Note Back to Main Text — INDEX TO THE FIRST VOLUME

5. Insurrection of Lambert Simnel. 1487.—Kildare and the colonists had every reason to distrust Henry, but to oppose him they needed a pretender. They found one in the son of an Oxford tradesman, a boy of ten, named Lambert Simnel, who had been persuaded to give himself out as the Earl of Warwick, who, as it was said, had escaped from the Tower. In 1487 Simnel landed in Ireland, where he was soon joined by Lord Lovel from Flanders, and by the Earl of Lincoln, of the family of Pole or De la Pole,[37] whose mother, Elizabeth, was the eldest sister of Edward IV., and who had been named by Richard III. as his heir after the death of his son (see p. 342). Lincoln and Lovel, after crowning Simnel at Dublin, crossed to Lancashire, taking with them the pretender, and 2,000 trained German soldiers under Martin Schwarz; as well as an Irish force furnished by Kildare. Scarcely an Englishman would join them, and on June 16 they were utterly defeated by Henry at Stoke, a village between Nottingham and Newark. Lincoln and Schwarz were slain. Lovel was either drowned in the Trent or, according to legend, was hidden in an underground vault, where he was at last starved to death through the neglect of the man whose duty it was to provide him with food. Simnel was pardoned, and employed by Henry as a turnspit in his kitchen.