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1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
• Perkin Warbeck
The Nuttall Encyclopedia
• Warbeck, Perkin

PERKIN WARBECK ( c. 1474-1499), pretender to the throne of England, was the son of Jehan de Werbecque, a poor burgess of Tournay in Flanders and of his wife Katherine de Faro. The exact date of his birth is unknown, but as he represented himself as having been nine years old in 1483, it must have taken place in, or close on, 1474. His confession made at the end of his life was an account of his early years which is to some extent supported by other testimony. The names of his father and other relations whom he mentions have been found in the municipal records of Tournay, and the official description of them agrees with his statements. According to this version, which may be accepted as substantially true, he was brought up at Antwerp by a cousin Jehan Stienbecks, and served a succession of employers as a boy servant. He was for a time with an Englishman John Strewe at Middleburg, and then accompanied Lady Brampton, the wife of an exiled partisan of the house of York, to Portugal. He was for a year employed by a Portuguese knight whom he described as having only one eye, and whom he names Vacz de Cogna (Vaz da Cunha ?). In 1491 he was at Cork as the servant of a Breton silk merchant Pregent (Pierre Jean) Meno. Ireland was strongly attached to the house of York, and was full of intrigue against King Henry VII. Perkin says that the people seeing him dressed in the silks of his master took him for a person of distinction, and insisted that he must be either the son of George, duke of Clarence, or a bastard of Richard III. He was more or less encouraged by the earls of Desmond and Kildare. The facts are ill recorded, but it is safe to presume that intriguers who wished to disturb the government of Henry VII. took advantage of a popular delusion, and made use of the lad as a tool. At this time he spoke English badly. By 1492 he had become sufficiently notorious to attract the attention of King Henry's government and of foreign sovereigns. He was in that year summoned to Flanders by Margaret, the widowed duchess of Burgundy, and sister of Edward IV., who was the main support of the Yorkist exiles, and who was the enemy of Henry VII. for family reasons and for personal reasons also, for she wished to extort from him the payment of the balance of her dowry. She found the impostor useful as a means of injuring the king of England. Several European sovereigns were moved to help him by the same kind of reason. The suppositions that he was the son of Clarence or of Richard III. were discarded in favour of the more useful hypothesis that he was Richard, dike of York, the younger of the two sons of Edward IV., murdered in the Tower. Charles VIII., king of France, the counsellors of the youthful duke of Burgundy, the duke's father Maximilian, king of the Romans, and James IV. of Scotland, none of whom can have been really deceived, took up his cause more or less actively. He was entertained in France, and was taken by Maximilian to attend the funeral of the emperor Frederick III. in 1493. At Vienna he was treated as the lawful king of England. He was naturally the cause of considerable anxiety to the English government, which was well acquainted with his real history, and made attempts to get him seized. His protectors entered into negotiations which in fact turned on the question whether more was to be gained by supporting him, or by giving him up. An appeal to Isabella, queen of Castile, met with no response. In July 1495 he was provided with a few ships and men by Maximilian, now emperor, and he appeared on the coast of Kent. No movement in his favour took place. A few of his followers who landed were cut off, and he went on to Ireland to join the earl of Desmond in Munster. After an unsuccessful attack on Waterford in August, he fled to Scotland. Here King James IV. showed him favour, and arranged a marriage for him with Catherine Gordon, daughter of the earl of Huntly. He was helped to make a short inroad into Northumberland, but the intervention of the Spanish government brought about a peace between England and Scotland. In 1497 Perkin was sent on his travels again with there was no declaration. (See Ariga, La Guerre s inoa onaise Paris, 18 6 The delivery of an ?? > 9)

y ultimatum specifying those terms, the compliance with which is demanded within a specified time, is practically a conditional declaration of war which becomes absolute in case of non-compliance. Thus the note communicated by the United States to Spain on 20th April 1898 demanded the "immediate withdrawal of all the land and sea forces from Cuba," and gave Spain three days to accept these terms. On the evening of 22nd April the United States seized several Spanish vessels, and hostilities were thus opened. In the case of the Transvaal War, the declaration also took the form of an ultimatum. A special Hague convention adopted at the Conference of 1907 now provides that hostilities "must not commence without previous and explicit warning in the form of a reasoned declaration of war or of an ultimatum with conditional declaration of war." It also provides that the existence of a state of war must be notified to the neutral powers and shall not take effect in regard to them until after the receipt of the notification which may be given by telegraph. Most of the good effect of the provision, however, is negatived by the qualification that neutral powers cannot rely on the absence of notification if it is clearly established that they were in fact aware of the existence of a state of war.

Too much confidence must not be placed in regulations concerning the conduct of war. Military necessity, the heat of action, the violence of the feelings which come into la will always at times defeat the most skilfully- law of war. play y y combined rules diplomacy can devise. Still, such rules are a sign of conditions of public opinion which serve as a restraint upon the commission of barbarities among civilized peoples. The European operations in China consequent on the "Boxer" rising showed how distance from European criticism tends to loosen that restraint. On the other hand, it was significant that both the United States and Spain, who were not parties to the Declaration of Paris, found themselves, in a war confined to them, under the necessity of observing provisions which the majority of civilized states have agreed to respect. (T. BA.)