At the opening of 1492, at the moment when the king was threatening a descent on the French coast, a youth calling himself Richard, Duke of York, landed suddenly in Ireland.

His story of an escape from the Tower and of his bringing up in Portugal was accepted by a crowd of partizans; but he was soon called by Charles to France, and his presence there adroitly used to wring peace from the English king as the price of his abandonment.

At the conclusion of peace the pretender found a new refuge with Duchess Margaret; his claims were recognized by the House of Austria and the king of Scots; while Henry, who declared the youth's true name to be Perkin Warbeck, weakened his cause by conflicting accounts of his origin and history.
Fresh Yorkist plots sprang up in England.

The Duchess gathered a fleet, Maximilian sent soldiers to the young claimant's aid, and in 1495 he sailed for England with a force as large as that which had followed Henry ten years before.

But he found a different England.