most credible that the
duchess has supported Perkin, on the persuasion he was her nephew;
and Henry not being able to prove the reports he had spread of her
having trained up an impostor, chose to drop all mention of
Margaret, because nothing was so natural as her supporting the heir
of her house. On the contrary, in Perkin's confession, as it was
called, And which though preserved by Grafton, was suppressed by
lord Bacon, not only as repugnant to his lordship's account, but to
common sense, Perkin affirms, that "having sailed to Lisbon in a
ship with the lady Brampton, who, lord Bacon says, was sent by
Margaret to conduct him thither, and from thence have resorted to
Ireland, it was at Cork that they of the town first threaped upon
him that he was son of the duke of Clarence; and others afterwards,
that he was the duke of York." But the contradictions both in lord
Bacon's account, and in Henry's narrative, are irreconcileable and
unsurmountable: the former solves the likeness,(41) which is
allowing the likeness of Perkin to Edward the Fourth, by supposing
that the king had an intrigue with his mother, of which he gives
this silly relation: that Perkin Warbeck, whose surname it seems was
Peter Osbeck, was son of a Flemish converted Jew (of which Hebrew
extraction,(42) Perkin says not a word in his confession) who with
his wife Katherine de Faro come to London on business; and she
producing a son, king Edward, in consideration of the conversion, or
intrigue, stood godfather to the child and gave him the name of
Peter, Can one help laughing at being told that a king called Edward
gave the name of Peter to his godson? But of this transfretation and
christening Perkin, in his supposed confession, says not a word, nor
pretends to have ever set foot in England, till he landed there in
pursuit of the crown; and yet an English birth and some stay, though
in his very childhood, was a better way of accounting for the purity
of his accent, than either of the preposterous tales produced by
lord Bacon or by Henry. The former says, that Perkin, roving up and
down between Antwerp and Tournay and other towns, and living much in
English company, had the English tongue perfect. Henry was so afraid
of not ascertaining a good foundation of Perkin's English accent,
that he makes him learn the language twice over.(43) "Being sent
with a merchant of Turney, called Berlo, to the mart of Antwerp, the
said Berlo set me," says Perkin, "to borde