He had every motive to justify and expand his royalty; a usurper is always in danger, and almost at once the Yorkist faction began to conspire against him. Some of the former king’s supporters rose against Henry, at Worcester and in Wales, but they were easily dispelled. The throne was further strengthened by the birth of a son and heir at Winchester in 1486; this was the city in which the ‘Round Table’ was to be seen, and the infant was given the name of Arthur. Henry was eager to employ or to exploit any royal connection he could find.
Another attack upon his throne was launched at the end of this year by Yorkists who claimed that they had rescued the young earl of Warwick, son of the duke of Clarence and therefore a proper heir to the throne, from long imprisonment. This was enough to arouse all the hopes of the defeated. The fact that the real Warwick was even then immured in the Tower of London did not in any way diminish their enthusiasm. The boy had emerged in Dublin, and in that city on 24 May 1487 he was proclaimed as Edward VI. A crown had been taken from a statue of the Virgin Mary and placed in ceremony upon his head.
The real name of the supposed king was in fact Lambert Simnel. Of his earlier life, little enough is known. It seems that he was characterized by a pleasing appearance and an uncommon manner, leading some bold spirits to believe that he could indeed impersonate an earl. He also caught the attention of Edward IV’s sister, Margaret of Burgundy, who would in future years do everything in her power to restore the Yorkist dynasty. Other Yorkist sympathizers, the earl of Lincoln and Lord Lovel among them, were eager to participate in the conspiracy. Its most surprising member, however, must be Henry’s mother-in-law. Elizabeth Woodville, widow of Edward IV, might have been considered to be above suspicion. Her daughter, Elizabeth of York, was the reigning queen. What had she to gain in supplanting her son-in-law and effectively dispossessing her daughter?
It seems likely that she felt herself and her kin to have been humiliated by Henry’s seizure of the crown. There were rumours that Henry was not treating his wife with due respect or kindness. He had delayed the wedding, and was still delaying the queen’s coronation. He did not like the Yorkist connection; he had been fighting against it all of his adult life. He had married Elizabeth for reasons of state. So the mother turned against him, and supported the pretensions of Lambert Simnel.
Henry, alarmed at this threat to his rule, extracted the real earl of Warwick from the Tower and had him paraded through the streets of London. The young man also attended High Mass at St Paul’s, where he was allowed to converse with those who were familiar to him. Simnel’s supporters in Dublin of course denounced him as an imposter. From her palace in Flanders Margaret of Burgundy proceeded to hire 2,000 German mercenaries under the command of the earl of Lincoln. It was said by the Tudor chronicler, Edward Hall, that she was a ‘diabolical duchess’ and ‘a dog reverting to her old vomit’; the vomit was directed against Henry Tudor.
The German mercenaries landed in Dublin as the army of the proclaimed Edward VI where they enlisted more soldiers and mercenaries. They sailed to England with the counterfeit king, and Henry rode out with his army against them. They met at East Stoke on 16 June, where the 12,000 men of Henry defeated the 8,000 men under the command of the earl of Lincoln. Lincoln himself was killed in the mêlée, and Simnel was captured. Lovel had fled the scene of battle. Francis Bacon, in his life of Henry VII, remarks that Lovel lived long afterwards ‘in a cellar or vault’. It has been said that, during building work at Minster Lovell Hall in Oxfordshire at the beginning of the eighteenth century, an underground chamber was discovered; here was found the skeleton of a man, sitting in a chair with his head reclining on a table. Fortune had not favoured him.
Yet the battle of Stoke had been finely balanced. It is significant that some of the gentry had held back from supporting Henry with one excuse or another, and that many rumours or ‘skryes’ – commotions – were spread concerning the king’s fate. The fortunes of battle are always uncertain, and the fragility of his rule was emphasized by the fact that he had been forced to fight for his crown only two years after Bosworth. The battle of Stoke may be considered to be the last battle of the Wars of the Roses. Yet the victor was relatively merciful. Lambert Simnel was employed by him as a turnspit in the royal kitchens, and later became the king’s falconer. Elizabeth Woodville was removed to a nunnery in Bermondsey, where she spent the rest of her life. At a later feast with the lords of Ireland Henry remarked that ‘My masters of Ireland, you will crown apes at last’.
