As the rebel forces approached the city, they paused at Bootham Bar, cried “King Edward,” and then tried to force the gates. In June 1487, less than two years after his dramatic usurpation of the English throne from the late Richard III at Bosworth, King Henry VII faced the first serious challenge to his rule.
The rebellion’s origins were a volatile mix of disaffection and dynastic ambition among a section of England’s nobility and landed gentry. Some had lost land. Some, such as Lord Francis Lovell, were fugitives from the king, while others—notably John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln—had one eye on Henry’s crown.
Lovell had crossed the English Channel to Flanders, where he sought help from Margaret of York, Duchess of Burgundy, a staunch Yorkist with sufficient wealth and power to back the revolt. Soon they were joined by the Earl of Lincoln, self-styled leader of the rebellion, who had a strong claim to the throne. Not only was he a grandson of Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York (killed at the Battle of Wakefield on December 30, 1460), but he also had been named heir apparent by King Richard III. Together they secured ships from Margaret and a force of some 2,000 German Landsknecht mercenaries under the able command of Swiss Captain Martin Schwartz.
The rebels decided to land first in Ireland, where Yorkist sentiment remained strong. A further incentive was provided in the hapless figure of Lambert Simnel, the 10-year-old son of an Oxford tradesman. This boy, under the tutelage of Richard Simons—a priest with an eye for an opportunity—was presented as none other than Edward Plantagenet, nephew of Edward IV, who, Yorkists claimed, had escaped from the Tower of London. Two notable Yorkists, Gerald Fitzgerald, Earl of Kildare, and his brother Thomas, who was at that time chancellor of Ireland, eagerly accepted this juvenile impostor as Edward. How fully the Irish were taken in is open to question, but when he was crowned Edward VI in Dublin, all of Ireland except Waterford declared him king. Estimates of local fighting men who joined the cause were put as high as 5,000, but they were little more than a poorly armed rabble.
Such was the makeshift invasion force that landed at Piel Castle on England’s northwest coast, where it was met by Thomas Broughton, a local Yorkist sympathizer. Lincoln was counting on a major uprising there, but aside from Broughton’s small contingent and a few Scottish mercenaries, very few Englishmen were willing to throw in their lot behind such a risky venture.
Lincoln’s heart must have sunk as he marched into Yorkshire. As Lord Bacon observed, “Their snowball did not gather as it went,” for patriotic Englishmen would have no desire “to have a king brought in to them upon the shoulders of Irish and Dutch.” Some support, however, did materialize, notably from John, Lord Scrope of Bolton, and Thomas, Lord Scrope of Masham, who tried to force the city gates at York.
Learning of the invasion while at Kenilworth, King Henry raised local levies and gathered more as he moved north. A combination of sloppy intelligence and poor planning on his part, however, had given the rebels five days in which to consolidate their position. It fell to Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, to try to check the invaders. He contacted the Council of York to say he would be arriving there on June 10 at the latest, but the rebels had already crossed the Pennines, a stretch of moorland bisecting the North of England, a move that put York in imminent danger. Luckily for the royalist forces, the citizens of York thwarted rebel attempts to take the city. Northumberland and Henry, Lord Clifford, who had actually retired south to link up with the king, eventually garrisoned York, remaining there until June 14.
After negotiations with city representatives, the rebels, facing the prospect of a long and costly siege, decided to bypass York. With Northumberland’s original plan aborted, he and Clifford again contrived to make the wrong decision. They moved north to deal with the Scropes, leaving the rebel forces unencumbered in their drive south.
In spite of these initial setbacks, Henry was still in a healthier position than his opponents. On June 11, he reached Loughborough in Leicestershire, where he was handily placed to swing either northwest or northeast to intercept the enemy. The following day, his army pressed on, camping under a wood called Bonley Rice. There he was told of a force marching toward him from the southeast, and on June 13 he set out to meet the threat. His destination was Nottingham, but his army seemed to lose its bearings. It ended up three miles short of its destination, probably in the village of Ruddington, where it spent the night.
The next morning, on a day marking the feast of Corpus Christi, Henry heard Mass in the local parish church. His army was becoming restless, and some soldiers were deserting. Promised support had not yet arrived. As he moved on to Nottingham, however, it seemed Henry’s prayers were to be answered. According to Polydore Vergil, writing some 50 years after the event, “A great number of armed men, George Talbot Earl of Shrewsbury, George Lord Strange, and John Cheyney, all outstanding captains, with many others well-versed in military affairs, came to him there….” The arrival of Strange’s 6,000- man force was especially welcome, though it was headed by the son of Thomas Stanley, Earl of Derby, whose allegiance Henry may well have questioned—he had gained his earldom two years earlier at Bosworth Field, where his duplicity in no small measure cost King Richard the battle, his throne and his life.
Those reinforcements arrived not a moment too soon, however, for Lincoln’s rebels were at Southwell, just 12 miles away, and on the march. They had slowly made their way through Sherwood Forest toward Newark. They were hoping to use that formidable castle as a base for operations, but Henry tracked their movements and maneuvered his army along a parallel route, with the Trent River acting as a buffer between the two forces. On June 15, Henry halted his army at Ratcliffe, some six miles east of Nottingham.
Early next morning, scouts informed Henry that the rebels had forded the Trent and were now on its south bank. He hastily organized his forces with his most experienced commander, John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, taking up the vanguard. Oxford advanced down the Fosse Way, the old Roman road, and just before the village of Stoke he saw the rebels formed up and waiting in a line straddling the road.
Martin Schwartz, the only rebel commander with any record of field command, had by now taken tactical control, and he wasted no time in attacking Oxford’s isolated vanguard. His total force numbered about 9,000, while the royalist total is estimated at about 15,000. Schwartz’s comments at that moment reveal grave doubts about the battle: “Sir [Lincoln], now I see well that ye have deceived yourself and also me, but that notwithstanding, all such promise as I made unto my lady the duchess, I shall perform, exhorting th’ earl to do the same.”
Schwartz’s position ran along a ridgeline, drawn up on a south-facing slope. Because this was not a bad defensive position, his headlong rush at the royalists could be seen as a blunder. He realized, however, that time was not on his side. Also, lacking archers, he was probably eager to prevent the fight from becoming a long-range shooting match.
For the assault he used his own German contingent, leaving the “beggardly and naked” Irish as a tactical reserve. What few cavalry he possessed were placed on the wings. The sight of this phalanx of men, charging down the slope, their great 20-foot pikes raised to the sky, caused some of Oxford’s less experienced troops to flee, claiming the battle had been lost and spreading panic in the rear. Schwartz’s Irish reserve sensed that victory was at hand and enthusiastically joined in the fighting.
At that point, however, the tide of battle began to change. Oxford’s veterans had steadied the line and were beginning to use their slashing bills to good effect at close quarters against the longer, more unwieldy German pikes. That renewed effort gave Henry enough time to bring forward his own “battle” to assist Oxford’s. Derby’s force, numerically the strongest, also started to appear, and the rebel army was being driven back up the ridge. The Irish, ill-equipped to fight against English infantry, were first to break and ran in disorder over the ridge.
What followed that rout was little more than butchery. As many as 4,000 of the Irish were cut down while trying to make their way to the Trent, at a place still known today as Red Gutter. Schwartz and his mercenaries were eventually overwhelmed, choosing a soldier’s end and gallantly dying where they stood. The battle had lasted some three hours.
As for the leaders of the rebellion, the Earl of Lincoln, Thomas Fitzgerald and Thomas Broughton were all killed in battle—they would have known that the game was up and to be taken alive would only have resulted in humiliation, execution and probable mutilation. The spot where Lincoln fell, allegedly close to the Fosse Way and in a position suggesting that he was killed in the act of fleeing, is marked by a spring known as Willow Rundle. Its exact location is open to question, and some sources suggest that this particular tale is apocryphal. Another legend claims that a common soldier vowed if his soul went to heaven the spring would flow for eternity. In fact the spring is still flowing after more than 500 years.
Lord Lovell’s body was never found, giving birth to a legend that he made good his escape by fording the Trent and making his way back to his ancestral home of Minster Lovell. In all probability, he drowned while trying to cross the river. But a secret chamber was said to have been discovered at the Minster during restoration work early in the 18th century, and in it, seated at a table, was a man’s skeleton.
The Earl of Kildare was sent to the Tower of London but eventually pardoned. He died in 1513. As for Lambert Simnel and his mentor Richard Simons, the latter was sentenced to life imprisonment and probably owed his life to the fact that he was a man of the cloth. King Henry no doubt saw Simnel as a gullible youth, duped by Machiavellian elders. In fact, a rebel victory might well have sealed the young impostor’s fate, as Lincoln would most likely have conveniently done away with him and claimed the throne for himself. Instead, Simnel was sent to labor in the royal kitchen.
By the standards of the time, the Battle of Stoke Field had been a bloody affair. Henry’s army suffered an estimated 3,000 casualties, although as he himself wrote, “Without death of any noble or gentleman on our part.” He marched his army from Stoke directly to Newark, where the customary titles were bestowed on his subjects, as reward for loyalty and valor in battle. Within a few days, he arrived in Lincoln, where the public execution of captured rebels took place—a grisly reminder to the population of the price of treachery. Henry then took his army north in a show of strength before returning to London.
The fact that Lincoln’s far-fetched scheme came so close to success was in itself indicative of the fragility of Henry VII’s crown, just two years after it was placed on his head at Bosworth Field. Stoke Field, however, gave the king the chance to strengthen his position. The next few years saw a number of smaller risings against Henry, but his authority was never seriously threatened.
Stoke Field marked in many ways the end of England’s medieval era. It brought to an end that series of 15th-century conflicts known collectively—at least thanks to William Shakespeare—as the Wars of the Roses. Not until the Glorious Revolution of 1688 would rival claimants to the throne again confront each other on the field of battle. Although plotting and political intrigue, notably the Perkin Warbeck affair, were very much characteristic of Henry VII’s reign, he ruled for 23 years before he was succeeded by his only surviving son, Henry VIII. The Tudor dynasty was secured.
Originally published in the June 2006 issue of Military History. To subscribe, click here.
