The Dublin King: The True Story of Lambert Simnel and the Princes in the Tower

by John Ashdown-Hill

  Grainge is more useful when it comes to his description of Sheriff Hutton Castle itself. First he quotes Leland, who had seen the castle before it was ruined:

  Ther is a base court with houses of office besides the entering. The Castell itself in front is not ditched, but it standeth in loco utcunque edito. I marked in the front part of the first area of the castell three great and high Towres, of the which the Gatehouse was the middle. In the second area be five or six towers, and the statlie stair up to the Haul is very magnificent, and so is the Haul itself, and all the residue of the House; insomuch that I saw no house in all the north so like a princely lodging.10

  The fact that this was the most princely of the northern castles presumably provides the true explanation as to why Richard III chose to house (not imprison) his nephews and nieces there.

  Sadly, Sheriff Hutton Castle has been in ruins since the seventeenth century:

  The ruins stand on a hill, to the south of the village, and consist of the remains of four large corner towers, with a part of the warder’s tower over the entrance on the east side. The towers are of considerable elevation, especially that at the south-west corner, which is one hundred feet in height; square, massive, perpendicular, and plain, without buttresses, or architectural ornament of any kind. In the base of this tower, is a vault or dungeon … Above, is another room, arched in a similar manner, and in a tolerable state of preservation. The rooms above are broken down, and in a state of ruin. The circular stair which led to the top of the tower, has been entirely taken away. … The principal entrance has been on the east side; the not very lofty pointed arch of the gateway yet remains, with four shields carved on stone above it. The inner area of the castle is overgrown with grass … The castle has not been moated in front, and only partly on the northern side; on the southern, are the remains of a double moat, about two hundred yards in length, each division being about five yards wide, and full of water; these meet at an acute angle on the west, with another fosse, partly filled with water from the north side of the castle.11

  At Sheriff Hutton Castle the young Yorkists came under the supervision of their older cousin John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln. A figure of great importance in this story, Lincoln was born in about 1460. He was the eldest son of Elizabeth of York and her husband, John de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk. The Duchess of Suffolk was the middle sister of Edward IV and Richard III. Edward IV had created her eldest son Earl of Lincoln on 13 March 1466/67. Later, the young earl had been knighted, together with Edward’s own sons, on 18 April 1475. On the occasion of Anne Mowbray’s marriage to Edward IV’s second son, Richard, Duke of York in January 1477/78, Lincoln had attended the child bride. Subsequently he had borne the salt at the baptism of Edward’s daughter Bridget in November 1480. In the absence of the future Richard III himself, Lincoln had acted as the chief mourner at the funeral of King Edward IV in 1483. Finally, at Richard III’s coronation Lincoln was given a position of honour, and carried the orb.12 By 1485 he was already a young adult:

  Lincoln supported Richard against the rebels of October 1483 and was rewarded the following April with land worth £157, and the reversion of Beaufort estates worth a further £178 after the death of Thomas, Lord Stanley, who had been granted a life interest in the land which his wife, Margaret Beaufort, had forfeited for her part in the rising. In the following month Lincoln was granted an annuity of £177 13s. 4d. from the duchy of Cornwall until the reversion materialized.13

  The new king, Richard III, who might possibly have encountered the real Earl of Warwick as a baby, had probably not seen much of him since, because Richard himself had spent the greater part of the intervening years in the north of England, while Warwick, as we have seen, had probably been based in London under the care of the Marquess of Dorset. Therefore in the summer of 1483, by which time Warwick was 8 years old, neither Richard, nor his wife, Anne Neville (who was the younger sister of Warwick’s late mother, the Duchess of Clarence – and therefore Warwick’s aunt by blood as well as by marriage), would have been in any position to personally recognise their nephew when they met him. As in the case of Edward IV and the Marquess of Dorset, five years earlier, the new king and queen must simply have accepted the boy who was presented to them under the Warwick title. Richard then took charge of this boy, and treated him as of noble and royal status. Both Warwick and Lincoln were promoted by Richard III, who saw these royal nephews as potentially important future figures within the Yorkist royal family.

  Following the deaths of his own son, Edward of Middleham, and of his wife, Anne Neville (which both occurred in 1484, according to the medieval year reckoning), Richard III found himself with no direct heir. As a result, throughout 1485 (right up until his death at the Battle of Bosworth) he was planning a second marriage, to an infanta.14 His preference was for the Infanta Joana of Portugal. However, a second possible choice was the Infanta Isabel of Spain (an elder sister of Catherine of Aragon). Both of these possible brides were descendants of the house of Lancaster. Clearly, what Richard had in mind was to reunite the houses of York and Lancaster – just as Henry VII later claimed to do.

  As far as Richard was aware, he still had many years of kingship before him in 1485. He must therefore have had every hope of producing another legitimate son of his own, as the future heir to the throne. Nevertheless, it is conceivable that, if he failed to produce such a son, Richard had the two earls of Lincoln and Warwick in mind as potential future Yorkist kings. Indeed, it has often been said that he actually named one of them – either the Earl of Warwick or the Earl of Lincoln – as heir to his throne.15 In fact there is no evidence that either nephew was ever formally designated as heir presumptive. Indeed, the conflicting accounts of different writers on this point merely serve to underline the lack of certainty.

  It remains possible that, in August 1485, on the eve of what proved to be his final battle, Richard may have made some statement about the succession.16 Moreover, if he did make such a statement, that could perhaps provide a clear explanation for the subsequent conduct of the Earl of Lincoln. Richard’s marriage negotiations with Portugal had made excellent progress, and the marriage with the Infanta Joana would probably have taken place had Richard survived the battle. But the fact is that in August 1485 he had no queen and no son to succeed him. Some statement about the succession under these circumstances would perhaps have seemed logical.

  But whatever plans Richard may have had for the future, during his short two-year reign he never got around to revoking the Act of Attainder against his brother, Clarence. This left the Earl of Warwick in a somewhat equivocal position as a potential heir. Logically, whether or not Richard III made any pre-battle statement on the subject, the heir presumptive to the throne prior to August 1485 should have been John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln because the Act of Attainder against Clarence and his line was still in force.

  However, Richard’s own claim to the throne was based not only upon the bigamy of his elder brother, Edward IV, but also upon a wider range of criticisms of Edward, as outlined in the Act of Parliament of 1484. Although Edward IV’s treatment of his brother, Clarence, was not specifically mentioned in that Act, Richard III and his supporters may have perceived the wider criticism of Edward IV as implying that the late king’s actions against Clarence and his heirs were invalid.

  It is therefore possible that on the eve of Bosworth Richard III named the Earl of Warwick as heir to the throne. If so, such a decision on the part of his uncle, taken on the eve of his death at Bosworth, could well explain the subsequent conduct of the Earl of Lincoln. It has already been noted that Lincoln amazed Henry VII by backing the claim of the Dublin King (whom Lincoln explicitly recognised as Warwick), rather than seeking to win the crown for himself. In this apparently puzzling situation, most historians offer cynical explanations of Lincoln’s conduct, which they see as certainly intriguing, but probably sneaky. Maybe this tells us more about the mentality of the writers in question than it does about Lincoln. If King Richard III h
ad announced, or stated in his will, just before he was killed, that, in the event of his death, Warwick should be the next King of England, surely that might possibly explain Lincoln’s subsequent loyalty to the Dublin King.

  Leaving on one side their respective claims to the throne, in the eyes of Richard III both Lincoln and Warwick were promising bulwarks who could – and hopefully would – support and maintain the royal house of York on the English throne well into the coming century. Richard III therefore had every reason to train and promote them as future key supporters for the throne. Richard III’s son, Edward of Middleham, Prince of Wales, had briefly held the important post of Lieutenant of Ireland before he died.17 After Edward of Middleham’s death, Richard appointed Lincoln to the same post (21 August 1484). Lincoln was also created president of the Council of the North. This was a body established in the summer of 1484 ‘as the successor to the prince’s council, which had itself replaced Gloucester’s ducal council as a way of maintaining Richard’s authority in the north’.18

  Like Lincoln, Warwick was also a member of the Council of the North.19 In Warwick’s case (given his youth) his membership was probably largely nominal in 1485, but it certainly indicates Richard III’s intention that this younger nephew, too, should be trained to play some role in the politics of the future.

  Following the Battle of Bosworth, in August 1485, Warwick’s situation changed yet again. Having seized power, the new king, Henry VII, sent at once to Sheriff Hutton. Naturally, his first objective was to secure the person of his potential bride, Elizabeth of York, eldest daughter of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville. As we have seen, Henry intended to reverse Elizabeth’s bastardy, in order that he might marry her and present her to his people as the Yorkist heiress. But Elizabeth of York did not journey to London alone. She was almost certainly accompanied by her sisters and by some of her cousins.

  A representation of Edward of Clarence, Earl of Warwick. This is not a true ‘portrait’ since he was only a child when the picture was drawn.

  Naturally, all the surviving Yorkist heirs were perceived as potential threats by Henry VII. They therefore had to be rounded up and placed under secure control. Moreover, interestingly, in spite of the Act of Attainder passed against his father, Clarence, which was arguably still in force, Henry VII seems to have perceived the young Earl of Warwick as a particularly strong danger. Could it be that Henry had been informed that, on the eve of the Battle of Bosworth, Richard III had designated Warwick as his heir?

  That is one possibility. However, a much more likely source for Henry VII’s fear of Warwick was the new king’s own uncle, Jasper, Earl of Pembroke. In the period 1470 to 1471, during the Lancastrian Readeption, George, Duke of Clarence had sided with the Lancastrians against his own brother, Edward IV. Jasper knew this very well, since he had been in regular contact with George at that time. He also knew the precise consequences of George’s Lancastrianism: one result of the Duke of Clarence’s support for the restoration of Henry VI was that George had been formally recognised by the last Lancastrian king as second in line to the throne, after Henry VI’s alleged son, Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales. When this information was coupled with the fact that subsequently Henry VI and Edward of Westminster had both died, leaving no surviving children – and with the fact that George himself had also died – legally, the Lancastrian heir to the throne in 1485 was not Henry VII, but George’s only surviving son – namely the Earl of Warwick. In other words, according to the agreement sealed by Henry VI, it was the Earl of Warwick who should now be king. Arguably, this Lancastrian claim would have been completely unaffected by the Act of Attainder passed by the Yorkist usurper, Edward IV, in 1477.

  His inherited – and unassailable – Lancastrian claim to the throne therefore made Warwick the most dangerous surving member of the house of York from Henry VII’s point of view. And indeed, it is absolutely clear that in the new king’s opinion, ‘Dynastically the young Plantagenet offered the greatest threat to Henry’s claim to the throne … One of Henry’s first acts after Bosworth was to fetch the earl of Warwick from Sheriff Hutton, and keep him securely guarded.’20 The new controller of the little prince was initially Henry VII’s own very determined and forceful mother, Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby. She was granted custody of Warwick in 1485, as this later note proves:

  24 February 148[5/]6

  Henry, by the grace of God, king of England and of Fraunce, and lord of Irland. To the tresourer and chambrelains of oure Eschequier greting. Forasmoche as oure moste dere moder, at our singuler plesure and request of late hadde the keping and guiding of the ladies, doughters of King Edward the iiijth, and also of the yong lordes, the duc of Buk,21 therles of Warwik and of Westmerland,22 to her grate charges, For the which oure right trusty servaunt Maister William Smyth, keper of oure hanaper within oure Chancery, at oure special commaundement, hath paied and delivered unto oure saide moder the somme of cc, Ii., for the which he hath not hadde of us any warrant or othre matier suffisaunt for his discharge in the premises. [The text went on to say that king would now reimburse Smyth].23

  Later, as we shall see, Warwick was permanently confined in the Tower of London by Henry VII. In effect, he became the third ‘prince in the Tower’. Indeed, we have already noted that Vergil alleges that there were rumours of Warwick’s death in the Tower in about 1486.24 However, no other sources survive to confirm Vergil’s statement.

  Thus the official account of his life tells us that the real Earl of Warwick remained in England from before his father’s death in 1477, until 1485. Could he then have escaped and gone to Ireland? Was the later prisoner in the Tower – who supposedly suffered from mental deficiency, and who was held (and later executed) by Henry VII – the authentic earl? All these are issues to which we shall return later. First, however, it is now necessary to consider an alternative childhood history for the Earl of Warwick. This is a completely different story from the official version. However, it is the story hinted at by the intriguing words of Jean de Molinet.

  Notes

  Abbreviations

  CPR

  Calendar of Patent Rolls

  ODNB

  Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

  PROME

  Parliament Rolls of Medieval England

  1. ‘ung rainceau extraict d’estoc de royale géniture, s’estoit nourri entre les fertils et seigneurieux arbrisseaux d’Irlande … ce très noble rainceau est Edouard, fils du duc de Clarence, lequel, par le conseil et meure délibération des nobles d’Irlande, et en faveur de plusiers barons d’Angleterre, ses bienveuillans, fut délibéré de soi couronner roy, et d’expulser de son royal trosne le comte de Richemont, qui lors occupoit la couronne d’Angleterre.’ J.-A. Buchon, ed., Chroniques de Jean Molinet, vol. 3, Paris 1828, p. 152, author’s translation.

  2. D.F. Sutton, ed., Polydore Vergil, Anglica Historia (1555 version), online 2005, 2010 – my emphasis.

  3. PROME, 1487 Parliament, Lincoln attainder [November 1487].

  4. Bodleian Library, MS. Top. Glouc. d.2, Founders’ and benefectors’ book of Tewkesbury Abbey, fol. 39r.

  5. See ‘Edward, styled Earl of Warwick’, ODNB.

  6. Nicolas, Privy Purse Expenses, p. 157.

  7. Nicolas, Privy Purse Expenses, pp. 158–9.

  8. W. Grainge, The Castles and Abbeys of Yorkshire, York and London 1855, p. 238.

  9. Grainge, Castles and Abbeys, pp. 238–9.

  10. Grainge, Castles and Abbeys, p. 240, citing Leland.

  11. Grainge, Castles and Abbeys, pp. 241–2.

  12. ‘John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln’, ODNB.

  13. ‘John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln’, ODNB.

  14. J. Ashdown-Hill, The Last Days of Richard III, Stroud 2010, 2013, Chapter 2.

  15. See, for example, A.R. Myers, ed., G. Buck, The History of the Life and Reigne of Richard the Third (1646), Wakefield 1973, p. 44.

  16. See Ashdown-Hill, Last Days of Richard III, Chapter 7.


  17. R. Horrox, ed., British Library Harleian Manuscript 433, vol. 4, London 1983, p. 66.

  18. ‘John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln’, ODNB.

  19. Confirmed by the York city register, 13 May 1485, ‘when it was determyned that a letter should be consaved to be direct to the lordes of Warwik and Lincoln and othre of the counsail at Sheriff Hoton ffrome the maire and his bretherne’: L.C. Attreed, ed., York House Books 1461–1490, vol. 1, Stroud 1991, p. 361.

  20. M.K. Jones and M.G. Underwood, The King’s Mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby, Cambridge 1992, 1995, p. 67, citing Campbell.

  21. Edward Stafford, third Duke of Buckingham, born 1478, and restored to the title of his executed father following the battle of Bosworth.

  22. Probably he means Ralph, Lord Neville, the son and heir of Ralph Neville, third Earl of Westmorland (c.1456–6 February 1498/99). Ralph (the son), born in about 1474, had been given into Henry VII’s custody after Bosworth. However he did not hold the title of Earl of Westmorland in 1486, as his father was still living.

  23. SB no. 166, published in W. Campbell, ed., Materials for a History of the Reign of Henry VII, vol. 1, London 1873, p. 311.

  24. Sutton, Anglica Historia. See Chapter 4.

  4

  Edward, Earl of Warwick – Alternative Version

  We have already noted that the Burgundian chronicler Molinet reported unequivocally that the Dublin King was ‘Edward, son of the Duke of Clarence’, and therefore the young Earl of Warwick. Not only did Molinet state the Dublin King’s true identity as a matter beyond question; he also believed that the boy had been ‘nurtured amongst the … lordly shrubs of Ireland’.