The Dublin King: The True Story of Lambert Simnel and the Princes in the Tower
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But the problem is, as Edward IV knew, that the previous year the Duke of Clarence had attempted to send his real son, the 2-year-old Edward, Earl of Warwick out of England to either Flanders or Ireland, at the same time replacing him in the Clarence nursery with a substitute child. The great difficulty is that we do not know whether Clarence succeeded in carrying out this plan – or parts of it. Clearly, the official view of Edward IV’s government was that Clarence had not succeeded. However, the wording of the Act of Attainder against Clarence leaves some doubts about how far the scheme had progressed.
At the same time there is evidence from both Irish and Flemish sources which suggests that the Dublin King/‘son of Clarence’ travelled to Mechelen from Ireland, where he had been resident for some time. When this is coupled with the later story that the Duke of Clarence had visited Ireland in 1476/77, the serious possibility emerges that George may have made arrangements for the housing and bringing up in Ireland of the Dublin King/‘son of Clarence’, as a result of which the little boy had subsequently lived there, under the care of Clarence’s friend the Earl of Kildare.
Of course, there is no absolute proof that this is what took place. But if things did happen in that way, then it is highly probable that the Earl of Kildare believed that the child left in his care was the genuine Earl of Warwick. The logical consequence of that would have been that Kildare brought the child up under the name of Edward, Earl of Warwick. The little boy himself would therefore have grown up believing that he was a prince of the house of York, and the son of the Duke of Clarence.
Even then, however, the problem remains that we have no way of knowing whether a little boy sent to the Earl of Kildare by the Duke of Clarence some months before his arrest would have been the real Earl of Warwick, or a substitute child. Thus, although the Dublin King and the Mechelen ‘son of Clarence’ were probably one and the same person, the suggestion that he had been brought up by the Earl of Kildare contains an element of guesswork. And even if he had grown up under Kildare’s guardianship, that fact by itself would not absolutely prove that he was the genuine Earl of Warwick.
There also remains yet another possibility. The boy might only have been brought to Ireland in about 1485 or 1486 – by a priest with a surname something like Simons, who had deliberately created a pseudo-royal impostor. However, we cannot overlook the fact that the official Tudor government evidence in favour of this last notion has proved to be flawed, and contains a number of contradictions.
We also need to take account of the fact that two genuine members of the royal house of York (one of whom had an excellent claim to the English throne in his own right) both accepted the Dublin King as the Earl of Warwick, and promoted him as King Edward VI. Significantly, these two Yorkist royals were the most independent members of their family in 1486 and 1487. They were therefore the ones who enjoyed the greatest freedom, and who had the best possible opportunity to say what they truly believed. Of course, they may, nevertheless, have been lying. However, their motivation would then be very hard to understand. Alternatively they may have been deceiving themselves, or allowing themselves to be deceived. However, the third possibility is that Margaret of York and the Earl of Lincoln may both have got it right.
We also have to confront the question of what happened to the Dublin King after the Battle of Stoke. Apparently a captive was handed over to Henry VII, who initially imprisoned him and then later employed him in a menial capacity. But because Henry VII had never previously set eyes on the Dublin King, he would have had no personal ability to recognise or identify his prisoner/kitchen boy. Interestingly, however, there is some evidence that those Anglo-Irish lords who had attended the Dublin King’s coronation did not subsequently recognise him when they were confronted with Henry VII’s kitchen boy. At the same time we also have one (possibly partisan) report that the Dublin King did not remain in the hands of Henry VII after the Battle of Stoke Field, but was taken away and concealed abroad by his supporters and surviving members of the house of York. In connection with these reports one also has to take account of the fact that Henry VII’s prisoner and servant appears to have been about 5 years older than the individual who had been crowned as King Edward VI in Christ Church Cathedral.
At the same time there are certain question marks over what became of the official Earl of Warwick after 1487. The lad who had been in Henry VII’s custody since 1485 is not reported to have had learning difficulties. Certainly he cannot have been obviously backward before 1485, since Richard III had promoted him in various ways. However, after 1487, there is a suggestion that the official Earl of Warwick may have been intellectually impaired. This story is problematic, and may merely be the result of a misinterpretation. Certainly, as far as we know, nothing had happened to him which would explain such a change. Nevertheless, there may be some question as to whether the official Earl of Warwick who was executed in 1499 and buried at Bisham Priory was indeed identical with the official Earl of Warwick prior to 1487.
In the end, none of the evidence is cut and dried, and readers must make their own decision as to which view they wish to take. The only way to make the picture clearer would be to seek the remains of some of the chief characters in the story and use scientific (DNA) testing to try to clarify who they really were.
This approach could possibly be used in the case of the official Earl of Warwick. If the chance ever arises for excavation on the site of the church of Bisham Priory, it would certainly be worth trying to find and identify his bones. The body should hopefully be recognisable, even if the coffin purchased for him by Henry VII is not labelled with his name and title, since we know that he was approximately 24 years old at the time of his death. An additional aid to identification would, of course, be the fact that his head was cut off.
There is also room for a future scientific examination of the remains found at the Tower of London in 1674. But if the evidence presented earlier in respect of Edward IV’s sons was correct, those remains would probably tell us little or nothing about the true identity of the Dublin King. Unfortunately, as we have seen, thanks to the bombing of London in the Second World War, there is now very little prospect of finding or examining the remains of Edward IV’s intriguing putative son Perkin Warbeck.
There may, however, be some possibilities for DNA research using living individuals. First, it would be very useful to hear from any living male residents of England, Wales or former British colonies who bear the surname Simnel(l). If living men who have this surname were willing to participate in DNA testing, it would then be possible to establish details of their Y-chromosome. Comparison of results from different individuals whose recent lines of descent are not closely connected could indicate whether there is a common (or, at least, a predominant) Y-chromosome sequence for that particular – and rather unusual – surname. It would also be interesting to compare the results with the Y-chromosome of Richard III (if that can be established). Alternatively a comparison could be made with the Plantagenet Y-chromosome as revealed by the living male-line descendants of Edward III in the illegitimate Beaufort/Somerset lineage.
What would be the point of this? Simply, if the Lambert Simnel who worked for Henry VII – and who may have living descendants today – was identical with the Dublin King, and if he was really a son of the Plantagenet royal family, he should have carried the Plantagenet Y-chromosome. Thus such testing could potentially reveal whether there is any living male with the surname Simnel who appears to be related to the Plantagenet family. To a lesser extent, it might also be interesting and possibly informative to carry out similar testing of living males who have the surname Wilford.
In the final analysis, maybe we need to bear in mind the fact that every known story about a mysteriously surviving claimant of a royal identity seems to have turned out, in the end, to be false. Thus, those young men who, in the early nineteenth century, claimed to be King Louis XVII of France all proved to be impostors. Likewise those who, in the twentieth century, claimed to b
e surviving Romanov children were not telling the truth.
Yet we must not lose sight of the fact that the story of the Dublin King has one unique twist to it, which may set it apart from all the other stories of miraculously rescued royal children. That key point, which makes the case of the Dublin King unique, concerns the very strange scheme concocted by George, Duke of Clarence to send his son abroad and replace him in the Clarence nursery with a substitute child. In the final analysis we cannot be sure what the Duke of Clarence really did with his son in 1477. But the fact that he unquestionably had a plan to replace his son and heir with a human changeling, and to send his real son out of the country, cannot be overlooked or ignored. When coupled with the other surviving evidence, this raises a serious question mark over the official Tudor version of the Dublin King’s story which has been told and retold with little real thought or enquiry for more than 500 years.
Appendix 1
Timeline
1464
Secret (and ?bigamous) marriage of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville.
1469
Marriage of George and Isabel, Duke and Duchess of Clarence.
1470
2 November, birth of Edward, Prince of Wales (Edward V).
1473
17 August, birth of Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York and Norfolk.
1474/75
25 February, birth of Edward of Clarence, Earl of Warwick.
1476
22 December, death of Isabel, Duchess of Clarence.
1476/7
?Birth of Lambert (?or perhaps John), ?son of Thomas Simnel of ?Oxford. The widowed Duke of Clarence made plans to smuggle his son and heir, Edward, Earl of Warwick – aged about 2 – to either Ireland or Flanders, and replace him with a substitute child.
1477/8
18 February, execution of George, Duke of Clarence;
?Edward, Earl of Warwick, aged about 3, was placed under the guardianship of the Marquess of Dorset, then aged about 25, married to his second wife, Cecily, and probably resident at the Tower of London.
1480
?Edward, Earl of Warwick, was given a selection of new leather footwear by Edward IV, just before the summer visit to England of his aunt, Margaret, whom the young earl may have met. He was then aged 5.
1483
Death of Edward IV. Richard III assumed guardianship of Edward V (aged 12½, and Richard of Shrewsbury, approaching 10 years of age), and placed these two ‘princes’ at the Tower of London (whence they may later have been abducted by the Duke of Buckingham). Richard III also assumed guardianship of ?Edward, Earl of Warwick (aged 8) and placed him at Sheriff Hutton Castle together with other royal children. Richard gave ?Edward, Earl of Warwick appointments, so presumably the child did not then show any signs of learning difficulties.
1485
Henry VII took control of ?Edward, Earl of Warwick, then aged 10, and placed him initially under the guardianship of his own mother, Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Stanley. Later Henry accommodated him at the Tower of London.
1486
The ‘son of Clarence’ (then aged 11), was with his aunt Margaret of York in Flanders.
1487
The ‘son of Clarence’ (aged 12), or Lambert (?John) Simnel (?aged 10), was crowned king in Dublin.
?Edward, Earl of Warwick, was brought out of the Tower of London by Henry VII and displayed at St Paul’s Cathedral in the hope that people would recognise him.
The ‘son of Clarence’ (aged 12), or Lambert (?John) Simnel (?aged 10), was captured at the Battle of Stoke and either subsequently employed by Henry VII, or shipped to the Continent by Edmund de la Pole.
1489
Henry VII entertained Irish lords in England and showed them Lambert Simnel (then aged 12?), their alleged former ‘Dublin King’. All but one of the Irish Lords failed to recognise him.
1499
?Edward, Earl of Warwick, then aged 24 (and possibly intellectually impaired) was executed by Henry VII for allegedly attempting to escape from the Tower of London with Perkin Warbeck. His body and head were buried at Bisham Priory.
1525
Issue of robes to Lambert Simnel (then aged about 48?) for the funeral of Sir Thomas Lovell,1 courtier and counsellor of Henry VII.
?
Some time after 1525 (and possibly after 1534) Lambert Simnel died.
Note
Abbreviations
CPR
Calendar of Patent Rolls
ODNB
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
PROME
Parliament Rolls of Medieval England
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Lovell. For Francis Lovell, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Lovell,_1st_Viscount_Lovell, accessed December 2013
Appendix 2
Contemporary and Near-Contemporary Records of the Dublin King’s Identity
This summary restricts itself to sources written within twenty-five years of the coronation of the Dublin King. Ten sources are included. Of these:
four state that he was the Earl of Warwick/King Edward
three ascribe no name to the Dublin King
two give his name as Lambert Simnel
one gives his name as John.
In terms of statistics, these figures might perhaps be interpreted as suggesting that there is a 60 per cent chance that the Dublin King was a false claimant (though if so, his real name remains uncertain). At the same time, however, there seems to be a 40 per cent chance that he was the genuine Earl of Warwick. Apparently there would only be a 20 per cent chance that his real name was Lambert Simnel.
Restricting this analysis to include only the most closely contemporaneous sources would produce a result fractionally more favourable to the suggestion that the Dublin King really was the Earl of Warwick (approximately 43 per cent), with only a 10 per cent chance that his real name was Lambert Simnel.
The most obvious outcome of such analyses is that, despite the general tendency of historians to accept the official Tudor line, in fact the truth about the identity of the Dublin King remains very unclear.
SOURCE
THE IDENTITY OF THE PRETENDER
Closely contemporary sources
Canterbury convocation, Feb.1486/87
[no name
Herald’s account, 1487
John
York city archives, 1487
King Edward VI
Henry VII’s letter to the pope,1487
spurium quemdam pueram
Kildare’s letter, Aug. 1487
King Edward
Parliament, Lincoln Attainder, Nov. 1487
Lambert Simnel (son of Thomas)
A. De But, Chronicle, c.1490
Duke (sic) of Warwick/Duke of Clarence)/son of Duke of Clarence
+ about 13 years
B. Andre, Historia H.VII, c.1500
Unamed fake who claimed to be Richard, Duke of York
J. Molinet, Chronique, c.1500
the genuine Earl of Warwick/King Edward
+ about 25 years
Vergil, Anglica Historia, c.1512
Lambert Simnel
Appendix 3
Frequency of the Occurrence of the Surname Simnel in the UK circa 1500–2000
Below is a provisional list of reported occurrences of the surname Simnel(l) in England and Wales over approximately the last 500 years, based on internet sources.1 So far, 102 entries have been found. However, entries which are close together in name, date and location may refer to various events in the life of a single individual. Thus the total number of Simnel(l) s represented by the list is almost certainly less than 100. Probably about ninety separate individuals are represented.
However, it is obvious that the list, as it stands at present, does not constitute a complete record of Simnel(l)s over approximately the past 500 years. For example, an Edward T. Simnell was married in 1944, but there appears to be no record of his birth. Nor is there any record of his death. Possibly he was a
n American serviceman who married in the UK during the Second World War, but who had been born in the USA. However, Edward T. Simnell is by no means the only example of incompleteness in the list as it stands at present.
No Simnel(l) entries have so far been found in the current (2013–14) BT online phonebook – but of course if there are living Simnel(l)s, they may not have landline telephones, or they might have chosen to be ex-directory. Reportedly no entries, under either spelling of this surname, figure in the UK voters registers for the period 2002–14. That would appear to suggest that no adult UK citizens now bear the surname Simnel(l). Nevertheless, in January 2014 there were several examples of the surname on Facebook – though an attempt at investigation subsequently showed that at least one of these was a pseudonym. (No answer was received in respect of the other Facebook enquiries.)
It is worth noting that there is also a record of at least one male Simnell emigrating from the United Kingdom to the United States of America, in 1912. Thus, it would be useful to conduct a search for living Simnels in the USA – and also in other parts of the English-speaking world. However, although the surname appears forty-seven times in Australian and New Zealand records dating from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the current situation in Australasia appears to be similar to that in the UK – there seem to be no living Simnel(l)s.2