In Our Time - The Battle of Bosworth Field

Episode Date: April 26, 2012

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Battle of Bosworth Field, the celebrated encounter between Lancastrian and Yorkist forces in August 1485. The battle, the penultimate of the Wars of the Roses, resulted in the death of Richard III. The victory of Henry Tudor enabled him to succeed Richard as monarch and establish the Tudor dynasty which was to rule for over a century. These events were immortalised by Shakespeare in Richard III, and today the battle is regarded as one of the most important to have taken place on English soil. But little is known about what happened on the battlefield, and the very location of the encounter remains the subject of much debate.With:Anne CurryProfessor of Medieval History and Dean of Humanities at the University of SouthamptonSteven GunnTutor and Fellow in Modern History at Merton College, OxfordDavid GrummittLecturer in British History at the University of Kent.Producer: Thomas Morris.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio 4. I hope you enjoy the program. Hello, 118 years of Tudor rule began in a field in Leicestershire on the 22nd of August 1485. That morning, an invading force led by Henry Tudor

defeated the army of King Richard III in a battle which has become as much part of English folklore as its history. Henry was the nobleman who'd returned from France after 14 years of exile to claim the throne on rather spurious grounds. Richard was a usurper, widely suspected of having murdered his own nephews in the Tower of London in order to cease power. The Battle of Bosworth Field proved the decisive confrontation in the bitter and prolonged wars of the roses.

Shakespeare famously dramatised it in his portrayal of Richard III, giving the villainous king Equine Immortality with the cry A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse. With me to discuss the Battle of Bosworth Field are Anne Currie, Professor of Medieval History and Dean of Humanities at the University of Southampton, Stephen Gunn, tutor and fellow in modern history and Merton College, Oxford,

and David Grummitt, lecturer in British history at the University of Kent. Anne Currie, can you, shall we begin with the Wars of the Roses in the 15th century? How did they begin? How did they gather speed? Well, I need to take you back right to 1399 because it was at that point that Henry, the Duke of Lancaster,

Henry Bollingbrook, usurp the throne from Richard II. And that really creates a sort of tension across the whole century. Can you just explain to listeners what you mean, by the word, usurped the throne? Well, yes, he'd been sent into exile by Richard II and he returned rather similarly to Henry Tudor in 1485 and essentially got control of the king and he deposed him. Later on, he was to say that Richard had done pretty terrible things, whether that's true or not. But whatever the case, we ended up with a Lancasterian dynasty on the throne in 1399 in the shape of Henry IV.

Henry the Fourth had lots of problems during his reign, but perhaps things got into plane assailing under Henry V. The great victories in France, stabilised the Lancasterian monarchy. Henry V was succeeded by a nine-month-old baby, Henry the 6th. At first, a sort of stability. but in the 1450s he goes mad and we lose the possessions in France that previous generations had fought for. So the Wars of the Roses proper

really erupt in the mid-1450s with rivalries between the Duke of York who had a claim to the throne and Edmund Beaufort, the Duke of Somerset, who was supported by the King, if you could say he's the Lancasterian Party. That works itself out

until eventually in 1460 after a number of battles between these two factions, Richard of York claims the throne. Although he is killed himself, his son, Edward, becomes king after the Battle of Tauton in 1461, a sort of huge battle. It's very complicated, but I'm afraid that's the way it is. I think you made it quite simple. I mean, 300 and then we have this battle, and we're on to the Edwards. But it's not quite over them, because, in fact, Edward VIII gets deposed in 1470 by a coup within his own group,

by Warwick the Kingmaker, who feels he's not got enough. influence over Edward and Warwick actually restores Henry the 6th to the throne at that point. We have a few more battles, particularly Chukesbury, which sort of ends the Lancasterian claim to the throne. Completely, Henry 6th's son is killed at that battle, Henry the 6th then is murdered and so Edward V is back on the throne. It all looks now hunky-dory for the Yorkists. What they were not expecting in 1483 was that when Edward VIII died and his son Edward VIII became king, the uncle, Edward VIII's brother, Richard Duke of Gloucester, would seize the throne, essentially.

So what we've got is these great aristocratic houses, both with us as were, splendid northern affinities, at each other for control of the throne for about 25 years, and claiming it, they don't want to be usurpers, they want to claim their legitimacy by saying, oh, my wife's great-grandfather was John of Gaunt, who was the third son of it, and that sort of things go. Absolutely, and of course they've got licence to do it because of that usurpation back in 1399.

So they can say it was illegal in 1399, so we'll roll back 70 years of history and start again. Yeah, we can keep doing it. Yes. And so turmoil added to turmoil when Richard Duke of Loster seized the throne, which should have gone to one of the two princes in the tower. Yeah, very much so. And we'll come to that, I hope. Well, we'll be in a minute. Stephen Gunn.

So, as Anne said, Edward VIII died in 1483. Richard the third took the throne. How did he get held of it? Well, Richard acted with remarkable speed and ruthlessness in 483. His brother died on the 9th of April. Richard came south. He'd been in charge of the north for his brother, met his nephew, the prince,

who was now going to be King Edward V. He was about 15 or something, was it? He's a bit younger. Yeah. and he is with his maternal uncles who everyone expects to play a large role in the regime but they don't know quite how large. Richard's clearly worried about how large it would be

so he arrests the maternal uncles claiming that they were armed and ready to spring a coup against him so he sprang a coup against them first. He then heads down to London with Eber VIII ready to play a major role in his regime as protector. Andrew the Fifth being the boy? Eber the 5th is the boy. and people seem to have expected

that Richard was the obvious person to look after things while his nephew grew to be old enough to rule for himself. That seems to have been generally accepted amongst the political classes but then suddenly in the middle of June Richard's ambitions changed Richard arrested and executed

ever the fourth's closest friend and in some ways most powerful supporter William Lord Hastings and then started calling in his own military supporters from the north before, on the 22nd of June, having his own title to the throne proclaimed. Slightly unclearly, as to whether he was proclaiming it on the basis that his brother Edward should never have been king in the first place, and there's some suggestion that Edward was an illegitimate son of their father, Richard Duke of York,

and therefore Richard is the surviving legitimate Yorkist claimant. They seem not to lean heavily on that argument, but instead to go with the argument that Edward, who was a notorious womanizer, had already been married before he married Elizabeth Woodville, the mother of the princes in the tower, and therefore the princes in the tower, Edward V and his brother were illegitimate, and therefore Richard was the only remaining legitimate Yorkist claimant. And from that point, the princes are put in the tower and at some point disappear, and Richard declares himself king and is crowned.

Right, now we're in clear waters now. I mean, as soon as a prince has disappeared, to go back, it is thought, you tell me, but I think it is thought that Richard's done away with them, or had them done away with. It's thought that Richard has had them done away with. It's certainly thought that by many of Eber the Fourth's leading personal servants and household retainers who rebel against Richard in the autumn of 483. Well, their body's found, things like that?

No, the problem is that there's no immediate contemporary evidence. and even foreigners in London report that they were seen in the tower and then they weren't seen anymore. And of course that leaves it open for people to think that Richard organises the murder but covers his ground very effectively, or someone else who thinks that Richard might like it done, organizes the murder and Richard finds out afterwards, or conceivably even that they survive through Richard's reign

and then die subsequently that that does seem extraordinarily unlikely, or that because nobody knows what's going on, they escape and are then in exile on the continent, which is what Perkin Warbeck, who claims to be the younger of the princes in the tower, is claiming ten years later when he challenges Henry the Seventh for the throne. Right, but it's important to say at this stage that there's a very strong notion that Richard has had them assassinated.

There's a strong notion he's had them assassinated, certainly by 1485, when Henry the Seventh is accusing Richard of doing away with his. his nephews, but also there's a presumption, I think, that he's had them assassinated. Even if there isn't that presumption, there's some shock that Richard has deposed his nephew when everyone expected his nephew to be king, and Richard had apparently accepted that his nephew was king. Was this, as it were, attack of villainy, something unexpected in Richard's character, or have

we other evidence of it earlier on? Well, that depends how you read his career in the 1470s and early 1480s. Well, that's what you're going to do, because in a sense there are two Richards. There's the Richard who is his brother Edward's most loyal supporter all the way through the 1470s right up to 1483. Richard went into exile with Edward in 147071 when their other brother Clarence betrayed them both, came back with Edward, led the vanguard at the Battle of Chukesbury

when Edward won the throne back. Richard was then governor of the north in effect for his brother and did a very good job of managing northern politics and leading the north in war against the Scots. And he did lead in war. Quite useful. In those days, people who said we're going to have a war, they led in the war. They led in the war. And Richard is central to the English recapture of Berwick from the Scots in 1482. And he does all the things that you would expect a late medieval military and political leader to do.

He leads in war. He wins people's loyalty and he rewards that loyalty and builds himself up a very strong following in the north, which he's then able to use to back him when he springs the coup in 1883. So that's Richard the model late medieval nobleman. On the other hand, there's also Richard who is extraordinarily ruthless when he has an eye to the main chance. And the best examples of that would be that he falls out with his brother Clarence in the 1470s over the division of the lands of their respective wives. They're married to the two daughters of Warwick the Kingmaker, and Richard pushes very hard to get his hands on his share of the lands. And possibly worse, because he's not picking on somebody his own size,

he takes on the dowager countess of Oxford and supposedly has her more or less in prison, so she claims afterwards to force her to hand over her lands to him. So there is a streak of ruthlessness there, which may be what comes out in 1483. Let's switch across to France, David Grammatt, where Henry Tudor, a man in his 20s, living there in exile. How come he was there and in exile?

Well, Henry was the great-great-grandson of John of Gaunt, through his mother Margaret Beaufort. He was born in 14... And John Gant was the third son. Of Edward III. That's right. So Henry had been born in January 1457. In 1471, he had been forced to flee into exile.

He tried to get to France, but... Why was he forced to flee into exile? Because of his Lancasterian connections, his Beaufort connections, through his mother. His father, Edmund, Earl of Richmond was the half-brother of King Henry the 6th. His father, Owen Tudor, had married Catherine of Valois, Henry V, the 5th's queen. So Henry has close links to the Lancasterian royal family on both sides,

for his father and his mother. So in 1471, he's forced to flee into exile. He aims to get to France, but is actually forced to land in Brittany. So from 1471 until 1484, he's an exile in Brittany under the not quite benevolent guardianship of Francis II Duke of Brittany. And there's all sorts of plots and all sorts of ways in which Edward VIII tries to get Henry back into England. And there's talk of reconciliation between the two. But at the end of the day, nothing comes of that. But nobody really mentions Henry as a claimant to the English throne

until the autumn of 1483. But can we go, I mean, that's 13 years of exile in Britain is, 171 to 83, well, 12, how can I count, one of every, 12 years of exile, it's a long time, isn't he? I mean, has he got money, what does he do, where does he live, that sort of thing? Well, I think as far as we know, he's a hangar-on at the Breton court, really. he's a pretty poor English noblemen in exile there are a few English noblemen in exile in Europe at this point

and Henry is perhaps one of the poorest and one of the least important of them his mother Margaret Beaufort who is in England at this time is constantly I think trying to work for reconciliation between Henry and Edward VIII but there's always a there is a mistrust, I think, there of Henry's Lancastrian credentials.

So you're about to say, then in 1483, his fortunes change. Why was he spotted and picked as the man to lead the charge against the Yorkist? We're talking about an undistinguished nobleman in a not very important part of Brittany. There's a few people around him, but he doesn't have an army. So why did they pick on him and who did pick on him? What did they pick him? What do you expect of him? Okay, well I think the first person, if you like, the person who makes this possible is the Duke of Buckingham. Buckingham was Richard's closest supporter in the events of June 1483.

But by the autumn of 1483, Buckingham has changed his mind. Buckingham has decided that he's not getting what he wants under Richard and leads a rebellion. The rebellion against Richard is headed by. Buckingham but includes two important groups. The first group is the members of Edward the 4th's household, the disaffected members of the Yorkist establishment who I think believe that Richard has probably murdered his nephews. The second group, a much more, if you like, predictable set of opponents for Richard are the Woodville's and the, so these are Edward V's maternal uncles that Steve spoke about. Buckingham's own claim to the throne is very, very

very distant. But anyway, he leads a rebellion against the king. And what happens? It ends in ignominious failure. Buckingham is executed, but in the meantime, Buckingham has invited Henry Tudor to come and be the figurehead, to be the rival claimant, if you like. And poor wins prevent him getting across to join that battle, which turns out it was probably just as well. Yeah, I mean, he lands, I mean, he sort of, um, is off the coast of England, sees which way the wind is blowing, so to speak, he decides to go back as quickly as possible. But then he sets off again, Anne Currie, on the 1st of August in 1485.

What has he assembled around him to give him the confidence to set off, and what has he assembled around him? Well, after the end of Buckingham's rebellion in the course of 1484 and the early part of 1485, there is a lot of contact between him and his would-be supporters in England, a lot of letters, going backwards and forwards. I think he's realising that things are getting sticky for the regime in England. Richard loses not only his wife but also his son,

and that may make him look as though he's kind of cursed, really. Richard, of course, is scared stiff of invasion. We know a lot about the military preparations he took over the course of 1484, saying that men should be ready on an hour's notice to defend the coast and all that kind of thing. But Richard perhaps acts too soon and by the summer, really by July, early August of 1485, he stepped down a lot of these defences.

Now there's a lot more spying going on in the Middle Ages than we might have thought, and I think therefore Henry thinks it's a propitious moment to invade England. It's also interesting where he chooses to invade. He chooses to land very close to today's Milford Haven. It seems a long way from the power bases of England. Richard at this point is in the Midlands.

up in Nottingham. But of course his other uncle on his father's side, Jasper Tudor, the brother of Edmund Tudor, is Earl of Pembroke. And I think he thinks if he lands in Pembrokeshire, he'll get allies, and indeed that is what happens there. He comes over with a lot of support from the French King Charles VIII, probably about 2,000 men who are sort of veterans

of the French wars. And these French mercenaries? Essentially they are. The French king, has been a little reluctant to support him, but he facilitates the provision of these troops. Anything directly English, really? Yeah, and also have been quite a lot of exiles, as David said, and they join with him.

There are quite a few defections, even from the garrisons in the Calais. So Henry invades with, I think, at least about 2,500 men at that point, and he very cleverly really marches up through deepest Wales to Mechinlich, which I can't pronounce probably, but he's there by the 14th. Yes, but all the time he's sending out letters by the king.

He's already claiming to be King of England, and he's sending out letters summoning troops to him. He then manages to get into England at Shrewsbury, and that is interesting, because initially it won't open its gates to him, and then there seems to be some persuasion by the Stanlies. He's also related to his great northern family, and they open the gates.

now got into England and he's gathering troops all the time. Stephen Gunn, so Henry, it must be Richard the Third's nightmare has been realised then. How did he react? Well, Richard, as we've heard, was awaiting invasion, awaiting it at Nottingham. He's actually hunting at Beskwood Park in Sherwood Forest when the news reaches him on the 11th that Henry Tudor has landed and he puts into action the plans that he's already laid. So let us go out to his leading supporters and those leading supporters start raising troops. John Howard Duke of Norfolk, who is someone who will hear more about in the battle, we've got letters from him going to the Pashton family in East Anglia saying, bring the people that you've got ready to come and fight for the king. So Richard's mobilisation

gets going and he marches from Nottingham heading towards where he thinks Henry's army will be and that's more or less the standard thing to do in the Wars of the Roses. Almost all the battles in the Wars of the Roses happen in a triangle between London, Gloucester and York, because the basic principle is you march to the middle of the country, you have a battle, you try to kill your political enemies and rivals for the throne, and then the battle's over. And so he's doing that, bringing them in. How fast is this operation expedited? You send letters, it sounds, we think muddy tracks, days to get there and so on.

But speed is of the essence here. How does it make it work quickly? Speed is of the essence, and it's striking that it takes four days to find out in Nottingham that somebody has landed in Pembrokeshire four days earlier. We know that Richard's calling for people to bring mounted troops, and it's been normal in the Hundred Years' War for English armies to move around on horseback, even if they're going to fight on foot. And that seems to be what Richard intends here,

that most of his army will come on horseback so it can move reasonably fast to concentrate. And so he manages to concentrate around Leicester. We're already starting to get into something we'll have to think about later on, which is that the sources for the battle are so thin that it's hard to know who actually gets there and who doesn't. It's very interesting. A recent document has been uncovered in the Norwich Record Office of a will made by somebody on the 16th of August,

probably one of the people that Howard called out, who says he's on his way to do. join the king to give battle, and he mentions Nottingham. Richard has been at Notting. In fact, he's there on the 20th. Amazingly, he gets to Leicester on the 21st and then the battlefield on the 22nd, so the movement seemed to be very, very quick indeed. David Grammet, can you just break down what we know about Henry's army? I think I would take his shoe, perhaps a little with Anne, over the size of Henry's army. I think the amount of support that Henry's received from Charles the 8th, the French king has...

perhaps been overestimated. Crucially, Charles is supporting Henry because of this complex web of European politics. At the beginning, well, in the autumn, sorry, in the summer, late spring, summer of 1485,

the position in Brittany changes as a change of regime. And Henry is less useful for Charles as a pawn in these European politics. So really, I think, at the last minute, Charles cuts his ties to Henry and Henry is forced to offend for himself

he gets a private loan he's able to recruit a force of mercenaries as Anne said but I think that force of mercenaries maybe a little bit smaller than has been So how many do you think you do? I think probably a thousand. Sorry, he lands on Milford Haven with a thousand mercenies, anybody else? And perhaps 500 other

English exiles the people who joined him in 1483 the people who, some people who'd been with him throughout the 1470s, but very few. So he lands, I would have thought, with an army of near a 1,500 than 2.5,000. Anyway, he gathers, how many does he gather in Wales and who are they? Two important men join his banner in Wales. The first is Sir Rysap Thomas, who Richard had expected to stop him, in fact. And the second is Walter Herbert.

And these two individuals probably is difficult. to say, but again, retinues in the hundreds rather than the thousands. So he's got the Welsh, he's got the French, he's got the English exiles, who come over with him, he gets into Shrewsbury, so his army is then what? I would have thought in the region

of 3,000 to 4,000. And that's the army that goes into battle? There's a few more join his banner. The most important Englishman to join his banner is Sir Gilbert Tolbert, who is a important Midlands landowner. But of course the elephant in the room is the Stanley. It's

Now the Stanleys are Henry's uncle in effect, his uncle and his stepfather. George, sorry, Thomas Lord Stanley is married to Margaret Beaufort now. And Thomas's brother, Sir William Stanley, is in charge of a large force. And this force could well be a couple of thousand. And this force appears to shadow Henry's army. So in effect we have three... So they're in the field on horseback a mile or two away, three or four miles away.

That's what you mean by shadowy? Yeah, right. So in effect, we have three armies converging on the Midlands. We have Richards. Why are the Stanleys standing off? I think the Stanleys are a family of veteran politicians who know that by not committing themselves, they have a flexibility to really reach,

the benefits and see which way the wind is blowing. Okay, because you've got a chance, which we actually aim to get in the programmes like this, which are very focused, to really go into detail. We're a bit hampered here. We didn't know the records were quite as thin, as you indicated, but let's keep going.

So how large was these two armies, how were they equipped? What are we talking about when they mean? I mean, I still think it's likely that at the battle itself on the 22nd of August, Henry had more men. There were quite a lot of defection. and also although he may have many in his retinue,

they all had troops with them. I mean, it was common for a man at arms, even the squire of the household, to have a couple of archers with him. I think also it's likely that Sir William Stanley is already with Henry at the battle. It may be Thomas, Lord Stanley, who holds off. So I would go for the 4 to 5,000 for Henry.

But the important thing there, he's got the crack troops. He's got the mercenaries who are crossbowmen, gunners, all of that kind of thing. And he's got the Earl of Oxford also, as a leading commander with a lot of experience. Richard has probably 6 to 7,000, probably 1,000 of those or more provided by the Duke of Norfolk,

perhaps about the same by the Earl of Northumberland. But interestingly, neither of these protagonists have all that many peers with them. In this period, it's the peers who have the largest retinues and who provide the largest number of troops. Well, 50 or 60 nobles, but only 12 of them turn up for Richard. That's right. Well, possibly only six. some of the other six are not sure.

And one of the other six who may be there, John Lord Grey of Kodner, I think raised a retinue of about 400 men in 1475 when there'd been a big campaign into France. So we're not talking about very large retinues here. But one feature that comes out of all the chronicles is that the Earl of Northumberland's division didn't fight, so in a way the size of an army is irrelevant,

it's whether they engage or not. And also that there were perhaps other defections. perhaps also Richard's. So how many do you think Richard's got? Who is better equipped? Was there any... I don't think they've mentioned guns. You're talking about artillery,

but you're also talking about handheld shotguns, right? Yes. Well, the fines on the battlefield discovered by Glenn Ford in a big project on Bosworth recently suggests, I mean the cannonball's been found lead shot from 30 millimeters to 94 millimeters

suggesting also about at least 10 different artillery pieces but there are some small things that come from handguns as well. Stephen Gunn, how did the battle, they came together on August the 22nd, can you brisk to tell us how the battle unfolded? It was a brisk battle, wasn't it?

It's a brisk battle, of which the details are quite obscure, but there seem to be four phases that together add up to produce the outcome. So first of all, the vanguards of the two armies clashed in hand-to-hand fighting, Henry's vanguard led by the Earl of Oxford,

veteran Lancasterian campaigner, Richard's vanguard led by John Howard Duke of Norfolk, who was one of his own leading supporters. And it may have been that Richard's army expected Henry's army to fold at that point, but they didn't. Fighting was very fierce, and in the end, John Howard was killed. The second significant thing was that parts of Richard's army clearly didn't engage, and the Earl of Northumberland

is the biggest figure who doesn't join in, but it's not clear how many others don't join in when Richard expects them. They're waiting to see what happens, on it? They're waiting to see what happens. perhaps they were ready to say after the battle, well, the terrain was more difficult than we expected. We couldn't get there in time. We didn't understand what you wanted us to do.

We have from other battles in the Wars of the Roses excuses where people explain why they didn't quite manage to do what was expected, which suggests they were biding their time. So that's the second important thing. The third thing is that Richard, then, it appears, saw the quick way to end the battle, which was to charge Henry Tudor in person. And that makes...

You told he put his crown on, is that true? Yes, and there are signs that English kings in battle, like Henry V, probably had a helm with a crown on, and so Richard was probably wearing that. If you want to push the psychology a bit, it may well be that Richard, if he thinks he genuinely does have the best claim to the throne, thinks this is the moment to vindicate my claim in front of all the people who matter in the kingdom and in front of God. This is his appeal to divine judgment. over the succession to the throne, but it's also a very good chance to get to Henry Tudor and kill him, because if you kill Henry Tudor, the battle's effectively over. So Richard charges Henry Tudor and his immediate entourage, leads a charge, and apparently has his own most loyal household knights,

these people who have been helping him govern the north in the 1470s and 80s around him. And that charge crashes into Henry and his entourage. Some of the people around Henry are killed, like his banner bearer of William Brandon, who's the father of Henry VIII's best friend, Charles Brandon. And Henry's French mercenaries, together with Henry's loyal supporters, resist that charge. And at that point, there's key intervention by the Stanle's, who then either take Richard by surprise or help finish him off or something.

So those seem to be the four elements that make up the outcome of the battle. Richard is killed fighting. Contrary to Shakespeare's story, he apparently refuses the charge. chance to get away. There are several sources that say he says, I'm not fleeing, I'm going to stand here and fight for my crown. David Romper, do you have anything to add to that in the terms of the battle that is fought there? I think really we can identify three decisive factors in Tudor's victory. The first, I think, very important is the presence of these skilled French mercenaries, skilled or experienced.

It's true, I think, in the battles of the wars of the roses, just as it is in the Battle of Waterloo. If cavalry come charging at you, if you stand still with a long pike, the horses are not going to run onto you. But you need experience, you need to know that that's what's going to happen. So I think they play a vital role. The second factor, I think, is the presence of Sir William Stanley

and Stanley's intervention, as Steve said. But the third factor, And this is in many ways the most interesting factor is the inactivity of the Earl of Northumberland. Northumberland was one of Richard's closest supporters in the 1470s. We must presume that with him are many of these northern knights and gentlemen who had benefited from Richard's patronage during the 1470s, and by all accounts, they do nothing.

Do you think, Anne Carrey, they do nothing because of the princes in the tower? Is that playing still? I think that would be difficult to substantiate. I think it's more to do with the way. battles are fought. The vanguard was the Duke of Norfolk against the Earl of Oxford. Those would have engaged first. We heard from Steve the charge of Richard in the centre battle. The rear guards may well have been standing off. Battles are very episodic things and therefore they may have seen that things were not going well. A very similar thing happens at Adjinkourt where the

French rearguard also holds off. My reckoning also is that Richard is killed quite early in the battle and there's no need to fight on. He has no male air. and essentially once that happens the battle is over. They take Richard's body into Leicester itself, don't they? Stripitnais. What Coon tells us what they do with it? It isn't too gory. No, it's displayed, naked, I think for three days. The idea is that everybody can come and see

and carry news that Richard is indeed dead. But it is humiliated a bit. It's supposedly thrown over the back of a horse. It's covered with a dirty cloth, that kind of thing. This is a typical treatment of traitors. Warwick had been treated. Warwick the Kingmaker treated similarly after the Battle of Barnet in 1471. Are your comments on this battle frustrated by a porcity of sources?

To be honest, I don't think there's any less in the way of information than for other battles of the Wars of the Roses. Civil wars are never as well documented as international wars, which are planned ahead and where troops are paid. In this case, we have a shortage of English source. because sources are always written by the victor. And so really the main source on the English side is Polydor Virgil, who is writing in the reign of Henry the 7th

and is obviously going to applaud the successes of the Earl of Oxford and of Henry himself. We rely on continental sources, and they certainly thought Richard had murdered the princes, and they're based on sort of second, if not third-hand information. But there is an extra problem with the sources, which is that the most of the most of the sources, Vivid English sources are ballads, which appear to have been composed not long after the battle,

but only survive in 17th century copies. So some of the things they talk about are 17th century things, and that might make us dismissive of them. But in terms of naming people who are at the battle, they actually contain a lot more information than sources written nearer the time like Polydor Virgil. But because they're ballads, the fact that they want to tell a good story, so there's one called the Song of the Lady Bessie, which is all about how Elizabeth of York is desperately in love with Henry the 7th and wants him brought over from Britain. that shapes them and the demands of rhyme

and the demands of alliteration shape them because they're written in northern alliterative verse so they have to have lots about how the Lord Stanley's both stern and stout and obviously that shapes the kind of story they tell he may well have been but they're also to vindicate the stanleys because William Stanley actually rebelled against Henry the 7th within a few years so they're trying to redeem

the reputation of the stanleys. I suppose the difference about Bosworth which makes the sources in some ways a little bit richer is that we do actually have a couple of eyewitness accounts for Bosworth. We have a letter written supposedly by a French mercenary the day after the battle. What does he say? Well, he sort of talks really about what a hard-fought battle it was and the role that they played, precisely this standing firm during the charge.

But this is quite unusual because for many of the battles of the Wars of the Roses, we don't have any eyewitness accounts. the largest battle, most important battle in many ways, Tauton, is entirely from chronicle and other sources. You see, even that letter by the French mercenary was printed in the 19th century by a French historian and has since been lost, so we're not quite sure whether the text is right and so on.

These difficulties run on. Yeah, we also have a letter which was written by a Spaniard and he got information from another Spaniard called Salazar, who was in Richards, so it was in Hesas, Richard, and all of that kind of thing. But archaeology is important here. there's been more archaeological work done. Initially, of course, we couldn't find the battlefield of Bosworth,

but the finding of these cannon balls, about a mile and a half away from the traditional site of the battle, it's transforming what we know. It's not just the cannonball finds, but also a little silver gilt. Boar badge, a hilt of a sword, another badge and various coins and things of this. So this is really going to transform our knowledge of the battle.

Was it a surprise to people, Stephen Gunn, that the king had been defeated in this battle. Is there any expressions of surprise in any of the accounts? There are expressions of regret, particularly at York, so there is a sense in which this is a northern king who's been defeated by unknown and southern forces. But I think something we haven't stressed enough yet is that because Henry had promised in Brittany at Christmas 1483

that if his supporters could get him to England, he would marry Elizabeth of York, who is Eber the 4th's daughter, and therefore the princes in the tower, assuming to have been eliminated, is now the heir to Edward the 4th. That makes in a sense, Henry, not only the best Lancastrian claimant, when the Lancastrians are running out of claimants, it also makes him the best Yorkist claimant if he's married to Elizabeth of York. So the sense that if you can get this family, which is now going to be a Yorkist and Lancasterian family, on the throne, married and breeding fast, you've then got some different kind of future, that I think doesn't mean something to people. So the fact that Henry married Elizabeth of York and that they had

Prince Arthur very rapidly by the end of 1486, that started to change the political constellation. Well, I'm glad you mentioned running out of contenders for the crime, because we are talking just, there isn't time to develop this, but the plague keeps looping in and out of the country and taking away a great number of people. What's the figure about the aristocracy? They lose a quarter of the men in every 25 years or something, and to the plague itself. So that is making it more difficult to them. And to the wars of the roses as well, many peers are killed

in a battle like Howard Duke of Norfolk, although his son, the Earl of Surrey who gets away in his prison for a while is then reinstated in the dukedom. Sorry, one of the interesting things about the aftermath of the battle, for me at least, is this question

of regret. And I think in many ways it's a question of indifference. There's a wonderful will made by John Lord Mountjoy in 1485 in which he advises his heir not to seek to be great about princes for it is dangerous. And one of the reasons perhaps why there are so few noblemen present on both sides at the Battle of Bosworth is people are actually a bit fed up of the Wars of the Roses by now. And there's a sort of a, oh gosh, okay, another king syndrome coming into play in 1485.

How long did it take Henry to get a grip on the country? Because he did get a grip. He did get a grip. militarily, it takes longer than you might think in that there are serious Yorkist challenges in 1487. He has to fight another battle in the Midlands at Stoke by Newark. And then there's a further big rebellion, they're not necessarily a Yorkist rebellion in 1489,

but he has to march north to deal with that. The Earl of Northumberland is killed by tax rioters, and it develops into a bigger rebellion. Tax rioters? Tax rioters, because Henry... That thing again. It keeps coming up in English history. It does. Henry is ambitious to make the tax system more effective,

and people tell him what they think of it. By killing him? Well, by killing the Earl of Northumberland. And then again, in the mid-1490s, there's trouble from Yorkist pretenders, this case Perkin Warbeck claiming to be Richard Duke of York, the younger of the princes in the tower. And that ends up with a battle at Blackheath,

so they get very close to London. Are we talking about when Henry, as it were, begins to put his personality and imprint on the country. Are we talking about a recognisable change in direction for the country? Yeah, I think, I mean, he's helped by the fact that he's able to put these down, but I think also he is developing new supporters, new titles, restoring the good government that had been really started by Edward VIII after 1471. He becomes wealthier.

They get interests in attacking France. That's always a good way of uniting the country behind you. He's got two sons, of course, and therefore it all looks very successful. It's a contrast of what I said about Richard, being cursed by the loss of his wife and children. After the Tudors go, after Elizabeth goes, and the Tudor propaganda machine, as it were, faltered a little bit. The reputation of people attempt to redeem the reputation of Richard III and say, look, Shakespeare got it wrong, villainous Shakespeare, therefore saying this about Archie. How successful has that been, that attempt to restore it.

his reputation, even redeem it, but Damic Drummond. I think the efforts of earlier 20th century historians and popular writers to restore Richard's reputation have floundered on the fact that the most likely explanation for the death of the princes and it's almost certain they did die in the tower was Richard. And Richard's usurpation was without precedent I think in the weakness of his own position

and was without precedent in the barbarity of the manner in which Richard took the throne. So I think those efforts to restore Richard as good King Richard, I think have really run aground on that point. Richard, as Steve said at the beginning, though, is in many ways an exemplary late medieval nobleman, and late medieval king for those few months in which he is king. So academic historians, I think, are quite prepared to say,

yes, Richard attempted to rule justly. He was a great warrior. He was very pious, but he murdered his nephews. Finally, Stephen, and briefly, at the end of the programme, what significance would you attach to that battle? I think there was no necessary significance, because if an arrow had gone in the wrong direction at the Battle of Stoke two years later, we wouldn't be worrying about the Tudors as a significant dynasty. You might say there's no necessary significance

because as the man in the street in 16th century England, you'd notice high grain prices and things like that more than you'd notice which particular royal family were on the throne. But the Tudors are remarkable, and this starts their rule. It brought us the Tudors. Thank you very much, Anne Currie, Stephen Gunn and David Grummit. Next week we were talking about Voltaire's novel in 1759. Condide. It was immediately banned. It immediately became...

bestseller. Thank you for listening. Thank you for listening to this Radio 4 podcast. If you've enjoyed it, you might like to try others like it, such as Start the Week, or Thinking Aloud, which are both available from the Radio 4 website.