John de la Pole, 1st Earl of Lincoln

John de la Pole 1st Earl of Lincoln was buried with a willow stick through his chest. This was a sign he died a traitor at the Battle of Stoke Field in 1487

From Darryl Lundy's Peerage page on John de la Pole

http://thepeerage.com/p10757.htm#i107564

John de la Pole, 1st Earl of Lincoln [1]

• M, #107564,
• b. between 1462 and 1464,
• d. 16 June 1487
• Last Edited=22 May 2004
• Consanguinity Index=0.2%

John de la Pole, 1st Earl of Lincoln was born between 1462 and 1464.[1] He was the son of John de la Pole, 2nd Duke of Suffolk and Elizabeth Plantagenet.[1]

He married Margaret FitzAlan, daughter of Thomas FitzAlan, 17th Earl of Arundel and Margaret Woodville.[1]

He died on 16 June 1487, killed in action.[1]

He gained the title of 1st Earl of Lincoln in 1467.[1]

He fought in the Battle of Stoke on 16 June 1487.[1]

Citations

• 1. [S11] Alison Weir, Britain's Royal Family: A Complete Genealogy (London, U.K.: The Bodley Head, 1999), page 135. Hereinafter cited as Britain's Royal Family.

  ---

From the Dictionary of the National Biography:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_de_la_Pole,_1st_Earl_of_Lincoln

POLE, JOHN de la, Earl of Lincoln (1464?–1487), born about 1464, was eldest son of John de la Pole, second duke of Suffolk [q. v.], by Elizabeth, sister to Edward IV.

He was created Earl of Lincoln on 13 March 1466–7, and knight of the Bath on 18 April 1475, and attended Edward IV's funeral in April 1483.

Richard III seems to have secured him firmly to his party. He bore the orb at Richard's coronation, 7 July 1483, and the same month he was made president of the council of the north (cf. Letters and Papers of Richard III and Henry VII, ed. Gairdner, i. 56).

Richard's son Edward died on 9 April 1484, and one of his offices, that of lord lieutenant of Ireland, was conferred upon the Earl of Lincoln on the following 21 Aug. He continued to hold this office for the rest of the reign, the duties being performed, or neglected, by the Earl of Kildare.

It now became necessary for Richard III to find an heir to the throne. Edward, earl of Warwick (1475–1499) [q. v.], son of the Duke of Clarence, had a strong claim, and he was certainly allowed to take precedence of the Earl of Lincoln after the death of the Prince of Wales. But, on the other hand, Warwick was a mere boy, and if he had any claim to be heir, he had an equally valid claim to be king. Hence, after some deliberation, Lincoln was selected as the heir to the throne.

Richard was very generous to him. He gave him the reversion to the estates of Lady Margaret Beaufort [q. v.], subject to the life interest of her third husband, Lord Stanley; and in the meantime he was to have a pension of 176l. a year.

He was with Richard at Bosworth; but Henry VII had no wish to alienate his family, and Lincoln, after Richard's defeat and death, took an oath with others in 1485 not to maintain felons.

On 5 July 1486 he was appointed a justice of oyer and terminer. None the less he seems to have cherished the ambition to succeed Richard, and he was the real centre of the plot of Lambert Simnel.

Suddenly he fled in the early part of 1487 to Brabant, and thence went to Ireland, where he joined Simnel's army, and, crossing to England, was killed at the battle of Stoke on 16 June 1487. He was attainted.

He had married, first, Margaret Fitzalan, daughter of Thomas, twelfth earl of Arundel; and, secondly, the daughter and heiress of Sir John Golafre, but left no children. His brothers Edmund and Richard are noticed separately.

• [Doyle's Official Baronage, ii. 379;
• Letters, &c., Richard III and Henry VII, ed. Gairdner, i. 6, &c.;
• Rot. Parl. vi. 288, 436, 474;
• Memorials of Henry VII, ed. Gairdner, pp. 50, 52, 139, 314 (Bernard Andreas in his ‘Douze Triomphes’ probably alludes to him under the name le Comte de Licaon);
• Materials for the Hist. of Hen. VII, i. 482;
• Cal. of the Patent Rolls of Richard III (Rep. Dep.-Keep. Publ. Records, 9th Rep. App. ii.;
• Busch's England under the Tudors (Engl. transl.), i. 32–3;
• Gairdner's Richard III;
• Ramsay's Lancaster and York, ii. 453, 522, 523, 534, 545;
• Gairdner's Henry VII;
• Burke's Extinct and Dormant Peerage.]

  ---

Killed at the Battle of Stoke Field. From the English Wikipedia page:

The Battle of Stoke Field (16 June 1487) may be considered the last battle of the Wars of the Roses, since it was to be the last engagement in which a Lancastrian king faced an army of Yorkist supporters, under the pretender Lambert Simnel. However, there is some dispute whether the Battle of Stoke Field was the last battle in the Wars of the Roses, as a number of historians consider the Battle of Bosworth, two years previously, as the real last remaining battle in the Wars of the Roses. Despite being the final major conflict between York and Lancaster (Tudor), it was one of the costliest in terms of life, as there was a mutual agreement that there would be a policy of no quarter for those left standing.[citation needed]

Later in Henry's reign emerged another pretender to the throne, Perkin Warbeck, however this was resolved without resorting to arms.

The pretender

Henry VII of England held the throne for the House of Lancaster (House of Tudor), and had tried to gain the acceptance of the Yorkist faction by his marriage to their heiress, Elizabeth of York, but his hold on power was not entirely secure.

The best surviving male claimant of the York dynasty was the queen's first cousin, Edward, Earl of Warwick (son of George, Duke of Clarence). This boy was kept confined in the Tower of London.

An impostor claiming to be Edward, whose name was Lambert Simnel, although it is difficult to say if that was his real name, came to the attention of John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln. Lincoln, although apparently reconciled with the Tudor king, himself had a claim on the throne; moreover, the last Plantagenet, Richard III of England, had named him as the royal heir. Although he probably had no doubt about Simnel's true identity, Lincoln saw an opportunity for revenge and reparation.

Lincoln fled the English court on 19 March 1487 and went to the court of Mechelen (Malines) and his aunt, Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy. Margaret provided financial and military support in the form of 2000 German mercenaries, under the commander, Martin Schwartz. Lincoln was joined by a number of rebel English Lords at Mechelen, in particular Richard III's loyal supporter, Lord Lovell, Sir Richard Harleston, the former governor of Jersey and Thomas David, a captain of the English garrison at Calais.

The Yorkist rebellion

The Yorkist fleet set sail and arrived in Dublin on 4 May 1487. With the help of Gerald FitzGerald, 8th Earl of Kildare and his brother Thomas FitzGerald of Laccagh, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, Lincoln recruited 4,500 Irish mercenaries, mostly Kerns, lightly armoured but highly mobile infantry.

With the support of the Irish nobility and clergy, Lincoln had the pretender Lambert Simnel crowned "King Edward VI" in Dublin on 24 May 1487. Although a Parliament was called for the new "King", Lincoln had no intention of remaining in Dublin and instead packed up the army and Simnel and set sail for north Lancashire.

On landing on 4 June 1487, Lincoln was joined by a number of the local gentry led by Sir Thomas Broughton. In a series of forced marches, the Yorkist army, now numbering some 8,000 men, covered over 200 miles in five days.

On the night of 10 June, at Bramham Moor, outside Tadcaster, Lovell led 2,000 men on a night attack against 400 Lancastrians, led by Lord Clifford. The result was an overwhelming Yorkist victory.

Lincoln then outmanoeuvered King Henry's northern army, under the command of the Earl of Northumberland by ordering a force under John, Lord Scrope to mount a diversionary attack on Bootham Bar, York, on 12 June. Lord Scrope then withdrew northwards, taking Northumberland's army with him.

Lincoln and the main army continued southwards. Outside Doncaster, Lincoln encountered Lancastrian cavalry under Lord Scales. There followed three days of skirmishing through Sherwood Forest. Lincoln forced Scales back to Nottingham. However, the fighting had slowed down the Yorkist advance sufficiently to allow King Henry to receive substantial reinforcements under the command of Lord Strange, on arriving at Nottingham on 14 June.

On 15 June, King Henry began moving north east toward Newark after receiving news that Lincoln had crossed the Trent. Around nine in the morning of 16 June, King Henry's forward troops, commanded by the Earl of Oxford, encountered the Yorkist army assembled in a single block, on a brow of a hill surrounded on three sides by the River Trent at the village of East Stoke.

In an unusual military manoeuvre, the Yorkists surrendered the high ground by immediately going on to the attack. The battle was bitterly contested for over three hours, but eventually, the lack of body armour on the Irish troops meant that they were cut down in increasing numbers.

Unable to retreat, the German and Swiss mercenaries fought it out. All of the Yorkist commanders: Lincoln, Fitzgerald, Broughton, and Schwartz, fell fighting. Only Lord Lovell escaped and, according to legend, died hidden in a secret room at his house.

Simnel was captured, but was pardoned by Henry in a gesture of clemency which did his reputation no harm. Henry realised that Simnel was merely a puppet for the leading Yorkists.

The Irish nobles who had supported Simnel were also pardoned, as Henry believed he needed their support to govern Ireland effectively.

References

• Bennett, M.J. (1987) Lambert Simnel and the Battle of Stoke, Stroud : Sutton, ISBN 0-86299-334-2
• Mackie, J.D. [1952] (1994) The earlier Tudors: 1485-1558, Oxford history of England 7, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-285292-2, pp. 73–75
• Roberts, D.E. (1987) The Battle of Stoke Field 1487, Newark and Sherwood D.C.
• Beeston, D (1987) A Strange Accident of State : Henry VII and the Lambert Simnel Conspiracy, Self-Published.

  ---

Date 16 June 1487

Location East Stoke, Nottinghamshire, England

• 53.035°N 0.888°W or 53.035°N 0.888°W

Result Decisive Lancastrian victory

Belligerents

• House of York under John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln†, and Colonel Martin Schwartz†, 8,000 men (4,000 casualties and losses)
• House of Lancaster (Tudor) under Henry VII of England, John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, and Jasper Tudor, Duke of Bedford, 12,000 men (3,000 casualties and losses)

  ---

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_de_la_Pole,_1st_Earl_of_Lincoln