In one respect there is now no doubt whatever about the identity of the person at the centre of this story: he was the Dublin King. This boy, who appeared to be about 10 years of age in 1487, was crowned King of England and France and Lord of Ireland at Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin on 24 May 1487, in the presence of at least one and possibly two archbishops, several bishops, a number of Anglo-Irish lords, and a small group of English nobles and gentry, led by his putative cousin the Earl of Lincoln, and by Viscount Lovell. After his proclamation as king, he bore the royal title of King Edward VI.
Nevertheless, problems exist on two levels. First, there is the question of the origin of the Dublin King. Where did he come from? What was his name before he became King Edward VI? Who were his parents? What was his family background? Where, and by whom was he brought up? Second, there is the question of what became of him when his brief sovereignty ended. Where did he live? What did he do? When did he die? Because his identity, both before and after his short nominal reign, is in doubt, this also raises questions about other historical characters, and his relationship with them.
We began by exploring the five possible stories of his childhood. From that careful examination, certain facts emerged. The Dublin King was definitely not Edward V, the elder son of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville. Nor was he Edward V’s younger brother, Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York and Norfolk. What is more, there is no evidence that he ever claimed to be either of these so-called ‘Princes in the Tower’, despite the subsequent allegations of two Tudor historians that at one point he assumed the identity of Richard of Shrewsbury.
There is now no doubt whatever that the royal identity claimed by the Dublin King was that of Edward of Clarence, Earl of Warwick. But while some contemporary sources stated that he really was the Earl of Warwick, others stated equally firmly that he was an impostor. The sources for both versions of the story are probably partisan in their different ways. Hence, any claim to say for certain which of the accounts is correct would simply be arrogant. The truth is that we do not know.
One further point which has emerged from this present reinvestigation of the story is that the king crowned in Dublin in 1487 seems to have been identical with the ‘son of Clarence’ who had been staying in Mechelen with Margaret of York in 1486. However, this Dublin King/‘son of Clarence’ could not possibly have been identical with the official Earl of Warwick, who had been in the custody of Henry VII since August 1485.
At the same time it seems probable that the official Earl of Warwick held by Henry VII between 1485 and 1487 was identical with the earlier official Earl of Warwick who had lived with other Yorkist princlings at Sheriff Hutton Castle from 1483 to 1485. He in turn was probably identical with the official Earl of Wawick who had been the ward of the Marquess of Dorset from 1478 until 1483. Thus this official Earl of Warwick was presumably the little boy, aged about 3, who had been delivered to messengers of King Edward IV by servants of the Clarence household at Warwick Castle following the execution of George, Duke of Clarence in February 1477/78.
But the problem is, as Edward IV knew, that the previous year the Duke of Clarence had attempted to send his real son, the 2-year-old Edward, Earl of Warwick out of England to either Flanders or Ireland, at the same time replacing him in the Clarence nursery with a substitute child. The great difficulty is that we do not know whether Clarence succeeded in carrying out this plan – or parts of it. Clearly, the official view of Edward IV’s government was that Clarence had not succeeded. However, the wording of the Act of Attainder against Clarence leaves some doubts about how far the scheme had progressed.
At the same time there is evidence from both Irish and Flemish sources which suggests that the Dublin King/‘son of Clarence’ travelled to Mechelen from Ireland, where he had been resident for some time. When this is coupled with the later story that the Duke of Clarence had visited Ireland in 1476/77, the serious possibility emerges that George may have made arrangements for the housing and bringing up in Ireland of the Dublin King/‘son of Clarence’, as a result of which the little boy had subsequently lived there, under the care of Clarence’s friend the Earl of Kildare.
Of course, there is no absolute proof that this is what took place. But if things did happen in that way, then it is highly probable that the Earl of Kildare believed that the child left in his care was the genuine Earl of Warwick. The logical consequence of that would have been that Kildare brought the child up under the name of Edward, Earl of Warwick. The little boy himself would therefore have grown up believing that he was a prince of the house of York, and the son of the Duke of Clarence.
Even then, however, the problem remains that we have no way of knowing whether a little boy sent to the Earl of Kildare by the Duke of Clarence some months before his arrest would have been the real Earl of Warwick, or a substitute child. Thus, although the Dublin King and the Mechelen ‘son of Clarence’ were probably one and the same person, the suggestion that he had been brought up by the Earl of Kildare contains an element of guesswork. And even if he had grown up under Kildare’s guardianship, that fact by itself would not absolutely prove that he was the genuine Earl of Warwick.
There also remains yet another possibility. The boy might only have been brought to Ireland in about 1485 or 1486 – by a priest with a surname something like Simons, who had deliberately created a pseudo-royal impostor. However, we cannot overlook the fact that the official Tudor government evidence in favour of this last notion has proved to be flawed, and contains a number of contradictions.
We also need to take account of the fact that two genuine members of the royal house of York (one of whom had an excellent claim to the English throne in his own right) both accepted the Dublin King as the Earl of Warwick, and promoted him as King Edward VI. Significantly, these two Yorkist royals were the most independent members of their family in 1486 and 1487. They were therefore the ones who enjoyed the greatest freedom, and who had the best possible opportunity to say what they truly believed. Of course, they may, nevertheless, have been lying. However, their motivation would then be very hard to understand. Alternatively they may have been deceiving themselves, or allowing themselves to be deceived. However, the third possibility is that Margaret of York and the Earl of Lincoln may both have got it right.
We also have to confront the question of what happened to the Dublin King after the Battle of Stoke. Apparently a captive was handed over to Henry VII, who initially imprisoned him and then later employed him in a menial capacity. But because Henry VII had never previously set eyes on the Dublin King, he would have had no personal ability to recognise or identify his prisoner/kitchen boy. Interestingly, however, there is some evidence that those Anglo-Irish lords who had attended the Dublin King’s coronation did not subsequently recognise him when they were confronted with Henry VII’s kitchen boy. At the same time we also have one (possibly partisan) report that the Dublin King did not remain in the hands of Henry VII after the Battle of Stoke Field, but was taken away and concealed abroad by his supporters and surviving members of the house of York. In connection with these reports one also has to take account of the fact that Henry VII’s prisoner and servant appears to have been about 5 years older than the individual who had been crowned as King Edward VI in Christ Church Cathedral.
At the same time there are certain question marks over what became of the official Earl of Warwick after 1487. The lad who had been in Henry VII’s custody since 1485 is not reported to have had learning difficulties. Certainly he cannot have been obviously backward before 1485, since Richard III had promoted him in various ways. However, after 1487, there is a suggestion that the official Earl of Warwick may have been intellectually impaired. This story is problematic, and may merely be the result of a misinterpretation. Certainly, as far as we know, nothing had happened to him which would explain such a change. Nevertheless, there may be some question as to whether the official Earl of Warwick who was executed in 1499 and buried at Bisham Priory was indeed identical with the official Earl of Warwick prior to 1487.
In the end, none of the evidence is cut and dried, and readers must make their own decision as to which view they wish to take. The only way to make the picture clearer would be to seek the remains of some of the chief characters in the story and use scientific (DNA) testing to try to clarify who they really were.
This approach could possibly be used in the case of the official Earl of Warwick. If the chance ever arises for excavation on the site of the church of Bisham Priory, it would certainly be worth trying to find and identify his bones. The body should hopefully be recognisable, even if the coffin purchased for him by Henry VII is not labelled with his name and title, since we know that he was approximately 24 years old at the time of his death. An additional aid to identification would, of course, be the fact that his head was cut off.
There is also room for a future scientific examination of the remains found at the Tower of London in 1674. But if the evidence presented earlier in respect of Edward IV’s sons was correct, those remains would probably tell us little or nothing about the true identity of the Dublin King. Unfortunately, as we have seen, thanks to the bombing of London in the Second World War, there is now very little prospect of finding or examining the remains of Edward IV’s intriguing putative son Perkin Warbeck.
There may, however, be some possibilities for DNA research using living individuals. First, it would be very useful to hear from any living male residents of England, Wales or former British colonies who bear the surname Simnel(l). If living men who have this surname were willing to participate in DNA testing, it would then be possible to establish details of their Y-chromosome. Comparison of results from different individuals whose recent lines of descent are not closely connected could indicate whether there is a common (or, at least, a predominant) Y-chromosome sequence for that particular – and rather unusual – surname. It would also be interesting to compare the results with the Y-chromosome of Richard III (if that can be established). Alternatively a comparison could be made with the Plantagenet Y-chromosome as revealed by the living male-line descendants of Edward III in the illegitimate Beaufort/Somerset lineage.
What would be the point of this? Simply, if the Lambert Simnel who worked for Henry VII – and who may have living descendants today – was identical with the Dublin King, and if he was really a son of the Plantagenet royal family, he should have carried the Plantagenet Y-chromosome. Thus such testing could potentially reveal whether there is any living male with the surname Simnel who appears to be related to the Plantagenet family. To a lesser extent, it might also be interesting and possibly informative to carry out similar testing of living males who have the surname Wilford.
In the final analysis, maybe we need to bear in mind the fact that every known story about a mysteriously surviving claimant of a royal identity seems to have turned out, in the end, to be false. Thus, those young men who, in the early nineteenth century, claimed to be King Louis XVII of France all proved to be impostors. Likewise those who, in the twentieth century, claimed to be surviving Romanov children were not telling the truth.
Yet we must not lose sight of the fact that the story of the Dublin King has one unique twist to it, which may set it apart from all the other stories of miraculously rescued royal children. That key point, which makes the case of the Dublin King unique, concerns the very strange scheme concocted by George, Duke of Clarence to send his son abroad and replace him in the Clarence nursery with a substitute child. In the final analysis we cannot be sure what the Duke of Clarence really did with his son in 1477. But the fact that he unquestionably had a plan to replace his son and heir with a human changeling, and to send his real son out of the country, cannot be overlooked or ignored. When coupled with the other surviving evidence, this raises a serious question mark over the official Tudor version of the Dublin King’s story which has been told and retold with little real thought or enquiry for more than 500 years.