Dan Snow's History Hit - Rise of the Tudors

Episode Date: September 3, 2023

Join Dan as he rollicks through the tumultuous life and rise to power of Henry Tudor, the man who would ultimately become King Henry VII of England. Step back to the late 15th century, a period marked by conflict, political manoeuvring and alliances as a young Henry Tudor, having spent much of his early life hiding out in France, honed his political skills and formed alliances, eventually rising from obscurity to challenge the might of the ruling Plantagenet dynasty.This explainer isn't just dates and battles; it's a lively exploration of the larger-than-life personalities, intricate plots, and the human drama that shaped the Tudor dynasty's rise to power.Written by Dan Snow and edited by Dougal Patmore.Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world-renowned historians like Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Matt Lewis, Tristan Hughes and more. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code DANSNOW. Download the app or sign up here.We'd love to hear from you! You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

The baby we now call Henry Tudor was born in Pembroke in West Wales on the 28th of January 1457. He was not a child that anybody would ever have guessed would one day become king. He was born in one of the most isolated castles in the kingdom. It's a beautiful place to go today. It's perched on a great lump of rock on the edge of a river that runs down to a huge natural harbour, Milford Haven. It's on a peninsula, the very south-western tip of Wales, scoured by regular squalls that spin off the Atlantic.

You would be hard-pressed to find a more remote setting for the birth of a King of England. The castle was an important one. It was a stronghold of Englishness set in a sea of Welsh. It had been built by the Normans, it had been massively enlarged by the legend that was William the Marshal. The Welsh had been throwing themselves over ramparts for generations in the vain hope of driving the English from Cymru. But they had failed. On his father's side, Henry's ancestors had been among those who'd

fought the English invaders. They were reasonably wealthy, reasonably powerful men in Gwynedd in North Wales. But eventually they decided to choose collaboration over defeat, over poverty, over exclusion. Rather than holding out to the end in some mountain fastness to die in an ambush, spear through the guts or be betrayed, rot in a cell in a New English borough and then swing from the battlements of an English castle by the neck. They switched sides. They served the English invaders in the 13th century and they were rewarded for supporting Edward I during his campaign to finally conquer what remained of

the independent Welsh kingdoms. And we call that family the Tudors. You're listening to Dan Snow's history hit, and this is the name of your father. So Llywelyn the Great was in fact Llywelyn ap Iorath, son of Iorath. Tudor was a name that kept cropping up in Henry. And his English enemies came to assume his surname was Tudor. And only much later did people refer to them as the Tudors or the Tudor dynasty. But anachronistically, I'm going to call him Tudor today if that's all right with you. speaking of Henry's grandpa, Owen Merit of Abtuda, he goes on a rather extraordinary journey where this story pretty much begins.

We don't have a clue how this happened, but this young stud, total legend, ends up at court, perhaps a reasonably lowly figure. We hear he serves food to the queen and the king. He may have fought at the Battle of Agincourt with Henry V, but either way, he ends up catching Henry V's wife's eye. After the death of Henry V, the unfortunate early death of Henry V from dysentery, his wife, now widowed, well, she's only 21 years old she's going to live she can't wear black for the rest of her life and young owain catches her eye one story goes the old hackneyed trope and i

remember that from my childhood and robin hood prince of thieves is that she stumbled across him one day swimming and she fell in love either Either way, slightly extraordinarily, this woman, Queen Catherine of Valois, Queen of England, daughter of the King of France, ends up marrying Owen Abmededith Aptuda. And they were happy and had kids, among them Edmund and Jasper. Now she'd had one son with Henry V, who was now King Henry VI, and Edmund and Jasper were his younger half-brothers. Henry VI's brother liked his younger brothers. He saw them as friends and allies. He ennobled them. Edmund became Earl of Richmond. Jasper became Earl of Pembroke. Another way to hugely enhance the wealth and prestige of your loyal followers, your family members, is find them a rich wife, an heiress.

And Henry VI found a very good marriage for his half-brother, Edmund Tudor. Margaret Beaufort, heiress to a great English dynasty, the Beaufort family. She had royal blood in her veins, ascended from Edward III. She would help turn Edmund Tudor into a powerful, wealthy magnate who could act on his behalf, support him, just as Henry VI's father, Henry V's brothers, had done for him. Margaret was a poor analyst, she had no choice at all. This was her second marriage and she was nine years old. The poor girl gave birth at just 13. It was a terrible birth. She was lucky to live but she could never have another child and that baby was Henry Tudor. child. And that baby was Henry Tudor. Henry's screams as an infant echoed through the corridors of Pembroke Castle. And well, Marty cry, because not only was his mother, a child Margaret,

fighting for her life, his father had just lost his. Edmund Tudor had been defeated by a rebel force. He'd been imprisoned, he'd contracted plague, and he died. He was one of the first casualties of a war that would tear England apart for the next generation. The kingdom was thrown into conflict with itself. King Henry VI, I think in many respects, was a rather nice man. He was not a thug, he was gentle, and he was pious, and he didn't really seem to like politics that much. He may well have thrived in a different setting at a different time. He may well have been happy right here in the 21st century with us. But this was the 15th century.

He was the Plantagenet king of a country his grandfather had seized off a cousin. His dad had taken an arrow in the face for while leading men in battle as a teenager. Henry VI was also allegedly, supposedly on paper at least, king of France, a kingdom full of people who despised the English and used their spectre to keep naughty kids in line. Maybe his dad, Henry V, could have held this together. Henry VI was certainly not the man to do so. He was unsuited to rule in this era. He had repeated bouts of mental illness and enemies were soon circling. The opposition to him centred on his cousin, the Duke of York. He had pretty

much as good a claim to the throne as Henry VI, and he had a far better claim when it came to lived experience. His claim would be measured in the miles travelled in the saddle of a warhorse, in the effort of keeping hungry troops together on forced marches to relieve a siege, in the effort of keeping hungry troops together on forced marches to relieve a siege, or the number of enemies chased from the battlefield. He represented a version of muscular medieval kingship which his gentle cousin Henry VI could never aspire to. The king was weak. The Plantagenet family was fracturing. The House of York, the followers of this Duke of York,

came to believe that they, and not Henry VI's line, known as the House of Lancaster, should rule. And it was into this conflict that Henry Tudor was born. His father, as I said, was one of the first victims. His grandfather Owen, the man who'd married the Queen, Henry VI's own father-in-law, was defeated and had his head hacked off by Yorkists just days after Henry Tudor's fourth birthday. Although just a boy, Henry's destiny was determined by the blood in his veins.

He was a nephew of the King, he was of the House of Lancaster, the blood of his Plantagenet forebears coursed through his body. He was born into this fight whether he liked it or not. He would lose most of his relatives to this fight. He would taste defeat, embarrassment, imprisonment and exile in this fight. But ultimately, he would emerge the unlikely winner of this fight. No one would have picked him out as a winner in 1461. His father had been killed. His granddad had just been killed.

His uncle Jasper had dashed off into exile. King Henry VI's army was annihilated in one of the bloodiest battles ever on British soil at Towton in Yorkshire, which I must do another podcast about one day, so watch this space. And off King Henry and his mother went into exile in Scotland. Edward of York became King Edward IV, and Henry Tudor was now a danger to the new regime. He wasn't yet five years old.

The Tudors' place at the pinnacle of Welsh power was snatched away. It was given to Edward IV's ally, William Herbert. He got their castles, he got their lands, he even got their names, their titles, and he even got their heir. He got young Henry Tudor. Henry was raised in a prisoner in Herbert's castle. However, it was a comfortable confinement. He had a good upbringing, great education. He was raised with William Herbert's kids. He had a good upbringing, great education,

he was raised with William Herbert's kids, he had a promising future, I think, with the Herberts. Although he must have been aware that William Herbert was the man responsible for the death of his father, grandfather, and exile of his uncle. Yet, apparently, he showed him kindness and nurtured him. That dissonance must have become almost overwhelming when, in the summer of 1468 his uncle Jasper invaded Wales. He went on a bit of a rampage around North Wales. An army commanded by Herbert,

the king's man in Wales, chased Jasper off and possibly Herbert had the 11-year-old Henry Tudor in tow. Serving effectively against his uncle, branded a rebel. Jasper was driven out of Wales and ran back to France. Henry Tudor's strange life was full of these remarkable swings of fate. Sometimes an impoverished, lonely, hopeless prisoner, other times raised up to the pinnacle of power, only to have it snatched away from him once again. other times raised up to the pinnacle of power, only to have it snatched away from him once again. One of these swings came in 1470, two years after his uncle Jasper's raid, when Edward IV's slightly intolerable bullying behaviour drove former allies to force him into exile and they put Henry VI back on the throne.

Herbert, as one of Edward IV's key allies, was killed. The House of Lancaster was back. Uncle Jasper returned and took back his castles and lands and titles, and took back Henry as well. But this Lancastrian summer was all too short. Edward IV roared back into England. He invaded. He was a superb warrior.

He smashed the Lancastrians in a string of battles. He killed Henry VI's only son and only heir in the bloody fighting at Tewkesbury. He captured his royal cousin Henry VI and saw to it that only a few weeks later he would come to a sticky end in the Tower of London. Edward IV and the House of York was back, more powerful than ever. Team Tudor had attempted to help Henry VI. They'd been marching to the field at Tewkesbury when they received news of the catastrophe that had overtaken Lancastrian arms on that battlefield. Uncle Jasper and young Henry Tudor turned and fled refugees once more. These two Tudors were pursued all the way across South Wales by the Yorkists.

If they'd been caught, what would have happened? Summarily executed? Very possibly. And that would have been the end of the Tudors. And none of us would ever have heard of them. Who would writers choose to make television dramas about? The mind boggles. They manage to get to good old Pembroke Castle. There was a siege of Pembroke, another siege of

Pembroke Castle. They escape to a waiting boat, we're told using underground tunnels. By the skin of their teeth, Henry Tudor is 14. The wind blows Henry Tudor to Brittany, an independent state on the western coast of France. And here Henry will spend the next 12 years. A prisoner of sorts, a political pawn, denied autonomy, a guest of the Duke of Brittany. Who has to consider how he could best use his guest as a bargaining chip? There are many times over the next 12 years when Henry Tudor could have ended up exchanged or with his throat slit in the dark by an assassin. There was a famous incident in 1476.

Henry was about 19 years old at the time. After some shenanigans at Breton Court, a clique of them had decided to make a deal with the Yorkists and they decided to hand over Henry Tudor. They took him to the port of St Marlow. Edward IV's men came to collect him. Henry Tudor was about to be put back on a boat and taken to England. What would have happened to him there? Well, we all say the Tudors were pretty tough on their enemies, but Henry IV was just as vicious. A year before, Henry Holland,

who was a leading Lancastrian, a cousin of the former king, he'd mysteriously drowned whilst crossing the Channel. A similar fate could easily have awaited Henry Tudor. But cunningly, he feigned illness. He said he wasn't ready to travel. He said he felt sick. And that gave time for a bunch of Breton soldiers to turn up. The Breton court, having changed its mind, they wanted Henry Tudor back. A fight broke out between the English and the Bretons, fighting over possession of Henry Tudor. Henry snuck away to a nearby cathedral and claimed sanctuary, and he got away with it. He's 19 years old.

He's just escaped the clutches of his enemy. It's one of multiple attempts to seize him, to kill him, to marginalise him, and he's alone in Brittany, the westernmost extremity of a continent. I guess the question then is how does this exiled, penniless, young, traumatised pawn dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in Brittany suddenly become a realistic contender for the throne of England? Well, the answer, as so often in medieval history, is premature death and aristocratic rivalry.

The answer is 1483, and the arrival of Richard III tears the English establishment apart. While Edward IV was on the throne, the Yorkist grip was solid. It was glorious summer in England as people basked in the glow of this son of York. He was everything his poor cousin Henry VI had not been. He was a thug. He was charismatic. He was physically strong.

He was a warrior. And he had two healthy sons to build his dynasty. But longevity can never be relied upon in the pre-modern world, and suddenly this king of kings drops dead, age 40, very young. His son is 12. He's supposed to become king, Edward V. But Uncle Richard seemed to have other plans. Uncle Richard made himself king, King Richard III, and blew up the House of York. Initially, Richard seemed to be fine with the fact that his nephew, Edward V, would become king at age 12. He was Lord Protector. The idea was he would govern until his nephew reached adulthood.

But within days, everything went slightly bonkers. Richard seemed to harbour a particular hatred of his brother's widow, King Edward IV's queen, Elizabeth Woodville. Richard didn't like her, and he didn't like her powerful family. First, he had her brother arrested, and a couple of his associates, and he had them executed pretty quickly for plotting his death. Then he accused one of his brother's most loyal counsellors, one of the most powerful aristocrats in the land, Lord Hastings, of plotting with his brother's widow to kill him. Then he expanded that to be a sort of general conspiracy by the Woodvilles. The Queen took

refuge in Westminster Abbey, and Richard had a raft of her followers and family members arrested. Life came at the Woodvilles pretty fast, because before you know it, a convenient claim had emerged that Edward IV had been married before he met his queen, and so he and his queen weren't properly married, and therefore the boys, King Edward V and his brother, the Duke of York, living in the Tower of London for their own safety, well, they were legitimate. And it wasn't long before a group of notables, peers of leading men of the kingdom, were rounded up and begged Richard to take the throne. Very generously, he agreed. He was crowned on the 6th of July 1483, almost exactly three months to the day since his big brother, Edward IV, died.

Shortly afterwards, the boys in the tower disappeared. I never like calling the prince in the tower, because it's a king and a prince in the tower. So anyway, the lads in the tower disappeared. One minute they were seen playing in the courtyard. The next minute, they were never seen again. Richard was king, but he had enraged a lot of the former regime's most loyal supporters, and they started to look for an alternative. And they found what they thought was a fairly harmless one,

sitting, twiddling his thumbs, in a castle in Brittany. There's a fantastic quote by a French, I think he is, chronicler, Philip de Comines, who says that when Henry Tudor became King of England, he was a man who was without power, without money, and without right to the crown of England, and without any reputation. But none of that seemed to matter. He was the only possible answer to the question, how do we get rid of Richard III and build any kind of lasting, peaceful settlement? Contrary to what that slightly waspish chronicler said, Henry had a reasonable claim to the throne. He has plantagenet blood in his veins through his mum.

He had a close connection to the House of Lancaster through his dad. And that would keep the fans of the former regime, the Lancastrian regime, happy. But importantly, he's also unmarried. That's key. He is available, ladies. And crucially, he agreed to one of English history's most important dynastic marriages. He agreed that he would marry Elizabeth of York. She was the sister of those two princes in the tower. She was the daughter of Edward IV so Henry and Elizabeth's children will fuse the bloodlines of these two warring dynasties the Lancastrians will be happy and distant Yorkists will be happy

they've got descendants of Edward IV back on the throne it's all coming together for Henry Tudor but it wouldn't be easy in fact the first attempt would be a disaster bordering on farce the Duke of Buckingham rose in 1483. He had been a very close ally of the House of York. Henry VII had set off in seven ships with a few hundred hired soldiers from Brittany, but Gales scattered them and he arrived in Plymouth with two ships and is eventually chased off.

Buckingham's revolt collapses and he is executed. King Richard doubles down after this. He gets Parliament to pass over a hundred bills of attainder. That means that titles and land will be confiscated from followers of Buckingham, from rebels against the regime. These titles were often transferred from sort of southerners, southern peers and gentry, to Richard's northern supporters. And that meant that lots of these southerners turned to Henry Tudor as the only option to rebuild their fortunes and regain their wealth and status. It seems that many of the Yorkists who beat a path to Henry Tudor's court in exile on the continent viewed this man as someone who could be malleable. He had a lack of experience that meant they hoped that he could be moulded into the kind of king they wanted. The policies, the favourites, the regime of Edward IV could kind of be reconstituted

by Henry Tudor. And remember this man, Henry, he's never even run an estate. He's the worst prepared king in English history. But perhaps that's why it worked for people. He was a blank slate and new allies could project whatever they wanted, their wish list, onto him. And so by 1485 Henry Tudor strangely, although he's Lancastrian by birth, he's in a weird way, he's almost a continuity candidate. He's actually surrounded by Yorkists who wish to return to the days of Edward IV. In some ways, he's the Yorkist candidate too, a true fusion of the two families. And in 1485, by the time he's ready to sail again, his core support was Yorkists with a few key Lancastrians. But a bunch of exiled toffs is not enough to launch an invasion. He needs treasure, men and guns. Who can he go to for that?

Who hates the English? Who sleep better in their beds at night knowing the English are going after each other, filling English streets with piles of their own corpses rather than eyeing up their neighbours' land and wealth. Who? Well, the French, of course. The French are more than happy to give this adventurer, Henry Tudor, money, ships and men. The fact is the Tudors were born to England on the shoulders of the French. Awkward. Henry left Harfleur in France on the 1st of August. He arrived in Milford Haven on the 7th, the spacious harbour into which he'd looked out from the battlements of Pembroke Castle as a boy. He was back in the far west of Wales, but this time he was here to claim the crown. He had a few dozen ships, something like 5,000 men. He was expecting more when he landed.

He didn't get an ecstatic welcome. Perhaps there were a couple of key defections. His army built a bit, and he headed towards Shrewsbury on the Anglo-Welsh border. You can understand, people were nervous after decades of violence, after twists and turns in the Game of Thrones. People were quite keen to just wait and see who the eventual winner would be rather than nailing their colours to the mast. But Henry marched to Shrewsbury and he knew and everyone knew that the question that would decide the fate of the kingdom now was which way would England's warrior aristocracy jump? This is Dan Snow's History Hip. More after this. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Eleanor Janaga. And together we bring you Gone Medieval from History Hip twice a week, every week. This month we're telling the stories of four phenomenal queens of England, like Aethelflaed, every week. This month, we're telling the stories of four phenomenal Queens of England, like Aethelflaed, who successfully captured

Derby, Leicester and York from the Vikings. Or Emma of Normandy, who married two kings and was mother to two more kings. How about Anna Bohemia, who advocated for peace during the Hundred Years' War? Or Margaret of Anjou, who led Lancastrian forces at the Battle of Tewksbury. Queens, you gotta love them.

And we've picked out four crackers to explore for you in September. Join us for Gone Medieval from History Hit. Listen and follow on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr Eleanor Yonaga. To be continued... Kings and popes. Who were rarely the best of friends. Murder. Rebellions. And crusades. Find out who we really were. By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. Wherever you get your podcasts. Now, speaking of the warrior Aristocracy may keep its mind which way to jump this is where we need to remind ourselves that henry tudor had a very very important influential

mother margaret beaufort was now married to a man called thomas stanley her former husband sir henry stafford had died of wounds that he received fighting in the Wars of the Roses, and the husband before that, Henry Tudor's dad, Edmund Tudor, had died imprisoned by the Yorkist forces. And our marriage to Thomas Stanley would prove to be very important indeed. He is a massively powerful magnate from the North West. He's a virtual pro-consul, sort of almost a king of Lancashire and parts of neighbouring Cheshire. He has a very uneasy relationship with King Richard III. Richard doesn't love the fact that his wife is Henry Tudor's mum and he has taken one of his sons as a hostage for good behaviour. Now clearly Henry had been corresponding with his mum, his mum had been

talking to her husband, and we think there was communication between the Stanleys and Henry. He was obviously hoping this hugely powerful aristocratic faction with its own army would throw their lot in with Henry. But would the stepfather play ball? It seems that the Stanleys tried to have it both ways. We think they told Henry that they would come to his aid, but they would choose their opportunity to do so. And you now get this very strange situation where both Henry's stepfather, Thomas, and his brother, William, are shadowing Henry's forces with an army each. To Henry Tudor, they can claim that they're sort of marching alongside him, keeping him company. But to Richard III, their king,

they can say they're sort of contesting Henry's advance, keeping an eye on him, monitoring him so the king can come and deliver the final blow. The Stanleys were clearly trying to have it both ways. Meanwhile, King Richard summons troops from all over his kingdom. York, unsurprisingly, was a traditional stronghold of the House of York. Richard spent a lot of time up in the north and men came down from Yorkshire. The Earl of Northumberland also marched south. Two very familiar names for anyone interested in English medieval military history, the Earl of Northumberland and the Duke of Norfolk. They marched to the aid of the king. Their ancestors and many of their descendants were never far from the action when it came to

playing the royal game of thrones. And actually, we think Richard was in quite a good mood. His most dangerous enemy, the man with the best Lancastrian claim to the throne, Henry Tudor, His most dangerous enemy, the man with the best Lancastrian claim to the throne, Henry Tudor, had just delivered himself into the middle of Richard's kingdom with a much smaller force than the one that Richard could command. It looked like he would be obliterated. Richard's throne secured. Richard amassed a big army. We think Richard took with him a huge artillery train, something like a hundred cannon. And perhaps it was with these new wonder weapons that Richard was hoping he would be able to scour his country clean of both Henry Tudor and the rebels who'd flocked to his standard. Richard took up residence in Nottingham Castle, a good central position, very strong fortifications,

great as a point to which all of his magnates with their bodies of troops could march. Norfolk, for example, joins in there. But there's something a little bit funny going on. You never know this in medieval history because it's hard to march big groups of men over long distance in this period. There's lots of friction. It does seem like the Earl of Northumberland was dragging his feet a little bit, taking his time to get there. And we know what the Stanley brothers were playing at. They also were hovering around the edges. They weren't rushing to serve their sovereign. In fact, it's at Nottingham that Thomas Stanley's son, who'd been taken hostage for good behaviour, as you'll remember, who had the very strange title, Baron Strange.

So at Nottingham, Lord Strange is actually found trying to escape, trying to head back to his dad. And apparently he does admit to Richard that the Stanleys are flirting with Henry Tudor. The king branded both Stanley brothers as traitors. He clearly though hoped, because he did still have Thomas Stanley's son as his prisoner, that the Stanleys would play ball and fight on his side against Henry Tudor, hoping to clear their name. On the 20th of August, a few days later, Richard left Nottingham. He rode with his great host to Leicester. There he spent a night in the Blue Boar Inn, which shockingly was demolished in the 19th century. Savagery. Northumberland arrived the following day with his troops from the north, just in time for the Royal Army to march west to intercept Henry as he headed towards London. The two armies are getting very close by now. In fact, I should say

really three armies, because you've got Henry Tudor, you've got the Royal Army of Richard III, and then you've got the Stanleys floating around somewhere between them, physically and metaphorically as well. Richard found a hill he liked the look of, Ambien Hill, good strong hilltop position, and he camped on it. He slept badly that night, we're told by the Croyland Chronicle, which is one of the best sources we think for this period, that in the morning he looked troubled. His face was, I'm quoting, more livid and ghastly than usual. That's a lovely write-up. At around 5am on the 22nd of August, 1485, the sun rose over a landscape that we now know as the battlefield of Bosworth.

The Royal Army, with its sleep-deprived King Richard in command, was around 12,000 men, we think. He deployed them right along the ridge of this hill, from east to west. He put the Duke of Norfolk's force on his right wing. Then he put his own royal soldiers, about 3,000 of them, in the centre, and he left Northumberland's men to guard the left flank.

The army was a mix of archers. That medieval longbow that had been so potent in battles against France during the Hundred Years' War was still very much on the scene. But alongside the archers, you now had artillerymen who manoeuvred their cannon's position, brought up their supplies of cannonballs, powder, laid out their equipment required to sponge and worm the barrels, make sure they could operate safely. You also had cavalry, men mounted on horses ready to provide some shock, perhaps their momentum and impetus. A great body of men on horses charging downhill could terrify and put to flight inexperienced infantrymen standing at the bottom. And there were also the good old spearmen, good old infantrymen,

And there were also the good old spearmen, good old infantrymen, possibly the lowest rung of medieval army, and yet the men on whom the fate of the kingdom depended, the men that were going to be at the sharp end, who would have to do the killing and gouging and stabbing and dying when the two armies clashed. As Richard looked out that morning, he had a good clear view of the area. He could see the Stanleys, perhaps around 5,000 men. They were to the south. They were also on a hill, and they were holding their position.

He still hoped they would join in on his side and help him defeat this pretender. Despite what the Crowland Chronicle said, I think he must have been feeling reasonably confident. He outnumbered him, particularly with the Stanleys, outnumbered him overwhelmingly, and he had much more combat experience than Henry, who'd spent the last decades shut up in his tower in Brittany. This, surely, was the final battle that would seal the Yorkist claim to the throne of England for eternity. Of the many strange things that would happen that morning, I think perhaps the first of them was that Henry, outnumbered and on the low ground, decided to attack. He moved towards Ambien Hill. He moved towards the Royal Army, which outnumbered him so greatly.

As Henry's army started to move, King Richard sent his final message to the Stanleys. He threatened to execute their son, Lord Strange, if Stanley did not attack Henry's rear and flank immediately. Stanley gave the legendary reply, Sire, I have other sons. He was enraged by this reply. We think that Richard did give the order to kill Strange, but some of his underlings decided that might not be such a great idea. Let's wait till the battle's been

fought and do the execution afterwards. I wonder if at this point people were already beginning to look to the future and take out an insurance policy. You've got to be careful you don't murder the son of a guy who might prove victorious that day. I don't think you'd be able to rely on clemency, on forgiveness, if you find yourself in that situation. So Lord Strange would live, and the Stanleys waited and watched. Henry had also sent messages to the Stanleys, as you can imagine, saying, now's the time, lads. This is the final clash. Come and help me. And the Stanleys apparently replied that they would once they'd had a chance to arrange their armies for battle. So the die was cast. And at this very moment, with Henry advancing towards Richard, it appeared that the Stanleys held the fate of England in their hands. Now we talk about Henry Tudor at this battle. He was very inexperienced.

He actually renounced control of his own force. He gave control of his army to John de Vere, the 13th Earl of Oxford, and he then took his bodyguards and retired to the rear to watch how things went. The Earl of Oxford was a warhorse. He's in his early 40s, absolute prime of life. He watched his father and his older brother executed by the Yorkists. He's fought time and again for the House of Lancaster. He'd taken an arrow to the face during a siege in St Michael's Mountain, Cornwall. He'd tasted victory. He'd become one of the great men of the kingdom, but he also knew defeat and exile as well. He was actually a close cousin to the Duke of Norfolk that was fighting in Richard's army. So it's a reminder of the fact that the War of the Roses tore these aristocratic families and other families asunder during the 15th century. It must have been a deeply traumatic aspect of that civil conflict.

Now the Earl of Oxford saw Richard's army spread out in a long line right across the ridge. And he decided to keep his men together to bring overwhelming force to bear on one particular portion of the king's line. So you achieve a local superiority. It's a good plan if you are outnumbered. He didn't do what many people at the time did, which was divide his force into three, a so-called vanguard, a centre, a rearguard. He just organised them into one tight unit, perhaps shaped almost like a wedge, like an arrowhead. Oxford had an all-or-nothing plan. It's very, very bold indeed. He was going to head up that ridge and he was just going to crash into one particular portion of the Royal Army, hope he could put it to flight and thus precipitate a general collapse of the Royal Forces. It was astonishingly bold. It's like the old expression,

if you get into a pub fight or you're fighting a big group of people, you just make sure you hit the biggest guy as hard as you can, hope that he goes down, and that changes the dynamics. The others don't want to get involved quite as much. So the Earl of Oxford lunged at Richard's army, the troops in fact commanded by his cousin, the Duke of Norfolk. The other advantage he's got, and it's not clear that Richard knew this the night he camped on that hill, is as the Earl of Oxford is sort of marching across the face of the hill to smash into the royal line at its right flank, the royal centre and left wing can't get down because there's some marshy ground at the base of this slope. So they can't intervene to strike at Henry Tudor's army as it's marching towards their right wing. And it says a lot I think for the leadership perhaps of Henry,

perhaps the Earl of Oxford, perhaps of more subordinate commanders, they managed to persuade those troops to march up that hill that morning. They had to slog up a hill towards the Royal Army of England, King Richard III presiding under his royal banners, some of the greatest warrior aristocrats in the kingdom alongside him. And yet Henry Tudor's men marched up that hill. The cannons started to fire, balls thudding down, skimming off the earth, scything through Henry's ranks. Archers drew back their strings and let loose. A hail of arrows started to fall among the advancing troops. And all the time, Henry's men starting to feel the exertion of heading up that hill,

carrying their armour, their helmets, their spears, their weapons, looking up at the infantrymen waiting for them on top. The early morning sun sparkling off burnished metal. As the Earl of Oxford's men closed, their bowmen started shooting back, and the sky was filled with arrows going to and fro, landing amongst either army, being pulled out of the earth, perhaps out of the fallen, the injured, the killed, and then reused, shot back into the sky and let loose at the enemy. We think that just before Henry Tudor's army, commanded by the Earl of Oxford, reached the top of that ridge,

the Duke of Norfolk gave the order to advance and his troops roared down the hill. It must have been like an avalanche, a landslide. Hundreds of men would have now shouted at the top of their voices, channelling aggression, finding you're perhaps better able to cope with the fear when you're screaming at the top of your lungs, and hoping to put the fear of God into the other side. The two armies crashed together on the slopes of that hill. The Earl of Oxford had told his men, whatever you do, stay near your standards, band together, there is strength in numbers. And that's how his men fought. They greeted the onrush, locked together, shield to shield. The solid feel of your mate next door, keeping up your morale, steadying you to meet what's coming. As the two sides crash together, you take daggers, swords,

billhooks, spears, you prod them over the shields, through the shields, under the shields, trying to catch the other side, trying to trip them up. Take out a hamstring, a tricep. The minute your opponent's on the floor, he's dead. Trample down by your own side, or the men pushing on from behind him. If there was room, you might swing a mace. A brutal, heavy, it's a blunt weapon, not a cutting or a stabbing weapon. There's a wooden or a metal shaft, and then there's a head, which could be stone or steel, and there might be the odd flange, the odd protrusion, which would like to break open enemy helmets, smash a breastplate or armour. These men literally hammered their opponents. Richard watched, Henry watched, the Stanleys watched, as Norfolk and Oxford's men, these two aristocratic cousins, battered and stabbed and cleaved each other, turned that hillside into a slaughterhouse.

Soon it appeared that Oxford's men, despite having to go uphill, despite being outnumbered, were having the best of it. despite having to go uphill, despite being outnumbered, were having the best of it. Some of Norfolk's men started to break away and flee. And Richard saw, for the first time perhaps, that he could be in trouble. He did not want a general panic to grip his forces. And so, like all great commanders, he made dispositions. He signalled for the Earl of Northumberland to move from the left flank to send reinforcements round, come and plug a few gaps to support Norfolk.

And Northumberland did nothing. There were no signs of movement. Historians have argued ever since what that means. Had Northumberland chosen not to come to the aid of Richard? Was he too hedging his bets? Hoping that whoever won the battle, he'd be able to come up with a plausible reason why he'd supported either side or perhaps it's just the chaos of battle messages get lost it's not as easy as it sounds to bring thousands of men from one side of battle to

another they'd prepared their positions there they were ready to fight to suddenly gather them all up and send them to the other flank it's a a complicated business. Either way, Norfolk's men were on their own, and Richard decided to take matters into his own hands. He'd spotted Henry Tudor some distance behind his own main attack. Henry, I remember, was lurking at the back with his bodyguards. Richard decided that, as so often on a medieval battlefield, the quickest way to bring this to a conclusion would be to decapitate the enemy, to seek and destroy the enemy commander, the pretender Henry Tudor. Just like in the Battle of Hastings, you're probably not going to stay and fight to

try and uphold the claim to the crown of a corpse. And so Richard roared that he would kill the Welsh milksop. He gathered cavalrymen around him, we think perhaps 800, perhaps around a thousand knights, and he galloped down the hill aiming straight for Henry Tudor. The men around him were his closest allies, his household troops. These were men who knew they would enjoy no good fortune in a Lancastrian, in a Tudor regime. These were the most committed Yorkists in Richard's army and they followed their king into battle. They fell upon Henry and his bodyguard. The sources all agree, even the ones that aren't very positive about Richard III, they all agree that he fought hard in this

battle. John Roos, who was not above comparing Richard III to the Antichrist, the devil, said, if I may say the truth to his credit, though small in body and feeble of limb, he bore himself like a gallant knight and acted with distinction as his own champion until his last breath. Because that's what Richard now was. He was his own champion. So often in military history we hear of other men, low-born men, dying and bleeding and fighting on some great lord's behalf. But here was King Richard of England staking his claim to the throne, his right to rule, on his own sword arm. He apparently killed Sir John Chaney. He was six foot eight.

He was the tallest soldier of his day, a legend. He'd carried the battle standard of Edward IV, Richard III's older brother, reminding us that there were renegade Yorkists among Henry Tudor's men. In this brutal melee, the man carrying Henry's banner, Henry's standard bearer, Sir William Brandon, was killed. And the principal commander is never far from where his banner is. So we can be sure that Henry Tudor was in the thick of the fighting. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Janaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research.

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Find out who we really were. By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. Wherever you get your podcasts. Richard's own standard bearer, the wonderfully named Sir Percival Thrywall, a man from the wilds of Northumberland, right on the Scottish border, who'd fought in his long life against Lancastrians, against Scots, against anyone. He had his legs cut out from under him, but he clung to Richard's standard until the last breath in his body.

It seems that Henry's French mercenary troops were responsible for shielding Henry, keeping him out of the hands of Richard and his brethren. And this was the decisive moment of the battle, not just because the two claimants of the throne were locked in a hand-to-hand struggle, but because the Stanleys now decided to intervene. Richard's men had been struggling on the ridge. Richard himself had now joined the trade, committed himself, with a relatively small number of troops, and the Stanleys realised that they'd ridden into a trap. They chose this exact moment to declare for Henry Tudor. Thousands of Stanleys surged down their hill and surrounded Richard's valiant group of knights, who I'm sure immediately regretted their impetuosity.

Richard's force was now terribly outnumbered. It was surrounded. Richard had gambled everything to strike down the pretender to the throne, but he now found himself the target of those who sought to take his own crown. The Stanleys drove Richard's small group to the edge of the marsh that I mentioned earlier. The king's horse seems to have toppled into it, got trapped in the marsh. He was unhorsed, screaming to his ever smaller group of followers, asking them to rally to him. He said, apparently, he roared, God forbid that I retreat one step.

I will either win the battle as a king or die as one. Death would be Richard's fate that day. We don't exactly know how. One source says that a Welshman basically stove in his helmet, crushed his skull with a powerful blow. And because King Richard's body has now been found, the famous king under the car park in Leicester, which we've talked about in this podcast before, we think that there are about 11 wounds on the body, nine of them to the head. The helmet seems to have been cut away after

death. There are several gouge marks in the front of the skull. These could have been caused after death, but it does look like there's a killing blow. The back of his skull scythed off and another spear thrust up into the base of his skull, right through the brain, that would certainly have done the job. Richard died in the thickest of the fighting. He died as a king. Richard had been right about one thing. The death of one of the leaders in this battle would be the end of it. His force completely disintegrated as news of his death spread. Northumberland and his unoccupied men fled to their northern stronghold

as soon as they heard about the king's fate. The Duke of Norfolk was killed on the battlefield. He would neither be the first nor the last of his name to fall in the king's service. Richard's body was apparently tied up like a hog, a kind of savagely ironic reference to his personal badge, his kind of standard, his symbol was a wild boar. So, trussed up like a slaughtered pig, he was taken to Leicester, apparently with his privy parts exposed. His corpse subjected to mockery all the way. He was put on public display in Leicester and then eventually buried in a religious establishment that was knocked down in the Reformation. Eventually it would become a car park, and then an exciting site of archaeological discovery. As for Henry Tudor, he'd won. He seized the crown by right of conquest. Interestingly,

he didn't claim the crown as the best Lancastrian claimant. He claimed it by right of conquest. He said, I won this battle. I defeated the king. The crown is mine by right. The old story goes that Richard's crown, which he wore into battle, had been found and brought to Henry, and he was proclaimed king on the top of what is subsequently called Crown Hill on the battlefield of Bosworth. You can imagine that Henry rewarded the Stanleys very generously indeed. He made William his chamberlain, he made Thomas the Earl of Derby, and he gave them vast rewards, estates, land. The Earls of Derby are still to this day a huge presence in the northwest of England. The old warhorse, the Earl of Oxford, was given everything that the Yorkists had taken from him and his family.

He was made Constable of the Tower, Admiral of England. And as for good old Jasper Tudor, his uncle, he was made the Duke of Bedford. To the victor go the spoils. Henry may have claimed the crown by right of conquest, but he made a very, very savvy political move that helped unite the aristocracy, unite the country behind him.

He married Elizabeth of York. She was the sister of Edward V and his brother, the two princes in the tower as they're known, so she had impeccable Yorkist blood in her veins. By creating this union, having children, Henry was determined to bring to an end this terrible schism in the Plantagenet house, this enmity between the houses of York and Lancaster. They'd be one happy family again. That was a pragmatic marriage, it was a political marriage, but it's one where, rather romantically, it appears really to have worked. They fell deeply in love with each other. They had several children. Their oldest surviving son was Arthur,

named after the mythical British hero. He was the man who they hoped would rule over United Britain, but he died at 15. And his little brother Henry became king, King Henry VIII, who you may have heard of. But don't forget their two surviving daughters, they became Queens of Scotland and France, respectively. It was quite the marriage. respectively. It was quite the marriage. Henry VII's mother, Margaret Beaufort, was rewarded by her son. She became enormously powerful and influential at court. She gained basically legal and social independence from men. She could control her own estates, lands, money, and she was really one of the most important people on the early Tudor state. Henry VII had won the Battle of Bosworth. It was the last time that two competing kings of England

fought for the crown on the battlefield. It was the last time a king of England was killed on the battlefield. It was, in some ways, the end of England's medieval history. Great changes were afoot, and the 16th century would be quite different to what had preceded it. For the next 120 years the Tudors, as we know them by, would rule over England, Ireland, bits of France and eventually the start of a global empire. And we mustn't forget that after the Tudors came the Stuarts of James VI of Scotland and I of England, and he inherited the throne because he was of direct descent from Henry VII. He and all

subsequent monarchs of England and Britain owe their crown to Henry Tudor and his victory at Bosworth. Thanks for listening you