That master is Henry Tudor, better known as Henry the Seventh, King of England.
What about Edward, the real Edward? As I would learn, there truly was a young Earl of Warwick. A simple boy. Henry had him in the Tower and kept him there. In November 1499, after a secret trial for treason, he was executed.
And I?
To be truthful, I sometimes recall how, for a brief moment, as if in the silence between the tolling of bells, the passing bells of my life, I was the king of England. Perhaps I was, though I am the only one who thinks of it. Once so low. Once so high. Now low again. Truly, wondrous things happened to me.
Had I been a simpleton to believe it all? Or had greatness been taken from me? How could I, in such a small splinter of time, a mere boy, have been so altered, and altered again, turned and turned yet again? What had it made of me?
When trying to understand it, I beg you to know that every now and again, in moments of aloneness, the thought does enter my head: Who am I?
I know the answer. I am Lambert Simnel, who was, once, very briefly, a king. The player king.
Be assured: All I have written here is true. I have a solitary groat to prove it. My name—Edward the Sixth—is on it.
But it will buy nothing.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
LAMBERT SIMNEL was a real person.
What unfolds in this book is based on what happened to him in England in the fifteenth century. A boy of uncertain age and name came out of nowhere; claimed to be the Earl of Warwick; was crowned King Edward the Sixth of England in Dublin, Ireland; led an invading army into England; and was defeated at the Battle of Stoke, only to become a scullion in the palace kitchen of King Henry the Seventh, the founder of the Tudor dynasty. There is some suggestion that Lambert later rose in position to become Henry’s falconer.
Yet Simnel was and remains very much a mystery. Almost nothing about him is known, though the people who surrounded him—Brother Richard Simonds, the Earl of Lincoln, Francis Lovell, the soldier Martin Schwartz, even the tall Lord Darcy of Platen who carried him about Dublin on his shoulders—were real and are part of the historical record.
The friar, Richard Simonds (that may or may not have been his real name), was the man accused of teaching Lambert to be the Earl of Warwick.
Readers might like to know that the manners that Lambert was required to learn are not of my invention but come from the fifteenth-century work Babees’ Book.
Likewise, there really was a Tackley’s Tavern, which may, today, be visited along the High Street in Oxford, England. Be careful of the steps. They are steep.
There is no account as to what happened to Viscount Lovell save that he was last seen fleeing the Battle of Stoke in his armor. All that is known is that he disappeared.
However, his ancestral home was Minster Lovell, and it was still standing two hundred years after the Battle of Stoke. In 1708, when building work was being carried out there, workers discovered a secret underground vault. When they opened it, they found the skeleton of a man seated at a table surrounded by writing materials and a book. People believed it was Lovell. Alas, when air was let into the chamber, the skeleton and the papers crumbled to dust.
Some believe Lovell’s ghost haunts the area, a ghost in armor, riding a horse.
That, however, is another story.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
AVI is the author of more than seventy books for children and young adults, including the 2003 Newbery Medal winner, Crispin: The Cross of Lead, and most recently The Unexpected Life of Oliver Cromwell Pitts. He has won two Newbery Honors and many other awards for his fiction. He lives with his wife in Clark, Colorado. Visit him at Avi-Writer.com.
Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Simon & Schuster New York
Visit us at simonandschuster.com/kids
Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Avi
SOME OTHER
HISTORICAL NOVELS
BY AVI
Catch You Later, Traitor
City of Orphans
Crispin: The Cross of Lead
Escape From Home
The Fighting Ground
Iron Thunder: The Battle between the Monitor & the Merrimac
The Man Who Was Poe
Sophia’s War: A Tale of the Revolution
The Traitors’ Gate
The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle
The Unexpected Life of Oliver Cromwell Pitts
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2017 by Avi Wortis Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Avi, 1937- author.
Title: The player king / Avi.
Description: First edition. | New York : Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2017. | “A Richard Jackson Book.” | Summary: In 1486 England, a penniless kitchen boy named Lambert Simnel is told by a mysterious friar that he, Lambert, is actually Prince Edward, the true King of England, setting him on a dangerous course to regain the throne. Based on a true story.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016042037
ISBN 9781481437684 (hardback) | ISBN 9781481437707 (eBook)
Subjects: LCSH: Simnel, Lambert—Juvenile fiction. | CYAC: Simnel, Lambert—Fiction. | Kings, queens, rulers, etc.—Fiction. | Great Britain—History—Tudors, 1485-1603—Fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Historical / Europe. | JUVENILE FICTION / Action & Adventure / General. | JUVENILE FICTION / Royalty.
Classification: LCC PZ7.A953 Pm 2017 | DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016042037
Avi, The Player King
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