Clip: Season 21 Episode 3 | 1m 44s | Video has closed captioning.
On May 27, 1487, a boy was crowned in Dublin as King Edward of England. The English government’s official record states that he was a pretender to the throne named Lambert Simnel, installed as part of a Yorkist rebellion against the crown. But could “Lambert Simnel” have actually been Edward, the elder prince in the tower?
Aired: 11/22/23
Traditional history tells us Lambert Simnel, a 10-year-old boy, was found in Oxford and brought here to Ireland and was proclaimed and crowned King Edward of England.
- Yeah.
Who's going to follow a boy who's just come from Oxford?
Who is going to fight and die for this boy?
- And also, we've perhaps lost sight of just how important a medieval coronation was.
It was a huge political moment, but a huge spiritual moment.
Nobody would undertake that ceremony lightly, and no one would want to do that to a random boy from Oxford.
- So, what you believed happened here was that a 16-and-a-half-year-old was sitting here being crowned by, well, significant members of the Church and the Irish nobility and others who showed up in force.
And it's only later that they've said it was actually a 10-year-old and it's all made up.
And that's part of the propaganda of Henry VII.
- That's what I believe.
I believe all of that Lambert Simnel business is big smoke and mirrors thrown up around what would've been a hugely threatening moment for Henry VII.
- Clearly, there was a boy crowned here in this church, a fleet showed up, they went through a ceremony, a religious ceremony.
Whether or not that means that that's one of the boys in the tower, I'm not yet confident about.
But applying my dispassionate mind, that's certainly some evidence that the older boy, Edward, that prince in the tower, could -- could -- have been the person that they crowned here.
