Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article, Cork Independent
Rebel Cork
Thursday 17 October 2013
Cork Rebel Week, the most talked about event in recent months, is upon us. One of the national flagship projects of The Gathering it focuses on what defines Cork as a place. There are many answers to that and even more questions. The collective memory of the city has many stories that are constantly republished, narrated amongst individuals and communities from legends such as St Finbarr to famous buildings to Cork’s GAA prowess. However perhaps it is the concept of being rebellious in its dealings through the ages that defines the essence of Ireland’s second and always ambitious city. But what does rebel Cork actually mean?
I always think that it’s a city that does not overly market its past despite its role in everything from early Christian Ireland to eighteenth century butter and beef markets to the Irish War of Independence. It always seems that the history of the city is either not ready for public consumption or that as a city we hold back from celebrating it. That being said the sense of place of Cork, a city built on a swamp with steep hills hosting its suburbs, built in the middle of the river adds to the charm of what Cork is all about.
When all is taken into account, perhaps the sense of rebelliousness in the city is bound up with its sense of charm which is written about much in tourist literature and also tends to be a foundation pillar in its history – a city whose keen interest in economics through many centuries created merchants who continually honed their skills to be the best they could and to be imaginative and ambitious in their aims convincing others that this small city had something to offer in the Atlantic corridors of business and empire building and in time empire destruction. Creating a port infrastructure on a swamp, one can still admire buildings like the Port of Cork, the timber wharves, some intact, some crumbling – but for all that heritage, the city is very picky in what should be remembered – the river and the harbour still call for a new sense of re-imagining – rowers and swimmers have shown how the water determines some of the sense of place of the city. I say this maybe because I do feel the city has turned it back on the waterways and the second largest natural harbour in the world.
Many of city’s old buildings, which are derelict, also call for a new re-imagining especially those located in areas where the local history itself is rich. We have all passed areas in our respective neighbourhoods where you’d pass and go I’d wish someone would do that place up and celebrate what an area stands for. Despite the city’s failings, a walk through its different suburbs reveals a place of different layers of history and exciting connections to not just the City’s local history but Irish and European as well.
If a sense of charm is one key pillar, the search for the historic origins of the term Rebel Cork is rooted in a city legend that in 1493 Perkin Warbeck, the Pretender for the English throne, came to Cork. He was well received by the Mayor and then allegedly was crowned as Richard IV of England in Christ Church on South Main Street. The story is bound up with the Wars of the Roses, (1455–85), in English history i.e. a series of violent dynastic civil wars. Fought between the Houses of Lancaster and York for the English throne, the wars were named many years afterward from the supposed badges of the contending parties: the white rose of York and the red of Lancaster. Both houses claimed the throne through descent from the sons of Edward III. In the English magazine History Today, several contributors through several publications note that in the aftermath of the Wars of the Roses, Henry’s position remained precarious, as doubts persisted over his questionable claim to the throne taken after defeating Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth. Perkin Warbeck’s web of deception began when he arrived in Cork, the seventeen-year-old servant of a Breton merchant. His confession alleges that after modelling the elegant silks that his master was selling, some locals insisted he must be Richard of York, the younger of the two princes Richard III was believed to have slain in 1483. Warbeck embarked on a conspiracy against the incumbent Henry VII to take back the crown.
On 5 October, 1497, Perkin Warbeck’s capture in Beaulieu by Henry VII’s troops marked the end of his ‘reign’ as the self-proclaimed Richard IV and revealed him as the imposter he really was. It was then that he finally confessed that he was not Edward V’s brother, as he had declared for six years, but was in fact descended from a Tournai boatman. By pursuing a number of conspiracies intended to oust Henry, Warbeck had been a major thorn in the king’s side ever since he was mistaken – deliberately or otherwise – for the Duke of York in 1491. Where did it all start – Cork and that just one of several intriguing stories that the citizens have woven through the ages.
Caption:
713a. Perkin Warbeck (source: History Today)