exercised the tribal authority of an
Irish chief, and were practically independent of English control.
Ormond fought at Towton on the Lancastrian side, and was executed
after the battle. Family quarrels broke out amongst his kindred, and
for the time Kildare was supreme in the English Pale (see p. 265).

5. =Insurrection of Lambert Simnel. 1487.=--Kildare and the colonists
had every reason to distrust Henry, but to oppose him they needed a
pretender. They found one in the son of an Oxford tradesman, a boy of
ten, named Lambert Simnel, who had been persuaded to give himself out
as the Earl of Warwick, who, as it was said, had escaped from the
Tower. In =1487= Simnel landed in Ireland, where he was soon joined by
Lord Lovel from Flanders, and by the Earl of Lincoln, of the family of
Pole or De la Pole,[37] whose mother, Elizabeth, was the eldest sister
of Edward IV., and who had been named by Richard III. as his heir
after the death of his son (see p. 342). Lincoln and Lovel, after
crowning Simnel at Dublin, crossed to Lancashire, taking with them the
pretender, and 2,000 trained German soldiers under Martin Schwarz; as
well as an Irish force furnished by Kildare. Scarcely an Englishman
would join them, and on June 16 they were utterly defeated by Henry at
Stoke, a village between Nottingham and Newark. Lincoln and Schwarz
were slain. Lovel was either drowned in the Trent or, according to
legend, was hidden in an underground vault, where he was at last
starved to death through the neglect of the man whose duty it was to
provide him with food. Simnel was pardoned, and employed by Henry as
a turnspit in his kitchen.

[Footnote 37: Genealogy of the De la Poles and Poles:--

Richard, Duke of York
|
+------------------------+--------------------------+
| |
Elizabeth= John de la Pole, George, Duke
| Duke of Suffolk of Clarence,
| died 1477
+--+--------------+----------------------+ |
| | | |
John de la Pole, Edmund de la Pole, Sir Richard Margaret, = Sir Richard
Earl of Lincoln, Earl of Suffolk, de la Pole, Countess | Pole
killed at Stoke, beheaded 1513 killed at of