In recounting how Lady Margaret had wept at her son’s
coronation, Fisher makes it clear that she did so from foreboding rather than
joy. Many people in the north and in Wales, who had done very well under
Richard, disliked the new regime. So did the English-speaking Irish of the
Pale, traditionally loyal to the House of York. In the Low Countries the late
King’s sister, Margaret of York – ‘mine old lady of Burgundy’ – was ready to
welcome any of his former supporters who were in need of a refuge or who
required a base from which to launch an invasion of England.
During April 1486 Sir Humphrey Stafford tried to raise his
native Worcestershire against Henry VII while Lord Lovell, once King Richard’s
Lord Chamberlain (‘Lovell our Dog’), attempted a rebellion in the North Riding.
However, their candidate for the throne, the Earl of Warwick – Clarence’s son –
was a prisoner in the hands of Margaret Beaufort, and they failed to win any
significant support. Sir Humphrey Stafford was dragged out of sanctuary and
beheaded, though Lovell got away.
On 19 May Lady Oxford wrote to her husband’s old ally, John
Paston, in his capacity as Sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk.
I am credibly informed
that Francis, late Lord Lovell is now of late resorted to the Isle of Ely to
the intent, by all likelihood, to get him shipping and passage in your coasts,
or else to resort again to sanctuary if he may. I therefore heartily desire . .
. that ye in all goodly haste endeavour yourself that such watch or other means
be used and had in the ports and creeks . . . to the taking of the same late
Lord Lovell. And what pleasure ye may do to the King’s Grace in this matter I
am sure is not to you unknown.
The Countess had good reason to dislike Yorkists, but
despite all her precautions Lovell succeeded in escaping to Burgundy.
Early in the spring of 1487 a priest brought an Oxford
organ-builder’s son called Lambert Simnel to Dublin, pretending that the boy
was the Earl of Warwick. Lambert was immediately hailed as king by the Irish
Chancellor, Sir Thomas FitzGerald of Lackagh, a brother of the Earl of Kildare
who was the most powerful man in Ireland. The FitzGeralds quickly contacted the
Yorkist dissidents who had taken refuge in Flanders. Their leaders were Lord
Lovell and John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, whom Richard III had recognized as
his heir presumptive. The Yorkists and the FitzGeralds agreed that they should
invade England together as soon as possible. They were warmly encouraged by
Margaret of York who, according to Vergil, ‘pursued Henry [VII] with insatiable
hatred and with fiery wrath never desisted from every scheme which might harm
him’. She gave them money and troops.
On Whit Sunday 1487 (24 May) Lambert, after having been
recognized formally as its sovereign by the Irish Parliament, was crowned and
anointed as ‘King Edward VI’ by the Archbishop of Dublin in Christchurch
Cathedral. No proper crown was available so a diadem was borrowed from a statue
of the Virgin. Another important Irish prelate, the Dominican Bishop of Meath,
preached the coronation sermon.
Always on the alert, despite conflicting information from
his many spies, Henry VII had already begun to suspect that a Yorkist invasion
was imminent. His first concern was for the safety of the Queen and his mother.
‘We pray you that, giving your attendance upon our said dearest wife and lady
mother, ye come with them to us’, he wrote urgently to the Queen’s chamberlain,
the Earl of Ormonde.7 On 13 May the King summoned Lord Oxford to Kenilworth
Castle, to discuss how they should prepare for the looming campaign.
By that time Lord Lovell and the Earl of Lincoln had landed
at Dublin with a band of Yorkist diehards. They were accompanied by 2,000 Swiss
and German mercenaries under the renowned Colonel Martin Schwarz (once an
Augsburg cobbler), who had been hired by ‘mine old lady of Burgundy’.
Reinforced by the FitzGeralds, they sailed across to Lancashire, landing on the
Furness peninsula, not far from Lancaster, on 4 June.
The Yorkist strategy seems to have been to march as far
south as possible after crossing the Pennines before giving battle. Although
the citizens of York failed to respond to a letter sent to them from Masham by
‘Edward VI’, and beat off an attempt to occupy their city by the two Lord
Scropes, the Earl of Lincoln was surprisingly confident. Probably he was
counting not only on the excellent quality of his troops but on the
intervention of secret allies as at Bosworth once the two armies were engaged.
Nothing else can explain his extraordinary optimism. Vergil was convinced that
Lincoln (who may have planted Lambert Simnel on the Irish) was planning to
seize the throne for himself as soon as Henry VII had been defeated. But
Lambert was far too unconvincing a pretender to win much support, and no more
than a score of knights and squires joined the Yorkists. Moreover, as a
commander Lincoln was scarcely in the same league as the Earl of Oxford.
Christopher Urswick brought King Henry the news that the
Yorkist expedition had landed in Lancashire. Although no overall figures are
available, it is clear that the King had sufficient support from his magnates
to be able to assemble an impressively large army. Vergil names more than sixty
gentlemen of substance who served in it, and afterwards an unprecedented number
of knights were created. It included 6,000 men provided by the Stanleys alone,
the King’s stepfather sending every retainer and well-wisher he could muster
under his son, Lord Strange. Among the other peers who rallied to the King was
William Hastings’ son Edward, who had been restored to his father’s barony and
estates. Archbishop Morton, accompanied by his nephew, the Bishop of Worcester,
brought a substantial force of retainers and of tenants from his wide estates.
So did the Courtenay Bishop of Winchester.
The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishops of Worcester
and Winchester were the first prelates to bring troops to a battle during the
Wars of the Roses. However, it will be remembered that Dr Morton was no
stranger to battlefields and might even be described as a veteran campaigner.
He had been present at the second St Albans and Towton, had been besieged in
the grim Northumbrian sieges of the 1460s, had been taken prisoner at
Tewkesbury, and had been amid the collapse of the Duke of Buckingham’s
disastrous rebellion four years before. Although nearly seventy by now, John
Morton was leaving nothing to chance – he did not underestimate the danger from
the Yorkists. He rode with his troops as far as Loughborough in Leicestershire
before handing over command to his nephew, Robert. They were going to fight in
the front ranks, in Lord Oxford’s contingent.
As Professor Ross stresses, the battle about to take place
could have gone either way. Treachery might have lost it for Henry VII just as
treachery had lost Bosworth for Richard III. Obviously the King suspected some
sort of plot. There can be no other explanation for his ordering Oxford to
place the Marquess of Dorset under arrest before he could join the royal army.
Despite being outnumbered, Lord Lincoln, the enemy
commander, was only too eager to give battle. At 9 a.m. on 16 June the
Yorkists, about 9,000 strong, engaged the royal army which was in three columns
drawn up in echelon (one behind the other) outside the village of Stoke, a few
miles from Newark. Schwarz’s landsknechts were obviously professionals to their
fingertips, while Lincoln’s followers and the Irish gentlemen were well armed.
However, the barefooted, saffron-shirted Irish kern who formed the bulk of their
force were a different matter, being without any form of armour and equipped
merely with axes, long knives and javelins.
The Earl of Oxford commanded the King’s vanguard or front
column, which alone engaged the enemy. Clearly Lincoln’s men fought with great
courage, but the unarmoured Irish suffered appalling casualties, one report
saying that 4,000 of them were killed. Eventually Oxford won the day with a
final determined charge. Schwarz’s men fought to the death by the side of their
colonel. Among the many other casualties were Lincoln and Sir Thomas
FitzGerald. Lord Lovell – King Richard’s old friend – was last seen swimming
his horse across the River Trent.
The Yorkist diehards would never again dare to challenge the
Tudors in armed confrontation, and they went underground. Yet their cause was
far from dead. Nor had Henry’s victory been a foregone conclusion. Northern
noblemen had joined the rebellion, such as the two Lord Scropes, while the
Bishop of St Asaph, Dr Richard Redmayne, was suspected of involvement.
Significantly, when a mistaken rumour that Henry had been defeated reached
London, riots broke out in favour of the Earl of Warwick. A City chronicler
tells of ‘false Englishmen . . . which untrue persons said that the king was
lost and the field was lost’. Yorkists emerged from their sanctuaries to attack
royal officials, shouting that Warwick was King. If the Earl had been old
enough and of the same calibre as his uncles, he could have escaped from the
Tower of London, and there might easily have been another Yorkist restoration.
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