The Battle of Stoke

16th June 1487

Result of the Battle – Tudor/Lancastrian victory

Within two years of his victory at Bosworth, King Henry VII faced another army, this time led by King Richard III’s nephew and assumed heir, John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln. The intervening months had been punctuated with insurrections and rebellions against the fledgling Tudor regime, but a more serious challenger for his throne appeared with an alliance between Lincoln, Viscount Lovell (the late king’s close friend), and supporters in Ireland and on the Continent which was to prove a very real threat. The rebels raised a fleet in Flanders in the name of King Edward. A recently discovered receipt signed later in 1487 by leading officials at the court of Maximilian, King of the Romans said this was Edward V returning to claim his crown. However rumours abounded that he was Edward, Earl of Warwick,  the son of the executed Duke of Clarence, brother to kings Edward IV and Richard III. Henry VII claimed he was merely a boy named ‘Lambert Simnel’ impersonating the Earl of Warwick. The young claimant was crowned as King Edward in Dublin on Sunday 27th May 1487.

On Monday 4th June, Lincoln, Lovell and Sir Thomas Fitzgerald, the Earl of Kildare’s brother, with the young king and a German mercenary leader named Martin Schwartz landed on Foulney Island in Lancashire, close to lands held by Sir Thomas Broughton, a staunch supporter. Their army comprised 2,000 Swiss and German forces, funded by Margaret, Dowager Duchess of Burgundy (sister of Clarence, Edward IV and Richard III), and a body of Irish troops raised by the Earl of Kildare.

The rebels marched eastwards over the Pennines and in Yorkshire recruited the Scrope lords of Bolton and Masham to their cause. From Masham, the rebels sent word to the city of York to receive their king and his army but the city, daily expecting the arrival of the Lancastrian Henry, Lord Clifford and the Earl of Northumberland, now committed to the Tudor regime, refused them. Lincoln decided to bypass York and travelled southwards through Boroughbridge to Bramham Moor. Clifford, determined to engage with the rebels, left York and camped at Tadcaster but the Earl of Lincoln attacked at twilight and bested Clifford who retreated to York having lost his baggage train to the rebels.

Despite this limited success Lincoln’s position was not promising. His army had grown to about 8,000 but the speed of his march across England left little time for others to raise their forces and join him. To the north there was the Earl of Northumberland and advancing from the midlands was the royalist army under King Henry. On 12th June the Earl and Clifford left York to join up with the King and in a bid to draw them back to the city the Scrope lords led a force of cavalry to assault the city at Bootham Bar shouting King Edward.  Although the mayor defended the city, the rebel object was achieved as the Earl and Clifford returned to York.

Lincoln’s route south is not known but he was joined at some point by Sir Edward Hastings and Robert Percy of Scotton with companies of men, and a further rendezvous was made, possibly at Castleford or Stainforth. The rebels now approached Doncaster and encountered part of the royalist vanguard under the command of the queen’s uncle, Sir Edward Woodville. What began as a skirmish became a rout as the cavalry failed to engage and fled south through Sherwood Forest to Nottingham. Lincoln continued his march south but his recruitment campaign now dried up and no fresh troops joined him. By 15th June he was searching for a suitable crossing of the River Trent and this was made at Fiskerton. That night the Yorkists made the crossing towards the village of East Stoke. They took up a position south of the village on a ridge in front of Burham Furlong and awaited the arrival of the royal host.

Meanwhile Henry VII had taken the reverse route of King Richard III almost two years earlier. He left Leicester on Monday 11th June and arrived in Nottingham the following day. On Friday 15th June he marched north-eastwards towards Newark and camped the night at Radcliffe, about nine miles from East Stoke. Early on the morning of the 16th the royal army were on the move and probably followed the course of the River Trent towards East Bridgford. Soon the scouts reported on the position of the rebels and at 9am the king was in the vicinity of Stoke.

The king’s deployment of his 12,000 strong army had the Earl of Oxford commanding the vanguard, Lord Strange the central division and Sir Edward Woodville his other flank. Many of the men-at-arms in the royal army were mounted and according to Molinet, formed wings on the flanks of the three dismounted battles. It is uncertain how Lincoln arranged his army but it is possible that he formed them into just one division. There was a lack of battle-experience within the Yorkist command and the rebels were under-armed and untrained (with the Irish lacking armour) but their position was a good one, being on high ground with the river protecting one flank and their rear. Oxford positioned himself opposite the rebels on the other side of the Fosse Way and gradually moved forward.

Lincoln opened the battle with crossbow fire, possibly hoping for early success before the remainder of the royal army caught up with the vanguard. The King was still at Syerston, a good mile away. Oxford’s well-armed division retaliated with a hail of arrow-fire which had no difficulty in finding its mark and Lincoln was forced to leave the safety of the high ground to lead a charge. However, the experience of the mercenaries and the agility of the Irish, all racing down the slope towards the enemy, the latter no doubt having their own blood-curdling battle cries to complement the English, produced a devastating effect as they ran headlong into Oxford’s van. For a while the battle hung in the balance but slowly Oxford made headway and, as the rebels retreated towards Bramham Furlong to regroup, he made a counter-attack which led to the decimation of the rebel army. Many were trapped and killed in the ravine, which became known as the red gutter, which ran down into the Trent. The poorly clad Irish had stood little chance against the rain of arrows and the chronicler, Molinet, likened the victims to hedgehogs. The battle was probably over by noon. It was a bloody engagement with the total number of dead perhaps as many as 6,000.

By the time Henry VII arrived it was all over. Lincoln, Thomas Fitzgerald and Martin Schwartz were dead and Lovell and Sir Thomas Broughton missing. According to later Tudor historians, Henry announced that the boy-king had been found and spared due to his age; the boy in question was given a job in the royal kitchens. This boy seems unlikely to have been the actual claimant due to an apparent discrepancy in age. Henry VII was reported as being furious at Lincoln’s fate. The King had wanted to learn why the earl had risked a comfortable existence to support an apparent pretender but death had cheated him of this knowledge. The Burgundian chronicler Jean Molinet was circumspect as to the fate of King Edward: he states that he was captured and imprisoned at Newark but reveals nothing more about what happened to him. The fate of the ‘Dublin King’ remains a mystery but the boy known to history as Lambert Simnel enjoyed a long career at the Tudor court, where he remained until at least the mid-1520s.

Contemporary Sources

• For a full list of documents and sources see Appendix in Lambert Simnel and the Battle of Stoke by Michael Bennett, pp 121-138, which includes the relevant extracts.
• The Popular Songs of Ireland edited by T C Croker, London, 1839, pp 318-31.
• Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Reigns of Richard III and Henry VII, edited by James Gairdner, 2 Vols, Rolls Series, 1861-3.
• Collectanea by J Leland, edited by T Hearne, Oxford 1774, Vol 4, pp 212-15, Herald’s Report.
• Chroniques de Jean Molinet edited by G Doutrepont and O Jodogne, 3 Vols, Brussels, 1935-7.
• Rotuli Parliamentorum edited by J Strachey, Vol 4, London, 1767-83, pp 397-8 (Act of Attainder).
• York Civic Records edited by A Raine, Yorkshire Archaeological Society, Record Series 103, 1941.

Further Reading

• Stoke Field: the last battle of the Wars of the Roses by David Baldwin, Pen and Sword, 2006.
• A Strange Accident of State: Henry VII and the Lambert Simnel Conspiracy by David Beeston, 1987.
• Lambert Simnel and the Battle of Stoke by Michael Bennett, 1987.
• The Battle of East Stoke 1487 by M W Bishop, 1987.
• ‘The Field of the Battle of Stoke’ by Richard Brooke in Visits to Fields of Battle in England of the 15th Century, 1857.
• ‘The Battle of Stoke Field, 16th June 1487’ by A H Burne in More Battlefields of England, 1952.
• A Pocket History of East Stoke by Frank A A Cotton, Newark and Sherwood District Council, 1987.
• The Battle of Stoke Field 1487 by Notts County Council, 1987.
• The Battle of Stoke Field 1487 by David E Roberts, 1987.
• ‘The Battle of Stoke’ Programme of quincentenary celebrations, official leaflet and advance announcement from History Today.
• The Secret Battle: Stoke Field 16 June 1487 by Alan Wilkinson, 1987.
• Battle of Stoke Field by The Battlefields Trust https://www.battlefieldstrust.com/resource-centre/warsoftheroses/battleview.asp?BattleFieldId=42
• English Heritage Battlefield Report Stoke Field 1487 by English Heritage https://historicengland.org.uk/content/docs/listing/battlefields/stoke-field/

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