On 22 August 1485, the armies of Richard III and Henry Tudor met at Ambion Hill, south of the Leicestershire town of Market Bosworth. The outcome should have been a foregone conclusion. Tudor’s army may have been as small as half that of the more experienced king, composed of a mix of paid mercenaries and Welsh, Scots and English exiles. Also to his disadvantage was the fact that he had not set foot in England since he had fled after the Lancastrian defeat at Tewkesbury, at the age of 14. He was fighting a reigning king, an experienced military leader who had ranged his troops along the high ground and had trained his cannons down the hill, right into the Lancastrian line of advance. While he waited for Tudor’s forces to assemble, Richard had ordered his armies to be blessed, and a cross carried before them, in the conviction that God was on his side. But battles can be unpredictable. The fortunes of war, and life, turn upon single decisions.
Mid-fight, Richard III made one such decision. Spotting Henry Tudor relatively unguarded on the battlefield, he led a direct charge in an attempt to cut his opponent down. It is likely that he took a small group of mounted men with him, anticipating that the fight would soon be won, breaking his way through to the place where Henry had taken shelter behind his archers. This took the Lancastrians by surprise, allowing Richard to get close enough to kill Henry’s standard bearer, but a combination of marshy terrain and Tudor’s Welsh guard brought the king to the ground. It was a bold, decisive move and, in other circumstances, might have won the day and reaffirmed Richard’s reign for years to come. Yet it was at this point that Lord Stanley, Henry’s stepfather, committed his troops on Tudor’s side.
In fact, the tide may have turned earlier. Sources writing soon after the event suggest a reluctance on the part of Richard’s men to come to his assistance; his officers deflected his order to execute Lord Strange and his instructions were not followed by key figures like Lord Brackenbury and Lord Stanley, on whom he was relying. The chronicler Molinet described how Richard’s death took place as the result his horse being stuck in a bog, whereupon he was killed with a halberd. The discovery and forensic analysis of Richard’s body in 2013 confirmed that this was likely, and that other blows to his head and body followed. Richard’s circlet, especially designed to sit upon his helmet, was found nearby and used to crown the invader as Henry VII. Control of England had passed out of Yorkist hands and a new dynasty was established. The Tudors had arrived.
Bosworth is often considered an historical watershed, a line in the sand between dynasties, a demarcation between the medieval and modern world. In reality, while the fortunes of England’s nobility did experience some change, the story was largely one of continuity. After the battle, the majority of Yorkist survivors recognised that their personal and dynastic futures depended upon them submitting to the new regime. Some did so enthusiastically, while it was more a question of tolerance than acceptance for others, an exercise in pragmatism. The example of frequent regime changes in recent years allowed for the possibility of Tudor’s overthrow, if the right challenge was mounted at the right time. With Henry cleverly backdating his reign to before Bosworth, England’s aristocracy swore an oath of allegiance that allowed them to retain their liberty and property. As a result, almost all of Richard’s supporters were pardoned; of the thousands who had fought at Bosworth, only twenty-eight men were attainted. People moved into the spaces that had been vacated, mopping up the lands, titles and jobs, even the widows, of the dead. Yet there was one individual who found this particularly difficult. Richard’s nephew John de la Pole had fought at Bosworth, and witnessed the aftermath of his uncle’s death. After being informally adopted as Richard’s heir the previous year, John’s claim to the throne meant that he was not prepared to countenance the Tudor regime for long. He swore the oath and escaped attainder merely to abscond and plan his assault upon the new king.
Like many of his contemporaries, John came from a family which united the Lancastrian and Yorkist bloodlines. His grandfather William de la Pole, First Duke of Suffolk had been married as a child to Henry Tudor’s mother, Margaret Beaufort, although the union was dissolved before they reached the age of consent. William had gone on to marry Alice Chaucer, granddaughter of the poet, friend and ally of Margaret of Anjou, but later endured an horrific death at the hands of his enemies, beheaded with a rusty sword on board ship on his way to exile. On the day before Suffolk died, he wrote a touching letter to his young son John, telling him to look after his mother and ‘always obey her commandments, believe her counsels and advices in all your works.’1 It may seem strange, therefore, that William’s son John, Second Duke of Suffolk sought a bride from a prominent Yorkist family, but the match had taken place by 1458, in a period of ceasefire and was, perhaps, a tacit admission of the importance of the Duke of York and his family.
The wife of the Second Duke of Suffolk came from the same Rouen nursery that had nurtured Edward IV and Edmund, Duke of Rutland in the mid-1440s. Elizabeth was the third child born to Richard, Duke of York and Cecily Neville during York’s tenure as Lieutenant of France, arriving less than a year after Edmund, on 22 April 1444. Like her mother, she was married as soon as she came of age, around the time of her fourteenth birthday, although given that the earliest birthdate suggested for their eldest son is 1462, a delayed consummation of the marriage is suggested. The match was probably made to reconcile the de la Poles with the York Plantagenets in the brief interval of peace in the spring of 1458.2 The young couple lived together at Wingfield Castle, in the village of the same name in Suffolk. Today only the south curtain wall and gatehouse survive of the medieval building but the local church, St Andrews, has an octagonal font dating from 1405. It is quite plausible that John, Earl of Lincoln was baptised there at some point between 1462 and 1464.
Between the de la Pole marriage and the birth of baby John, the Yorkist fortunes had undergone a significant change. Upon her marriage, Elizabeth Plantagenet had been the daughter of the most able and ambitious aristocrat of the era, second in line to the throne after Edward of Westminster, the king’s own son. Even though York had amply proven his ability to rule as Protector, Henry VI was still King of England and had produced a male heir. Four years later, father and son had been displaced and Elizabeth was now sister of the king. Her husband, John, had fought for Edward at the second battle of St Albans in February 1461 and then alongside him at Towton and was soon to benefit from the victory. The first sign of his changing fortunes was Suffolk’s appointment as a Steward of England for Edward’s coronation, which took place that June.3 Two months later, the duke was granted the office of the Constable of Wallingford Castle and other lands, yielding them an income of £40 annually;4 four years later it was increased to 100 marks.5 The following February, he received a commission of oyer and terminer, to hear local cases6 and in March 1463 his income was confirmed and he received a licence to ‘enter into all the castles, towns, lordships … and other possessions in England and Wales and in the marches of Wales’ over which his father had enjoyed jurisdiction.7 Of course there were also benefits for their children: an annual provision of £40 drawn from the fee farm of Gippewich was made for their male heirs in June 1466.8 John was created Earl of Lincoln by his uncle in October 1467, and the sheriff of Lincoln was ordered to pay ‘the King’s nephew, son and heir of John, Duke of Suffolk’ an annual income of £20 for life.9
In July 1471, John’s parents were granted the wardship of Francis Lovell, who had been a ward of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, recently killed at Barnet. Lovell was in his teens at this point, already married and living with his wife’s family, the FitzHughs; the control of his estates was a further privilege of proximity to the throne.10 In 1472, the family were trusted even further when John’s grandmother, Alice, Duchess of Suffolk, was appointed the keeping of the defeated Margaret of Anjou. The former Lancastrian queen stayed in Alice’s care at Wallingford and Windsor for the remainder of the duchess’s life, after which she was ransomed and sent back to her native France.
John’s family were typical in following contemporary patterns of aristocratic piety and patronage. In December 1473, when John was between 9 and 11 years old, Alice and her son received a licence to found a fraternity or guild of parishioners in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire. They were to appoint two guardians annually, have their own seal and appoint a chaplain to say masses for the souls of the royal family, the de la Poles and the members of the congregation. Although 100 miles from Wingfield, the family had an existing connection with the town’s church of All Saints, which perhaps came through the Chaucer family, as it was Alice who also paid for the church roof to be embellished with angels in the East Anglian style. It was a common act of piety undertaken as benefactors neared the end of their life, and Alice was to die in May 1475. Wills of the 1470s illustrate the extent of bequests made by wealthy widows for the creation of roods (crosses), statues, banners and wall paintings. Another widowed Alice, an Alice Chestre of All Saints in Bristol, left extensive gifts to her church when she died in 1485, including a new front for the altar carved with the images of five saints, gilding for Our Lady’s altar, a tabernacle for the image of Jesus and a black velvet hearse cloth embroidered in gold with her initials and those of her late husband.11 When she died, the church book recorded that because of these ‘good deeds’ the parish was ‘bound to pray for her’. These tokens were a way of embedding Alice Chestre’s memory into the fabric of the church, just as Alice Chaucer’s angels were. They were a reminder to the living to behave themselves and to pray for the women’s souls. Just as money and influence could offer comparative luxury and protection for the nobility in life, it was also considered able to assist the passage to heaven.
Alice Chaucer’s final resting place, St Mary the Virgin in Ewelme, Oxfordshire, is one of the best surviving examples of the late medieval cadaver tomb. This should come as no surprise, as she accumulated considerable wealth during her three marriages and died at the time such forms of memorial reached a peak of popularity. It goes without saying that Alice’s servants and tenants do not repose in such graves: the material demonstration of piety and the purchase of a swift path through purgatory were the preserves of the rich. For secular worshippers, the cream of religious benefits was available only to an elite minority.
The alabaster effigy of Alice lies on top of an ornate box tomb decorated with angels under canopies, her head resting on pillows borne by feathered angels, her features finely drawn and ageing. She is dressed in her ducal coronet, wearing the garter insignia upon her arm, full wimple and kirtle in folds, her hands clasped in prayer. Yet below the effigy, through apertures in the tracery panel, another glimpse of the duchess is visible. While the top figure presents the pious public face of the medieval aristocracy, death has ravaged the corpse below, wrapped in its shroud with hair spilling out. The duchess allows us to peep, voyeuristically, into the privacy of her death, through small holes that serve to heighten the terror, making more of an impression than if the tomb simply exposed the entire figure beneath. However, just inches above the cadaver, painted on the underside of the tomb is an image of the Annunciation, offering hope of redemption.
Hope and redemption were exactly what the Yorkist dynasty needed in 1470–71. John’s father offered solid support for the crown during the hiatus of Henry VI’s readeption, fighting alongside his brother-in-law at Losecote Field, Barnet and Tewkesbury. Among the Paston collection is a letter written at Wingfield, dated 22 October 1471, in which the Duke addresses the baileys, constables and chamberlains of the Suffolk town of Eye. Two of the Duke of Suffolk’s men had served in a skirmish at Stamford, putting down a rebellion that was led by Sir Robert Welles against the king. Welles was defeated and executed, and the duke was writing to insist that the men be paid in full, at once, for their service. In fact, as John was writing this letter, Edward had been forced to flee as a result of the actions of the Earl of Warwick and Duke of Clarence. In all probability, his brother-in-law was not yet aware of this new downturn in the family’s fortunes.12
Otherwise, the Paston letters do not show John, Duke of Suffolk in a particularly positive light, detailing his property dispute with the Paston family and his men’s attack upon the Paston property of Hellesdon, ransacking the church, standing upon the altar, stealing images and forcing out the parson. This desecration appears to provide quite a contrast to his mother’s piety, but the medieval world was more complex than that. It was not incompatible with Alice’s faith to lavish gifts upon one parish while supporting her son’s brutal attack upon another. Margaret Paston made an extensive list of what had been stolen and destroyed by the duke’s 500 men, including many personal and household items and buildings but, in addition, gowns, money, a silver collar in the king’s livery, a purse and three gold rings from the church.13
Most of John, Earl of Lincoln’s childhood at Wingfield left little mark upon the surviving records. During Edward IV’s reign, he witnessed the arrival of ten more siblings, eight of whom survived to adulthood. Perhaps he shared a tutor with his brothers Edward and Edmund, but he was in his late teens by the arrival of the youngest de la Pole, Richard. In April 1475, he was created a Knight of the Bath alongside his cousin the future Edward V, in a move intended to create a bond of loyalty between them. Three years later he attended the marriage between the young Duke of York and the Norfolk heiress Anne de Mowbray and, in 1480, he carried the salt at the baptism of Edward IV’s youngest daughter, Princess Bridget of York.14 In the late 1470s or early ’80s, John made a Yorkist match of his own, marrying Margaret FitzAlan, another cousin, who was the daughter of Queen Elizabeth’s younger sister, Margaret Woodville. The couple may have had a son but, if so, the child appears to have died young.
With his father and grandmother involved in such political and religious activities, John, Earl of Lincoln grew up within a narrative of unquestioning service to the Yorkist crown, and the paradoxes of piety and violence so characteristic of this era. This absolute loyalty might have been shaken in the spring of 1483, when John attended the funeral of Edward IV and watched the bastardisation of his royal cousins in the Tower. Yet neither Suffolk nor Lincoln challenged this; it was simply a matter of transferring loyalties to the next uncle, Richard III, and accepting the new king’s justification for his reign. John was around 20 when Richard succeeded the throne and, although his devotion to his dynasty would reap short-term rewards, it would ultimately cost him his life.
When Richard III was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 6 July 1483, both the Duke of Suffolk and John, Earl of Lincoln played prominent ceremonial roles. Behind the king and queen, Suffolk’s role was to hold the sceptre while Lincoln carried the cross and ball. John’s mother Elizabeth walked alone in the procession, as a mark of honour, with twenty ladies behind her. After the anointing and crowning, they would have taken their place on one of the top tables at the coronation feast in the palace nearby, among the 3,000 guests. The same month, John was appointed President of the Council of the North, which Richard established as a court of justice to oversee the north of England. It was based at Sandal Castle and Sheriff Hutton, the latter property John knew well, and he joined Edward, Earl of Warwick there the following year. Little more than ruins now remain of the quadrangular castle of sandstone and limestone.
When Buckingham and other rebels rose against Richard in the autumn of 1483, John supported his uncle and received rewards of lands worth £157, followed by the reversion of Beaufort estates worth £187 in the event of the death of Lord Stanley. In 1483, Stanley was still alive and well, though, so until such time as John could benefit from this arrangement, he was granted an annual income of a similar amount, to be drawn from the Duchy of Cornwall.15 After the death of Edward of Middleham in 1484, Richard III tacitly accepted John as his heir by granting him lands worth over £300, although his position was never formally clarified. It is likely that Richard had a more long-term plan to remarry and father more sons, so he kept John in reserve but never officially invested him with the title of heir. In the summer of 1485, John was aware of the new threat posed to his uncle by Henry Tudor’s planned invasion. He was with Richard at Nottingham Castle at the start of August, waiting to hear where the enemy would land; he was probably still with him when the king had marched to Leicester and on to Market Bosworth. Although John’s presence is not mentioned by contemporary chroniclers, he would have fought at Richard’s side, as he was mistakenly listed among the Yorkist dead afterwards.
After Bosworth, the trail goes cold for a few weeks. No doubt John was coming to terms with the change in his fortunes, perhaps even recovering from battle wounds. With the Yorkist cause at its nadir, he made the pragmatic decision to play along with the new king, attending Henry VII’s coronation that October and, probably, the king’s wedding to John’s cousin Elizabeth of York, eldest daughter of Edward IV, which took place the following January. Not to attend would have been a political statement that he could ill afford, considering his bloodline. Yet it is difficult to know whether this appearance of amity was instigated by John himself, or whether he responded to overtures made by the king. It was Henry’s policy to keep his enemies close, so he may have invited John to be with him at York that spring, and put him in charge of the investigation into a rebellion mounted by Francis Lovell and Humphrey Stafford. It would have been typical of Henry’s methods to send John a veiled warning through the medium of this legal process, to remind him of the fate awaiting those who challenged him. It was doubly poignant given the de la Pole family connection with Lovell, who had also been a close friend of Richard III. For the time being, Francis escaped justice and fled to Burgundy, where John’s aunt Margaret of York was duchess.
Still, John followed the Tudor line. He attended the baptism of Queen Elizabeth’s first child, Prince Arthur, at Winchester that September and was with the court at Greenwich early in November. The following February, of 1487, John was at Richmond Palace when the court was abuzz with news of a pretender to the throne. A 10-year-old boy, known to history as Lambert Simnel, had been claiming to be the young Edward, Earl of Warwick, reputed to have escaped from the Tower. However, Henry was confident in the knowledge that the real earl was securely locked away in London and decided to put him on display to demonstrate the falsity of this claim. This was a turning point for John. Perhaps he was already involved in the Simnel story or perhaps this development triggered a desire to join the rebels. As the eldest surviving Yorkist son, any challenge to the Tudor regime should have given him a central place in its plans, if not offered to champion his own claim to the throne. Either he intended to harness his cause to that of the rebels and use their dissent to overthrow Henry, or he planned to mount a counter-claim, to prevent them from stealing his thunder. John absconded from Richmond soon afterwards and crossed the North Sea to join Francis Lovell at Margaret’s sympathetic court in Burgundy. Tudor issued an act of attainder against him on 19 March.
Margaret of York was the sister of Edward IV, Edmund of Rutland, Elizabeth and Richard III. She had been born in 1446, after the family left Rouen and returned to the York estate of Fotheringhay in Northamptonshire. Just two years younger than John’s mother, Margaret’s marriage prospects had changed completely upon Edward’s succession in 1461. Whereas Elizabeth made a good but safe marriage to John, Duke of Suffolk, Margaret’s new status gave her a wealth of international candidates for her hand. In June 1468, she had married Charles the Bold in a magnificent ceremony described as the wedding of the century. John may have attended the London festivities as a child, before her departure, but he is more likely to have been present at Greenwich when she returned for a visit in 1480.
Margaret had been backing the restoration of the York dynasty ever since its defeat at Bosworth. She had no reason to feign obedience to Henry VII and openly backed both Lovell and Simnel in 1486, in the belief that Simnel might be Warwick, as he had claimed, or that he might open the door for another member of the family. In June that year, she made a gift of eight flagons of wine to ‘the son of the Duke of Clarence from England’16 but it is not clear whether this was intended for Simnel or the actual Earl of Warwick. As a wealthy widow, Margaret had time and resources to devote to the cause and a deep hatred of Henry VII, who had killed her brother. Between 1486 and 1487, her home town of Malines (Mechelen) raised a sum of 750 livres for her English cause, either for her to visit in person or to support an army.17 By this point, John, Earl of Lincoln was between 23 and 25, a suitable man, according to the Jacobean statesman Francis Bacon, ‘of great wit and courage’.18 The historian’s judgement of Margaret was stereotypical of his age, that she had ‘the spirit of a man and the malice of a woman’, but he recognised her complete commitment to the cause. By the time John was welcomed at her Mechlen court, and reunited with his friend Francis Lovell, Margaret was already assembling her troops. She offered John 2,000 men under the leadership of Colonel Martin Schwartz, a German mercenary who had been a veteran of her husband’s campaigns. Other exiles arrived in Mechelen, including Thomas David, captain of the Calais garrison, and Sir Richard Harleston, former governor of Jersey. Back in England, Henry moved north in anticipation that they would land somewhere on the east coast, only to learn that they intended to bypass him and sail round to the traditional Yorkist stronghold of Ireland to unite with the Earl of Kildare and his brother Thomas FitzGerald, Ireland’s Chancellor.
Exactly when John and Simnel met is unclear, although it was probably soon after the earl’s arrival in Ireland on 5 May. He was faced with a boy who must have looked familiar, reputedly bearing strong facial similarities to the children of Edward IV and, perhaps, to John himself. He had been tutored by an Oxford priest by the name of Richard or William Symon or Symonds, and proved himself adept in courtly accomplishments and graces, to the extent that ‘had he ruled, he would have as a learned man.’ Simnel was paraded through the streets of Dublin, carried on the shoulders of the tallest man in the city. On 24 May, he was crowned as Edward VI in Christchurch Cathedral, Dublin, sanctified by two archbishops and twelve bishops.19 When John was confronted with the boy, he presumably maintained the pretence of allegiance, paying homage at the coronation, while keeping his own intentions secret. For centuries historians have pondered his motivation and whether the child was simply an opportunity he chose to seize. As his uncle, Richard III, had proved, medieval kingship sometimes involved acts that were ruthless and cynical, even towards children. John would have believed himself justified in manipulating Lambert Simnel, a commoner and pretender, just as Richard had been in displacing his nephews.
It seems most plausible now that John’s ultimate aim was to rule in his own right. Strangely, though, the lone voice believing that he had been deceived by Simnel comes from Henry VII’s historian, Bernard André, a French Augustinian friar who was working from official papers and blamed the cleverness of the boy’s advisors:
thanks to the false instructions of his sponsors, he was believed to be Edward’s son by a number of Henry’s emissaries, who were prudent men, and he was so strongly supported that a large number had no hesitation to die for his sake … In those days such was the ignorance of even prominent men, such was their blindness, (not to mention pride and malice), that the Earl of Lincoln had no hesitation in believing.20
It cannot be completely ruled out that John was taken in by Simnel’s pretence but it seems more likely that the earl kept his true intentions concealed and his thoughts on the matter were assumed by Henry and others after his death.
A century later, Francis Bacon took the opposing view and was convinced that Lincoln had not been deceived by Simnel’s claims, but had used him in the hope that he ‘might open and pave a fair and prepared way to his own title’. It was intended, Bacon believed, ‘that if all things succeeded well, he [Simnel] should be out done, and the true Plantagenet received, wherein nevertheless the Earl of Lincoln had his particular hopes’.21 He also thought that the rebels grew too confident of their own success while in Ireland, believing that ‘they went in upon far better cards to overthrow King Henry, than King Henry had to overthrow King Richard.’ There is no doubt that they posed a serious threat to the Tudor regime, with the backing of the Burgundians under Margaret, the Irish under Kildare and the two Yorkist figures of Lincoln and Lovell. With the 2,000 missionaries, a crowned ‘king’ and 4,500 Irish troops, their confidence was not misplaced and Henry knew it. On 5 June, the army of ‘Edward VI’ landed at Piel Island near Furness on the Lancastrian coast and marched through the Pennines towards York. Henry was at Coventry and marched to meet them at the village of East Stoke. But things were looking very encouraging for the rebels. On 10 June, Francis Lovell led 2,000 men in an attack upon Lord Clifford’s Lancastrians, who were waiting at Bramham Moor to join the king, winning a decisive victory. Two days later, John ordered Lord Scrope to create a diversion by attacking Bootham Bar in York. This had the effect of drawing the Earl of Northumberland away from the impending conflict, taking out more of Henry’s support. This was very encouraging for John and his supporters.
And yet there may have been dissent among the rebels. Days later, a rift arose between John and Margaret’s military commander, and the Great Chronicle of London includes a letter written to the earl by Martin Schwartz on the eve of the battle, suggesting that he and Margaret had been deceived as to John’s intentions:
Sir now I see well that ye have dyssayvyd yoursylf and alsoo me, but that not wythstandynd, all such promyse as I made unto my lady the duchess I shall perfform, Exortyng th’Erl to doo the same. And upon thys spedd theym towards the feel dwt as good a corage as he had 20m [20,000] men more than he had.22
By this point, it was too late. Schwartz was committed to fight, but misunderstanding or disillusionment on the rebels’ side can hardly have helped their cause. As John prepared for battle, praying for the same success that Henry Tudor had enjoyed, he faced the tantalising possibility that he might be wearing the crown himself within a few hours or days.
The armies met at Stoke Field on 16 June. Tudor’s men were led by the Earl of Oxford and Henry’s uncle, Jasper, Earl of Pembroke, and outnumbered the rebels. Many of the Irish soldiers were poorly clothed and equipped, suffering heavy losses from the Lancastrian longbows, while the German mercenaries made some headway against Oxford’s flank, using new handguns. Molinet’s chronicle describes how the rebels were unable to retreat due to the position of the river and they soon plunged into the ravine while the Irish were ‘filled with arrows like hedgehogs’. According to Bacon, they did not lack courage but their nakedness made the confrontation ‘rather an execution than a fight upon them’.23 The battle lasted for three ‘fierce and obstinate’ hours. Henry’s historian Polydore Vergil tells us that the king had hoped to capture John alive, in order to question him about the extent of Yorkist support, but the earl was killed along with Schwartz and Fitzgerald, while Kildare and Lovell escaped. Lambert Simnel was arrested and exposed as a fraud but, due to his youth, he was pardoned and given a role in the palace kitchens. He later became a royal falconer, married and died peacefully.
Henry VII did not treat John’s body in the same way he had that of Richard III. The excavations following the discovery of Richard’s body in 2012 confirmed the treatment the king received after his defeat: his hands tied, carried naked across the back of a horse through the streets of Leicester, publicly displayed and buried with minimal rites in a cramped grave in the choir of the Greyfriars church. There were good reasons for laying out the corpse of a rival in full view, to create witnesses to the fact of his death and quash any future rumours of escape, but other elements might speak of humiliation and speed. At the time of Stoke, Richard still lay under a simple slab, but in 1495 Henry commissioned him a proper tomb of alabaster and coloured marble, paying out £60 to two different craftsmen for the work. The sixteenth-century writer Holinshed states that the memorial had borne an inscription and a picture of Richard, which was perhaps a two-dimensional carving or painting, rather than the usual three-dimensional effigy. Henry may have decided that it was fitting for an anointed king to have a proper tomb or, in line with medieval notions of violent death, that this went some way to making amends to Richard’s unquiet soul. John, Earl of Lincoln received no such rites or tomb. His body was buried in an unmarked grave on the battlefield and never retrieved. It would have been left to his parents to arrange masses for his soul. No records survive to confirm whether they did.
When Henry’s Parliament met in November 1487, it passed a lengthy and unequivocal act of attainder against Lincoln and his followers:
The 19th day of the month of March last past, John, late Earl of Lincoln, nothing considering the great and sovereign kindness that our Sovereign Liege Lord that now is, at divers sundry times, continually showed to the said late Earl, but the contrary to kind and natural remembrance, his faith, truth and allegiance, conspired and imagined the most dolorous and lamentable murder, death and destruction of the royal person … and also destruction of all this realm, and to perform his said malicious purpose, traitorously departed to the said persons beyond the sea and there accompanied himself with many other false traitors and enemies … by long time contriving his malice, prepared a great navy … and arrived in the ports of Ireland … where he conspired and imagined the destruction and deposition of our said Sovereign … and for the execution of the same thereon 24 day of May last past … contrary to his homage and faith, truth and allegiance, traitorously renounced, revoked and disclaimed his own said most natural sovereign … and caused one Lambert Simnel, a child of ten years of age, son to Thomas Simnel, late of Oxford, joiner, to be proclaimed, erected and reputed as King of this Realm, and to him did faith and homage, to the great dishonour and despite of all this realm, and from thence, continuing in his malicious and traitorous purpose arrived with a great navy … accompanied with a great multitude of strangers, with force and arms, that is to say, swords, spears, marespikes, bows, guns … and many other weapons … with many other ill disposed persons and traitors, defensible and in warlike manner arrayed, to the number of 8,000 persons, imagining, compassing and conspiring the death and deposition and utter destruction of our said Sovereign Lord … [and] passed from thence from place to place to they come to Stoke in the county of Nottinghamshire, where, the 16 day of June last past, with banners displayed, levied war against [the King] and gave him mighty and strange battle, traitorously and contrary to all truth, knighthood, honour, allegiance, faith … intending to utterly have slain, murdered and cruelly destroyed (the King). For the which most malicious, compassed, great and heinous offence … against the universal and commonweal of this realm [Lincoln and others] were to be taken, judged and reputed as traitors and convicted and attainted of high treason and that all [honours, lands and titles] the late Earl … had or was possessed of … be forfeit to our sovereign lord the King.24
John, Duke of Suffolk appears to have played no part in his son’s rebellion. In fact, he rode out the storm convincingly and remained loyal to the Tudors. The parliamentary attainder against John, Earl of Lincoln specifically protected rights of his father: ‘this act of attainder, made in this present parliament against John, late Earl of Lincoln, extend not, nor be prejudicial unto John, Duke of Suffolk during his life time.’25 Suffolk served as a trier during the same session and was entrusted with the muster of troops against Brittany the following year. The duke did not live much longer, dying in May 1492, upon which his next son and heir, John’s younger brother Edmund, forfeited the title in exchange for lands. John’s mother Elizabeth survived into the next century, although she lived quietly and left little trace in the records. It is highly likely that she adopted a similar stance to other royal widows of the era, including Cecily Neville and Elizabeth Woodville, in living a quasi-religious life, perhaps even taking vows. The role of a vowess was a safe, reflective end for women whose lives and families had been shattered by the dynastic conflicts of their menfolk. Elizabeth was described as deceased in 1503, although she may have died long before. She was buried beside her husband at St Andrew’s church, Wingfield. The alabaster tomb shows Sir John dressed in armour, his head resting upon the bleeding head of a Saracen while Elizabeth lies on his left, her clothing virtually identical to that on the effigy of Alice Chaucer. Both have their feet upon curly maned lions.
John’s rebellion was the last realised effort of the Yorkists to regain the throne. As one of the eldest ‘young men’ included in this collection, he had the advantage over the others of having reached adulthood. But this didn’t mean he was not subject to restrictions, even a sort of imprisonment at the Tudor court: he may not have been imprisoned in the Tower, but the expectation of his compliance made a cage for Lincoln which he was unable to endure. The existence of Lambert Simnel may have been the trigger for the earl’s revolt, or else he harnessed the child to his intentions, which he had hitherto kept secret. Given the role he played during the reign of Richard III and his Yorkist ties of affinity, John’s actions fell within Henry’s expectations despite his outward signals of conformity. However, they display a very different pattern of loyalty to that of his father. Both exhibited exceptional devotion to their family, although this followed two convergent paths and yielded contrasting results. Throughout his life, Lincoln modelled dedication to the continuation of the Yorkist dynasty, as a supporter of Edward IV and Richard III and in his attempt to restore its favours. He did not question Richard’s ascendancy in 1483, as this would have led to disruption and conflict, even the resumption of war, had the Princes in the Tower been rescued and the rule of a minor re-established. Lincoln preferred the transfer of power from one adult male to another, and is likely to have accepted Richard’s narrative about the boy’s illegitimacy, or at least accepted its necessity. After the arrival of the Tudors, he played a diplomatic game before rebelling as soon as the opportunity presented itself. He upheld the ideal of the Yorkist men as kings of England and took his place in that succession when he perceived the mantle had fallen to him. By contrast, Suffolk’s devotion was to the survival of his family, whether they were rulers or not. To this effect, he was prepared to accept the sacrifice of individuals and the loss of the throne, if it permitted the continuation of his bloodline. His was a pragmatic loyalty rather than the dedication to an ideal followed by his son.
In a political sense, John of Lincoln had a valid claim to the English throne. Leaving Simnel aside, his personal challenge to Henry was a valid one and had the potential to be a success. While Henry claimed right of conquest, and had married Edward IV’s eldest daughter, Lincoln had the advantage of being Richard’s implied heir, although he was equal to Tudor in that their bloodlines passed through a female descendent. The Yorkist dynasty had previously suffered an interruption and regained its footing under Edward IV; surely John reasoned that Henry Tudor’s rule might be a similar blip before the family fortunes were restored under his own kingship? With Burgundian and Irish support, he was confident that he stood as good a chance as his rival and he was right. In the planning stages, in theory, the battle might have gone either way, determined by an incident as unexpected as Richard III’s charge upon Henry into marshy ground. In theory, the rebellion would have seen Simnel swiftly removed and England ruled by John II. In all likelihood, he would have fathered more children, or passed the throne to his brothers, and established the continuation of Yorkist rule well into the sixteenth century. In practice, though, the various elements under his command did not come together in the battle and the day went against him. It is easy to speculate about the ‘what-ifs’. Had the Irish been properly clothed and equipped, had Lincoln chosen another location, had more former Yorkists offered their support, had the weather been different, had the experienced earls of Oxford and Pembroke failed to make the rendezvous, the outcome may have been the restoration of the dynasty.
John may have represented the last plausible Yorkist assault on the throne but he was not the last claimant. After his death, his brothers continued to be a thorn in Tudor’s side. Next after John to survive to adulthood was Edward de la Pole, born in 1467. In 1481 he was attending lectures in Oxford, where he was praised as a precocious scholar. Richard promoted Edward to the position of Archdeacon of Richmond, Yorkshire, in January 1484,26 but he was referred to as being dead in October 1485, so it cannot be ruled out that he was killed at Bosworth, although some sources claim that he died of natural causes.
After Edward was Edmund, born in 1471, who was created a Knight of the Bath at Richard’s coronation but was too young to be involved at Bosworth. He managed to make the transition to the Tudor regime by being a close friend of his cousin, Queen Elizabeth, and frequently attended court at Christmas and other festivities, including her coronation in 1487. After John’s death at Stoke, Edmund became the leading Yorkist heir and inherited his father’s title upon the duke’s death but agreed its reduction to the rank of an earldom in exchange for some forfeit lands, which was in keeping with Henry VII’s policy to weaken the influence of the nobility. Edmund took part in the siege of Boulogne in 1492 and jousted at the investiture of Prince Henry as Duke of York in 1494, a title which must have struck particularly close to home. At Christmas 1495, he entertained the king and queen at Ewelme Manor, took part in disguisings at court and resisted invitations to join rebellions, leading troops against the pretender Perkin Warbeck in 1497.27 By 1499, though, Edmund’s loyalty to the Tudor regime was running thin as his finances were curbed by Henry, and his implication in a murder provided the king with an opportunity to impose humiliating conditions.
Edmund fled to Picardy, possibly in the hope of receiving assistance from Margaret of Burgundy as John had done. None was forthcoming and her stepson Philip the Fair negotiated Edmund’s return as part of a trade agreement with England, with serious financial penalties for the earl. Henry kept his enemy close, and Edmund was present at court during the negotiations and proxy marriage of the king’s eldest son Prince Arthur to the Spanish Infanta Catherine of Aragon. In August 1501, Edmund left England again, without Henry’s permission, this time with his younger brother Richard. Based in Aachen, he began to plan an invasion while living on funds supplied by Emperor Maximilian. Yet this scheme only came to fruition in 1504, when Edmund left Richard behind as surety for his debts and headed for Friesland, only to be captured and imprisoned. He was attainted in Henry’s Parliament of 1504 and remained in custody for two years, until Maximilian’s son, Philip, was blown off course in the Channel and forced to land in England. Under duress, he agreed to hand Edmund over so long as the exile’s life was spared. Henry duly placed Edmund in the Tower upon his return but his son, Henry VIII, did not feel bound to honour the agreement and executed the earl in 1513.
The next de la Pole brother, Humphrey, was born in 1474 and educated at Gonville Hall, Cambridge, where he became a Doctor of Laws.28 Humphrey became the rector of St Andrew’s church, Hingham, in Norfolk. He died the same year as his brother Edmund was executed, 1513, but of some ailment rather than the axe. Four years his junior, William de la Pole lived quietly as the keeper of Wingfield Castle but suffered as a result of Edmund’s absconsion abroad. In 1502 he was considered untrustworthy despite little evidence to prove that he had supported his brothers, and imprisoned in the Tower. He would remain there for the next thirty-seven years, the place’s longest prisoner, until his death 1539.
Finally, Richard, the youngest de la Pole brother, born in 1480, came to be known as ‘The White Rose’. After escaping abroad with Edmund and remaining in Aachen as security for the Emperor’s loans, he made his way to Hungary, despite being pursued by Henry’s ambassadors. After the accession of Henry VIII, Richard attempted to gain a royal pardon but this was not forthcoming, so he allied himself with the French and was backed by Louis XII as a claimant to the English throne. He led German troops on Louis’s behalf during his invasion of Navarre in 1512 and against Henry VIII when the English lay siege to Thérouanne in 1513. After receiving the news of Edmund’s execution, Richard adopted the title of the Duke of Suffolk and announced his intention to seek the crown. By the following summer, of 1514, he had assembled troops in Brittany and including disaffected Yorkists abroad, funded by Louis, with the possibility of Scottish assistance. As they were poised to depart, the invasion fleet was cancelled when England and France made peace through a marriage treaty between the newly widowed Louis and Henry’s younger sister. Richard moved to Metz, under the protection of the Duke of Lorraine, and remained there until 1519. His next opportunity to launch an invasion came in 1522, when the Duke of Albany arrived in France, but again this came to nothing when Richard’s followers refused to rise, and his Scottish support returned home. Richard did not give up. He appealed to Louise of Savoy, the mother of the new French king, Francis I, for assistance and hoped to mount an invasion via Ireland but instead he took part in Francis’s invasion of Italy. In February 1525, Francis was taken prisoner by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at the Battle of Pavia and Richard, fighting as one of his captains, was killed. He was the last member of the house of York to actively seek the throne. News of his death provoked Henry VIII to respond with relief that ‘all the enemies of England are gone.’29
It was around the time of John’s rebellion that his aunt, the dowager queen Elizabeth Woodville, retired from public life. As a 50-year-old widow, this may well have been Elizabeth’s natural reaction to this stage of her life, or a response to the dangerous political situation and loss of her nephew. It was more usual for widows of comparable status to spend their final years in the seclusion and contemplation of a religious retreat and Bermondsey Abbey, on the bank of the Thames, had a history of housing royal women, including Catherine of Valois, Henry VII’s grandmother, in the year of Elizabeth’s birth. However, some have questioned the timing of the dowager’s withdrawal, speculating that it was not voluntary, but was instead a punishment imposed by Henry VII for her support of her nephew, John of Lincoln. It seems unlikely that Elizabeth would have supported her nephew over her own daughter, the king’s wife, and she was still receiving a reduced allowance from Henry, made over to ‘oure right dere and right welbeloved quene Elizabeth moder unto our most dere wif the quene’. It would have been quite consistent with her lifelong piety to have offered to withdraw from public life and return many of her assets to the crown for the use of her daughter and grandchildren. Beyond the reasons advanced above, she could have withdrawn due to increasing ill health, as she was to die in 1492. That April she drew up her will, outlining the simplest of funerals for a former queen, and its initial lines betray the reason for her choice: ‘being of hole mynde, seying the world so transitory and no creature certayne whanne they shall departe from hence’. It was humility, after years of turbulence, that dictated Elizabeth’s final statement to be interred ‘without pompe entreing or costlie expensis’. After her death on 8 June, she was placed in a wooden coffin and taken by barge with a small company to Windsor, where she was placed on a ‘low herse suche as they use for the comyn peple’ with four wooden candlesticks and a dozen old men carrying torches.30 Her funeral represented a contrast with the opulence of her life, but that was exactly the point she intended to make. In this, she was unusual among her peers, whose wealth might buy them a magnificent tomb flanked with gilt angels, wall paintings and gifts for the church, chapels dedicated to them with priests singing masses and marking their month’s mind and year’s mind. Elizabeth’s was a simpler piety, ahead of its time. The coming years would see a move towards a more direct, less ornate means of approaching death.