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English Pages 199 [220] Year 1985
4
The
Battle of
Bosworth Michael Bennett
ST.
MARTIN’S PRESS
New
York
Copyright
© Michael
First published in the
All rights reserved. St.
Bennett 1985
United States of America
For information,
in
write:
Martin’s Press, Inc.
175 Fifth Avenue York, NY 10010
New
Printed in Great Britain
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Bennett, Michael
J.
(Michael John), 1949-
d'he Battle of Bosworth. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1.
Bosworth Field, Battle of, 1485. 1985 942.05 85-14292
DA260.B46
ISBN 0-312-06972-3
1.
Title.
1985
PREFACE
Anniversaries are a mixed blessing for historians. their subjects with a spurious topicality.
On
On
the one hand, they invest
the other hand, by concentrating
public attention on old landmarks they provide an incentive for scholars to
sharpen the focus of their research, and to share their findings with that wider also seeks pleasure and meaning from the past. It was not my idea to write on Bosworth Field and 1485, but I took on the project with enthusiasm. I knew that others had made the task easier for me. For a start most of the major sources for the reign of Richard III have been published, a great boon for an English historian based in Australia. On this point it is fitting to pay tribute to the Richard III Society and Alan Sutton Publishing for harnessing lay enthusiasm and business acumen in support of fifteenth-century scholarship. I would like to record my gratitude to the late Professor A.R. Myers, who first introduced me to the study of Richard III, Dr Colin Richmond, who gave me early encouragement, Mr J.R. Tinsley, who welcomed me to the Battlefield Centre during the winter recess, Peter and Carolyn Hammond for not only selecting the pictures but also sharing their expertise on Ricardian matters, Airlie Alam for her work on the maps, and my mother, who assisted with the index. Finally I dedicate this book to my wife Fatimah, who has supported this work since its conception, and to my daughter Masni, whose birth by deflecting me from other projects made possible this one.
community which
M.B. Hobart, Tasmania May, 1985
CONTENTS
PREFACE
V
LIST
OF ILLUSTRATIONS
1
News From The
2
Civil
3
The Year
4
Kings, Pretenders
5
The Road to Bosworth
79
6
Ordeal by Battle
99
7
The TudorTriumph
123
8
1485
141
ix
Field
War and Common Weal
in
of
Three Kings
English History
APPENDIX LIST
and Powerbrokers
OF ABBREVIATIONS
1
17
33 53
155 176
NOTES
177
INDEX
193
5
LIST
OF ILLUSTRATIONS
1
Wood
2
Epitaph for Richard
now
8
Stowe School, depicting the Battle of Bosworth from the York House Books Composite Gothic field armour Equipment worn by a common soldier during the Wars of the Roses Effigy of Ralph Fitzherbert from Norbury, Derbyshire German mail shirt of the second quarter of the fifteenth century Swords and daggers Edward IV, painted about 1518
22
9
Battle of Barnet, April 1471
24
3
4 5
6 7
carving
2
at
3
III,
May
5
8
12 1
19
10
Battle of Tewkesbury,
1 1
Fotheringhay, Northamptonshire, birthplace of Richard of Gloucester
12
Richard
13
Anthony, Earl Rivers, presenting a book
14
Elizabeth Woodville, wife of Edward IV
15
20
Dukes of Gloucester and Buckingham and of Edward V Garter stall plate of Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham Baynard’s Castle, London, home of Richard’s mother, the Duchess of York Richard III, Anne Neville and Edward of Middleham The Tower of London as it was in the Middle Ages Sir John Cheney, later Lord Cheney
21
Great Seal of Richard
22
Signature of Richard
23
Middleham, Yorkshire, residence of Richard of Gloucester 1472-83
54
24
Garter
56
25
Edward of Middleham, Prince of Wales Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII Henry VII; bust by Pietro Torrigiano ‘Henry VII Tower’, Pembroke Castle John de Vere, Earl of Oxford
61
Oxford’s signature
65
31
Thomas Howard,
69
32
Surrey’s signature
69
33
John Howard, Duke of Norfolk Garter stall plate of Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland Possibly Thomas, Lord Stanley and his first wife Eleanor Neville Sir John Savage Nottingham Castle, as it was in the fifteenth century
71
1
6
17 18 19
26 27
^8 29 30
34 35
36 37
III,
1471
27
painted about 1518 to
Edward IV
Signatures of the
stall
29 31
III
III
plate of Francis, Viscount Lovell
Earl of Surrey
34 36 38 40 4?
44 46 48 49 51
57
59 63 65
73 75
77
80
5 1
X
THE BATTLE OF BOSWORTH 38 39
C.ommission of Array
to the
county commissioners
82
42
Rhys ap T homas \\ clsh Bridge, Shrewsbury Letter from the Duke of Norfolk I louse in Wyle Cop, Shrewsbur\
43
Blue Boar Inn, Leicester
44 45
King Richard’s Chamber Simon Digby
46
Bow
47
Sutton Cheney Church, where Richard traditionally heard his
48
Processional cross, found at Bosworth in 1778
101
49
King Richard’s Well
102
50
Standard of Richard
51
Standard of Richard
40 41
52 53
Sir
85
88 to John
Paston
89 91
93 at
the Blue
Boar Inn, Leicester
94 96
,
Bridge, Leicester
111,
97
flying
on Ambion
last
Mass
104
Hill
drawn by Julian Rowe Standard of 1 Icnrv' Tudor; drawn by Julian Rowe Standard of Henry Tudor, flying from the position occupied by at
Bosworth, the
Dun Cow
Warwick, and St George
56
German Gothic war
57
Memorial to Richard 111, erected in 1973 Banner of Richard III, flying over the modern memorial stone Memorial brass to Richard III and those who fell at Bosworth Plaque near the modern Bow Bridge, Leicester Elizabeth of York Sir Robert Wdlloughby, later L.ord Willoughby de Broke William Catesby and Margaret Zouche his w ife Gold seal ring w ith a boar enamelled in white on the bezel Cannon ball found at Bosworth IGrthenware costrel (water bottle) found at Bosworth Spurs traditionally from the battlefield at Bosworth
60 61
62 63
64 65
66 67
of 1 1
Pole Axes
59
106 his
108
Standards used by Henry' Tudor
55
58
106
111;
troops during the Battle
54
100
113 harness for
man and
horse
1 1
117 119
120 124 126 128 129 131
133
135
137
68 69
Sir Robert
Signature of Henry' VII
140
70
German
143
71
North
72
Battle axe
73
Italian bill
74
I
75
War hammers and maces
Harcourt
sallet
of about 1450-60
Italian sallet
lalberds of the fifteenth century
138
143 145
148
150 152
MAPS Ricardian England: retainers and rebels
Road
52
Bosworth: 7-22 August
78
Bosworth ITeld 22 August 1485
98
to
List of Illustrations
Photographs and
illustrations
were supplied
by, or are
reproduced by kind permission of
the following: Aerofilms Limited (11, 23); Society of Antiquaries of
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford Chatsworth Settlement
London
(8, 12, 48);
(14); British Librar\ (15, 18, 38, 41); Trustees of the
(64); University of
Ghent
(9, 10);
Peter
Hammond
(16, 17, 19,
21, 24, 34, 40, 44, 49, 57); Oliver Harris (54); Trustees of Lambeth Palace Library' (13);
Leicestershire
County Council Department of
Property' (50, 53, 58); Leicestershire
Libraries and Information Service (43, 46); Leicestershire
Records Service
(65,
66, 67); National
Museums, Art Galleries and London (26, 61); Castle
Portrait Gallery',
Museum, Nottingham (37); Julian Rowe (51, 52); Stowe School (1); Board of Trustees H.M. Tower of London, crown copy right (3, 4); Victoria and Albert Museum, London (27); Trustees of the Wallace Collection, London (6, 7, 55, 56, 70,
of the Armouries,
Wheeler (1,5, 20, 25, 28, 33, 35, 36, 39, 42, 45, 47, 59, 60, York City Archives (2).
71, 72, 73, 74, 75); Geoffrey
62, 68);
Picture research by Carolyn and Peter
jacket: detail
Hammond.
from the mural painting of the Battle of Bosworth,
The Three Tuns,
Atherstone; border incorporating symbolic representation of Henry'’s
Welsh dragon
triumphing over Richard’s boar, from an engraving by George Vertue. Photograph and jacket concept: Geoffrey Wheeler. Design:
Martin Latham.
xi
The
Battle of
Bosworth
1
News from
the Field
was harvest time. Before the full heat of the late summer day the battle was King Richard III was slain, and the mightiest army assembled in England within memory was shattered. Many lay dead, their bodies mangled in the press, but many more had thrown down their arms without a fight, and either taken to their heels or fallen in with the rebels. Whole battalions had held aloof on the side-lines, and their commanders now set out to ingratiate themselves with the victors. The obscure adventurer Henry Tudor, flushed with a remarkable triumph in his first military engagement, moved with his captains to a hill south of the battlefield which might serv e as a vantage-point from which to direct the mopping up operations. It was on this elevation, later called Crown hill by the local populace, that the jubilant soldiers acclaimed their young leader as king, and one of the captains placed on his brow a coronet found among the debris in It
over.
the field. It was probably still afternoon on 22 August 1485 that Henry VII led his triumphant cavalcade, bringing in tow many noble captives from the royal army and the naked corpse of his rival, through the gates of Leicester. The townsmen would already have received reports of the upset, and would have prepared an appropriate reception. Already reports of the battle would have spread to other neighbouring towns, as men fleeing from the fi^ld and messengers specially deputed for the task relayed the intelligence^ Before nightfall the city of Coventry buzzed with the tidings, and in the course of the following day the news could have reached most of the major population centres of Englan'T.] On the vigil of St Bartholomew, the evening of the day after the battle, the mayor and aldermen of York assembled in the council chamber in considerable agitation to hear ‘that King Richard late mercifully reigning upon us was through great treason piteously slain and murdered to the great heaviness of this city’.' This intelligence was owed to John Sponer, whom they had sent to Leicester for this purpose, but who in all likelihood had gained his information actually on the road. Presumably the city fathers of London were as well organised, and also had reports of the defeat of Richard III by 23 August. Hard on the heels of the first messages, winged by fear or self-interest, there would have come to London and all the county towns of the kingdom what amounted to an official communique from Henry VII. In addition to ordering firm measures for the cessation of fighting and feuding, it informed the general .
.
.
2
THE BATTLE OF BOSWORTH
Wood
carving
now
at
Stowe School,
depicting the Battle
of Bos wort It. Probably dating from the
middle of the sixteenth century, and possibly commissioned by an Earl of Oxford.
public that Richard
III
and
his
more prominent noble
supporters, the duke of
Norfolk, the earls of Lincoln and Surrey, Viscount Lovell, and Lords Ferrers
and Zouche, had been slain. Apart from the later act of attainder which named two dozen more of the men who had fought against him, the new king was to provide no more information about the battle. In view of the widely held assumption that the first Tudor actively promoted the rewriting of history for propagandist purposes, the reticence in official circles as to what happened in the battle needs to be stressed, and indeed is one of the many mysteries of this time. Even as late as 1500 Bernard Andre, poet laureate and official biographer of the king, had no coherent account to give of the battle, leaving a blank space for the episode which for some reason he was unable to fill.^ As rumour and report spread outwards from the epicentre at Bosworth in ever widening circles, and as the thousands of men from the various armies returned to their homes, there can have been no shortage of accounts of the battle. Unfortunately even participants might have found difficulty in making sense of the manoeuvres, and there can have been precious few observations which were not garbled, partial and partisan. Judging from the few extant accounts, it is painfully apparent that from its very source the flow of news was broken and muddied on the banks of ignorance and fear, and deflected by streams of self-interest and propaganda. The official communique, for a start, either wilfully or unwittingly misled the public. At least three of the nobles whom it claimed to be dead were in fact alive. Similarly the report which reached York contained the bizarre information that the duke of Norfolk, who in fact had laid down his life in the Ricardian cause, had betrayed the king. It is small wonder that even the basic items of report, that King Richard was slain and that Henry Tudor had taken the crown, were for some time in doubt in many quarters of the realm. Quite deliberately the late king’s corpse was kept on
News from
'
’
'
U ^
r
f*^2
-X
.
/