Lambert Simnel and the princes in the tower

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The line between history and farce wears thin in places, and with that bit of pseudo-profundity as a starting point, let’s talk about Lambert Simnel, pretender to England’s throne who was crowned Edward VI of England.

Sort of.

The coronation took place in Ireland, not in England, and you won’t find his name on any list of English monarch. He was ten years old when he was crowned and still had to ask permission if he wanted to stay up last enough to watch his favorite shows. 

The usual irrelevant photo: a Cornish hedge

 

The backstory

Simnel’s claim to the throne–or given his age, the claim made in his name–was that he was one of the princes in the tower. (If you’re about to yell that he never claimed that, stay with me. We’ll get there.) In the meantime, though, remember the princes in the tower? When they were 9 and 12 years old when they were imprisoned by their uncle Richard for the crime of being inconvenient. Or to take Richard’s side of the tale, for their protection.

Not long after that, their uncle became King Richard III.

The older boy had a decent claim to the throne–so decent that he was already King Edward V, although his coronation hadn’t been held yet. So yes, if you’re his uncle and want to be king, a pre-existing king who’s still alive is inconvenient. As is his younger brother, another Richard, who was next in line if Eddie turned up dead.

That makes a good and coherent story, and it’s the one most of us (if we’ve heard about them at all) know. But what happened to the kids isn’t 600% clear, leaving plenty of space for rumor and fantasy to do their work. 

But before I go on, an interruption: Names will be flying around here like bats at sunset. A lot of the actors have the same names, which any fiction writer can tell you is a bad idea. If you can keep them all straight, I admire you. If you can’t, don’t worry. Just keep up as best you can and nod when everyone else does. You’ll be fine. We’re overstocked on Richards and if you want a bargain on the name, this is the time to get out your wallet.

To be fair to Richard-the-Uncle, he didn’t invent locking up and crown-stealing. There was a lot of it going around. We’re dancing at the edge of the Wars of the Roses, when two branches of the Plantagenet family, Lancaster and York, fought over who was going to be the king of the mountain–or more accurately, of England. So an Edward locked up a Henry and took his crown, along with all that it symbolized. The Edward married an Elizabeth, offending a Richard, which I only mention to confuse us all. 

The couple had kids.

Are you still with me?

Henry’s supporters broke him free and re-crowned him. At best, that’s awkward. Once should be enough for any monarch. Edward fled with his brother, the Richard we were talking about earlier–the one who would later be king himself.

The alarm just went off, reminding me that it’s 1471.

The Edward we were talking about a minute ago popped up again, bringing an army with him. He defeated the Henry, killed his son and heir, and locked Henry back into the tower, which was getting a lot of use. 

Henry then proceeded to die, either of melancholy (the official explanation) or because he was murdered (the rumor), or possibly of some undiagnosed disease (an easy guess given this period). Take your pick. What matters is that being dead he could no longer be king, and the same could be said of his son, and that was the end of the Lancastrian line, leaving Edward as king, his son Edward as heir, and his son Richard as the backup band, or as they called it then, the heir presumptive.

See what I mean about the names?

In 1483 Edward (that’s the king) died, having named his brother Richard protector of his heir Edward. Richard-the-Brother took control first of Edward-the-Heir and then of Richard-the-Backup-Band, and had an assortment of people executed, including at least one stray Richard. 

And we still haven’t gotten around to Lambert Simnel.

Before Edward-the-Heir’s coronation could be held, the boys were declared illegitimate (don’t ask; it doesn’t really matter) making Richard-the-Uncle the next in line.

Ta da! I give you King Richard III.

The princes went from luxurious quarters in the tower to prison in the tower. They were seen less and less and then not at all. No one accused Richard of killing them until much later, when the Tudors were in power and Richard-the-Evil-Uncle suited their narrative. He probably did have it done, but it was a long time ago and definitive proof is out of reach, although a few hundred years later the skeletons of two boys of about the right age were found in the tower. 

 

Finally, we get to Lambert Simnel

In 1485 Richard III died in a battle with Henry Tudor, who then became Henry VII. Henry could claim a place on the Lancastrian family tree, although it was too far from the trunk to make him an obvious candidate, and he married a descendant of the Yorkist line, the oldest sister of the princes who were no longer in the tower, which you’d expect to put the Wars of the Roses to rest.

But you know how hard it is for people to let these things go. A young boy popped up, claiming to be the Richard who’d been in the tower and who had, he said, escaped and been on the run. Soon afterward, though, he claimed to be Edward, the Earl of Warwick, who’d also been in the tower. If either claim was true, it made him one of the last surviving males on the York family tree.

Except that  he probably never claimed to be Richard. The Richard story didn’t surface until some hundred years later, and over that length of time people’s memories tends to grow hazy. So all that business about the princes in the tower was irrelevant. I apologize. I was having too much fun to leave them out. What we have to do now is forget Richard. We have too many of them anyway. The boy claimed to be Edward from the start. Let’s focus on that.

Edward had been imprisoned in the tower. He was rumored to have died, but look, here was a boy of about the same age with a striking resemblance to some of the Yorks and a good tale about his escape, not to mention the backing of some important surviving Yorkists. Who was to say it wasn’t him?

These days, pretty much everyone. The agreement is that he was Lambert Simnel. Nothing’s known about his mother, but his father was a carpenter. Or possibly a cobbler. Or–well, something along those lines. Not an aristocrat. He was probably from Oxford and was spotted by a priest, who was yet another Richard, unless his first name was William. His last name was Symonds . Or Simons. Or else Simon. 

Listen, don’t try to keep all this straight. It’ll only end in tears. Let’s just call him the priest. He spotted a resemblance between this handsome body and–oh, hell, whoever the last Yorkist king was. (Edward IV, but it won’t be on the test.) The story goes that the priest groomed the boy to be a stand-in for the lost Yorkist heir, then took him to Ireland–a  Yorkist stronghold. By now the boy’s backers included John de la Pole (if you’re watching Wolf Hall, you’ll have heard the family mentioned); assorted survivors of a failed Yorkist rising in 1846; and Warwick’s aunt, Margaret of York, the dowager duchess of Burgundy. That’s worth underlining, since it’s impossible to keep these people straight: the aunt of the boy Simnel was claiming to be backed his claim to be her nephew. 

They had him crowned in Dublin as Edward VI. The Vth, remember, is the one who’d been imprisoned in the tower and then disappeared. 

Somewhat awkwardly, the Edward he was claiming to be was still alive and Henry had him paraded through the streets of London, but communications being what they were his appearance failed to go viral. Those who noticed didn’t care. Those who cared didn’t notice. 

 

What do you do after an irrelevant coronation?

By now we have Lambert/Edward crowned but without a country to rule, so there was nothing to do but invade England, which is what his puppet-masters did in 1487, with 2,000 Flemish mercenaries paid for and shipped to Ireland by Margaret-the-Aunt; some Irish troops (all I know about them is that they were poorly supplied and took the worst of it); and a few English supporters.

Most of England’s nobles were as interested in joining a rebellion as they were in catching the plague. They didn’t join. And Henry had been gathering troops to invade Ireland, whether to deal with the Simnel’s backers or because the English never could resist invading Ireland I don’t know. I think the former, but either way, it meant he had troops at hand and was able to react quickly. 

The king–you will have already figured this out by now–won. Assorted people were executed. Symonds was spared that because he was a priest but was imprisoned for life. 

And Simnel? He was a kid who’d been used by adults. Henry pardoned him and put him to work, first in his kitchens and later as a falconer. You’ll find at least some historians arguing that Henry never used more cruelty than could be helped. You could also argue–and I’m tempted to–that it might have pleased him to have a pretender to the throne working as a servant in his kitchen, but that’s pure speculation.

Not much is known about Simnel’s later life. He might have married and might have had a son, Richard Simnel (every third boy was name Richard), who became a canon of St. Osyth’s Priory in Essex during the reign of Henry VIII. 

Even Simnel’s name is uncertain. The one we’re using is the one that stuck. 

 

And now for the important stuff

First, Simnel did not give his name to the simnel cake, which predates him. I can’t swear that his name didn’t come from the cake. 

Never heard of simnel cake? That’s a sign you’re not British. It’s–umm, it’s a cake. Unless someone offers you a slice, what more do you need to know? In its earliest incarnation it was a sweet bread. At that stage, cake meant something breadlike involving sugar, butter, fruit, nuts–you know, that sort of thing.  

Second, in the process of invading England the Yorkists–some 8,000 of them–landed on the 50-acre Piel Island.  

They faced no resistance and they didn’t stay long, but they behind a bit of local legend: an unsubstantiated belief that the Kings of Piel are Simnel’s descendants, along with a battered, high-backed wooden chair, which sits in the island’s only pub and is the King of Piel’s throne. Any hapless visitor who sits in it has to buy a drink for everyone who happens to be there at the moment.

The legend has two problems: Simnel was around ten, which is young to have descendants, and the kings aren’t each other’s descendants. The title goes to whoever runs the pub. Still, when each new publican becomes king, he gets a rusty helmet and a saber and a bucket of beer poured over his head.

37 thoughts on “Lambert Simnel and the princes in the tower”

  1. And, because of how, the status of, king, emperor, monarch had normally been, passed down the line, from the monarch’s son with his, rightful, wife, that’s why, this system, will, eventually be, diminished, because, despite how all the, first ruler of each and every, dynasty or kingdom are, righteous, morally, responsible, with the passing of the power down the line, things are eventually going to turn, sour, because, there’s no, guarantee, that the son would rule, as justly or, morally, righteously, as his own, father,nand, there’s also, the, taking over the land, conquering the neighboring kingdoms, so one can rule with, complete, power, this is why, there’s, only, reduced number of countries that are still, opeating under, this, system of, government in modern day era, and yet, the democracies, also, don’t work, because, people are, too easily, manipulated by those who are, power-thirsty, and, still end up, electing an, authoritarian into, office. There’s, currently, no, flawless government system that exists in the world, but we blindly believe, that, there is, and, we try our best to, make the system that’s, originally, flawed, work as well as, i seet possibly, can.

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    • I think it was Churchill who said, “Democracy is the worst system of government except for all the others.” In recent years, many democracies have made the choice to abandon working people and further enrich the already rich (just crank people up against “scroungers” and see what happens next), and as worldwide crises have made governing more difficult, we’ve seen a building wave of understandable anger and a lot of people are falling for the line that what we need is a powerful leader–basically a dictator.

      I think we know where that leads.

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  2. I find the Wars of the Roses utterly confusing. All the men were Edward, Henry or Richard and the women were Margaret or Elizabeth. Their ofs didn’t help, as they were either ‘of York’ or ‘of Lancaster’.

    I’ve never understood about Lambert Simnel. It’s such a daft story. I suspect it went as far as it did because Henry VII’s claim to the throne was more than a bit suspect and facial recognition technology hadn’t been invented.

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    • Thank you for making me laugh even before the morning’s caffeine has fully kicked in. I have an additional reason to find them confusing: at least in Shakespeare, they’re called not only by their names (if my memory can be trusted) but also by their place names. It’s like reading a Russian novel. Furthermore, in my life, facial recognition technology was never installed: I’m face blind and would’ve looked at Lambert Simnel and thought, Well, he’s got two eyes and one nose, so that’s a resemblance, isn’t it?

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  3. Sorry, I have never heard of the lad. And I know nothing about this war, except that it was long-ish.
    For me the most interesting person in this tableau is Margarete von York, the sister of Edward who’s-number-I-forgot and Richard the 3rd (he’s the big baddy I assume ? “Now’s the winter of discontent”, sorry that’s all I can scrap together).
    All these guys do strange and ugly things, Pack schlägt sich, Pack verträgt sich, while Margarete plays her own game, and protects Burgund / Bregogne, and what it stands for. I would like to learn more about the women of this age. She dies 1503, when the later Emperor Charles V. is just a small child, but his upcoming is also at least influenced by women who held powerful positions. And a dream in burgundy (sorry, could not resist). I am sure that this history is already told, but I do not know by whom, where.
    Nice to learn that Simnel survived, and reached a good position at the court.
    The boys ? Ach … Strange and ugly things they do to each other.

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    • More and more research is being done on the women of this (and every other) period, but it’s been a long time coming and I’m sure more will appear. But the picture’s far from complete. For one thing, the records are thinner than they are for men.

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  4. The fact that Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck have such memorable names not only adds to the fun of their stories but really does set them miles apart from all the other notable people of the period who all shared the same half a dozen names.

    I assume the skeletons from the tower must have been misplaced at some point otherwise I am sure there would have been a clamour to have them genetically tested for a familial match to Richard as soon as he was found beneath the parking lot.

    I have never heard of Piel island nor its publican king so I am now going to click on your hyperlink and go down the rabbit hole.

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    • You make a good point about their names and now that you’ve said it it seems screamingly obvious. You don’t suppose that’s why the English aristocrats all (or so I’ve read) have strange nicknames, do you? So they can tell themselves apart?

      I can’t remember why the skeletons found in the tower haven’t been genetically tested. I did run into the information somewhere but, sadly, it didn’t stay with me. Sorry.

      I hope you found little cakes at the bottom of the rabbit hole. ‘Tis the season…

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      • I went down the skeleton rabbit hole too so I did find the arguments for why permission to conduct testing has not been granted. There’s lots of stuff about respecting both those remains and those whose remains would also have to be tested to prove theories and an argument that it would not prove who or what had led to their deaths. However, I think reading between the lines, nobody wants to question or disrupt lines of succession through questioning their legitimacy if various historic theories are put under scientific scrutiny. For instance, there is a theory that Queen Victoria was not a legitimate heir. So, while I think the circumstantial evidence would point to those skeletons being those of the missing princes, I guess we will never know for sure.

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    • No – the skeletons are still very much there! But the Royal Family have refused to let them be dug up on the grounds that it’s not very nice to dig up graves, especially on consecrated ground, just for the purposes of genetic testing. I take their point, but I wish they’d change their minds!

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  5. Pretenders (as in people pretending to be claimants to the throne, not people like Bonnie Prince Charlie who are rival claimants to the throne and are actually who they say they are) have been fairly common in history. Russia actually crowned one of the various False Dmitris. It’s just that Henry VII’s reign was the only time that it really happened in England. Authors have taken to using Dickon, Meg, Ned, Marguerite, Lizzie, Bess etc etc for the various royals, because there are just too many Edwards, Richards, Margarets, Annes and Elizabeths! Then you get to Henry VIII’s reign, when More, Wolsey, Cromwell and Cranmer are all called Thomas …

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    • Oh, absolutely. All those kings and aristocrats with the same names? Their parents would’ve loved to name them Sparky and Jack and Wat, but they wanted to leave a legacy of baffling the outsiders–us–so they made the sacrifice and named half of them Edward and the other half Richard.

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  8. I just love this period in English history. I was just thinking of rereading The Sunne in Splendour, which, while fiction, is historical fiction and a darn good read. The Richards, Henrys, Williams, and three other male names in use at the time (not to mention the Elizabeths, Annes, Marys, and two other females names in use at the time) always trip me up. And then the nobles would call each other by their titles (I had a talk with Gloucester yesterday), but the title-holder could die (or the title could be revoked) and the title given to someone from an entirely different family, so suddenly Gloucester is not longer Richard from family X, but instead Henry from family Y (or more likely, Richard from family Y). It’s all very maddening and you pretty much need to read all the fascinating English history while sitting at a computer with a spreadsheet open in front of you. But I still love it.

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    • A spreadsheet might help, but you’d have a lot more fun with little–oh, say finger-sized dolls in ridiculous and very different costumes. Or stuffed toys–that might be better. You put a label on each one. It’ll be easier to remember that the Richard who’s Gloucester is the squirrel and the Richard who’s York is the bunny rabbit. And the Henry who just happens to be king? He’s the– Hmm. I need to think about this. He’s the acorn-headed doll your friend made that you’ve dressed in a cape made from a scrap of paper toweling.

      I could see this turning into a great passtime if we end up with another lockdown.

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      • I consider it very good – but it was my first encounter with some of this information. Though it delves into the true history, it is set as a contemporary story : the inspector hero of many of her mysteries is laid up with a broken leg and his friends try to alleviate his boredom with pictures of historical figures without captions,, to see what he makes of them just by sight. He picks out a portrait of Richard III and doesn’t feel the picture indicates the kind of monster Richard is portrayed as by history.

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        • Interesting–and questionable. The art of portraiture was hardly neutral. They pleased their patrons. Don’t we all, at least sometimes, in one way or another, although not usually so blatantly? And then there’s the question of how much you can tell about a person from their face. Still, I’m nitpicking. Not many mysteries (if it’s fair to call it that) stand up to too much scrutiny. If it’s a good read, more power to it.

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    • Well no wonder. The amazing thing is that they could keep themselves sorted out well enough to know who to fight.

      The difference between Siimnel and L. J. Grey (okay–one significant difference) is that since everything depended on birth he was no real threat. She was, poor soul.

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