Friday, September 12, 2025

Crowned in Dublin, Humbled in London: The Curious Episode of Lambert Simnel


Lambert Simnel’s story is one of the strangest twists in English history. A boy of ordinary birth, he was suddenly thrust into the dangerous world of royal ambition, paraded as a lost prince and even crowned a king. For a brief, dazzling moment, this child stood at the center of a rebellion that shook King Henry VII’s throne, before fate turned sharply against him.

 


Lambert Simnel (impression), Unknown, 1910, via Wikipedia


Lambert Simnel was a ten-year-old commoner with an uncommon destiny. In 1487, just two years after King Henry VII had wrested the crown at Bosworth by defeating and killing King Richard III, the boy was swept into a storm of intrigue. For the Yorkists, Bosworth had not merely been the loss of a King but the shattering of a dynasty, and many still nursed their bitterness in exile or rebellion. Chief among them was Richard III’s sister, Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, who poured her wealth and influence into resurrecting Yorkist hope. With her backing, and with discontented nobles eager for a figurehead, Simnel was plucked from obscurity and paraded as a prince- the living emblem of a cause thought lost on Bosworth Field.

 


King Richard III, Barthel ii, c. 1520


Officially, he claimed to be Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, a nephew of King Edward IV and Richard III, and one of the last surviving male heirs of the House of York. Such a figure carried undeniable weight, for Warwick’s blood alone gave him a powerful claim to the throne. Yet this bold declaration raised immediate questions. The real Warwick, son of George, Duke of Clarence, was known even then to be locked within the Tower of London, a prisoner under Henry VII’s watchful eye. Could the Yorkists truly have believed that this wide-eyed boy was Warwick miraculously escaped? Or was belief beside the point? For Margaret of Burgundy and the disaffected nobles who backed the scheme, Simnel’s true identity mattered less than his usefulness. He was a banner under which they could rally, a living symbol of resistance to the Tudor king. If the mask fooled enough supporters, or at least unsettled Henry VII, it might be enough to turn simmering resentment into open rebellion.

 


Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, Rous Roll, 1500

Some historians whisper that Simnel’s handlers may have first intended him to play the role of Edward V, the vanished elder of the Princes in the Tower, the rightful heir who should have worn the crown but never ruled. The name alone carried a ghostly weight, for Edward’s disappearance under Richard III still haunted the realm. To proclaim his survival might have lit a fire in the hearts of Yorkist loyalists, desperate to believe that the true line of Edward IV endured. Yet such a claim would have also been fraught with danger: it would force the conspirators to reckon with the dark shadow of Richard III’s usurpation and the unanswered question of the Princes’ fate. Perhaps, then, they chose ambiguity by design, shaping Simnel’s identity with deliberate flexibility until the moment was ripe. What is clear is that whether he was called Edward V, Edward of Warwick, or simply “King Edward”, the boy became a rallying cry- less a child than a vessel into which Yorkist hopes were poured, proof that the cause of the White Rose had not yet been extinguished.

 


King Edward V and Richard, Duke of York, in the Tower of London, Paul Delaroche, 1830

In Dublin, the illusion became real. Within the ancient stone walls of Christ Church Cathedral, beneath the vaulted ceiling that had witnessed centuries of kingship and faith, the boy was anointed before the gaze of Irish lords and would-be allies. There, in a land where Yorkist loyalty burned fiercely, Lambert Simnel was crowned King of England. Not Edward V. Not Edward VI. Simply “King Edward”- a name, a shadow, a symbol. To his backers, it mattered little which Edward he was meant to be. What mattered was that he embodied the living defiance of York, a spark to ignite rebellion against the Tudor who had taken their crown.

 

From Dublin, the Yorkist gamble gathered force. With Margaret of Burgundy’s coffers supplying mercenaries and John de la Pole, the Earl of Lincoln, lending legitimacy, Simnel’s small court transformed into an army. Ships carried the boy-king and his backers across the Irish Sea, landing in Lancashire with banners unfurled. They marched southward through England, proclaiming that the true heir had returned, and at every village and market town they sought to rouse support. But the English people, weary of dynastic strife after decades of civil war, did not rally as the conspirators had hoped.



Margaret of York, Duchess of Burgundy, Unknown, c. 1450

Henry VII moved quickly, mustering his own forces to intercept the invaders. On 16 June 1487, the two armies met near the village of East Stoke in Nottinghamshire. There, in fields choked with summer heat and cries of war, the illusion of “King Edward” was put to the ultimate test. The Yorkist forces, swollen with Irish levies and hardened foreign soldiers, fought with desperation, but the Tudor army held firm. The battle raged fiercely, bloodily- so fierce that chroniclers later called it the true last battle of the Wars of the Roses. When it was done, the Earl of Lincoln lay dead, thousands of Yorkist soldiers were cut down, and their cause lay shattered.

 


King Henry VII, Unknown, c. 1505


And yet- Lambert Simnel lived. In an age when pretenders were usually met with the axe or the noose, his survival is striking. Perhaps Henry VII saw the absurdity of it all: a ten-year-old boy swept up in the ruthless ambitions of others, a pawn rather than a plotter. Or perhaps the King, ever calculating, recognized that a living Simnel was safer than a martyred one. Dead, the boy could inspire legend; alive, he was only a cautionary tale, a jest at Yorkist expense. Instead of execution, Henry offered him a place in the royal kitchens, where the “king” who had once worn a crown in Dublin now turned spits and poured wine for the household he had been meant to overthrow. It was a humiliation as much as a mercy.

 

Yet Simnel endured. In time, he rose from the sculleries to become a falconer, trading the gilded illusions of royalty for the real work of tending hawks and hunting birds. From false king to keeper of falcons, his life traced one of the strangest descents in English history- a child who had once been paraded as the savior of a dynasty reduced to the quiet service of the very monarch he had been used to depose. His story lingered less as a threat than as a parable of ambition’s folly, a reminder of how easily men could crown a shadow when desperate for a king.

 

Lambert Simnel’s survival left behind a curious legacy. He was no longer a danger, yet his story showed the world how fragile Henry VII’s new dynasty remained. If a kitchen boy could be dressed as a king and crowned in Dublin, what might happen if a more convincing claimant arose? One with age, bearing and the craft to play the role? That answer arrived less than a decade later, in the figure of Perkin Warbeck. Unlike Simnel, Warbeck carried himself with the elegance of a prince and claimed to be Richard, Duke of York, the younger of the lost Princes in the Tower. His story stirred deeper fears, for if the younger prince had lived, then Henry VII’s entire reign was built on a falsehood.

 


Perkin Warbeck, Jacques Le Boucq, c. 1500

Where Simnel had been a pawn, Warbeck was a weapon. His campaign drew the backing of kings and courts across Europe, and for a time, he seemed a very real threat to Henry VII’s throne. Yet Henry’s handling of Simnel had prepared him: he understood how to unmask a pretender without making a martyr. In the end, Warbeck, too, would fail- but his rebellion showed that the Yorkist cause was not easily silenced, and that the shadow of lost princes could haunt a kingdom long after their bones were hidden.

 

Thus, Simnel’s tale was more than a curious episode- it was the prologue to a decade of plots and pretenders. His crown of paper and pageantry in Dublin was the first test of Henry VII’s rule, a rehearsal for greater challenges to come. And in sparing Simnel, Henry VII turned a would-be king into a living reminder: that thrones could be claimed by whispers and words but secured only by power.

 

©All Things Tudors

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