Lambert Simnel and the Battle of Stoke

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

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

2Christchurch Cathedral, Dublin, where Lambert Simnel was crowned

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

4Italian sword of about 1460

5North German sallet of about 1480

6Elizabeth of York, (died 1503)

7Garter stall plate of Francis, Lord Lovell

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

9Medieval 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