Lambert Simnel

Lambert Simnel (circa 1477 - circa 1534), pretender to the throne of England, was born in about 1477. Together with Perkin Warbeck, he was one of two impostors who threatened the rule of Henry VII of England (reigned 1485 - 1509) during the last decade of the fifteenth century.

Simnel was the son of a baker. At the age of about ten, he was taken as a pupil by a renegade priest named Roger Simon, and was put forward as Edward, Earl of Warwick, a boy of about the same age who was a genuine claimant to the throne (being the son of George, Duke of Clarence) and was at the time a prisoner in the Tower of London. Simnel was crowned in Ireland as "King Edward VI", and was brought back to England at the head of an army consisting largely of mercenaries supplied by Margaret of Burgundy.

After the defeat of the rebels at the Battle of Stoke Field in 1487, Henry VII pardoned Simnel and gave him a menial job in the royal household. He died in about 1534.