It was in July 1484 that William Collingbourne, an opponent of the Yorkist regime, attached to the door of St Paul’s Cathedral in London a now famous couplet:
The Catte the Ratte and lovell owyr dogge
Rulyn all Engeland undyr an hogge.16
The hogge was Richard III, the reference being to his white boar badge. Likewise the mention of Lovell as a dogge referred to the white wolf which formed part of the crest above his coat of arms. The Catte referred to William Catesby, another of Richard III’s servants, and yet another connection of Eleanor Talbot.17 The Ratte was Richard Ratcliffe, who was killed with Richard III and the Duke of Norfolk at the Battle of Bosworth.
In 1485, when news came of the planned invasion of England by Henry Tudor, Francis Lovell was sent by Richard III to guard the south coast. Since Henry actually landed at Milford Haven, Francis was not able to intercept him, and although some historians maintain that Francis fought with Richard at Bosworth – and two contemporary reports actually listed him among the dead18 – in fact it is by no means clear whether Francis had been able to reach Richard in time to take part in the battle. More will be said about this point – and about the subsequent history of Viscount Lovell – later, when we explore what actually occurred in 1486 and 1487.
Other Yorkists who actively supported the Dublin King included members of the gentry. Sir Henry Bodrugan from Cornwall was one of them.19 Although he was about 60 years of age in 1486, Bodrugan, who, like Lincoln and Lovell, had previously been a very firm supporter of Richard III, attended the Dublin coronation. John Beaumont was another member of the Yorkist gentry who attended the coronation.20 Like Bodrugan, Beaumont was based in Cornwall; indeed it is possible that Beaumont was related in some way to Bodrugan, who had married Jane, the widow of William Beaumont, in about 1461.21 Another member of the Yorkist gentry who is recorded as having supported the cause of the Dublin King is Sir Thomas Broughton.22 Edward Franke or Franks, who had been sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire in 1484, under Richard III, also gave his support to ‘Edward VI’.23
Some members of the religious hierarchy in England also supported the Dublin King. One notable example is John Sant, the Abbot of Abingdon, who first helped the Stafford brothers in their unsuccessful rising of 1486, and whose name was well known to Margaret of York in Flanders. Later it was reported that Abbot Sant sent one of his servants abroad in January 1486/87, carrying funds for the Earl of Lincoln. Since this predated Lincoln’s own departure it would suggest that plans for the Dublin King were well under way even while Lincoln was still at Henry VII’s court.24
Curiously, however, the division of opinion over the contest between Henry VII and ‘Edward VI’ which we have already encountered within the royal house of York, also seems to have been present among the wider ranks of former Yorkist supporters. By no means did all the living Yorkists in England follow Francis Lovell, Bodrugan, Beaumont and Broughton in supporting the Dublin King. Even among those families which had earlier seemed very loyal to the house of York, the position adopted in 1486 was equivocal.
The Howard family are an excellent example of this, and possibly reveal the reason why some former Yorkists seemed reluctant. John Howard, Duke of Norfolk had, of course, been killed at the Battle of Bosworth, together with his king, Richard III. However, his son, Thomas, Earl of Surrey, though wounded in the fighting, survived – to be captured by Henry VII and subsequently imprisoned in the Tower of London.25 It is reported that in 1486 Thomas Howard was offered a chance to escape from the Tower and fight for the Dublin King.26 But apparently Thomas felt that it was safer for him to remain in his cell. Of course, this in itself may indicate that the Yorkist loyalty of the Howards had not died completely, for ‘while others prospered in serving the new king and in establishing the new authority, [Howard] led a passive existence’.27 But since he had been stripped of all his lands and titles by the Tudor regime, he was probably frightened about taking any further risks. In the long run, of course, Thomas Howard’s refusal to back the Dublin King does seem to have acted in his favour – as perhaps he had secretly hoped. Thus in May 1489, after the Dublin King had been defeated, Henry VII restored Thomas to the earldom of Surrey.
Notes
Abbreviations
CPR
Calendar of Patent Rolls
ODNB
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
PROME
Parliament Rolls of Medieval England
1. There were two fifteenth-century Elizabeths of York. This is the senior of the two. The junior Elizabeth was her niece, the eldest daughter of Edward IV and wife of Henry VII.
2. ‘John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln’, ODNB.
3. 9 April 1484.
4. Horrox, British Library Harleian Manuscript 433, p. 66.
5. See, for example, Myers, History of the Life and Reigne, p. 44.
6. See, for example, Ashdown-Hill, Last Days of Richard III, Chapter 2.
7. PROME, 1484 Parliament, Act of Titulus Regius, citing the petition of the Three Estates of the Realm of 1483; my emphasis.
8. J. Brown and E. Brown, ‘The de la Poles, Earls and Dukes of Suffolk’, Wingfield 2000, p. 6.
9. ‘John de la Pole, second Duke of Suffolk’, ODNB. (http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/22450, accessed December 2013.)
10. She must have conceived Prince Arthur in about December 1485.
11. Brown, ‘The de la Poles, Earls and Dukes of Suffolk’, p. 7.
12. He was certainly dead by 20 May 1492, ‘John de la Pole, second Duke of Suffolk’, ODNB.
13. CPR, 1467–1477, pp. 261, 312.
14. Eleanor’s first husband, Sir Thomas Butler, was Lord Sudeley’s son.
15. Horrox, British Library Harleian Manuscript 433, pp. 3–4.
16. A.H. Thomas and I.D. Thornley, eds, Great Chronicle of London, London 1938, p. 236. There are several slightly different published versions of this rhyme.
17. Ashdown-Hill, Eleanor, p. 37.
18. M. Bennett, The Battle of Bosworth, Stroud 1993, p. 155.
19. Hayden, ‘Lambert Simnel’, p. 628.
20. Hayden, ‘Lambert Simnel’, p. 628.
21. www.girders.net/Bo/Bodrugan,%20Sir%20Henry,%20(d.1489).doc, accessed December 2013, citing CPR 1461–67, pp. 539–40.
22. Hayden, ‘Lambert Simnel’, p. 631.
23. C. Weightman, Margaret of York, Duchess of Burgundy, 1446–1503, Gloucester 1989, pp. 168–9; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Sheriff_of_Berkshire, accessed December 2013.
24. See Weightman, Margaret of York, pp. 156–7.
25. Thomas Howard was certainly imprisoned initially in the Tower of London. But though he remained in confinement for several years it is not certain that he spent all this time at the Tower. M.J. Tucker, The Life of Thomas Howard Earl of Surrey and Second Duke of Norfolk 1443–1524, London 1964, p. 49.
26. Tucker, Thomas Howard, p. 49, n. 58. However, Tucker is dubious about this report.
27. Tucker, Thomas Howard, p. 49.
7
The ‘Diabolicall Duches’
Outside of England, of course, the position was very different. Anyone with an interest in English politics who was resident in a foreign country was in a fairly safe position to say and do exactly what they felt. Thus, after the Earl of Lincoln, it is not surprising to find that the key surviving member of the royal house of York who most unequivocally supported the Dublin King was Margaret, dowager Duchess of Burgundy. According to Professor Mary Hayden, ‘she was a woman skilled in intrigue, and was very popular in Flanders.’1 Certainly the second part of this sentence is correct.
From the safety of her palace in Mechelen, Margaret vehemently opposed Henry VII. It is usually supposed that her opposition dated from the first moment when the news reached her of his victory over her brother, Richard, at Bosworth. However, Christine Weightman tentatively suggested a different and rather more mundane explanation:
Margaret of York, dowager Duchess of Burgundy, sister of Edward
IV and Richard III, a supporter and a possible aunt of the Dublin King.
Margaret had benefitted from all the various trading licences granted by her brother Edward, and she had continued to enjoy these privileges during the brief reigns of Edward V and Richard III, but with the accession of Henry VII her trading activities appear to have ceased.2
Whatever the real reason for her opposition to Henry, in the year following his seizure of the English throne, Margaret invited to her palace in Mechelen the young future king ‘Edward VI’. Once this boy had joined her there she recognised him as her nephew the Earl of Warwick and set in motion the initial planning of his future Dublin coronation.
Margaret was the third daughter of the Duke and Duchess of York, and the youngest of their daughters to survive to adulthood.3 She was born on 3 May 1446, at Waltham Abbey in Essex.4 Very close in age to her slightly younger brother, George, Duke of Clarence, she seems always to have felt very close to him. She also appears to have been close to her youngest brother, Richard. It is therefore not surprising that, after the death of Richard III in August 1485, Margaret took an interest in Clarence’s son, the young Earl of Warwick.
Incidentally, Margaret’s genuine devotion to the interests of her family – the house of York – makes it inherently improbable that she would deliberately have supported impostors. Like all her contemporaries in 1486 and 1487, she knew that her niece, Elizabeth of York the younger, was married to Henry VII, and was therefore engaged in producing new royal children who would be partly of the bloodline of the house of York, and one of whom would eventually inherit the crown, assuming that Henry VII remained on the throne. It must therefore be the case that she genuinely believed that the Dublin King was her nephew Edward, Earl of Warwick just as later she must genuinely have believed that the claimant known as Perkin Warbeck really was Richard of Shrewsbury.
In itself, of course, Margaret’s belief is not sufficient to prove the authenticity of either of the Yorkist pretenders. After all, Margaret of York had left England in 1468, when the Duke of York and the Earl of Warwick had not yet been born. She may have met them both in 1480, when York was aged 7 and Warwick was 5. But that does not guarantee that she would have recognised Warwick six years later, at the age of 11, or York some twelve years later, at the age of about 19. Margaret could perhaps have been deceived – or have deceived herself.
As a girl, she was brought up in England, where she had spent much of her early life in the care of her mother. She was with the Duchess of York and her two younger brothers at Fastolf’s Place in Southwark in the autumn of 1460. After her father was killed at the Battle of Wakefield, Margaret’s two younger brothers were sent to the Low Countries for safety, but except for a possible period of residence in Ireland when her father and mother held court there in her early childhood, Margaret herself never left England until the time came for her marriage. In 1460/61, while her brothers were in exile in Utrecht, Margaret seems to have remained at her mother’s side. In the early days of the reign of her eldest brother, Edward IV, Margaret and her mother were resident at Baynard’s Castle in London. Later, Edward IV established a household for Margaret, George and Richard at the Palace of Pleasaunce (Greenwich Palace).
Like other members of her family (some of whom were probably reluctant to do so) Margaret was required to attend the coronation of Elizabeth Woodville as Edward IV’s queen in May 1465. During the following two years she spent a good deal of her time in the new queen’s company. Margaret, the only unmarried princess of the house of York at that time, was potentially a valuable pawn in the hands of her brother’s government. There was talk of a possible Scottish royal wedding, followed later by discussion of a possible Portuguese alliance. Most serious in the mind of her brother, the king, however, was the prospect of a possible alliance between Margaret and the widowed Count Charles of Charolais, son and heir of the Duke of Burgundy.
Negotiations for a Burgundian match began almost as soon as Charles lost his second wife, in 1465. The process was delayed somewhat by the innate Lancastrian predilections of Charles’s parents, the Duke and Duchess of Burgundy. Progress was also hindered in England by the opposition of Edward and Margaret’s cousin, Richard Neville, the Kingmaker Earl of Warwick, who much preferred the idea of an alliance with France. By 1467, however, a marriage between Margaret and Charles was agreed.
Margaret left London on 18 June 1468, and was escorted by her brothers and a large selection of the nobility with great splendour. She set off on a slow procession through the county of Kent which finally took her to the port of Margate. There she embarked for the Low Countries. Her marriage to Charles the Bold was celebrated at Damme on 3 July, followed by another splendid procession, this time a state entry into the town of Brugge.
Curiously, following her marriage, Margaret spent little time with her new husband, and their marriage always remained childless. Charles’s first marriage, to Catherine of France (who had been five years his senior and who had died at the age of 18) may never have been consummated simply because of the bridegroom’s youth. But although Charles later succeeded in fathering one daughter, by his second wife, Isabelle of Bourbon, he seems to have shown very little interest in the opposite sex. In fact it has been suggested, both during his lifetime, and by more recent historians, that he may possibly have been homosexual.5
Nevertheless, Margaret, now Duchess of Burgundy, got on very well with her mother-in-law, Isabel of Portugal, and also with her stepdaughter, Marie. Margaret shared her own mother’s deep religious devotion, and was a great patron of education and of religious foundations in her new homeland. She was also a great patron of the arts. Margaret also proved politically astute. She was an able diplomat, who succeeded in reconciling her brother George to Edward IV in 1471, and who also proved an able assistant to her husband as he struggled to fight off his cousin, the French king.
When Charles was killed at the Battle of Nancy (5 January 1477), Margaret did her best to aid and support her stepdaughter, Marie, whose territories were then being overrun by French forces. When her own brother George, Duke of Clarence was widowed in 1476, Margaret initially favoured the idea of a marriage between him and Marie. Later, however, she supported the more practical plan of a union between her stepdaughter and Maximilian of Habsburg, the King of the Romans.
When Marie and Maximilian were married, Margaret swore loyalty to her new stepson-in-law, and from then on the two of them generally worked as one. When young Marie died in an accident, in March 1481/82, Maximilian proved rather unpopular as regent for his son, Philip. Nevertheless, Margaret did her best to assist Maximilian, and it was she who was chiefly responsible for young Philip’s education.
However, another set of problems began to confront Margaret in 1483. First, her brother Edward IV died unexpectedly. Then her nephew, Edward V, was set aside as illegitimate, and her youngest brother became King Richard III. Finally, two years later, Richard was killed at Bosworth and Henry VII seized power in England.
Margaret refused to recognise the change of dynasty, and her dowager court at Mechelen quickly became a safe haven for Yorkist exiles. It was in the context of her court at Mechelen, as we shall see shortly, that Margaret subsequently received the Dublin King, recognised him as her nephew, and planned for his coronation.
Notes
Abbreviations
CPR
Calendar of Patent Rolls
ODNB
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
PROME
Parliament Rolls of Medieval England
1. Hayden, ‘Lambert Simnel’, p. 623.
2. Weightman, Margaret of York, p. 150.
3. There was only one younger daughter, Ursula, who was born in 1455 – but died very young.
4. T. Hearne, Liber Niger Scaccarii nec non Wilhelmi Worcestrii Annales Rerum Anglicarum, vol. 2, London 1774, pp. 525–6. Later versions of Worcester’s list, possibly confusing Margaret with her brother, William, incorrectly state that Margaret was born at F
otheringhay.
5. R. Vaughan, Charles the Bold, the Last Valois Duke of Burgundy, Woodbridge 2002, p. 159.
8
The Earl of Kildare and the
Irish Contingent
In Ireland, as in England, there were different reactions to the emergence of the Dublin King in opposition to Henry VII. Nicholas St Lawrence, Lord Howth seems to have favoured the Tudor monarch. Generally, however, among the Anglo-Irish nobility, opposition to Henry VII appears to have been quite widespread. Hence there was a good deal of support for ‘Edward VI’. In fact the only major Irish family which supported Henry VII was the Butler family, earls of Ormonde. The Butlers had been declared traitors by Edward IV, so they had no great love for the royal house of York.
As Hayden has noted, however, the Irish supporters of the Dublin King ‘were not the real native Hiberni. In the long lists of those implicated in the plot we find but one certainly Celtic name.’ ‘It is to be noted that all the thirty-two names on the Dublin list of those pardoned are Anglo-Irish. On the Kinsale list there are thirty-nine names, of which one “Morys O’Kine” is certainly Celtic, while one “Denis Redyggan” is rather doubtful; the rest are Anglo-Irish. Nothing could more clearly show that Polydore Vergil and Bernard André are quite incorrect in stating that the native Irish supported Simnel.’1
The premier Anglo-Irish peer was Gerald the Great (Gearoid Mór Fitzgerald), eighth Earl of Kildare. An iarla mór (‘the great earl’) was said to be a man of exceptional charisma and impressive charm, although, rather like his friend and patron the Duke of Clarence, he has also been described as hot-tempered and unpredictable as a young man:
Nothing is known of his early life, although Walter Hussey, in the Book of Howth, recalled in the 1540s that he was ‘without great knowledge or learning, but rudely brought up according to the usage of his country’. He was, however, ‘a mightie man of stature, full of honour and courage’, ‘a warrior incomparable’, ‘hardlie able to rule himself when he were moved to anger’, but quickly appeased. … [although he was at home in the English language,] Kildare spoke and wrote in Gaelic, as occasion demanded, and his court included a Gaelic entourage, with a judge, physician, poets, and other captains, household servants, and receivers.2
The Dublin King: The True Story of Lambert Simnel and the Princes in the Tower Page 13