The Rise of Henry VII

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Welcome to Gone Medieval, the podcast from history hit devoted to the Middle Ages. I'm Matt Lewis and today I'm delighted to be joined by Nathan Amin, historian and author of the House of Beaufort, Tudor Wales, York pubs. and the forthcoming Henry VII and the Tudor pretenders, Simnel, Warbeck and Warwick, the first single volume to examine the threats to Henry VII's throne that rounded off the 15th century.

Keep an eye out for part two coming very soon. But in the first part, we're going to take a close look at the rise of Henry Tudor. So thank you very much for joining me, Nathan. Thank you for having me, Matthew. Always a pleasure. As anyone will know who follows either of us on social media, we are regularly arguing over several of the topics that we're probably going to talk about today.

So we're going to try and leave all of that to one side and talk about Nathan's book and Henry VII's response to the pretenders who challenged the early Tudor crown.

So if we start off, Nathan, just by talking a little bit about who Henry Tudor was, so who his parents were, what he was born into. Yes, certainly. Obviously, most people know Henry Tudor as Henry VII, the first king of... the tudor dynasty but it's henry tudor's background that really i feel is the most fascinating aspect of this man henry tudor was born in pembroke in west wales in january

And he was not a figure. He was not a child that anybody could ever have foreseen would have become king. I know we tend to have a lot of modern... fiction work at the moment that seems to suggest that his mother margaret beaufort had this lifelong dream this lifelong ambition to see her child on the throne but the fact is that when henry taylor was born

In the 1450s, he was just another minor noble child. Nothing particularly special about him. His mother was Margaret Beauford, as I mentioned, and she was the heiress of a great English dynasty. the Beaufort family, they were directly descended from Edward III. But again, during the mid-15th century, who wasn't? There were plenty of descendants of Edward III knocking around. Hence why we had the Walls of the Roses. Everybody's everybody's cousin several times over. Absolutely.

So again, you know, it was a royal lineage, but it wasn't anything special. Obviously, as his birthplace suggests, he was born in Pembroke, which is about as west as you can get on the British mainland, certainly nowhere near the great centres of power. of england at that time his father was edmund tudor now edmund tudor was the earl of richmond and he was the son of a welshman called owen tudor and the french dowager queen of england catherine de valois

So Edmund certainly had an interesting background. He was that younger half-brother of the king of the day, Henry VI, but he himself... was of no great lineage. Well, certainly no great lineage if we're looking at things from an English point of view. They kind of get thrust to prominence on the basis that he and his brother Jasper are half-brothers to the king, so they're kind of related to him.

but not a direct threat to his throne. So there's someone that he can lean on quite heavily in the absence of his own brothers or anything like that. Absolutely. Henry VI, he spent a considerable part of his younger life with no real close male relatives. Certainly once his uncles passed away. The House of Lancaster, again, you know, we're looking into why the Wars of the Roses started. But the House of Lancaster during the 1440s, the 1450s, was starting to become very narrow.

Henry VI didn't have his own heir until 1453, but what he did have was he had two younger half-brothers who, as you suggested, were no threat whatsoever to him dynastically. They were just his little brothers. And he certainly used them to help prop him up personally. And we can assume he was hoping that they would bolster him dynastically down the line, hence why they were married into the Beaufort line, to give Henry VI support that wouldn't.

again, wouldn't be a threat to him. But again, looking at Edmund Tudor from an English point of view, he's just not very relevant at all. From a Welsh point of view, he was descended from all of the great ancient Welsh dynasties. through his mother who as i mentioned was a frenchwoman a french princess even edmund tudor's bloodline was this incredible mix of french welsh and bavarian royalty

So you add in Margaret Beaufort's English royal blood. Young Henry Tudor, he may have been fairly irrelevant during the day of his birth, but he had this wonderful mix of royal blood in him. And it does put to bed some of the modern claims thrown against Henry Tudor that perhaps he wasn't that, you know, his blood wasn't that impressive because he certainly was. We kind of have to set aside that idea that he was just a Welsh nobody because...

His lineage just doesn't stand up to that kind of accusation. He had so much going on in his past, like so many of the nobility in 15th century England did, but he had no less of that than his contemporaries. Yes, there were people alive during the 15th century who had far more impressive and more obvious royal lineages than Henry Tudor. The House of York as a prime example. But that's not to dismiss.

Henry Tudor's own bloodline. He certainly wasn't this son of nobody's. He was in himself a fascinating figure at birth. Just not somebody who would ever have been expected to rise as far as he ultimately did. Yeah.

And I think that's one of those, as you mentioned before, kind of insidious modern myths that seem to have sprung up and really taken hold about this overwhelming drive of Margaret Beaufort's to get her son onto the throne that just doesn't seem to really exist in the historical record anywhere at all. It doesn't. And if you put Margaret Beaufort and Henry Tudor back into the original context, nobody at any stage prior to 1483 was ever going to consider Henry Tudor.

as this realistic claimant to the English throne. It would have made absolutely no sense to anybody living during those times. So I don't see why we need to start to almost rewrite that narrative. in the modern day, to try and create this fanatical idea that Margaret Beaufort and Henry Tudor always had ambitions and dreams for a throne.

that would have been utterly preposterous to the contemporaries. It's sort of writing something back into the history to explain what happened in the end, with the benefit of hindsight. Absolutely, and ironically, we can possibly trace some of this to... henry the seventh own reign with the work of polydor virgil and bernard andre who both in my opinion created a story that when henry tudor was a boy he went to visit henry the sixth

at court and henry the sixth predicted that this young child would be the boy who would one day be their king which in the context of the actual time when henry the sixth had his own heir was planning for the house of lancaster to forever be vested in a young line plus there were other people living during that time who had better lancaster and royal claims such as henry holland the duke of exeter

it would have been preposterous that that would actually have ever been the case but i think maybe the fact that bernard andre and polydor virgil wrote this story during henry the seventh reign which then got picked up by shakespeare And there we go, we start to come down the years with history being created that is very fanciful. Yes, it's sort of an effort to lend Henry a bit of legitimacy almost backfires and it creates this other story.

that just doesn't stand up to any kind of scrutiny at all. Exactly. And I'm sure Henry VII wouldn't have cared about this if he had known that down the years. people would have built this myth around them. But just for us as modern historians, trying to glean out the real truth, the real stories by these men, it gets quite tiresome sometimes to have to keep on wading through the same myths.

You know this is self-study in Richard III. It's funny that the same things are happening to Henry VII. Perhaps not as famous as some of the myths and traditions around Richard III, but it does get tiresome sometimes. Yeah, you're definitely preaching to the choir here. Yeah, when the real story is just as fascinating. We don't need myths. We don't need fictionalised versions. Absolutely, couldn't agree more.

But Henry was someone who found his fortunes very much tossed by the Walls of the Roses. So as the Yorkists come to the throne, he finds himself distanced from any kind of power, separated from his mother, initially put in the care of the Herbert family. Yeah, so 1461, the House of York comes to power. In February 1462, William Herbert of Raglan.

The most powerful Welshman of the day. A man on par with the other most powerful Welshman of the day. Jasper Tudor. So you've got Jasper Tudor on one side of the divide. William Herbert on the other side. Lancaster versus Yorkist, the two most powerful men in Wales. When Jasper falls, Herbert rises and vice versa. February 1462, William Herbert purchases the wardship of Henry Tudor. who then is four years old. So he's effectively bought the heir of his enemies and he's taken them into care.

Now, this is a fascinating dynamic that I think needs to have a lot more work done on it. Because what you've got is you've got the four-year-old Henry Tudor being raised. at Ragland Castle in Wales, under the care of the Herbert family, who are the sworn enemies of his family. Again, it's just a smaller Wands of the Roses playing out in Wales. Herbert versus Tudor. Now... Henry Cowder lived at Raglan for 10 years and he later considered his time at Raglan to have been that of a prisoner.

However, he conceded that he was honourably raised. He was raised as one of the Herbert children. And I think the long game was that William Herbert was planning to marry Henry Tudor to one of his daughters. Almost creating, again, this minor Union of the Roses situation in Wales. Uniting the families. From Henry Tudor's perspective, we don't have any information about this, but it must have been complex for him.

that he was having a good upbringing, great education, a promising future with the Herberts, while having to acknowledge that William Herbert was the man responsible for the death of his father and the death of his grandfather. Edmund Tudor and Owen Tudor just through being competing forces in Wales during the Wars of the Roses. It would certainly make a fascinating fiction book because we don't have enough information really to try and work out what.

his thought process was. But I always thought that would make a wonderful plot anyway. Absolutely, yeah, sounds like a great plan. Because William Herbert ultimately gets the Eldam of Pembroke as well, which was Jasper Tudor's title. So putting them into an even more direct conflict with each other.

They'd both become Earls of Pembroke in conflict to each other, which must have left Henry kind of sat in the middle, torn between the people who were looking after him and actually treating him quite well. And I think as King, you know, he looks back with positive views on his time at Raglan Castle. And his uncle...

who is displaced by the people who are looking after him, he must have felt really kind of stuck in the middle. We also have to consider that Henry would not have really have known Jasper Tudor. I mean, Henry was four years old when he went into... The care, you know, of the Herberts. I mean, I don't know how good your memory was at four years old, but I can't remember much. Rubbish, I can't remember anything. Yeah, so he probably wouldn't have had at all very little personal memories.

of Jasper Tudor, who presumably would have been quite an absent lord. You know, he wouldn't have been at Henry's side every day, he would have been off being an earl. However, from four to fourteen, Henry Tudor was raised every single day with the Herberts. He would have possibly... I think probably likely have looked upon William Herbert as a father figure. Even with this background of William Herbert being responsible for the destruction and the downfall of the Tudor family.

You're a boy. You're being raped. You're being treated well. You're just going to be caught up in that kind of moment. I wouldn't say we have evidence, but we have suggestions of how well his education was because when Bernard Andre... wrote the biography of Henry Tudor during Henry Tudor's life, he records in quite detail the education Henry received. There's certainly an element of...

trying to make the present king look wonderful and clever and educated and cultured as a child. But it's quite believable because we know what kind of man Henry Tudor turned out to be. You know, clever men were clever boys. And I wonder as well whether, jumping ahead a little bit, but whether those experiences informed or affected Henry's ability to deal later with the kind of factions that would mire at least the first 15 years of...

So he's used to that kind of balance of viewing enemies as friends, friends as enemies, and kind of walking that fine line between the two. I've always taken Henry Tudor's ideas on unity, you know, on healing division, which have been taken from Edward IV. Because Edward IV, certainly during the second part of his reign, that was his mentality. You know, just try to heal the division because...

You need to be king over a united realm, not a divided realm. It doesn't work in anyone's favour to keep on favouring one side. However, I hadn't really thought about it before, looking at perhaps Herbert's influence on Henry and doing that, because that's ultimately... What Herbert seemed to be trying to do in Wales, he's defeated the Tudors, he's vanquished Jasper Tudor, who's now going to, to his mind, die a penniless, bitter old defeated enemy abroad. He now needs to heal Wales.

And he's going to heal Wales by uniting the Tudor and Herbert children together. Yeah, I can understand that's probably something that Henry picked up then as a boy and brought it with him through his entire life.

And they say the brief Lancastrian re-adaption from 1470 to 71, where Henry VI comes back on the throne, sees a brief reversal in Henry's fortunes, but that didn't last very long. And he soon finds himself on the continent as an exile. Yeah, I mean, 1469, William Herbert is killed at the Battle of Edgecourt as part of the fallout between Warwick and Clarence. Warwick the Kingmaker and Clarence is kind of, you know, the inter-Yorkist kerfuffle that happened, and Herbert dies.

So that freed the path a year later during the Lancaster re-adaption when Jasper Tudor came back to claim his nephew. Which again would have been interesting because at this point Henry Tudor is 14. or 12 even, and he's looking at this man who's now saying, I'm your uncle, you're coming with me. And they've got no real personal bond there other than blood. You know, the personal bond would have presumably been between Henry and William Herbert, who had served as father.

And Raglan would have been home for Henry at that point, so he's been taken away. He would have been home, yeah. Now, what's interesting is that, obviously, there was never this final clash between Herbert and Jasper Tudor because Herbert was killed. So that would have been interesting if it had come down to Henry almost having this choice of who do you go with? Are you going to go with the Yorkist William Herbert, the man who's raised you, or are you going to go with your uncle Jasper Tudor?

and the Lancastrians. But, I mean, that never had the chance to play out. Yeah, Jasper Tudor essentially came back during the re-adaption and claimed Henry. And during that period, Henry was in the care of Jasper Tudor, not Margaret Beauford. He still didn't go to live with Margaret Beaufort. I mean, they were attempting to sort out the wardship during this year because we have the record of negotiations taking place between Margaret Beaufort and Jasper Tudor on one side.

and William Herbert's widow and Devereaux are on the other side. But before that ever had the chance to reach a final conclusion, back came Edward IV and the Orchists to sweep back to power. And from that point on, Jasper Tudor and Henry Tudor were effectively on the run. And they end up initially in Brittany where Henry was to spend...

kind of the next 12 years, I guess, as a sort of prisoner, sort of political pawn, but not kept in strict terms as a prisoner might be expected to be. So he had this kind of strange experience, again, going from that... condition at Raglan of being looked after and cared for by someone he might have considered an enemy of his family, to fleeing into exile with his uncle to become a captive pawn in everybody else's game for kind of the next 12 years of his life.

Absolutely. I mean, it's very key. Anybody who wants to study Henry Tudor, anybody who wants to make a judgment on Henry Tudor as a king, you know, whether your hunches are a positive view of the man, a negative view. You've really got to put yourself in his shoes during this period of his life to try and understand why he became the man, the king he did. He's four years old. He never knew his father.

His uncle's been banished from the kingdom. He's been raised, as he called himself in later years, a prisoner with the enemies of his family. Putting aside however nice that upbringing was, his mentality was he was a prisoner. He's now been chased from the country at 14 years old. The Tudors tried to get to Tewkesbury for the Battle of Tewkesbury between York and Lancaster, 1471. Jasper Tudor didn't make it and he turned and fled.

And the Tudors were pursued all the way across South Wales by a Yorkist detachment. Now, what would have happened if that group of Yorkists had captured the Tudors? Would they have killed them there and then? You know, victims of a war. You know, the battle is still going on, just perhaps a little bit detached from the main battlefield. Kill the enemies, live for another day. They got to Pembroke. There was a siege at Pembroke. The Tudors managed to get out.

they fled to temby on the coast they only escaped to a waiting boat using we're later told underground tunnels At the age of 14, it's proper like Indiana Jones adventure time, really, isn't it? Absolutely. He's surviving by the skin of his teeth at this point. You know, he is minutes away from being captured and possibly killed. You know, he's 14 years old at this point.

Maybe that was old enough for him to be taken out, you know, in distant Wales. Nobody knows what happened. All they know is the Tudor boy is dead. And to be fair, that idea of being a minute away from imminent danger is something that follows Henry for the rest of his life, really, isn't it?

absolutely they were heading for france because jasper tudor was related very closely to the king of france uh and henry tudor was they were aiming for france winds blew them off coast of brittany which was hostile territory At the time, they managed to claim refuge, you know, claim asylum at the Bretton court. And as you can address, they're there for the next 12 years. But as pogs, they are living.

Again, one day away from being turned over. And there's numerous occasions during that 12 years in Brittany where Henry Tudor nearly comes undone. I mean, there's a famous incident in 1476. I think he was about 19 years old at the time. He'd been in Brittany for five years. The Bretons had made a deal with the Yorkists that they were going to turn over Henry Tudor. And they actually did. They handed him over to control of Edward IV's men.

who took him all the way to the port of St Malo, where Henry Cudor was just about to be put onto a boat headed back to England. What would have happened to him once he'd got back to England? Edward IV had record. for taking out enemies. You know, we can say all we want all day long about how the Tudors got rid of their rivals. Edward IV was a master at this. Henry Holland mysteriously drowned the year before, crossing the Tarnel.

Henry Holland was by far the number one Lancastrian air living at the time. His death really brought Henry Tudor to the fore. So that only happened a year earlier. So Henry Tudor is now suddenly being put onto a boat to be sent back to England. I think he would have died. However that would have happened, I think that was the end for him. So because of what happened to...

Henry Holland, he's effectively propelled a step further up the pecking order through no fault of his own or no effort of his own. He's thrust into the limelight where he's suddenly the prime target for the Yorkist government. Absolutely. And the only reason at this stage that he's been put into Yorkist hands is because of a sudden agreement reached between the Bretons and the English. As you say, he's the ultimate pawn. There's nothing he can do other than sit on his hands.

and wait for other people to make decisions that literally shape his life. But what does Henry Tudor do? He fakes an illness in the port of Sid Marlow, claims he feels sick. It oddly gives enough time for a bunch of Breton soldiers to turn up and go, wait a minute, we don't want you to take him back. A fight breaks out between the English and the Bretons, and during this fight, Henry Tudor sneaks away.

to the nearby cathedral and claim sanctuary this is like a movie you know this is incredible this can almost happen in real life you know talk about the state of mind and the pressure to try and save your life effectively And he did. It's genuine Hollywood action movie stuff, isn't it? Edge of your seat, tense, gripping stuff. And it's impossible to imagine that doesn't leave a mark on a young man as he's growing up.

He has come already at this age of 19 too close, too many times to effectively being assassinated. You know, and all he has been his entire life is just this figure. was being controlled by the forces without his control. Yeah, with no active input. He's a pawn. He's 19 years old and he's a pawn. That's all he is.

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So I guess the question then is how does this exiled pawn stuck in Brittany suddenly become a contender for the throne of England? And I guess 1483 is the year that really transforms his fortunes. Yeah, I mean, it's Richard III is the answer, in short. Henry Tudor, by this point, you know, after he survived this St Marlowe debacle in 1476, he's just kind of left to, I wouldn't say quite rot, but it's a penniless...

and nobody cares. Edward IV has moved on. They know he's out there, but the Yorkist grip on the throne is so solid, it doesn't matter anymore that there's this little, to use the Chronicles words, imp. An imp of Lancastrian blood living abroad. Nobody cares. The Yorkists are insuperable. They're on the throne forever. But Edward IV dies at 14. Edward V is supposed to be king. Richard III comes along.

The fact is, Richard III becomes king. And at this point, there's a great fracture within the House of York that completely explodes this situation. And dissident Yorkists need somebody, anybody. They don't care who it is. They need somebody to be put up against Richard III. And it happens to be one man of the right age outside England. with a reasonable-ish claim to the throne, who's unmarried, is a key thing, and that is Henry Tudor. Right man, right place, right time, right age.

That's all it's come down to. If Richard III did knock down what Richard III did in 1483, we wouldn't know who Henry Cureda was today. And I guess Henry Tudor tries to invade southern England in October 1483 as part of Buckingham's rebellions that go on during that month. And perhaps Buckingham's death as well helps to add to Henry being propelled to the front line. Buckingham is possibly the last.

viable alternative of the blood royal available. And when he's executed by Richard III in November for his part in those rebellions, Henry Tudor again becomes this real focal point for any kind of disaffection for Richard III.

whatsoever and he's transformed from this penniless meaningless exile into suddenly being a person that people are suggesting as the next king of england um There's a fantastic quote by Philip de Comynes, a French or Burgundian chronicler, who says that when Henry Tudor became king of England, he was a man who was...

without power without money and without right to the crown of england and without any reputation but what his person and his deportment obtained for him and i think it's a fascinating summary of henry tudor at this point in his life he has nothing going for him ultimately he's still a pawn but the odds and the what people are doing outside of his control is starting to work in his favor

I think it's a very interesting point that you make in the book as well, that Henry Tudor is perhaps the most inexperienced and least prepared monarch ever to win the throne of England in the sense that he barely knew England.

He had no training to rule. He'd not even really been an earl in anything but claimed title. And I'd never really thought about that before, I think, but I can't think of anyone who was in a worse position in terms of their previous experience and training to take on the role of king.

i mean something just popped in my mind and i'm not sure if it's gonna be i'm not sure if it's gonna make sense or just be a ludicrous suggestion but it almost has parallels to donald trump and america somebody who whether rightly or wrongly, but somebody who is perceived at least to have absolutely no previous experience of the job and the role in question so that they come into it with a completely fresh slate.

a free mind yeah and i'm not going to make any kind of political comments on how the modern analogy has gone down but back then i think that worked in henry's favor in this idea of coming to the throne with a complete fresh slate. He's got no preconceived ideas. He's doing everything based on his own logic, his own mind. It's a fresh start. I think that it worked.

Henry Tudor was a great monarch for meritocracy and I think that all stems from himself. He's going to do what he thinks is the right and the best thing that England needed at that time. whether rightly or wrongly. And I think ultimately it worked. I'm somebody who does buy into the idea that his reign was ultimately a great success and he accomplished what he needed to accomplish.

And that's why we still remember him today as the man who ended the Wars of the Roses, which is a very simplistic term, of course. It's not as easy as that, but that's what he's remembered for. bringing peace to england etc and i think they needed somebody who was freed from all previous loyalties and issues bonds friendships etc

And I wonder whether some of the Yorkists who made their way to his court on the continent just before he becomes king viewed him as someone who was a bit malleable because of that lack of experience of someone that they could take and shape. to run the government, how they were used to it being run under Edward IV. Yeah, they did not know who they were dealing with, I think. You know, the Woodfill faction, dissident Yorkists. Henry Tudor was, in some ways, a continuity candidate.

a lot of what he did as king is edward the fourth in action because he's surrounded by edwardian supporters now we often talk about how henry tudor was the lancastrian King, you know, he brought House of Lancaster back to the throne. But the fact was, in many ways, he was still a Yorkist claimant. He was almost a Yorkist pretender based on his support. His core support was Yorkists.

With the odd Lancastrian. And a bunch of French mercenaries who obviously soon returned to France. And I think that these dissident Yorkists. These Edwardian Yorkists. Whatever term we want to put to them. thought that they had somebody they were going to have you wrap around their little finger. Malleable. I think malleable is a great term because they didn't know who he was. And I think once they got into his court in exile...

And they spent two years in Excel with him and they perhaps did start to discover what type of man he was. The dyes are any cast. You know, they've got to stick with him because they've got no other option. The other thing that I think must have played a role at this point...

was we have this idea that henry tudor was this dour miserly paranoid king he must have had an abundance of charisma about him if he didn't at the age of fifty in late in the reign he certainly must have had it at the age of twenty-six twenty-seven twenty-eight Because how do you keep a bunch of people at your side when you're a penniless nobody with no hope in hell of making this invasion campaign successful? Certainly it's against the odds.

how do you keep people fighting for you how do you keep people at your side and ultimately during his reign when all of the threats that came at him he kept the vast majority of his nobles at this side and I don't think it could have just been fear alone because fear alone will bring you your downfall ultimately yeah there's a complex range of things that keep your nobility with you but definitely at least you know in that time in exile it's not the money

or the potential for power that's really attracting them, because it didn't seem like much of a cause when they were there. But I guess we probably need to move on to Henry as king and some of those pretenders and threats that he faced, which is the real core focus of...

your new book and Henry's reaction to those threats and the way that he dealt with them. And I guess maybe having so many Yorkists in his early government who had previously been loyal to Edward IV.

would have either worked in his favour and helped him to combat those threats, or it would have served to increase suspicion of those around him that they couldn't be trusted and might be involved. But it was only 18 months after Bosworth, I guess, that the first real threat emerged. There was a spate of... small insurrections early in Henry's kingship but if we look at 1487

the Lambert-Simnel affair is the first real serious attempt on Henry's throne and that comes out of Ireland. So is there any sign that Henry was expecting trouble before news started to arrive that this boy had appeared in Ireland? Absolutely. The key thing for me with the Lambert Simnel conspiracy is if we just suddenly take its start as, oh, there's a boy in Ireland who claims to be the Earl of Warwick, then...

It sounds like it's believable. It sounds like that could be the case. But if we take it back a year to 1486, in 1486, there was a plot in England. It's known as the Stafford Uprising. Two Yorkish brothers, two supporters of Richard III, the Stafford brothers, they allied with Richard III's great friend, Francis Lovell. And they were leading this kind of like...

It's kind of like a Ricardian resistance against Henry Tudor, but obviously there isn't a Ricardian at the helm. So they decided they were going to rebel against Henry Tudor. But to what end, it seems a bit undetermined. They were going to go down fighting. They hadn't died at Bosworth like a lot of their friends. They were still going to keep going until they were ultimately killed. And they tried to summon up support.

at one point by claiming that Henry Tudor had been captured in York, which wasn't true. And then they started proclaiming the name of Warwick in public. they were going around through various cities and towns in the west country chanting warwick warwick warwick now this was a reference to the imprisoned earl of warwick who was the son of george duke of clarence the nephew

of Richard III and Edward IV. The Earl of Warwick was by far the leading Yorkist pretender, the leading prince of Yorkist blood in Tudor England. And if Henry Tudor wasn't on the throne and people wanted to return the House of York to the throne, then the clear answer was this imprisoned boy, the Earl of Warwick. So we have these men chanting Warwick, Warwick, Warwick.

all through the West Country. In North London during 1486, some royal household members were actually attacked by a mob who were waving the ragged staff banner. The Ragustaff banner was a heraldic device linked to the Earls of Warwick. So what I'm trying to say is that in the first day of Henry Tudor's reign, there was small pockets of violence in support of the Earl of Warwick.

Now, what did Henry Tudor do? Henry Tudor knew that he had the real Earl of Warwick safe in the Tower of London. So everything was okay, you know, he can abide small pockets of violence. Lovell and the Staffords, however, realised that they could not find any support while everybody knew the real Earl was in the tower. You know, nobody can support an army where you don't have a leader. All of a sudden, early 1487...

We are suddenly presented with, in my opinion, an imposter who is playing the part of the Earl of Warwick to front an army. And that's where the Lambert Simnel conspiracy starts for me. Suddenly there is a boy who's free. who is now being called Warwick by Lovell and is now suddenly able to find support because there's a nominal leader that everybody can see. We have the earlier everybody.

Let's get behind him. And that's what happens. They take him to Ireland, where the House of York have always had good support. You know, the real Warris father was actually born in Dublin. And suddenly, lo and behold, what was a major failure in 1486... just trying to mention the name Warwick, now suddenly has a vast army behind a little boy who everyone's saying is Warwick. And that, for me, is the key when it comes to trying to work out what's going on with the Lambert Siminal conspiracy.

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and phone payments will not be refunded. History has made this world of ours. I'd like to tell you about my show Dan Snow's History Hit that really explains... Well, everything that's ever happened. The origin stories of the cities we inhabit or of what's in our kitchen cupboards. Why we've always been drawn to dictators. The greatest discoveries, inventions and mistakes. And I guess one of the big aspects of the Lambert Simmel affair...

for Henry VII as well, is the defection of John de la Pole, the Earl of Lincoln, who has initially been apparently reconciled to the early Tudor government, fairly well treated by Henry, and seems to have been free of suspicion for a long time, and yet he suddenly jumps ship.

and heads over to his Aunt Margaret in Burgundy and ends up joining up with this Lambert-Simile affair. So that must have been a blow to Henry that maybe shook his confidence in the Yorkists that were around him. Absolutely, because at this point, Henry Tudor really is trying. to live up to this unity candidate that he had presented himself by. This isn't the creation of William Shakespeare, this idea that Henry was going to...

unite the two houses and he was going to bring peace to England, etc. He was trying to do that. The evidence is solid that he truly was trying to be the unity candidate. And that included having a man like John de la Pole who fought against him at Bosworth as part of his council. You know, he didn't banish de la Pole, the Earl of Lincoln. He didn't exile him. He brought him into, maybe if not his inner circle,

certainly close enough to the royal household to be involved in significant decisions of government. So now when Dillapool actually defects, suddenly from Henry's point of view, it's like... Things aren't going perhaps as solidly well as I had anticipated. And looking around, who is going to be the next one who leaves? Yeah, York is spanner in the works and it must have made him look at everybody else. I mean, not least John de la Pole's father, the Duke of Suffolk.

and all of his brothers and wonder, like you say, who is going to be next to betray me? Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because I think the brothers were probably a bit too young, but, you know, time will tell, so to speak.

You know, little boys soon grew up to be rebels. That mentality. He probably would have had a bit of a suspicion then. The father, oddly, still seemed to have stayed loyal throughout the reign, which I would have loved to have been around the Dillapol dinner table during these discussions of a...

What are we going to do? But one person who has historically appeared to have come under suspicion at this point was Elizabeth Woodville. Now, for me, I don't interpret what was going on during this time as... to be elizabeth woodfield herself under suspicion i think it was her son thomas grey the marquis of dorset i think he was incredibly under suspicion

at this point. And I think he was a prime candidate for defection. And I think given the choice, he would have defected. So Elizabeth Woodville was the widow of Edward IV. And Thomas Grey was her son from her first marriage, her stepson to Edward IV, half-brother to Edward V and Richard, Duke of York, the princes in the Tower, and now kind of half-brother-in-law to Henry VII.

He had a bit of a checkered history with Henry on the continent, didn't he? At one point tried to escape from Henry's court and was recovered and brought back. So there was maybe some lingering doubt as to what he was doing.

And perhaps Elizabeth Woodville then becomes a vehicle through which he was able to mobilise the Woodville faction against Henry. And maybe that was the reason Elizabeth was seen as a threat? Yes. I mean, yeah, you nailed it on the head now by bringing up Thomas Graves earlier.

defection from henry's side before he was forcibly uh i think the court and the chronicles was persuaded to return because we've always gone you know i say we um historians and readers have always believed that it seems a bit unusual for elizabeth woodfill to consider defecting at this point to put the earl of warwick on the throne when her daughter the queen and her grandson arthur tudor

is in line. It makes no sense and it doesn't make any sense to me. She gains nothing, does she? She loses every bit of position that she has and she's... Suspective involvement in the Earl of Warwick's father's execution, George Duke of Clarence. So she can probably not expect much sympathy from Warwick as he grows into a man. So it's not clear what she would ever have to gain by involvement with the Lambert-Sinnall plot.

Absolutely. The reason that this has come down I think could be perhaps just a bit of taking some basic facts. getting confused, coming up with theories that can't be disproven completely, briefly don't seem like the logical answer. For example, we have Henry stripping Elizabeth of the castles, the manas, the lordships. that she held and transferring them to her daughter. It's at this time that Elizabeth is removed from court.

not removed by somebody else but you know in the basic idea of the word she removes herself from court to bermondsey army now that's often been assumed interpreted to be henry kicking his mother-in-law out of court and locking her away in an abbey. We don't know really why she went to Bermondy Abbey at this point. It could be health, it could be financial, it could be religious, it could have been her own decision. We're just assuming...

The worst of Henry at this point. Without the full facts. I don't think Elizabeth was involved in anything to do with a conspiracy at this point. The timing could just be coincidental. I do think her son... was involved and the main reason i think a son was involved or wanted to be involved but was stopped by being you know locked up is because during the reign of edward the fourth warwick's wardship was actually granted

to thomas gray thomas gray was the custodian of the young warwick and as happens time and time again during this period normally when you have a ward a male ward you marry them to your daughter so i think thomas grey had long health ambitions to marry warwick to one of his daughters and that of course would put royal blood into his descendants i think he had this long plan to seize the throne through Warwick. So I do think that Thomas Grey was a potential defector.

And I guess for the Woodville faction, including Thomas Grey, there's an element there of maybe looking at the influence that they've completely lost that they would have expected to have during Edward V's kingship as his half-brother and his mother and everything else.

And Thomas Gray wondering whether he could replace that influence with the relationship he previously had with Warwick. And as you say, perhaps marrying him to his daughter to propel the Woodville faction back to the position that they'd been dislodged from effectively by Edward IV's death. Yeah, and, you know, it might seem a bit baffling to us today that we're basically suggesting that Thomas Crowe's looking to kick his half-sister off the throne in favour of his own ambitions, but...

Come on, this is the Wars of the Roses we're talking about. Anything is possible. Absolutely. These people, a lot of these men, their ambitions during this period are completely self-involved. I think ultimately that didn't happen. You know, Henry...

Locked down the kingdom after Dillapool absconded. But yeah, from Henry VII's point of view at this time, he's looking around. He's spent his whole life on the run. He's now become king. He thought, I finally made it. and now it's happening again people are trying to kill him even when he's got a crown on his head and that must have been a source of incredible frustration for a man who up to this point was trying to unify and heal the country

Even as a king, those kind of plots against his life and that living on the edge is still following him around. Absolutely. I mean, there's a great quote by Polar del Virgil in his biography where he says that once Henry became king...

It's then that he began to be harassed by the treachery of his opponents and assaulted frequently thereafter by the forces of his enemies. And it's almost like, you know, it's the whole... uneasy is the head that wears a crown yeah you thought it was bad before you became king yeah you're never gonna rest until the day you die you know and that's ultimately what happened

And that's probably where we're going to have to cut today's conversation, I'm afraid, just before we get to the juicy pretenders part of Nathan's story. So tune in next time to learn more about the plots against Henry Tudor's throne.