Lambert Simnel and the Battle of Stoke E-Book

Michael Bennett

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 408

Beschreibung

Within two years of the battle of Bosworth, Henry Tudor was forced to defend his throne against a formidable challenge mounted on behalf of a ten-year-old boy who had been crowned in Dublin as 'Edward VI'. Though presented as the last surviving Plantagenet, the young lad is generally known to history as Lambert Simnel. Lambert Simnel and the Battle of Stoke unravels the tangled web of dynastic politics and rivalries in Yorkist England, seeking a context for the bizarre events of 1487. It considers the political instability and the miasma of intrigue associated with the reign of Richard III and the first years of Henry VII. It seeks to probe the mysteries surrounding Lambert Simnel, raising questions about his identity and the roots and ramifications of the movement that centred on him. Above all, it charts the progress of the conspiracy and rebellion, from the raising of troops in the Netherlands and Ireland to the 'coronation' in Dublin in May 1487, from the invasion of northern England through to the final, bloody encounter outside the village of East Stoke, near Newark, in June. Henry's triumph in the field, the last occasion when an English king personally took to the field against a rival, marked an important stage in the development of Tudor polity. In this revised and updated edition, Professor Michael Bennett offers new information and insights on this remarkable episode in English history, seeks clarity and coherence in accounts of the fast-moving drama, re-examines old and new evidence, including misconceptions and misinformation, and addresses recent theories regarding the identity of the Dublin king.

Leseprobe

About the Author

Michael Bennett is Emeritus Professor of History, University of Tasmania, and the author of four books and over fifty articles on late medieval England. His most recent book is War Against Smallpox: Edward Jenner and the Spread of Global Vaccination (Cambridge University Press, 2020).

Untuk Adinda Fatimah dan Anakanda Masni

First published 1987

This paperback edition first published 2024

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Michael Bennett, 1987, 1993, 2024

The right of Michael Bennett to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 80399 723 0

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

1 Prologue: Whitsuntide 1487

2 Blood and Roses

3 The Tudor Interlude

4 The Lambert Simnel Mystery

5 The Gathering Storm

6 The Struggle for the Kingdom

7 The Battle of Stoke

8 The Significance of 1487

Afterword

Appendix

List of Abbreviations

Notes

List of Illustrations

1 Henry VII, (died 1509), showing him in late middle age

2 Christchurch Cathedral, Dublin, where Lambert Simnel was crowned

3 Groat attributed to Lambert Simnel, struck in Dublin, 1487

4 Italian sword of about 1460

5 North German sallet of about 1480

6 Elizabeth of York, (died 1503)

7 Garter stall plate of Francis, Lord Lovell

8 ‘Herald’s report’ of the battle of Stoke, showing Lambert Simnel’s real name

9 Medieval chapel of Magdalen College, Oxford, possibly connected with Lambert Simnel

10 Margaret of York, Duchess of Burgundy (died 1503)

11 Seal of John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln

12 German mercenaries of the 15th century

13 Irish warriors of the early 16th century, engraved by Durer

14 Keep of Kenilworth Castle, Warwickshire, where Henry VII stayed, summer 1487

15 Furness Abbey, Lancashire

16 Bootham Bar, York, besieged by the Lords Scrope in the name of ‘Edward VI’

17 Sir John Savage, (died 1492), Macclesfield, Cheshire

18 Newark church, Nottinghamshire

19 Ballock dagger, North German, 15th century

20 Mace, Italian, late 15th century

21 Composite Gothic field armour, made in North Italy c. 1480

22 John de Vere, Earl of Oxford (died 1513), drawing of his tomb effigy

23 The Red Gutter, scene of many deaths after the battle

24 Spur found on the battlefield at Stoke

25 Seal of Jasper Tudor, Duke of Bedford

26 Sir Reginald Bray, (died 1503) from the stained glass at Great Malvern Priory

27 Sir Richard Edgecombe, (died 1489), painting in his home Cotehele Manor Cornwall, of his tomb at Morlaix, Brittany

28 The ‘Burrand Bush’ stone

MAPS

The Road to Stoke Field 4–16 June 1487

Stoke Field 16 June 1487

Photographs and illustrations were supplied by, or are reproduced by kind permission of the following: Society of Antiquaries of London (1, 10); British Museum (3, 8); Burrell Collection, Glasgow Museums and Art Galleries (5, 19, 20); Clive Hicks (15); National Gallery of Ireland (13); National Portrait Gallery, London (6); Newark Museum, Nottingham and Sherwood District Council (18, 23, (photographs by Francis Welch), 24, 28); Board of Trustees of the Armouries, H.M. Tower of London, Crown Copyright (21); Trustees of the Wallace Collection, London (4); Geoffrey Wheeler (9, 11, 12, 14, 16, 17, 26, 27).

Picture research by Carolyn and Peter Hammond

Acknowledgements

When I wrote about the battle of Bosworth two years ago, I believed that quincentenaries only happened every 500 years. The exercise could not possibly be habit-forming. To follow now with a study of the rebellion of 1487 might appear to observers to be the sure sign of an addiction, which could see me bound to the remorseless regimen of Henry VII for a quarter of a century. All I can plead is that when, at the solicitation of Alan Sutton, I undertook this project I did so in the belief that there was an interesting and significant episode of English history which deserved more extended and serious treatment than it had been previously afforded. If the story of Lambert Simnel were not told in 1987, there was a danger that it would not be taken up again for another half millennium. Since embarking on the book I have received help from a number of quarters. Among the scholars, archivists and librarians who passed on information are M. Condon, C.S.L. Davies, Ralph Griffiths, Alison Hanham, C. Harper-Bill, Peter Poggioli, Colin Richmond, David Smith, R.L. Storey and H. Tomlinson. I would like especially to thank Peter Clifford and his colleagues for production, Peter and Carolyn Hammond for the picture research, Hugh Aixill for sharing his thoughts on the battlefield with me, and Anne Bishop, my sister, for her sleuthing around Newark. I incurred many debts of gratitude in Hobart: Rod Thomson shouldered an extra teaching burden; Annette Sumner arranged interlibrary loans; Ian Smith, Bob Develin and Peter Davis helped on points of translation; Airlie Alam prepared the maps; Louise Gill offered criticisms of the first draft; and Em Underood proof-read against the clock. For her work on the index, and for so much more besides, I thank my mother, Vera Bennett. For her initial encouragement and continuous support in what was a short but exacting enterprise, I am most grateful to my wife, Fatimah.

M.B.

Hobart, Tasmania

May, 1987

Preface

It has been almost forty years since I wrote Lambert Simnel and the Battle of Stoke. While researching The Battle of Bosworth, I found out-of-the-way sources relating to the Yorkist rising of 1487 regime and soon saw the potential for a sequel that explored the conspiracy that linked England, Ireland and the Low Countries, the little-known invasion of northern England and the battle of Stoke, and the puzzles at the heart of the Lambert Simnel affair.

As I enjoyed writing the book, I was pleased to receive The History Press’s proposal for a new edition. It was a book written in a different age in a narrative style that seemed appropriate then to a general readership, but with endnotes and extracts from primary sources for a more scholarly audience. I found narrative history liberating but imposing its own discipline, requiring a more imaginative response to the interplay of character and circumstances, but imposing constraints in terms of chronology, context and coherence. It allowed scene-setting and colourful detail, a sense of people in place as well as time, so essential to the story of Lambert Simnel.

There was no opportunity for a full-scale revision of the book. I was happy with the book’s overall structure and found the text generally serviceable. Aware of the considerable scholarship published on fifteenth-century England over the last decades, I soon realised that I could only really refer to work directly pertinent to the topic. Among them were many long-familiar books that I was surprised to discover had not been available to me in 1987, including new editions of some major chronicles and texts and books on Perkin Warbeck by Margaret Weightman, Ian Arthurson and Ann Wroe.

For the new edition, I decided that, in addition to making minor corrections, I would add a chapter-length ‘Afterword’ in which I could summarise the basic narrative, add in new evidence and reflections, and amend and inflect the account in the light of new scholarship. For readers who are familiar with the field, the chapter can be read as a standalone piece. Its organising theme is the debate over the identity of the lad in Dublin crowned in 1487, not for its own sake but for what is at stake. A core element in most accounts of this episode, shrouded in uncertainty and obfuscation, is that he was an impostor, perhaps named Lambert Simnel, and claimed to be Edward of Warwick, son of the duke of Clarence, the last of the Plantagenets. A central concern of the ‘Afterword’ is to assess the claim and counter the assertion set forward by the Missing Princes Project that he was Edward V, the elder of the Princes in the Tower.

In adding my original acknowledgements, I pay tribute again to Alan Sutton, who commissioned books on the Wars of the Roses, and to The History Press for continuing this tradition. Scholars working on late medieval England also owe a great deal to Boydell and Brewer and Shaun Tyas, publisher of the Harlaxton Series and the Richard III Society’s Yorkist History Trust. I am very grateful to Sean Cunningham of The National Archives for images of documents, Randolph Jones for sharing recent papers, and Philip Caudrey for reading and correcting a draft of the paper at short notice. Finally, I thank Chrissy McMorris of the History Press for commissioning the new edition and seeing it through the press.

Michael Bennett,

Hobart, Australia,

February 2024

1

Prologue: Whitsuntide 1487

The old battlefield to the south of Market Bosworth lay convalescent, its ruddy clay soil no longer red with blood and its scars now covered with a second spring growth. It was now the end of spring in 1487, and it would soon be difficult to trace the site of the battle. Nonetheless there were still many people in the neighbourhood who could still see in their mind’s eye the army of Richard III arrayed on the brooding eminence of Ambien hill, the awesome spectacle of the breakneck charge down the western slopes, the bloody encounter among the scrub and mire, the hacking down of the king at Sandeford. The villagers of Dadlington, or at least the bolder spirits among them, probably had the fullest view of the action as well as the subsequent acclamation of Henry VII on Crown hill.1 Though the dead king was carried to Leicester, and later buried in the Greyfriars convent, it was to their little church that most of the slain were brought. There was still talk of the endowment of a proper battlefield chapel. Pilgrim traffic and well-lined offertory boxes might yet reconcile the villagers to their grisly legacy. It was not to happen this year. Piety must wait on peace.

For the people around Bosworth, the warmer and longer days of May held no promise of carefree repose. As the weeks slipped by between Easter and Pentecost, there was more to think about than the ‘smoke farthings’ or chimney tax that householders had to pay as their Pentecostal offering to the motherchurch at Leicester.2 Throughout the realm, but perhaps more especially in the counties of Leicester and Warwick, the spectre of civil war loomed larger and more menacing. It was no longer news that in Ireland there was a boy who claimed to be a scion of the house of York, and that some Yorkist lords were attempting to raise an army in the Netherlands to invade England. What did become apparent at this time was that the challenge from Ireland was acquiring considerable support and that there was a chance that it would be supported from the continent. The precipitate arrival at Coventry of Henry VII late in April obviously signalled that this was what the government suspected. By the end of May it was clear that far from the king leading an expedition to Ireland to suppress the rebellion, the Yorkist lords and their allies looked set to launch an invasion of England.

By Ascension Day Market Bosworth and other towns and villages within a day’s ride of Coventry were drawn into a theatre of war. For some time the roads around had buzzed with the movements of royal messengers, careering across the countryside with letters for the king’s friends and reports on the king’s enemies. In ever widening circuits Henry VII’s harbingers and scourers moved around the midlands buying up supplies at bargain prices. Local larders were emptied to provide for the royal household as it grew into the nucleus of a large army. The human resources of the region were culled for transport and other duties. William Altoft of Atherstone, whose medical work after Bosworth must have impressed the right people, was one local man whose services were to be greatly appreciated.3 Above all, of course, there was the mobilisation of the fencible men of the region, under such local commanders as Edward Grey, Viscount Lisle, constable of Kenilworth, and Edward, Lord Hastings from nearby Kirkby Muxloe. Soon the roads were full of cavalrymen, footsoldiers and camp-followers. Since the king lay at Kenilworth, and the perceived threat lay to the north and northwest, the Leicestershire farmers had reason to be anxious that their pastures would again see passages of arms.

Henry VII, (died 1509), showing him in late middle age.

* * *

As Whitsuntide approached, Henry VII could not immure himself from the atmosphere of confusion and alarm that was building up around the land. Although only thirty years old, he had long ago learned the virtues of vigilance and caution. Half his life, from 1471 until the battle of Bosworth less than two years ago, had been lived in exile, rarely more than a Lancastrian mascot and a pawn in a diplomatic game, and always a target for Yorkist intrigue. Looking northwards from Kenilworth, in the direction of the scene of his triumph, he, like many others, must have wondered what the bloodshed at Bosworth had achieved. Of course, in public the king and his supporters stressed the providential nature of his triumph over a parricidal tyrant. In the toppling and slaughter of Richard III, the battle had indeed been decisive, but the rather shoddy circumstances of the battle made it a little hard to see any sort of vindication of his title. More positively, he presented himself as the kinsman and, more tendentiously, the heir general, of his saintly half-uncle, Henry VI, but it is doubtful whether either claim carried much weight with more than a small faction. More crucial in the winning of hearts and minds was his promise to marry Elizabeth of York, the eldest daughter and, assuming the deaths of her brothers, the heir of Edward IV. It was a promise renewed at the close of his first session of parliament in December 1485, and fulfilled early in the following year. Its significance for public opinion stretched far beyond sentiment. The union of the roses offered the best prospect for an end to discord and the restoration of stability in the body politic. When the marriage bore immediate fruit with the birth of a son nine months later, many people found real comfort in the thought that the new line was properly grafted onto the old stock, and hoped that the end was in sight to the dynastic strife of the previous generation.4

It had been a real struggle for Henry VII to broaden his power-base. Even in 1487, there were still few people he could absolutely trust, save his paternal uncle, Jasper Tudor, now duke of Bedford, and the small circle of friends who had shared his exile. He recognised well enough his dependence at Bosworth and in the establishment of his regime, on the tactical genius of the old Lancastrian warhorse, John de Vere, earl of Oxford, and on the immense military following of his stepfather, Thomas Stanley, now earl of Derby, but he could never take their loyalty and commitment wholly for granted. Arrayed against him in the early days, were not only the many lords, gentlemen and communities who had cause to be loyal to the memory of Richard III, but also the many people who understandably found it hard to accept the accession of the largely unknown Welsh adventurer, Henry Tudor. It was certainly the case that although magnates like Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland, had not lifted a finger to save Richard III in 1485, they could not for that reason be regarded as supporters of the Tudor regime. In seeking to win the allegiance of a wider section of the political nation, Henry had perforce shown great circumspection, overlooking as much as he could overlook in the past records of peers, county notables and royal servants. In his first year or so, at least, he acted with generosity and magnanimity towards men whose commitment to him he had every reason to doubt, and indeed his policies had borne some fruit. His progresses through the realm, including his visits to towns like Nottingham and York, where the late king had been well regarded, had been public relations successes. Yet, even in Warwickshire and Leicestershire, the very heart of his kingdom, Henry had faced first smouldering discontent, and then open insurrection. He could not but feel that there was an incurable giddiness in the body politic. Many simple folk, doubtless encouraged by some who should have known better, saw the ‘sweating sickness’, which ravaged the realm from autumn 1485 through 1486, as a sign that his rule would be unusually harsh and deleterious. At the same time, the royal marriage, on which much popular hope was pinned, was not progressing as smoothly as had been hoped. By the summer of 1487, it was widely felt that the king was remiss in not arranging for the coronation of the queen, who eight months after the birth of the prince of Wales remained uncrowned.

Waiting at Kenilworth for news of his adversaries, Henry VII might even have felt some empathy with the man whom he had supplanted. Though he had summoned to his side, for relaxation and emotional support, his mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, and his wife, Elizabeth of York, he must have felt all the crushing loneliness of supreme power. Anxiously watching for signs of anxiety and dissembling among his counsellors, he knew that at any moment he must set out once more to submit his title to the crown to ordeal by battle. Like Richard III before him, he would then himself have the daunting task of holding together and ensuring the loyalty of men, whose commitment in the crucial hour could not be forced. Like the challenge he presented to his predecessor, the challenge he had now to face came from an unexpected quarter, and by its very preposterousness it was deeply unnerving. A determined group of malcontents, supported by a formidable force of German mercenaries, had established themselves in Dublin, and were threatening to invade England, doubtless with promises of powerful assistance from as yet undeclared traitors in the realm. They had with them a young boy, whom they claimed was Edward, earl of Warwick, the last male Plantagenet, and whom they had crowned as ‘Edward VI’. What real intelligence Henry VII had about the enterprise is unclear. There were certainly a great many points which awaited clarification. On one point, however, the normally taciturn and secretive king was vocal and unequivocal, at least in his public utterances. The puppet-king was no Plantagenet, but an impostor called Lambert Simnel.

Christchurch Cathedral, Dublin, where Lambert Simnel was crowned.

The cathedral of Christchurch, Dublin, had staged many spectacles in the three centuries since its construction, but none more remarkable than the coronation ceremony on Ascension day, 24 May 1487. The old and commodious church, normally so dank and eerily hollow, glowed and throbbed as the large and curious congregration waited expectantly on this summer day. Most of the normal points of reference were obscured or overlooked. For the moment the miracle-working relics of the staff of Jesus and the cross of the Holy Trinity were unattended. The battered effigy of Richard ‘Strongbow’, the progenitor of Anglo-Irish society and a founder of Christchurch, lay redundantly in its alcove in the nave, walled in by the backs of the great crowd. In the chapel of St Loo, the bronze-cased heart of St Lawrence O’Toole, his partner in the re-founding of the church in the late twelfth century, was temporarily forgotten as an object of veneration. All eyes were turned to the procession of splendidly robed prelates and cathedral clergy, richly accoutred noblemen and knights, and in their midst the ten year old youth who was to be crowned in Dublin as ‘Edward VI’, king of England and France.5

Presiding over the proceedings, never far from centre stage, was Gerald Fitzgerald, the ‘great’ earl of Kildare, governor of Ireland. Around him were gathered the chief officers of the lordship of Ireland and an impressive array of Anglo-Irish lords. The ecclesiastical establishment was well represented by the archbishop of Dublin and four other bishops. A rarer sight was the knot of distinguished-looking strangers, who included John de la Pole, earl of Lincoln, a nephew of the Yorkist kings, and Francis Lovell, viscount Lovell, a former confidant of Richard III. As representatives of the house of Plantagenet and the English peerage, this pair probably escorted the fresh-faced child to his place before the high altar. John Payne, bishop of Meath gave the sermon, and outlined the claims of the boy to the throne. It all seemed so indisputable: as Edward, earl of Warwick, the son of the late duke of Clarence, he was the next male heir of Edward IV and Richard III, and indeed the last surviving Plantagenet. The ceremony proceeded with dignity, though not without a measure of improvisation. A coronet was taken for the occasion from the head of a locally revered statue of the Virgin Mary. Once the crown had been placed on his young brow, the boy was lustily acclaimed by the congregation as King Edward. The cheers of acclamation were soon echoing through the streets of Dublin, where large crowds gathered along the road to the castle. So difficult was it for the loyal townspeople to see their diminutive lord that he was borne aloft on the broad and high shoulders of Lord Darcy of Platen. The celebrations were completed in grand style at Dublin castle with a state banquet and lavish entertainments.

Over the preceding weeks the young king had become well known in Anglo-Irish society. He was a handsome and well-proportioned youth, graceful in manner and alert in conversation. There had been many sceptics and secret spies who had talked to him about his past, but he had responded with facility and assurance. In his tale hehad needed no prompting. He was indeed a prince of the house of Plantagenet. He was Edward, earl of Warwick, Clarence’s son and heir. His mother, who had died when he was a baby, was Isabel Neville, daughter and heiress of Warwick the Kingmaker. He had been totally orphaned in 1478 when his father was falsely charged with treason and secretly put to death. Since then he had lived in straitened circumstances, first as the ward of the grasping marquis of Dorset, and then during Richard III’s time as a virtual prisoner at Sheriff Hutton castle. After the accession of Henry Tudor, he had been transferred to the Tower of London, the very place where his father had met his end. Daily he had feared for his life, but eventually well-wishers had effected his escape. With God’s assistance he had managed to reach Ireland, where he trusted to find men who honoured his father and grandfather, and who would support his cause against the ‘Welsh milksop’ who had usurped his throne.

The boy could not have been better schooled to win Irish hearts. From the outset the solemn but plucky youth had brought tears to the eyes of the people of Dublin. The outlines of his tragic story were already well-known, but gained considerable emotional charge from being related in the first person. The appeals of a friendless orphan are never easy to resist, but such appeals had special force for many people in the Irish Pale coming from a scion of the house of York. The memory of the boy’s grandfather, Richard, duke of York, who had held office as lieutenant of Ireland from the late 1440s to 1460, was cherished among most Anglo-Irish. During his firm but even-handed rule, the Irish Pale had known a degree of political stability and constitutional progress which in retrospect took on the glow of a golden age. Not surprisingly, the Anglo-Irish establishment welcomed the accession of his son to the throne in 1461, and through the brokerage of the earl of Kildare its support for the Yorkist monarchy brought the colony important privileges from Edward IV and more latterly Richard III. It was never forgotten, however, that the duke of York had another son, George, duke of Clarence, who was actually born in Ireland, and whose destiny might have been seen to lie in the lordship. Like the two previous dukes of Clarence, he had served for a while as lieutenant of Ireland, though he had not been permitted to take up office in person. He certainly seems to have had credit and connections in the colony. At the time of his arrest and imprisonment he was apparently considering having his infant son dispatched to Ireland for safe-keeping.6 It was this man’s son who was now appealing to them for assistance.

What made the cause of the young pretender compelling even to the most hard-headed in the Irish colony, however, was the arrival in Dublin, at the head of an impressive force of German mercenaries, of John de la Pole, earl of Lincoln. He was a twenty-five year-old young man of impeccable credentials. The eldest son of the duke of Suffolk, he was the heir to a noble house, which though only dating back to Edward III’s time, was unusually illustrious and well-endowed. He counted among his ancestors on his father’s side not only grandees with impressive records of service to the crown, but also the famous poet, Geoffrey Chaucer. The lineage of his mother, Elizabeth, was even more portentous. She was the daughter of Richard, duke of York, and the sister of Edward IV and Richard III, and her sons could thus regard themselves as princes of the house of York. Lincoln’s special status was clearly acknowledged by his royal uncles. After the death of his only legitimate son in 1484, King Richard not only appointed him to the lieutenancy of Ireland, but also seems to have regarded him as his heir to the throne. Manifestly, the circumstance that in 1487 the earl of Lincoln was acknowledging the pretender in Dublin as his cousin, and offering himself as his champion, must have carried great weight with many people. Even though he was apparently a late recruit to the movement, few could doubt that he would be the real leader of the enterprise, and Henry VII’s chief adversary. It is a pity that so little is known about his character, save for conventional statements affirming his nobility, gallantry and wisdom. Anecdotal evidence about him suggests a rather more complex character. According to later tradition, he was rather circumspect, especially in what he said, adopting such circumlocutions as, ‘I will not confidently aver it; but it is so and so, if men may be credited in their mortality’ or; ‘The number amounts to so many, if men fail not in their computations’.7 Perhaps with an uncle like Richard III it was wise to choose your words carefully, and with Geoffrey Chaucer as an ancestor, words came easily.

Needless to say, for the power-élite in Dublin it was not merely a combination of sentiment and fair-minded appraisal of Yorkist claims that drove the enterprise forward. In securing the coronation of the young claimant to the kingdom of England and the lordship of Ireland, the earl of Kildare and his faction thought not in terms of sacrifice but in terms of consolidating their own position and securing constitutional privileges. As the lieutenant of the boy-king, Kildare assumed vice-regal powers, and exploited his position to entrench the Fitzgerald ascendancy. For the English colony as a whole it offered a unique opportunity to properly establish the liberties and autonomy which had been the promise of Yorkist rule. It is not known what grand declarations were made in the parliament summoned on ‘Edward VI’s’ behalf, but the government seems to have had no hesitation in striking coins in the new king’s name. Of course, it is the case that the new regime was regarded with at least some scepticism in Dublin, and actively resisted in Waterford and some other towns. Yet it cannot be assumed that it was wholly without significance for the Gaelic chieftains beyond the Pale. Kildare was already a force to be reckoned with beyond Leinster and Meath, extending his overlordship into Munster, Connacht and Ulster. None since Brian Boru, the last high king, had wielded such power and authority in Ireland.8

* * *

In the summer of 1487 England was awash with rumours. The king issued, on Whitsunday, a stern proclamation that all tale-tellers unable to name their sources in court were to be pilloried.9 It was impossible for people to know what to credit about the identity of the pretender, the men who were supporting him, the aims of the movement, and the degree of support it enjoyed. There was so much that was mysterious about the whole affair, so much that, for all his informers and spies, and despite having sent a herald to Dublin for an audience with the alleged prince, even Henry VII did not know. Needless to say, even what the government knew, perhaps including the ‘coronation’ in Dublin, it did not necessarily wish to be bruited abroad. Conversely, what the government condescended to tell the people might well have been less than the truth. The king might have put on display in London the ‘real’ earl of Warwick, and declared the boy in Dublin to be an impostor named Lambert Simnel, but predictably the rebels, for their part, insisted that it was the Tudor regime that, in desperation, had resorted to trickery. This state of uncertainty was bound to persist, to some degree at least, until the challenge to Henry VII came to some final resolution. Even then, many crucial points could be deliberately obscured or lost to human memory. In his final comment on the affair, Francis Bacon astutely described the king ‘as loving to seal up his own dangers’.10

Groat attributed to Lambert Simnel, struck in Dublin, 1487.

The historian, five hundred years later, thus has precious few trustworthy sources for this episode in English history. The most reliable forms of documentation, generally speaking, are government and church records, especially when produced, as part of routine administration, close to the events in question. The chancery rolls, the exchequer accounts, court records, bishops’ registers and municipal memoranda, for example, all provide much hard information on people, places and dates, and generally offer firm footholds in historical enquiry. Of their very nature, however, such records tend to be formal and terse, explaining little or nothing of the background to the recorded action. While waiting for news of the invasion, for example, the king instructed his officers to deliver the revenues of land held by his mother-in-law, Elizabeth Woodville, to his wife, the new queen. Later commentators associated the disendowment of the dowager queen with the troubles of the time, implying some involvement in the conspiracy. The record itself, however, simply noted laconically that the king was acting ‘for diverse considerations’.11 Of course, there are some classes of material, most notably official letters, proclamations and judicial proceedings, that are a little more forthcoming. The register of the archbishop of Canterbury contains a record of the ‘exposure’ of Simnel’s imposture made during convocation in February 1487. A letter from the king to the pope, written shortly after the rebellion, described the circumstances of a miracle that had powerfully assisted the royal cause in London. The act of attainder against Lincoln and his associates, entered in the parliament rolls in November, offers a brief narrative account of their treason.12 Yet the more communicative, the less routinely bureaucratic, official documents appear, the more the historian needs to be on guard. All too obviously, such sources might testify more to what the powers-that-were wanted people to believe, than to what was actually the case.

At the very least administrative records of various sorts help to establish firmly crucial benchmarks in the drama of 1487. The pretender’s presence in Dublin was clearly known at the time of the great council and convocation in February, and perhaps even in the previous December, when summonses were sent for the meeting. The king’s itinerary, from his departure from Sheen early in Lent through to his arrival at Coventry on St George’s eve, can be charted from the workings of the privy seal office. In the lead up to and in the aftermath of the king’s confrontation with the rebels, a series of proclamations and letters offer a guide to the process of mobilisation and to the re-establishment of order. The records of chancery and exchequer provide details of pardons granted to and fines exacted from rebels in the months following the battle of Stoke.13 Incidentally, administrative records provide unimpeachable evidence that within a short time, Henry Tudor’s second victory, unlike his first, had a generally accepted name. The initial reports of the battle simply referred to its taking place near Newark. An inquisition held at Rugeley in Staffordshire late in August, however, related to a horse stolen in the battle called ‘Stokefield’, while in the autumn the mercers of London recorded the appointment of thirty men of their company to wait on the king ‘coming from Stoke field’.14

Some of the most illuminating records are the more informal and personalised letters written at the time, whether by the king, prominent noblemen, officials or country gentlemen. A few valuable items, touching on the drama of 1487, have survived, including correspondence of the king and the pretender, and the earls of Oxford and Northumberland.15 When the government records and extant letters are set in sequence, a narrative framework can be established, and some casual relationships can perhaps be inferred. In the case of the conspiracy and rebellion of 1487, this task is made a little easier by the happy chance that the main collection of surviving correspondence also includes a sort of commentary on it. In the house book of the city of York, some conscientious clerk, not only minuted the major decisions of the mayor and aldermen, but also made copies, in sequence, of important letters received and sent. From his arrangement, it becomes clear, for example, that it was the city of York, rather than the government, that took the initiative in preparing itself to resist the rebels. Even more interestingly, the clerk decided to connect up some of the entries with explanatory detail, and in this fashion provided the earliest extant narrative of the rising in the north and what he termed ‘the process of the battle beside Newark’.16

In the case of another important source, the report of a herald attending the court in the late 1480s, the distinction between a record and a chronicle is also hard to draw. From the reign of Edward IV, if not earlier, it became the practice for heralds to keep journals of events at court and on campaign, presumably to serve as books of precedents as well as records of achievement in the complex and contentious world of ceremony and chivalry. Though wholly devoid of any pretension to literary style, some reports inevitably assumed a crude narrative form. This is the case with the report, or ‘brief memory’, surviving in the British Library, Cotton MS. Julius B.XII. It covers the king’s activities from the early 1486, with short interruptions when the author was rostered on leave, until the beginning of 1490, when the whole account was perhaps written up from notes. The form in which it is most often consulted is based on John Leland’s copy, which with the exception of one crucial alteration is remarkably faithful. The report certainly provides an important source of court life in the first years of Henry VII’s reign, and provides an eye-witness account of the weeks leading up to the battle of Stoke. Although it was produced by someone well-versed in court affairs, the report was written ‘by licence’ and is disappointingly bland on matters of state. Rather more surprisingly, it is better on the details of the muster and campaign than on the actual combat.17

The events of 1487 are otherwise rather poorly recorded by contemporary or near-contemporary narrative sources. The annals compiled at London and elsewhere do not offer much information beyond the basic details about the battle. It is most unfortunate that neither the second continuator of the Crowland Chronicle nor John Rous of Warwick extended their accounts to cover the affair, because both in their own ways could have offered fascinating insights.18 Even by the end of Henry VII’s reign precious little had been written on the affair. The Great Chronicle of London merely provided a slightly more elaborate account of the battle, adding only a few details to the earlier annals. Bernard André, the poet laureate and court historiographer, wrote a poem to commemorate the victory and, of course, later treated the episode in his biography of the king.19 Yet his verse sheds little or no historical light, and his later prose account of the conspiracy and battle is somewhat confused and lacking in conviction. More impressive is the report of his Burgundian counterpart, Jean Molinet. While he is obscure on some points and mistaken on others, he clearly had access to a fair amount of information, apparently from a number of independent sources, including perhaps German mercenaries who had fought in the rebel army.20

The standard account of the rising of 1487 comes from the pen of Polydore Vergil.21 He was the first to attempt a connected and coherent version of the whole affair, and his narrative of the conspiracy, the rebellion and the battle of Stoke became, almost immediately, the dominant tradition. It seems to have been known, for example, to the author of the Book of Howth, which otherwise might be viewed as independent testimony on some points. It is incorporated with little more than the occasional gloss, into the English histories of Edward Hall and Raphael Holinshed, the life of Henry VII produced by Francis Bacon, and indeed most modern historical writings.22 The major problem, therefore, is the reliability of Polydore Vergil’s account, and therefore the quality of his sources. It is known that this distinguished humanist scholar only arrived in England around 1502, and thus it seems likely that he did not embark on a narration of the events of 1487 until some twenty years after the affair. Even more worrying is that there is no evidence that he had access to any written sources, whether government records or earlier narratives. The long list of knights and squires who joined the royal host, incorporated in the printed version of his Anglica Historia, was in all probability an editorial contribution.23 More than for most episodes in his history, Vergil seems to have relied on what he learned from talking to people at court, most especially, it would seem, Christopher Urswick. Given the informal nature of his sources, however, it is rather a pity that his smooth and stylish narrative has left few rough edges of circumstantial detail.

Independent traditions regarding the events of 1487 faded in the course of the sixteenth century as Polydore Vergil’s attractive, lucid and informed account gained lustre and the appearance of authority through its being repeated and re-worked by other writers. It is certainly the case that information about the affair was preserved in oral tradition for some time. A ballad on the battle of Stoke was in circulation in the early years of Henry VIII’s reign.24 If it took the form of the ballad of Bosworth Field it might have supplied the list of knights and squires fighting for the king that was incorporated into the Anglica Historia. The colourful Martin Schwartz and his German mercenaries survived in folk memory, though perhaps only as rather ludicrous ‘bogey-men’.25 Snippets of information were preserved, presumably by families and friends, about quite a number of the other actors in this drama, including the earl of Lincoln, viscount Lovell, Richard Harleston and, perhaps most notably, Nicholas, Lord Howth, who cast himself as the only Irish lord who was not taken in by the imposture.26 Oral tradition was particularly strong in districts figuring prominently in the affair, most especially the loyalist town of Waterford. The villages around Stoke have their own traditions, some based on the unearthing of bones and artefacts.27 All told, however, it is surprising how little can be added to the story from sources later than the reign of Henry VIII.

* * *

The source materials available for Lambert Simnel and the battle of Stoke are limited and generally poor in quality. From this cursory review of the evidence, it is also clear that some of what seem to be the best sources often present the greatest problems of assessment and interpretation. Polydore Vergil’s Anglica Historia, the fullest and most coherent account, requires particularly careful handling. Apart from its being written late, perhaps as much as a quarter of a century after the events described, it necessarily reflects, to some degree, the official view of events in 1487. Of course, it is possible, on some points of detail, to check his account against earlier records, but this sort of exercise is scarcely reassuring. While Vergil is quite clear, for example, that Simnel’s priest–mentor was captured at Stoke in the summer of 1487, the archbishop of Canterbury’s register records that he was in custody from the beginning of the year.28 If Vergil cannot be relied on for important facts, it is difficult to know what reliance to place on his general picture of the conspiracy and its progress. On a number of aspects of the affair, unfortunately, he remains the sole guide. The records alone are rarely informative enough to provide the basis for an alternative view, and on crucial affairs of state might be deliberately misleading. The memoranda written by the royal herald and by the clerk at York are patchy and unenterprising, while the chronicle of Jean Molinet is uneven and a little muddled, but these early narratives must be regarded as more authentic witnesses to the mood of 1487 than Vergil, and in some significant respects allow a different reconstruction and interpretation of events.

Italian sword of about 1460.

A great deal about the conspiracy and rising of 1487 will necessarily remain obscure. From the evidence available, it is hard to escape the impression that there was much about the whole business that was mysterious at the time. All the writers were, to some degree, reliant on government information or misinformation, and popular rumour and gossip. Even if the historian can feel sure that the boy in Dublin was an impostor, he cannot know who at the time, from Henry VII downwards, had any firm knowledge on the matter. Unless he were writing tongue-in-cheek, Jean Molinet assumed that the lad was the earl of Warwick, and there are grounds for supposing that many people in Ireland believed in their prince. To confuse matters further, the intrigue itself emerged from a miasma of scandal and mystery that dated back to Richard III’s reign and beyond. The crux of the problem, needless to say, is that impersonation is necessarily corrosive of truth and certainty. To compound the confusion for historians, Lambert Simnel was followed by Perkin Warbeck and other impostors. Some early chroniclers, most notably Bernard André, anticipated later generations of English school-children, in conflating or otherwise confusing the two episodes.

In seeking an understanding of the events of 1487, it is vital to keep as close as possible to the evidence. For the most part, it will be a matter of crawling on the ground, groping in the gloom for safe footholds, and exploring every nook and cranny for possible leads. Nevertheless, in an enterprise of this sort, it will not be possible to make progress without occasionally climbing above the swirling mist to seek a wider vista. It is the broad perspective that makes sense of the detail, suggests patterns and informs the imagination. In a study of Lambert Simnel and the battle of Stoke, it seems sensible to start by briefly surveying relevant features of the fifteenth-century landscape. In this fashion it is planned to set the scene genealogically and politically, to trace the ramifications and rivalries of the dominant families in Lancastrian and Yorkist England, and to see how dynastic uncertainty and civil strife created a political culture in which imposture briefly but banefully flourished.

2

Blood and Roses

It is no longer fashionable to discern in fifteenth-century English life the ‘mixed smell of blood and roses’. In seeking to evoke the early summer of 1487, however, it is hard to dismiss Johan Huizinga’s haunting image from the mind.1 In the literal sense, it was most certainly a time of blood and roses, at a time when on the banks of the river Trent flowers bloomed amid the carnage. In more figurative senses, as well, images of ‘blood’ and ‘roses’ loomed large in the consciousness of English people in the mid-1480s. A central concern was with the fate of the house of Plantagenet, which had ruled England for over three centuries, with the extinction or survival of its blood-line, and with the contending claims of princes and pretenders to represent and embody it. The two main branches of the ruling dynasty, which over the previous three decades had disputed the crown, had lately become more and more identified with roses: the red rose of Lancaster and Beaufort and the white rose of York. More recently, the fledgling regime of Henry VII had actively promoted this symbolism, and elaborated on it for propagandist purposes. The marriage of Henry Tudor and Elizabeth of York, a union of the blood-lines of the rival dynasties, was appropriately depicted as two roses entwined. The new royal house of Tudor would adopt as its best known emblem the double rose.2

Huizinga did not write for the literal-minded or even the emblematicallyminded, nor for that matter with England in mind. What he sought to express in the image were the contrasts and paradoxes of European life and culture in later middle ages. For this noted Dutch historian, the ‘mixed smell of blood and roses’ epitomised the contrasts in experience – between suffering and joy, adversity and prosperity, war and peace – which were then more keenly felt, and the oscillations in mood – between tenderness and cruelty, love and hate, piety and worldliness – which then seemed more violent and striking. Even if alongside the rich and ebullient tapestry of continental experience, the fabric of English life appears a little bland and colourless, this sort of duality is nonetheless strikingly apparent. English men and women of the late fifteenth century felt and acted with a directness and a passion that even some foreign observers found disconcerting. In the theatre of English public life, most especially, the contrasts and upheavals were notoriously overdrawn and precipitate.