Battle of Stoke Field

Battle context

The Battle of Stoke Field, fought at East Stoke, Nottinghamshire on 16 June 1487, is considered the last battle of the Wars of the Roses, as it was the final major engagement between contenders for the throne whose rival claims derived from descent from the houses of Lancaster and York. Two years earlier, the Battle of Bosworth Field had established Henry VII on the throne, ending Yorkist rule and initiating Tudor sovereignty. Stoke Field was the decisive engagement in a Ricardian Yorkist effort to unseat Henry VII in favor of the pretender Lambert Simnel. The Yorkist force of approximately 8,000, commanded by the Earl of Lincoln, Viscount Lovell, Sir Thomas FitzGerald, and the mercenary captain Martin Schwartz, was outnumbered by Henry VII's army of around 12,000. Casualties were substantial on both sides — roughly 3,000 for the Tudors and 4,000 for the Yorkists — indicating the intensity of the contest. The defeat extinguished the leading Ricardian challenge to Tudor rule and, by ending the last serious dynastic armed contest of the period, effectively closed the Wars of the Roses as a military conflict.