Perkin Warbeck
The Last Man had appeared in January,
1826, and for the remainder of the year, Mary worked on shorter writing
projects (stories, poems) and had great fun with her dear friend Jane Williams,
who, as you will recall, was the widow of Edward Williams, who had drowned
alongside Bysshe back in the summer of 1822. Mary greatly enjoyed Jane’s
company. Trusted her implicitly. A mistake—as we’ll see.
As 1827
commenced, she had settled on Perkin Warbeck (?1475–1499) as the subject for
her next novel. Warbeck, a figure now largely unknown to the general public,
caught Mary’s fancy in the mid-1820s, and she read all she could about this
murky historical figure.
In her
scholarly edition of Perkin Warbeck,
editor Doucent Devin Fischer tells us a bit about the historical Warbeck, a
young man who claimed to be one of the two princes held in the Tower of London
and murdered by order of Richard III.[1]
Warbeck claimed that he’d escaped. Later, he raised supporters, invaded England
more than once, hoping to overthrow Henry VII, who, he claimed, was not the
legitimate heir to the throne. He,
Warbeck, was.
But his
final invasion floundered; he was captured; and, on November 23, 1499,
authorities transported him to Tyburn, near the Marble Arch in contemporary
London, where they summarily hanged him.
In her Preface
to the novel, Mary confesses that she believed Warbeck’s claim: It is not singular, she wrote, that I should entertain a belief that Perkin
was, in reality, the lost Duke of York.[2] She also says that
she will not be sticking to rigorous fact—she will tell the story, try to make
it exciting.
But early in
1827 family and personal issues emerged, issues that would slow her progress on
the novel—that would break her heart. Yet again.
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