The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and the Rise of the Tudors (34 page)

Fortunately for Henry, it paid off. Charles VIII’s government received the Tudors neither with trepidation nor hostility, but rather with delight. There was no excitement in the French court at the prospect of a renewed Anglo-Breton alliance, and the voluntary flight of the Tudors greatly reduced the prospect of this happening. So the renegade Englishmen were greeted with honour by the French king’s envoys, presented with money, clothes and lodgings, and encouraged to continue their plans to invade Richard’s realm. As they wintered in France they were reinforced by a steady trickle of defectors and sympathisers: John de Vere, earl of Oxford escaped from Hammes Castle in the Pale of Calais and joined the Tudors in November; the academic and rising cleric Richard Fox offered his support from his position at the university of Paris, and former members of Edward IV’s household continued to smuggle supplies and messages out of England to the Tudor court in exile.

This was all extremely irksome to Richard, whose attempts to establish secure and broad-based kingship were undermined by the existence of a possible rival authority, no matter how small and far away. On 7 December 1484, from the palace of Westminster, the king issued a proclamation against the Tudors and their allies. He described them as rebels, traitors, murderers and extortioners ‘contrary to truth, honour and nature’. The proclamation damned Henry’s ‘ambitious and insatiable covetice’ which led him to ‘encroach upon … the name and title of Royal estate of this Realm of England, whereunto he hath no manner, interest, right or colour as every man well knoweth’. If the rebels were to be successful in their plans to invade, Richard warned, they would ‘do the most cruel murders, slaughters, robberies and disinheritances that were ever seen in any Christian realm’. All natural subjects were called upon ‘like good and true English men to endeavour themselves at all their powers for the defense of themselves, their wives, children, goods and inheritances’. They would be in good company, for Richard, ‘a well-willed, diligent and courageous prince will put his most royal person to all labour and pain necessary in this behalf for the resistance and subduing of his said enemies …’
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And indeed, Henry Tudor had begun to style himself as king of England. Around the time of his flight from Brittany to France he began to sign documents with the initial H, a considerable presumption which had not been adopted by any unanointed English king-in-waiting before him. His intention to marry Edward IV’s eldest daughter, Elizabeth of York, remained undimmed, although it was an intention that Richard was determined to subvert. On 1 March 1484 Richard had reached a settlement with Elizabeth Woodville by which she and her girls could leave the sanctuary at Westminster, where they had been for the best part of a year. The king had sworn publicly to ensure that if the Woodvilles would emerge ‘and be guided, ruled and demeaned after me, then I
shall see that they shall be in surety of their lives … [and] I shall put them in honest places of good name and fame …’
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Richard promised to marry the girls respectably and provide modest lands for their upkeep. Rumours began to circulate at Christmas 1484 that he intended to discard Queen Anne and marry his niece Elizabeth himself, despite a closeness in relationship that bordered on the grotesque, even by fifteenth-century aristocratic standards. The prospect was unpalatable – ‘incestuous’ and guaranteed to incur the ‘abhorrence of the Almighty’, was one verdict – but this was Richard, after all, whose attitude towards members of his family had proven to be anything but sentimental. Could he marry Elizabeth? ‘It appeared that in no other way could his kingly power be established, or the hopes of his rival be put an end to,’ wrote one chronicler.
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Queen Anne died on 16 March 1485. She was only twenty-eight and mutterings of poisoning accompanied her demise. These, combined with the lurid speculation about Richard’s intentions, were enough to prompt the king to make a public statement in the presence of London’s mayor and citizens shortly after Easter. He had been advised by his disgusted councillors that to press ahead with plans to marry Elizabeth would incur not ‘merely the warnings of the voice; for all the people of the north, in whom he placed the greatest reliance, would rise in rebellions against him’. For this reason, Richard stood in the great hall of the Hospital of St John and made a denial ‘in a loud and distinct voice’, assuring his people that he did not intend to wed his brother’s daughter. The limits of good taste had been reached.

On 23 June 1485 Richard issued another proclamation against the Tudor rebels in France, damning Henry’s ‘bastard blood both of father side and of mother side’ and warning of ‘the disinheriting and destruction of all the noble and worshipful blood of this Realm forever’ should a Tudor invasion succeed.
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Evidently, Richard was acutely concerned for his crown. According
to Vergil, the king remained ‘vexed, wrested and tormented in mind with fear almost perpetually of the earl Henry and his confederates’ return; wherefore he had a miserable life.’
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Yet he was no more nervous than Henry Tudor, who was, Vergil continued, ‘pinched by the very stomach’ at the rumour concerning Richard’s intentions towards Elizabeth of York, and had also to deal with the wavering of Elizabeth’s half-brother the marquess of Dorset, who flirted with returning to England as a loyal subject of the king. By the height of summer it was clear that both sides needed a resolution. Henry in particular sensed that his chance to strike at Richard was both fleeting and immediate. He borrowed a modest forty thousand
livres tournois
from Charles VIII, took counsel with his uncle Jasper and the other leading exiles, fitted out a small fleet with four thousand men – some of them dredged up hurriedly from the jails of Normandy – and set sail from Honfleur at the mouth of the river Seine. They were headed for the western tip of Wales, the land from which Henry’s grandfather, Owen Tudor, had first emerged, where Edmund and Jasper Tudor had held sway during Henry VI’s reign, and from where the Tudors had fled when Edward IV had retaken his realm in 1471. Their journey, propelled by a helpful southerly breeze, took seven days: plenty of time for those aboard the invasion fleet to consider the enormity of what they were about to attempt.

Henry Tudor was described succinctly by Philippe de Commines as being ‘without power, without money, without right to the Crown of England’.
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Nevertheless, on Sunday 7 August 1485, this unlikely claimant to England’s crown landed at Mill Bay near Milford Haven, waded through the salt water onto wet Welsh sand, knelt and kissed the ground, and uttered the words of Psalm 43: ‘Judge me, O Lord, and plead my cause.’
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His time had finally come.

They marched through the mountains beneath the sign of the dragon. Henry Tudor and his allies had been on the road for a little over a week, travelling on a cautious route and at a slow pace through the rolling and occasionally inhospitable Welsh countryside. Frenchmen, Welshmen, English exiles and a smattering of Scots made up this hotchpotch army, but above their heads the banners of the campaign included a few clear symbols of their intent. The cross of St George and the Dun Cow of the Beaufort family spoke of royal intent and Lancastrian ancestry. The red dragon against a background of green and white reminded those who passed by that as a Welshman, Henry could connect himself not only with Henry VI (who had granted Edmund and Jasper Tudor the right to use it as a heraldic symbol) but with ancient kings of the Britons such as Cadwaladr, whose exploits were celebrated by the bards.
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Their route during the first week of their march had taken them north-east from Mill Bay, via Haverfordwest to Cardigan, then hugging the coastline up to Aberystwyth. This was by no means the most direct path towards Henry’s sworn enemy, the man whom his letters to local Welsh gentry described as ‘that odious tyrant Richard late duke of Gloucester, usurper of our said right’. But it was the safest road to take: partly because south Wales was well secured against the Tudors and partly because Henry entertained a keen hope that his stepfather Lord Stanley and his brother Sir William Stanley would be willing to add their substantial military might from their estates in north Wales and north-west England.

On Sunday 14 August the invaders were at Machynlleth, the small town in the Dyfi valley that had in Owain Glyndwr’s day been the rebel capital of the whole country, and from which it was possible to turn directly east and traverse the mountains of mid-Wales, descending through the marches to reach England by the fertile plain of Shropshire. Even in the height of summer this was rugged and difficult countryside, but after three days Henry’s men had dragged their feet and their guns over the high ground and were approaching Shrewsbury. The English midlands and their chance at seizing the realm opened up before them.

Of all the men and women who had fought for the English crown during the struggles of the century, perhaps none was less familiar to the majority of that crown’s subjects than Henry Tudor. A thin face with high cheekbones framed a long thin nose, a feature shared by his mother, Margaret Beaufort. Round, somewhat hooded eyes formed a tight triangle with his thin, downward-sloping mouth, and dark wavy hair tumbled down almost to his shoulders. Having barely lived in England, he preferred to speak French. But he had already adopted the style and bearing of a crowned king, and his letters calling for support suggest that he was more than comfortable in the language of imperious persuasion that was expected of an English monarch. ‘We will and pray you and on your allegiance straightly charge and command you that in all haste possible ye assemble [your] folks and servants … defensibly arrayed for war [and] come to us for our aid and assistance … for the recovery of the crown of our realm of England to us of right appertaining,’ he wrote from Machynlleth to potential supporters among the Welsh gentry.
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To many of these Welsh supporters he also dangled the alluring prospect of the principality’s ancient liberties and legal freedoms being restored, should he be victorious. All the same, the Tudor rebellion struck most contemporaries as so unlikely that reinforcements trickled, rather than flowed, to his side.

As Henry rode through the mountains, word reached Richard III that the attack he had long anticipated had finally arrived. He was in Nottinghamshire during mid-August, and according to one well-informed chronicler he ‘rejoiced’ at the news, celebrating Henry’s arrival as ‘the long-wished-for day … for him to triumph with ease over so contemptible a faction’. The Stanley family was the one serious ally whom the Tudors could hope to recruit, but Richard had taken precautions to secure their loyalty: while Lord Stanley was absent from the king’s side in Lancashire, he had agreed to leave his son and heir, George, Lord Strange, under royal supervision. Richard did not trust the Stanleys – indeed, as a precautionary measure he had declared Sir William and his associate Sir John Savage to be traitors simply as a warning to others who might consider joining the rebellion – but he had enough of a hold on them to feel that they would think long and hard before attacking their anointed king.

All the same, as the Tudors came down out of the mountains into England, they found that their association with the Stanleys was beginning to work in their favour. On their first arrival at Shrewsbury on Wednesday 17 August, the bailiff, Thomas Mitton, lowered the portcullis against them, swearing an oath that they would have to walk over his belly – implying his dead body – before they were allowed to pass through the streets of the town. After a short impasse, word reached Mitton from the Stanleys that Henry was to be afforded civility and assistance. The rebel army marched through, and in order to protect his oath and his honour, Mitton lay on the ground in front of Henry and allowed him to step over his – very much living – belly as he went.

Little by little, Henry was gaining momentum. Although the nobility remained thinly represented – of the highest ranks only John de Vere, earl of Oxford was with him – the rebel army slowly began to expand with gentlemen who either had connections to the Stanley family or else remained loyal to the memory
of Edward IV, Buckingham and even the duke of Clarence. The Stanleys themselves had three thousand men in the field, although Lord Stanley refused to formally join his forces with the five thousand or so who were directly behind the Tudors. On Friday 19 August they were at Stafford. The following day they had reached Lichfield. The day after that Henry had his army camped around Atherstone, near the border between Warwickshire and Leicestershire.

By this stage, Richard III had travelled from Nottingham to Leicester and had somehow scrambled together an army described as ‘greater than had ever been seen before in England collected together in behalf of one person’. The king rode out of Leicester at the head of his army on the morning of Sunday 21 August with the duke of Norfolk and earl of Northumberland by his side and the crown on his head. ‘Amid the greatest pomp’ and with ‘mighty lords, knights and esquires, together with a countless multitude of the common people’, Richard rode west towards the place where his scouts told him Henry Tudor was waiting.
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By nightfall little more than a mile separated the armies of king and pretender, both of whom were now ready to meet their fate.

Richard III woke early on the morning of Monday 22 August, out of a fitful sleep, plagued by ‘a terrible dream’ in which ‘he saw horrible images … of evil spirits haunting evidently about him … and they would not let him rest’.
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It was so early that the king could not find breakfast in his camp, nor was there a chaplain yet awake who could celebrate the mass. But the discomfort of the night did not dissuade the king from battle; rather, it hardened his mood. His enemy was, to Richard’s mind, the last true obstacle to the final security of his kingdom. He ‘declared it was his intention, if he should prove the conqueror, to crush all the supporters of the opposite faction’, not least since he believed
that Henry Tudor would do exactly the same if the roles were reversed. That day, he told his companions, ‘he would make end either of war or life’.
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He decided at some point that he would ride into battle wearing his royal crown. Everything he was, everything he possessed, would be visibly at stake.

The two armies were camped on either side of a place known locally as the Redesmere – a marshy plain below the sharp slope of Ambion Hill, set in verdant countryside dotted here and there with towns and little villages, including Market Bosworth, some way off to the north. The royal camp was pitched at Sutton Cheney, near the hill: perhaps fifteen thousand men stretched out across the fields, all of them having been encouraged to feed and refresh themselves before the travails that lay ahead. Morale was reasonable, for none had been in the field for more than a couple of weeks, but spirits had all the same been dented by a pair of high-profile embarrassments. The royal captives Sir Thomas Bourchier and Walter Hungerford, both imprisoned in the Tower on suspicion of plotting in 1483, had escaped while being moved in custody, and managed to join with Henry Tudor. It was also suggested, some time after the battle, that during the night before the battle the duke of Norfolk’s tent was graffitied with a defeatist slogan:

The light had barely come up on the camp when, from the vantage point of Ambion Hill, the enemy was spotted on the move, marching north-east in battle formation across the corn fields that lay between the hill and the villages of Atterton and Fenny Drayton. Henry Tudor had beaten Richard’s men to the start, and now the king’s men scrabbled to be ready for the oncoming assault.

Richard’s army certainly appeared as ferocious as the sleepless king who commanded it. Arranged in a single line, they stretched
out for miles, horse and foot alongside one another: swords, armour and sharp arrowheads gleaming, and dozens of lean-barrelled serpentine guns chained together alongside their fatter cousins, the bombards. Some of the infantry carried handguns and when all the royal gunners began to fire, the early morning air would have been filled with caustic smoke, and the field rung with deafening booms. As the arrows were unleashed, the thunder would have been joined by the snap of bowstrings and the deadly fizz of wood and fletchings arcing towards vulnerable flesh.

The rebels’ vanguard was led by the wily and experienced John de Vere, earl of Oxford; the left and right were led by Henry’s allies John Savage and Gilbert Talbot respectively. Henry himself was behind the lines, surrounded by a very few men grouped around the Tudor standard bearer, Sir William Brandon. Mercifully for Richard III there were no Stanleys among the rebel ranks. Although Lord Stanley and Sir William were present near the battlefield they kept their forces mustered separately, arrayed about a mile away, from where they could watch the battle unfold before committing themselves. This was not entirely useful to anyone but the Stanleys themselves. In a fit of pique, Richard sent a message that Lord Stanley’s son, Lord Strange, whom he had brought as his hostage to the field, should be summarily beheaded to punish the Stanleys for their lack of commitment. But as the chaos, thunder and panic of battle unfolded, the orders were never carried out.

What occurred subsequently is hard to piece together. Henry’s vanguard, under Oxford, used the marshiest part of the field as a natural defence on their right flank and came upon the royal vanguard as they ran down Ambion Hill. The two vans crunched into one another, their helmets pulled down over their faces, fighting fiercely hand to hand. Oxford had ordered the rebel troops to fight in tight clusters, no more than ‘ten foot from the
standards’, according to Vergil.
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This caused some confusion to their enemies, watched by Henry Tudor from behind his lines, and King Richard observing from higher ground on the hill.

Henry Tudor and his personal guard were still bunched in a small group below his rival royal standard. To Richard, never short of personal bravery, this seemed to offer an opportunity to end the battle in short order. His enemy was a man who had lived twenty-eight years without ever commanding troops; he, Richard, was a toughened veteran of numerous difficult battles. ‘Inflamed with ire, he struck his horse with the spurs’ and charged around the side of the vanguard towards where his enemy was positioned. His crown was still on top of his helmet.
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Richard slammed into Henry’s men with lethal speed. His assault caused such terror and damage to the rebel leader that his standard bearer was killed and the standard that marked out the commander’s position was hurled to the ground. This was a very perilous situation for any army to endure, since the fall of the standard was generally associated with the defeat and probable death of the man below it. But Henry clung on, although ‘his own soldiers … were now almost out of hope of victory’.
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And his tenacity was rewarded. Seeing Henry in trouble – perhaps also having heard that Lord Strange’s sentence of death had been executed – Sir William Stanley charged his reserve army into the mêlée, casting in his lot with the Tudors at the last possible moment. Three thousand fresh men poured onto the field, scattering the royal army in despair and overwhelming Richard as he fought in plain sight of his rival.

At some point, it seems that Richard must have either lost or removed his battle helmet. It cost him his life. He was struck by several glancing blows, which cut his scalp and took small chunks of skull away. Then he was dealt a heavy blow directly to the top of the head by a small, pointed blade which pierced his skull right through. Finally, a heavy, bladed weapon – it may well have been
the wickedly curved large blade of a halberd – cleaved through the air and removed a large chunk at the base of his skull, opening a huge wound, perhaps severe enough to kill him instantly.
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‘King Richard alone was killed fighting manfully in the thickest press of his enemies,’ wrote Vergil.
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He died, if not a hero, then certainly a staunch and courageous soldier. ‘An end to war or life,’ the king had cried on the eve of the battle. Fate had chosen for him: as one writer at the time marvelled, ‘A king of England slain in a pitched battle in his own kingdom, has never been heard of since the time of King Harold.’
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His death brought the battle – which came to be known as the battle of Bosworth – to an end. Once the fighting had ceased King Richard was stripped of his armour, slung over a horse and taken to Leicester to be buried in the nave of the church of the Greyfriars. Somewhere on his final journey his body was abused and humiliated: a knife or dagger was stabbed so hard through the naked buttocks that it damaged the bone of his pelvis. Then his slashed and bloodied body was slung into a hastily dug shallow grave. ‘God that is all merciful,’ wrote one chronicler, ‘forgive him his misdeeds.’
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