Henry, always cautious but capable of decisive action when necessary, did not panic. Realising that a major military confrontation was now inevitable, he worked with speed and flair to organise his supporters. He gathered an army of about 15,000 men. Most of these troops were well armed and equipped; and, unlike the rebels – still no more than a conglomeration of brave but ill-disciplined and unarmoured Irishmen, continental mercenaries and relatively few English soldiers – they had the advantage of not being a multinational force. In addition, Henry, himself relatively inexperienced in battle, had a competent commander, the Earl of Oxford. Yet the morale of the royal army seems to have been brittle, and there were desertions as the crucial engagement approached.
In mid-June, Lincoln led his rebel army across the River Trent at Fiskerton Ford, a few miles south-west of Newark. That night, they settled on a broad ridge, high above the Trent to the west. The long straight Roman road known as the Fosse Way was on the other side, down to the east. The little village of East Stoke lay in lower ground a few hundred yards off towards Newark. Henry’s army, meanwhile, was camped on flat land at Syerston (now an airfield) a mile or so to the south.
The battle – involving about 25,000 troops – that ensued the next day is in many ways of greater significance than the Battle of Bosworth. It is generally known as the Battle of Stoke – and that has caused confusion over the years. Even the authoritative Brewer’s Royalty claims that it took place at Stoke on Trent, which is in the Potteries, many miles further west.
How the fighting developed is still a matter of dispute. But it is clear that the Yorkists, though outnumbered, were deployed in a strong position. Lincoln’s early attacks on Henry’s advance troops inflicted heavy casualties, and the royal ranks did not hold. Some of Henry’s men fled, and at this point a rout seemed likely. Henry’s best troops arrived as reinforcements, just in time. On the Yorkist side, the German and Swiss mercenaries maintained their discipline, but the Irish – who were poorly prepared for battle – broke and fled down through steeply wooded slopes towards the River Trent, pursued by royal troops. Hundreds of them were viciously hacked to death in the woods at the bottom of the decline between the high ground and the river, known to this day as the ‘Red Gutter’.
It was all over by noon. The royal army lost about 2,000 men and the rebels many more. The king had prevailed; his throne was secure for the time being. What the Yorkists would have done next if they had won must obviously remain a matter of conjecture; Simnel was hardly a credible figure, despite constant coaching from Richard Symonds, the priest who had ‘discovered’ him in Oxford. Lincoln would presumably have disposed of Simnel pretty quickly and pursued his own claim to the throne.
A defeat for Henry would have ended his kingship. He was, naturally enough, delighted. He knighted no fewer than fifty-two of his supporters. And, in victory, he showed mercy. Lincoln and Martin Schwartz were both killed in the battle, but the impostor Simnel was captured alive. Henry gave him a menial job in the royal kitchens. Later, he was promoted to falconer. He outlived Henry.
Symonds was imprisoned, but many of those who had supported the insurrection escaped even this punishment. The troublemaking Bishop of Meath was given a full pardon. Henry always showed craft and calculation in his dealings with bishops, and Meath became one of his most steadfast supporters. Many of the other leading rebels were fined. Gathering wealth was more to Henry’s taste than bloody revenge. In this, as in much else, he was very different from his son Henry VIII, who had a bloodlust and revelled in cruel reprisals.
Today, the area where this crucial battle was fought is bereft of signposts, let alone a ‘visitor centre’. It is nonetheless possible to circumnavigate the general area of the fighting, starting off from the village of East Stoke, which straddles the busy and dead straight A46 (formerly the Fosse Way). You walk a few hundred yards westwards down Church Lane towards the tiny and almost hidden church of St Oswald. Then you turn south-westwards along a rough bridlepath that takes you to the bottom of the high wooded bank which tumbles down to the infamous Red Gutter. As you look up to your left, you can easily enough imagine the ill-trained and ill-equipped Irish fleeing in utter terror down to the Red Gutter, where so many of them were killed. Those who survived rushed over the fields towards the supposed safety of the River Trent. If you keep alongside the wood, you come to one of the many bends in the river, which flows very fast hereabouts – so quickly that it is not navigable. If any of the escaping Irish troops managed to swim over to what appeared to be the other side, they would have been trapped, for it is in fact a narrow wooded island. The broader, more slow-flowing main branch of the river is on the far side of this island.
After looking back towards the Red Gutter – today the scene is utterly peaceful – and musing on the mayhem, the noise, the stench and the sheer horror of the battle’s aftermath, I turned and saw that I was being observed by a man leaning on his 4×4 vehicle further along the river bank. He must have driven down Trent Lane, the off-road track that leads to the river from the A46, which was my intended route back. As I approached him, he eyed me suspiciously – he told me he thought I might be an angler without a permit – but, when I explained my interest in the battle, he at once became friendly. ‘Ah yes, the last battle of the Wars of the Roses’, he said. He assured me that the story of how the Trent was red with blood that day had been passed from generation to generation over the centuries.
I told him of my proposed route and how the final part would entail a walk along the busy A46. He helpfully informed me that there was a faint track leading off to the left at the top of Trent Lane, not marked on the Ordnance Survey map. This would take me along the broad ridge where the battle had been fought, high above the A46. He instructed me simply to bear left when I reached the top of the hill; I could not miss the junction. He was absolutely right. But, before I set off along the unmapped track, I turned and looked back over the Trent towards Southwell. I was only about 70 metres above the river, but the view was magnificent and I could make out the high moors of the Peak District in the far distance.
I followed the rough track between large fields. Away down to the right was the busy A46, but I could barely hear the traffic. Eventually, the track led into the narrow Humber Lane, a right of way that takes you back to East Stoke. The entire perambulation takes little more than an hour – a pleasant walk with extensive views from the uplands and a dark brooding sense of doom alongside the Red Gutter. It is easy enough to imagine the course of this critical but almost forgotten battle in which many thousands of men were slaughtered.
The battle secured Henry’s kingship and established the Tudor dynasty. Henry’s son, Henry VIII, was to preside over the most nationalistic and the most personal of all the European reformations; it was to become known as the Henrician Reformation. One of the key men in this process was Thomas Cranmer, the long-serving Archbishop of Canterbury who was author of the English Prayer Book. When the Battle of Stoke was fought, Cranmer’s father Thomas was the squire of Aslockton, a small community a mile or so to the south. Young Thomas was born two years later, in 1489, into an England that was already more secure and more settled than it had been for generations.
Henry VII was to be tested later in his by now well-established reign by a second and more plausible impostor, Perkin Warbeck, who claimed to be Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, and thus another man who should have been king. Warbeck was charismatic, and he toured the courts of Europe. He also had some supporters within Henry’s own ambit; Henry never quite succeeded in ridding his court of all conspirators and potential traitors. Warbeck was dangerous insofar as he could dazzle in the pretty purlieus of a royal court; but, when it came to action, he consistently failed.
He gained some support in Ireland and in France. In 1495, he sailed from Flanders with a small invasion fleet. His attempted landing in Kent met with stiff resistance, and he withdrew to regroup. He eventually found succour at the court of James IV in Scotland, but not enough to launch a full-scale invasion across the Border.