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A pretender to the English throne gains support from Margaret, duchess of Burgundy and sister of the late Edward IV. The 10-year-old imposter Lambert Simnel impersonates the 10-year-old earl of Warwick, a son of the duke of Clarence, who is imprisoned in the Tower of London. Simnel's supporters crown him Edward VI in Dublin Cathedral and he lands in Lancashire with a force of poorly armed Irish levies and German mercenaries. The earl of Lincoln and the Swiss mercenary Martin Schwartz command a force of 8,000 men to oppose the king, but Henry VII commands an army of 12,000 that includes John de Vere, 13th earl of Oxford, and defeats the rebels at Stoke in Nottinghamshire June 16, losing 3,000 as compared to 4,000 rebel dead, including Lincoln and Schwartz. Henry VII pardons young Simnel, and he will become a falconer to the king after a period as scullery boy (see Perkin Warbeck, 1494).
The Star Chamber introduced under another name by England's Henry VII gives defendants no right to know the names of their accusers. The king moves toward royal absolutism.
Portuguese navigator Bartolomeu Dias, 37, leaves Lisbon with two caravels and a storeship. A storm drives his fleet around Africa's southernmost tip, which he names the Cape of Storms (see Cape of Good Hope, 1488).
Portugal's João II sends explorer Pedro de Covilhão, 37, to the Levant in search of spices and the legendary land Prester John mentioned by Fra Maruo in 1459. Covilhão will cross the Red and Arabian seas to India, visit Madagascar, and send home word from Cairo that if ships can round southern Africa they will find pilots who can guide them to India (see 1497).
Pope Innocent VIII names Tomas de Torquemada grand inquisitor (see 1483); Torquemada's Inquisition introduces sadistic instruments of torture that include the strappado (which yanks arms from their sockets), the asli (which forces water down the victim's gullet until his stomach bursts), and the auto da fe (which chars the victim's flesh). Torquemada employs an ideology based on the limpieza, a purity-of-blood doctrine which states that having even one Jewish ancestor stigmatizes a person and makes him liable to persecution (see Nuremberg laws, 1935). The Spanish Inquisition will continue until 1834 (see 1492).
Venice's Palazzo Dario is completed on the Grand Canal for Giovanni Dario, Venetian secretary to Constantinople.
1481 1482 1483 1484 1485 1486 1487 1488 1489 1490
