hath seldom been known, and could make his own part if at any time he
chanced to be out. Wherefore, this being one of the strangest examples of
a personation that ever was in elder or later times, it deserveth to be
discovered and related at the full--although the King's manner of showing
things by pieces and by dark lights hath so muffled it that it hath been
left almost as a mystery to this day.

The Lady Margaret,[1] whom the King's friends called Juno, because she
was to him as Juno was to Aeneas, stirring both heaven and hell to do him
mischief, for a foundation of her particular practices against him, did
continually, by all means possible, nourish, maintain, and divulge the
flying opinion that Richard, Duke of York, second son to Edward IV, was
not murdered in the Tower, as was given out, but saved alive. For that
those who were employed in that barbarous act, having destroyed the elder
brother, were stricken with remorse and compassion toward the younger,
and set him privily at liberty to seek his fortune.

There was a townsman of Tournai, that had borne office in that town,
whose name was John Osbeck, a convert Jew, married to Catherine de Faro,
whose business drew him to live for a time with his wife at London, in
King Edward's days. During which time he had a son[2] by her, and being
known in the court, the King, either out of a religious nobleness because
he was a convert, or upon some private acquaintance, did him the honor to
be godfather to his child, and named him Peter. But afterward, proving a
dainty and effeminate youth, he was commonly called by the diminutive
of his name, Peterkin or Perkin. For as for the name of Warbeck, it was
given him when they did but guess at it, before examinations had been
taken. But yet he had been so much talked of by that name, as it stuck by
him after his true name of Osbeck was known.

While he was a young child, his parents returned with him to Tournai.
There he was placed in the house of a kinsman of his called John
Stenbeck, at Antwerp, and so roved up and down between Antwerp and
Tournai, and other towns of Flanders, for a good time, living much in
English company and having the English tongue perfect. In which time,
being grown a comely youth, he was brought by some of the espials of the
Lady Margaret into her presence. Who, viewing him well, and seeing that
he had a face and personage that would bear a noble fortune, and finding
him otherwise of a fine spirit a