Lambert Simnel and the King from Dublin
by Gordon Smith

In the traditional story in Bacon (1622) Lambert Simnel first impersonated Richard, Duke of York, younger son of Edward IV, before changing his imposture to Edward, earl of Warwick, son of the king’s brother George, duke of Clarence. Lambert was crowned in Dublin but defeated at the battle of Stoke in 1487, and pardoned by Henry VII. But there are three different identities for the king from Dublin: Molinet’s true Warwick, André’s false York, and Vergil’s false Warwick. Bacon’s account conflates André and Vergil, and we do not know who the Irish king’s supporters say he was.    

Some people did not believe Richard III had murdered his nephews Edward V and York in the Tower of London during his reign (1483-85), and André linked rumours of their survival to the plot to imitate York. A son of Edward IV could have been in Ireland some time. André says the Irish king was the son of a baker or a shoemaker, and, once the conspiracy had started, a rumour was circulated that Edward IV’s second son had been crowned in Ireland.

Henry VII, who had supplanted Richard, sent over various messengers, including a herald who failed to trap the pretender on his knowledge of the times of Edward IV. This suggests the pretender was a young man, which would fit his age according to Molinet and Bacon.

It also fits Vergil’s mistaken age for Warwick, which is fifteen (actually ten) at the time Richard was slain at Bosworth in August 1485. After the battle Henry VII sent Warwick from Sheriff Hutton to the Tower, where it is rumoured he was murdered. Vergil claimed the rumour prompted Richard Simons, a priest from Oxford, to adopt the impersonation of Warwick for his pupil Lambert Simnel.

In late 1486 Henry VII issued writs for meetings of convocation and of his council at Sheen (Richmond, Surrey) in February 1487. He proclaimed a pardon to those accused of treason and other crimes, hoping to stop the Irish rebellion spreading. Messengers from Ireland had already been sent to supporters of Richard III and to his sister Margaret, duchess of Burgundy. The pardon failed to win over Sir Thomas Broughton of Furness Fells and others, who joined Richard’s friend Francis, Lord Lovell, in Flanders.             

That he himself ‘was with Lord Lovell in Furness Fells’ was part of the confession of a priest, William Simons, aged 28, before the convocation of Canterbury at St Paul’s cathedral in London on 17 February 1487. He had taken the son of an organ-maker of the University of Oxford with him to Ireland, and there the boy was reputed to be Warwick.           

The supposedly real Warwick was brought publicly from the Tower to the cathedral and ‘spoke with many important people.’ But he had probably been kept from public gaze, and people might have acknowledged him out of expediency. The exhibition failed to impress Richard III’s heir John, Earl of Lincoln, who joined the rebels with Margaret of Burgundy. The English government were asserting that the Irish pretender claimed to be Warwick, but was the pretender himself making such a claim?          

He could still be a son of Edward IV (bastard or feigning), which could explain why Henry VII at the council of Sheen ‘retired’ Edward IV’s queen Elizabeth Woodville to Bermondsey abbey. She had reached an agreement with Richard III in March 1484 that released her daughters, but it might be considered she had previously surrendered her sons Edward V and York. She was later alleged to have taught the pretender his rôle, which would be more convincing if the rôle was one of her sons. After Sheen, when her son Thomas Grey, marquess Dorset, tried to bring his forces to join Henry VII in East Anglia, the king had him arrested for the duration of the rebellion.

Henry was expecting trouble on the east coast from Burgundy, where André claimed the pretender joined Margaret, but Lincoln and Lovell crossed to Ireland with about 2000 mercenaries under Martin Schwartz. The lad was crowned in Dublin cathedral on Ascension Day, 24 May 1487, a parliament met at Drogheda, and coinage was minted. The rebel forces augmented by Irish under Thomas FitzGerald landed close to Furness Fells on 4 June and crossed the Pennines into Yorkshire.

They announced ‘they had come to restore the boy Edward, recently crowned in Ireland, to the kingdom.’ Restoration rather suggests Edward V, deposed by Richard III. Molinet claims York opened its gates, but this is not in the civic records. These mention ‘king Edward the sixth’ but could have been written later.

Henry had issued a proclamation against rumour-mongers, but did not deny or correct their rumours. His camp was beset by spies, tumults and desertions. The defeat of the rebel army at East Stoke in Nottinghamshire on 16 June 1487 was followed by wholesale slaughter. Irish and English captured on the following two days were hanged, and only the foreigners were dismissed.

The fact that André, Molinet, Vergil and Bacon relate different accounts of the pretender in accordance with their own views illustrates that Henry VII initiated no investigation into the rebellion. Vergil notes the pretender and his mentor Richard Simons were granted their lives.  The parliament of November 1487 described the pretender in an act of attainder as Lambert Simnel, aged ten, son of Thomas Simnel, late of Oxford, joiner.

Simnel cakes were eaten during Lent, the period after Sheen, and the maiden name of Edward IV’s mistress ‘Jane’ Shore was Elizabeth Lambert. A Lenten pretender (Simnel) who still claimed to be Edward’s son (Lambert) suggests the pretender’s name was a codename used by the English government. Henry VII seems to have told the pope the boy was illegitimate, and there are several occupations given for his father.

A person called Lambert Simnel survived in the employ of Henry VII and Sir Thomas Lovell until at least 1525, but the fact that no-one retold his own story suggests Lambert confessed to anything the English government required. And how could Simons have been captured at the battle when he had already made his confession in captivity some four months earlier? The notion there were two brothers William and Richard contradicts Vergil’s assertion that the Irish plot was the work of one priest.  And how could the pretender be sixteen or seventeen before the battle and only ten after it?

Clearly Lambert cannot be the king from Dublin. In an almost contemporary herald’s report of the battle the pretender’s real name was John, and he was captured by Robert Bellingham, a king’s squire. On 2 September 1487 Bellingham abducted the heiress Margery Beaufitz but after imprisonment still rose in Henry VII’s favour. Given the wholesale slaughter, the Irish king was probably killed. Bellingham could have made a battlefield substitution, and seized Margery as his reward.

Some years later the Irish lords on a visit to Henry VII were faced with Lambert Simnel serving them wine. Only the merry Lord of Howth acknowledged him, and was amply rewarded by Henry. The name Lambert Simnel is hardly mentioned even by Irish loyal to Henry. Records relating to 1486-87 were destroyed and a papal bull forbade Irish rebellion against Henry on pain of excommunication. A patent witnessed by Kildare as the king’s lieutenant in ‘the first year of our reign’ seems to date from 1486 and its seal is that of Edward V.

In 1493 Henry VII protested to Margaret of Burgundy about another pretender, Perkin Warbeck, who claimed to be Richard, Duke of York. Dr William Warham said she had given birth to two children (Lambert and Perkin) aged 180 months. Seemingly the king from Dublin was exactly fifteen when Margaret could have recognised him. Richard III’s titulus regius excluded the children of Edward IV from the throne, and its repeal in Henry VII’s first parliament in November 1485 legitimised them. The child of Edward IV, born in November 1470 and then exactly fifteen, was Edward V.

He fits André’s rumour about a son of Edward IV in Ireland, and Henry VII’s government could have spread a counter-rumour of his younger brother York being crowned to discourage support for Edward V.  Forced to admit his name was Edward, it claimed in February 1487 the pretender was Edward, Earl of Warwick, but its codename Lambert Simnel suggests a son of Edward IV. The pretender died at the battle of Stoke in June, and the boy John was substituted as the impostor Lambert Simnel. Henry was almost completely successful in suppressing any evidence that might conflict with his version of events.

The conclusion that the king from Dublin was Edward V fits events of the rebellion of 1486-87. It also explains differences in the narratives of Molinet, André and Vergil, and in their candidates for the pretender.  This conclusion is only a possibility, of course. But were the impostures of Simnel and Warbeck invented by Henry VII? If so, the sons of Edward IV could have survived Richard III to challenge the pretender who replaced him.

This article was based on Gordon Smith’s article published in The Ricardian in 1996, see below.        

Further Reading:

Lambert Simnel and the Battle of Stoke by Michael Bennett, Gloucester 1987

Definitive book on the subject

‘Lambert Simnel and the king from Dublin’ by Gordon Smith. The Ricardian, December 1996

‘Lambert Simnel: a Dublin mystery’ by Canon AE Stokes. From Newsletter of the Friends of Christ Church Cathedral Dublin. Vol 6. No 2. May 1987. Who was Lambert Simnel, crowned as Edward VI of England in Christ Church Cathedral – a brief account.