Exactly 530 years ago at the time of writing this article, a young boy who would become known to history as "Lambert Simnel" was crowned King of England in Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin. It was a unique event in English history for two reasons: First, because the boy was not crowned in England itself. Secondly, while it was not the first time in English history that a new king had been crowned while another king still sat securely on the throne - Henry II had his oldest son Henry crowned while he was still alive for several reasons - it was the first time and last time that a rebel against the anointed King of England was crowned and anointed while the monarch he was rebelling against was still alive and securely on the throne. (And, in Henry VII`s case, would remain so.)
There are many questions about this rebellion and even about the coronation itself that can no longer be answered, unless new evidence is found. The identity of the boy now known as Lambert Simnel is as much a mystery as his age - which has been given as variously ten, twelve and fifteen in different reports - and even with what regnal number he was crowned has been called into question.
Even more disputed is the question what would have happened to him had the Yorkists won. It is generally assumed that the boy crowned in Dublin was simply a puppet whom the Yorkists, if victorious, intended to push aside to have John de la Pole, the Earl of Lincoln, Richard III`s heir presumptive after the death of his son and de jure king from 22nd August 1485 until 7th November 1485, proclaimed as king. However, there are several problems with this assumption, first and foremost the question of why John - an adult with an undoubted Yorkist claim to the crown - was not crowned in the first place, rather than a young boy with doubtful origins.
Added to that is the problem that the coronation bestowed a legitimacy on the claim of the boy that would have been hard to explain away and shrug aside by those who had actually taken part in it, which John did.
Nor was the coronation a small affair, which could have easily been forgotten. It enjoyed a lot of support from the Irish and was made to be as impressive as possible. Jean Molinet, writing several years later, claimed that not only did the Yorkist rebels take part in it, but that so did the mercenaries hired by Margaret of York and her stepson-in-law, Maximilian. He reports that they went to Ireland "where they found the Duke of Clarence [Simnel], together with the earls of Lincoln and Guldar [Kildare] and the nobles of the country, who, with the agreement of all of the people, did crown him King of England with two archbishops and twelve bishops."
Though Molinet is shaky on details and frequently gets them wrong - in this instance, for example, not mentioning that Lincoln himself, together with Francis, only arrived in Ireland twenty days before the coronation - it is interesting that he reported the coronation ceremony as such a popular and grand affair, which shows that at least gossip must have reported it to be so, which allowing for exaggerations probably means it was at least quite a spectacle, though naturally without some of the usual elements of a "usual" coronation of an English king at the time.
Chief among those were the regalia needed for a coronation. As John Ashdown-Hill points out, such items as the sword, the spurs and the ring could very easily have been found and Margaret of York, in the year leading up the coronation, would have likely seen to it they were there, and records make no mention of them. There is some information as to the crown used in the coronation though, which appears to have been taken from a valuable statue of the Virgin Mary which stood in a church by the gates of Dublin.
There are few descriptions of what actually happened during the coronation and afterwards. The ceremony seems to have happened without a hitch, though sadly we do not know what parts exactly John, Francis, or the other rebels played in it. In sources such as Vergil, it understandably gets dismissed as no great affair. In fact, Vergil does not even explicitly state that there had been a coronation, instead simply saying that "at Dublin they treated the boy Lambert just as if he were born of the
royal blood and deserving of being crowned king in the traditional way."
Despite this, a little tidbit has survived, namely that supposedly, when the coronation ceremony in the cathedral was over, the newly crowned boy was carried back to Dublin Castle on the shoulders of "tall men" so that spectators who had come out to see him could do so. It appears that in Ireland, where the Yorkists were popular, the coronation had a lot of support even by the common people, though how true this is is now impossible to ascertain.
The boy, together with the rest of the rebels, entertained members of the Irish nobility sympathetic to his cause - which most seem to have been - in Dublin Castle after the coronation. Again, that this was meant to resemble a typical post-coronation banquet can be assumed, but we know no details. Francis, like John, was certainly present, but if he played a large role is not possible to say. He was one of the main instigators of the rebellion, but there is no indication he was much involved with the actual details of planning of it, and may have also played a more passive part in the coronation. Once more, this is guesswork.
After the coronation, the newly-crowned boy and the rebels stayed in Ireland only for a short while longer, landing in England with their troops on 4th June, there to find defeat, heartbreak and death.
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