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The Battle of Stoke
In 1487, Henry would face a serious threat to his throne. A young man named Lambert Simnel had been trained by a priest named Richard Symonds to pass himself off as the Earl of Warwick. When presented to the Earl of Kildare in Ireland, he was accepted as the Yorksit heir to the English throne. The real Earl, as the heir to the House of York (he was nephew to Edward IV and Richard III, Clarence's son), had been imprisoned in the Tower by Henry after Bosworth. In order to prove the rumours false, Henry paraded the Earl through the streets of London, but questions remained as to who was the real Earl. Yorkist sympathisers such as John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln (another Yorkist heir as son of Richard III and Edward IV's sister, Elizabeth) and Viscount Lovell were living in exile at the court of the Duke of Burgundy, whose wife was Margaret of York (another sister of Richard III and Edward IV). As soon as they heard of the Yorkist sympathy in Ireland, they sailed there, armed with financial support from Margaret, and two thousand German mercenaries under the command of Martin Schwarz. On 24 may 1487, Simnel was crowned Edward VI and Christ Church in Dublin. They were now joined by other dissaffected Yorkists, and with this backing, some Irish troops and the mercenaries, the Yorkists decided to invade England. On 4 June the Yorkists landed on the Lancashire coast. From here they headed to Yorkshire, Richard's area of greatest popularity, and gathered supporters as they went. Their force soon numbered as many as nine thousand men. From Masham, Lincoln wrote a note to the lord mayor and the city leaders of York, warning him that their force would soon be reaching York, where it would be gathering supplies. The city leaders wrote back declaring they would not let the forces enter. The Earl of Northumberland had sent orders to the city to support Henry. With the city of York closed the them, the Yorkists turned south. By 15 August, the Yorkists, who now numbered about ten thousand men, had reached Newark, and Henry was closing in on them with a large army. The Yorkist army, thanks mainly to Lincoln's leadership, was very well disciplined and had very high morale. The Yorksits had hoped to cross the River Trent here, but found out that the castle and bridge at Newark were being held by a group of the king's men who had ridden ahead of the main army. They decided instead to ford the river at Fiskerton, west of Newark, and by 15 June had travelled there and crossed the river. They made camp in a meadow, west of a small village called East Stoke. In the morning, the Yorkists moved into a defensive position, on a hill known as Burham Furlong. With their army in place, they waited for the king's forces to arrive, unwilling to lose their advantageous position. Unbeknownst to the Yorkists, the king's commanders did not know where the rebels were, or whether they had even crossed the Trent. Oxford was the first to discover their whereabouts, and he was forced to make a quick decision whether to attack the Yorkists, sending word and hoping the rest of the king's forces would arrive in time, or wait for the rest of the forces to arrive, and risk being attacked in the open. He decided to attack and advanced his forces into battle line. The Yorkists attacked downhill, and Oxford found his forces were being pushed back. It was only the timely arrival of the king's main army that saved Oxford's men from a rout. As more and more fresh troops kept arriving, the Yorkists began to be pushed back up the hill, until they broke and fled. Most of the Yorkists tried to escape along a ravine leading from the hill to the river. They were cornered by the king's men and hudnreds were killed. This place is still known as the "Red Gutter". The Yorkists were pursued for several days, thousand being killed and hundreds being captured. Lincoln and Schwartz were killed, and Lovell disappeared without a trace. The German mercenaries were allowed to return to their homes. Simnel was captured and later put to work in the royal kitchens.
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