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21 August 1485
Fourteen days after landing in Wales, Henry Tudor had marched across England and was now facing the forces of Richard III at Bosworth Field in Leicestershire.
The battle began when the vanguard of Richard's army, thinking to overwhelm Henry's much smaller force, charged down the hill. But instead of breaking and running, Henry's front line smartly re-formed itself into a dense wedge-shaped formation. Against this, the attack crumbled.
Richard now caught sight of Henry with only a small detachment of troops at the rear of his army. With courage or desperation, the king decided that the battle would be settled by single combat. Wearing his battle crown and, over his armour, his light robe bearing the royal battle arms, Richard led his heavily armed household knights in a charge down the hill. With magnificent courage, he cut down Henry's standard bearer and came within an inch of Henry himself. But once again, Henry's foot soldiers proved capable of assuming an effective defence position.
Richard now looked to Lord Stanley to bring his fresh forces to his aid. But Stanley, husband of Margaret Beaufort and Henry Tudor's stepfather, simply looked on as the king's situation worsened critically. Finally, abandoned and isolated, Richard was unhorsed and run through by an unknown Welsh pike-man. His corpse was mutilated and stripped, and the last Plantagenet king's body disappeared.
Stanley took the opportunity to ingratiate himself with his stepson by crowning him Henry VII on the battlefield.
Why I moved the battle of Bosworth to Atherstone
www.r3.org/bosworth/texts/jones.html
Article by Michael K Jones for the online journal of the Richard III Society, in which he discusses a new theory for the location of the Battle of Bosworth and outlines his findings on Edward IV's illegitimacy, claiming that this made Richard the true heir to the throne.
The Battle of Bosworth, 22 August 1485
www.pomian.demon.co.uk/bosworth.htm
A brief overview and some background to the battle.
Bosworth 1485: The psychology of a battle by Michael K Jones (Tempus Publishing, 2003)
Offers a completely new perspective on the period of English history that we know as the Wars of the Roses.
Get this book
Bosworth Battlefield and Country Park
Sutton Cheney
Nuneaton
Warwickshire CV13 0AD
Tel: 01455 290 429
Traditionally this is assumed to be where Richard III met his grisly end. However, there has been some doubt about this, so in January 2005, the Heritage Lottery Fund awarded nearly £1 million to the Battlefields Trust for a three-year archaeological investigation to track down exactly where the last Plantagenet died.
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