The Royal Stuarts: A History of the Family That Shaped Britain by Allan Massie Page B

might indeed be the Yorkist heir and the legitimate king of England.
    It was not impossible to win the throne for his protégé. Henry VII had himself invaded England with only a few thousand troops, met and defeated Richard III at Bosworth, and made himself king. Furthermore, James had another ambition that might be more easily realised. The town of Berwick-on-Tweed, which had changed hands thirteen times in the last two hundred years, was once again in English possession. It might be retaken in even a limited campaign, and Warbeck obligingly promised to hand it back to Scotland and also to pay James 50,000 marks in return for his assistance. Accordingly, even if the campaign achieved nothing more than the recapture of Berwick, James could consider it a success. So by force of argument or personality he overcame the doubters in his Council, and was able to prepare for war.
    In the summer of 1496 the army, with the big guns that were James’s especial pride, crossed the Tweed at Coldstream and laid siege to Hetton Castle. Warbeck was soon disillusioned and disheartened. None of the support he had expected from Yorkist sympathisers appeared, and he discovered in himself a distaste for the savage warfare of the borderlands. James on the other hand relished it. Ayala, the Spanish ambassador, who had been invited to accompany him on the campaign, thought him braver and more reckless than a king should properly be. When he remarked on this, James replied that he must do anything he required of his soldiers. Ayala was not convinced. Later he was to reflect that James was not a good commander, because ‘he begins to fight before he has given his orders’. 5 This was to prove a sadly prophetic judgement.
    The campaign petered out. When word came that an English army was advancing from Newcastle, James withdrew. Berwick remained in English hands. The invasion had been a gesture, nothing more. Poor Warbeck had preceded the King back to Edinburgh, and James soon abandoned his cause. It seems that the boy’s dislike of seeing men killed in battle may have convinced James that he was not of royal blood. Nevertheless, he paid his pension for another couple of years, then gave him a ship to take him from Ayr to Exeter, where he had been persuaded, or had persuaded himself, that enthusiasm for the Yorkist cause ran high. He was wrong again. Taken prisoner in a skirmish, he was carried to London and imprisoned in the Tower. His wife, Lady Katherine, followed him south, evidence of at least some affection, and begged Henry to spare his life. Henry took a liking to the young woman and was at first agreeable. But Warbeck attempted to escape, with a genuine Yorkist heir, the young Earl of Warwick, and this was too much for Henry. Warwick, who lacked some of his wits, was beheaded as was proper for a nobleman and the King’s cousin. Warbeck was first beaten up in his prison until he signed a confession admitting his imposture, and was then hanged at Tyburn, a sad end to a strange life in which he may well have come to believe that he was indeed the prince he had claimed to be. His widow, Lady Katherine, remained at the English court.
    It was time James himself was married. He was already well on in his twenties and there was need for a legitimate heir to the throne. He was more ambitious than most of his predecessors, among whom only his father had married into another fully royal family. Approaches for a Spanish princess had come to nothing, though. Soon after James’s abandonment of Perkin Warbeck in 1497, Henry VII offered his elder daughter Margaret to the Scottish king, and with her the promise of peace between England and Scotland. Margaret was still a child of seven or eight, and despite political considerations, James was in no hurry to marry. He had already fathered a number of children by different mothers, and was now in love with a young woman called Margaret Drummond. 6 She was the youngest daughter of the first Lord Drummond,