Henry VII and the Tudor Pretenders: Simnel, Warbeck, and Warwick

On 22 August 1485, Henry Tudor emerged from the Battle of Bosworth victorious, vanquishing the forces of Richard III and, according to Shakespeare over a century later, bringing ‘smooth-faced peace, with smiling aplenty and fair prosperous days’ to England. Yet, all was not well early in the Tudor reign. Despite later attempts to portray Henry VII as single-handedly uniting a war-torn England after three decades of conflict, the kingdom was anything but settled, nor could it be after a tumultuous couple of years that included the untimely death of one king, the mysterious disappearance of another, and the brutal slaughtering of another on the battlefield. Shortly into Henry’s rule, a pretender named Lambert Simnel appeared in Ireland, purporting to be a Yorkist prince and the true heir to the throne now occupied by a Welshman of obscure royal blood. Simnel wasn’t alone; after his eventual defeat at the Battle of Stoke Field in 1487, he was followed in 1490 by the shadowy figure Perkin Warbeck, who claimed to be the younger of the Princes in the Tower, returning in adulthood to reclaim his brother’s lost crown. Lesser known is the third pretender who threatened the fledgling Tudor dynasty in 1499, Ralph Wulford. For the first time, this book brings together all three pretenders and provides a comprehensive account into their impact on the reign of Henry VII. Just how close did the mysterious trio come to overthrowing the mighty Tudors less than a decade into their glorious reign?