The
Battle of Bosworth Field:
The continuing fight
Paul
Trevor Bale
[Ed. Note:
Almost twenty years ago, historian John Gillingham observed that
many maps of the battlefield have been drawn but that "apart
from the fun of making them, they are quite worthless." Still,
the drive to pin down the site of the actual battle is a strong
one, and the positions passionately argued. In this lively review
of the evidence, Society member and film-maker Paul Trevor Bale
makes his conviction about the actual location of the battle site
perfectly clear. The
author notes that he makes the assumption that everyone has a
basic knowledge of the period and its most famous characters and
events. This article copyright Paul Trevor Bale -- all rights
reserved.]
Ambion
Hill in 1973. Photo by Peggy Dolan. |
In 1973 Leicestershire
County Council purchased the piece of land known as Ambien Farm,
on, and around, Ambien Hill, near to the village of Sutton Cheney,
and began to develop a Bosworth Field Battlefield Centre. An historian
was hired to work out the battle moves and positions for the standards
of the various participants that were being made to fly over where
their armies had stood on the morning of that fateful day in August
1485.
Shortly
after the project was instigated, the original historian hired
by the council withdrew, for reasons never stated, to be replaced
by the late Dr. D. T. Williams, lecturer in history at Leicester
University. On Ambien Hill walkways around the hill were being
laid out, the old farmhouse was converted into an exhibition hall,
book shop and snack bar, and next to it car parking facilities
provided. Dr. Williams published a twenty-four page booklet setting
out his case, the council set out their flags and maps to match
Dr. Williams' theories, and the Battlefield Centre opened to the
public.
Since 1973 however, many doubts have been expressed about the
validity of the site, and on the 500th anniversary of the battle
Dr. Colin Richmond published an article in the August 1985 edition
of History Today claiming that Dr. Williams is wrong, and
that the battle was actually fought elsewhere. Dr. Richmond's
account was thought controversial enough to make the front pages
of The Times and Guardian newspapers of July 27th
1985, and what had previously been private academic discussions
became heated public debate.
The
two theories of the battle. Map copyright Paul Trevor Bale.
The nub of
Richmond's argument is that the battle was not fought to the west
of Ambien, with William Stanley intervening decisively from a
position to the north, where Williams places both Stanleys, illogical
from any aspect, but the exact opposite, that is William came
up from a south-westerly direction to swing the day in Henry's
favour, the main battle taking place in the plain to the south
of Ambien Hill, between the village of Dadlington and the hill.
He also forwards the theory that Northumberland, one of Richard
III's chief commanders, was a traitor. This will come as no surprise,
as Richmond seemed to think, to students of the battle, but the
revised positioning of the battle site may prove it to be a statement
that does the Earl an injustice. It is unfortunate that Richmond
made such a bid to be controversial, with comments like 'the manner
of [Richard's] death may account for the sympathy he otherwise
unaccountably evokes.' This naturally angered pro Ricardian scholars,
many of whom attacked the article as a whole, thus discarding
some interesting and salient points.
Naturally
Dr. Williams led the attack, defending his own position along
the way. In a letter to the London Times he wrote, 'Dr.
Richmond makes it clear that he does not like the Battlefield
Centre, but his comment and observations seem to be carrying pique
a little too far.' To close he states that 'there is a good deal
more to be said, but what is here supports my feeling that the
Silly Season has started somewhat early.'
What makes
Dr. Williams think he is right? Some of his theories are dubious
to say the least. A couple of examples would be useful here. Quoting
The Croyland Chronicle,
which states that King Richard's Army 'was encamped at the Abbey
of Mirival at a distance of about eight miles from that town (Leicester),'
Dr. Williams concludes that 'allowing for approximations this
would place Richard's camp...at about nine miles...from Leicester
and...about five miles...from Merevale Abbey, which is at...almost
exactly...the position of Ambien Hill.' These figures, abouts
and almosts, are highly convenient if one is trying to place the
site on Ambien Hill, yet a few weeks later, during a lecture given
on the 31st of August 1985, Williams stated that Ambien Hill is
six miles from Merevale and 10 miles from Leicester......Regarding
the campsite of Henry Tudor, self-styled Earl of Richmond, Williams
had this to say: 'Henry and his army arrived at the final resting
place before the battle, their camp at Whitemoors. The camp itself...must
have been...to the west of the intersection of Watling Street
and the road to Shenton.' According to his notes the source for
this assumption is a 'local but ancient tradition'. On the other
hand, in his article in The Times, Williams dismisses another
local but ancient tradition that had the inhabitants of Stoke
Golding watching the battle from their church tower.
And what
is it that encourages Williams and others to accept one local
tradition while dismissing another? In Williams' case, his theories
support the siting of the battle on the fields and on the land
now owned by Leicester County Council. While this may have represented
his best historical judgement, others have suggested a less scholarly
and more pragmatic motive, one more closely related to what The
Sunday Telegraph called 'The Big Business of Bosworth' in
an August 11 1985 article. Williams placed the battle on Ambien
Hill, they suggest, because that was the only land the Council
could buy.
View
across Redemore looking toward Dadlington. Photo by the author.
The Rev,
Anthony Bardesley, Vicar of Stoke Golding and Dadlington, for
example, defending Colin Richmond's views, states that the farmers
of Dadlington were the first to be approached by the council with
a view to buying their land for a battlefield centre, but refused
to sell. Odd behaviour for a Council that 'knew' the battle took
place across the valley on Ambien hill.
Charles
Ross in his book on Richard III said that 'There are almost as
many different accounts of the battle as there are historians,'
and as if to prove the point and add to this wealth of opinion,
and confusion, there came another book, Australian Michael Bennett's
book The Battle of Bosworth. This gives a clear and fair
account of Richard's life and reign, up to the battle itself when,
once again, the theories start.
On the morning
of the battle Bennett places both Sir William and Lord Thomas
Stanley to the south of Ambien Hill, Thomas on the slopes just
below the church at Dadlington, directly opposite King Richard's
position on the hill, William to his brother's west, nearer to
Stoke Golding, and just south of Henry Tudor's camp on Whitemoors.
This is a direct contradiction of Dr. Williams' plan, although
he does agree with him about the dubious loyalty of Northumberlan.
One of the few points Williams and Richmond agree about, an additional
indication that Richmond's Northumberland theory is nothing new
(of that more anon). Although Bennett's book on the whole challenges
the theory of Dr. Williams and the Tradition, it also suffers
its own contradictions -- publishing a photograph of the replica
set up by the council of Henry Tudor's standard, flying at Shenton,
to the north west of Ambien, with the caption 'the position occupied
by his troops during battle.'
In the text
Bennett states that 'there is...no doubt...that most of the fighting
took place on the borders of the marsh, on the south west slope
of Ambien Hill.' This is illustrated by a map that places Tudor
at the rear of his right wing. That is facing the Sutton Cheney
end of the hill, the eastern end, opposite Northumberland, with
the indication that Richard charged down the hill and right through
the marsh to attack Henry. This accords with his theory that Richard's
horse got stuck in the mire, but little else. Interestingly enough,
though, Bennett suggests a place for the King's death, at a point
on the Shenton road where it even today crosses the river Tweed,
and at the time a sandy ford across the route north. But again,
more of that anon! As can be seen, there is a wealth of confusions,
contradictions, and arguments that have arisen in all the writings
since August the 24th of 1485.
Sandeford,
according to the author. Photo by the author.
Into this
melée then bravely rode Leicestershire local historian Peter J.
Foss, with a clear, concise, uncluttered pamphlet on the position
of the battle. In The Battle of Bosworth - Where Was It Fought?
Mr. Foss concerns himself not with the tactics of a mediaeval
battle, but simply the location of the field. By using available
evidence, and little else, he manages to avoid the pitfalls other
writers have encountered by trying to make their theories fit
the the traditions. of these traditional places associated with
the battles. He says that 'many of the locations are the fanciful
conjectures of dilettantes.'
Of the many
local villages and place names associated with the Bosworth tradition,
it is a good example to quote Foss' article regarding Sutton Cheney
and its church, where Richard is supposed to have heard his last
mass: 'Sutton Cheney is not mentioned in any account befor ethe
late eighteenth century, and none of the early documents mention
King Richard hearing mass anywhere, because either his priests
were left behind in Leicester, or because the celebration articles
were not to be found (e.g., Croyland). It is only with William
Hutton in the late eighteenth century that Sutton Cheney comes
into the picture at all, yet most historians since have made a
similar claim about Sutton Cheney being Richard's Camp.'
Foss goes
on to give similar examples regarding Stapleton, Elmesthorpe,
Shenton, Cadeby, and Stoke Golding, as I have already mentioned.
In fact the only church to have definite associations with the
battle is Dadlington, and these are based on extant documentary
evidence. I was amazed that no one else had seen fit to mention
this before.
Dadlington Church, seen from conjectural site of mass grave. Photo
by the author
The
first document is a royal letter of licence dated 1511, when Henry
VIII allowed the church wardens of Dadlington to raise funds for
the 'bulding of a chapel of Seinte James standing upon a p(ar)cell
of the grounde where Bosworth Feld, otherwise called Dadlyngton
Feld.' Dr. Williams, on the other hand, is on record as saying
that 'as far as he can ascertain, the earliest reference to a
change of nomenclature from Redemore Plain to Bosworth Field,
is to be found in the 1516 printing of Robert Fabyan's Chronicle.'
A letter
of confraternity was issued shortly after the licence, giving
indulgence for those who contributed towards the saying of prayers
'for ye soules of them that were slayne at Bosworth Feilde' to
be said at St. James Dadlington 'chapell to ye wheche ye bodies
or bones of the men slayne in ye sayde feilde beth brought and
beryed.' Thus it was, and is, Dadlington that actually stands
as the official burial place for those that fell on Bosworth Field,
and must therefore have been the nearest sacred place to the battlefield.
Mediaeval man, was after all, a very tidy chap who always cleared
up the mess after his battles, and being religious too, saw the
dead buried as befitted their rank, the common soldier going to
the pit, or pits, in the nearest available ground, preferably
consecrated, while the rich were, naturally, taken home to be
interred in the family vault. [Ed. Note: To follow these arguments
in greater detail, the reader is referred to Peter Foss's new
edition of The
Field of Redemore (1998) and to the new edition of D.
T. Williams, The Battle of Bosworth Field (1996). In the latter,
Dr. Williams offers an alternate reading of the sources in question.
Both publications are available from the Battlefield Visitor Centre
shop.]
The second
document is William Burton's 'Description of Leicestershire,'
first published in 1622. Burton mentions the battle twice in what
is otherwise a topographical book. The entry for Dadlington reads
that 'Dadlington stands neere to the place where King Richard
the Third his field was fought' and that the churchyard of Saint
James was where 'many of the dead bodies (slaine at the said battaille)
were buried.' The second reference in Burton's very thorough Gazetteer,
is in his entry for Market Bosworth, where he simply says that
the battle was not fought at Bosworth but 'in a large, flat, plaine,
and spacious ground three miles distant, between the towne of
Shenton, Sutton, Dadlington, and Stoke.' He also adds that 'this
towne (Market Bosworth) was the most worthy towne of note near
adjacent, and was therefore called Bosworth Field.'
The field from the railway embankment. Photo by the author.
Dadlington
at the time was a village, still is in fact, and Market Bosworth
exactly that, the market town for the entire region. If one draws
a line connecting the four Burton mentioned towns, the northernmost
cuts straight along the north side of Ambien Hill, the eastern
in a south westerly route runs straight to Dadlington, the westernmost
line in an almost parallel direction south west to Stoke Golding,
the connecting southern line straight between Stoke and Dadlington.
In the centre of the box these lines create lies a large, flat,
plain, the centre of which is three miles from Market Bosworth.
Dr. Williams used this quote from Burton to place the battle on
the lower ground leading up the escarpment of the western slopes
of the hill Ambien, hardly between the aforementioned towns.
Apart from
the newly discovered documents, what do we actually know
about the battle, and where it was fought? Unfortunately, not
a lot! The battle was fought at Redemore in the vicinity of Leicester.
The name Redemore is twice mentioned in the York City Records,
'at Redemore near Leicester there was fought a battle', and 'John
Stoner send unto the field of Redemore.' It was not until the
the early sixteenth century that the name Bosworth became associated
with the battle. It is Bosworth Field in Henry VIII's Letter of
License of 1511, as mentioned earlier, in The Great Chronicle
of London, and in Fabyn's Chronicle of 1516 which is
virtually a copy of The Great Chronicle. The former says
that Henry Tudor 'came unto a village callyd Bosworth where in
the ffyeldys ajoynaunt bothe hosts mett,' while Fabyan elaborates
slightly with 'King Richad mette with the sayd Prince Henry nere
unto a vyllage in Leycestershyre named Boswroth, nere to Leycester.'
There were
hills near the battle site used by the troops of the various participating
armies, and a marsh stood at the place of the fight, probably
between the opposing forces at the start of the day. Finally we
know that King Richard was killed, according to Henry VII's proclamation
of August 1485 'at a place called Sandeford within the shire of
Leicester.'
So if these
few facts are all we know, from where do we get the famous traditional
account of the battle that most historians have followed over
the years, an account culminating in Paul Murray Kendall's magnificently
romantic 'swansong of English chivalry', and Dr. Williams' imaginative
mapping out of the Ambien Hill location?
It appears,
from an amateur historian named John Robinson, who in 1785 first
stated 'the Ambien' was 'the supposed place of the engagement.
This was followed three years later by William Hutton's famous
book The Battle of Bosworth, which, in spite of its being
almost totally rejected at the time and since, manages to be be
the account most theories are based upon. For example, the position
of the famous marsh: Hutton placed it on the the north west slope
of Ambien Hill. This discovery was the result of his having trodden
in it near to the spring known as King Richard's Well! The following
year he could find no trace of it, yet insisted that what he had
previously found was 'that marsh'. He seems not to have known
that the marshland in the area had been reclaimed during the enclosure
of Dadlington and Stoke Golding in the 1580s.
As Peter
Foss went on to say in his original article on the Dadlington
controversy, all we know for a fact is 'that the battle was probably
fought in an open space, on a marshy, waterlogged ground, with
hills around it, and that King Richard was killed in the thick
of the skirmish at a significant geographical location, a ford
with a sandy, gravelly bed. And of course, a short distance from
Dadlington Church where the slain from the battle were taken."
Paul Murray
Kendall's 'swansong of English chivalry' charge down the hill
tradition is certainly very romantic and dramatic, and when they/I
make the movie, this scenario will undoubtedly make the battle
one of the high spots of Richard III's story, but is it valid?
Did it happen like this, on or around the hill at Ambien?
Let's start
by comparing the traditional site of Bosworth Field with some
other fifteenth-century battle sites.
On July
the 21st 1403 near Shrewsbury, what can be technically called
the first battle of the Wars between York and Lancaster was fought.
As Burne says in his book The Battlefields of England,
'the two hosts were drawn up opposite one another in the prescribed,
deliberate method of mediaeval times' and those hosts were spread
out across the main local trade route, just to one side of the
chief route to the town. The 'Yorkist' leader, the famous Harry
Hotspur, had his position on a slight ridge that traversed the
large, flat plain, known to this day as the battlefield.
During the
years that followed the battles of Barnet, Blore Heath, Mortimers
Cross, Towton, Tewkesbury, and Stoke, were each and every one
fought on large flat plains, with the opposing forces drawn up
across a road. Burne again: 'in those days contests took two forms,
sieges, in which one side sat down to encompass the other, and
battles, in which one side drew up in a long straight line, and
the other obligingly conformed in a parallel line.' During the
entire period of the wars between York and Lancaster, the only
exceptions to this rule were, St. Albans, fought like 'a Boy Scout
battle' in the streets of the town, and, if we believe the tradition,
Bosworth Field, where the opposing forces slugged it out to start
with on the slopes of a boggy hill, until the disastrous intervention
of the King and his Household, and Sir William Stanley's force,
finished things off for Henry Tudor. .....(If you believe that
you'll believe anything!)
Interestingly
the Shrewsbury scenario, well documented at the time, unlike so
many an important mediaeval battle, bears a remarkable resemblance
to both Hastings and Bosworth, the only two occasions in English
history when the king has been killed in action. As Burne puts
it, "The battle, after an initial attack on Hotspur by the King's
archers up the slight ridge that was Hotspur's position, became
a general melèe, when Hotspur's men pursued the retreating
royal troops down the hill onto the plain.' At this point Prince
Henry's ( the future Henry V ) troops intervened from the left
flank, and Hotspur found himself surrounded, and was killed.
There is
an interesting local legend at Blore Heath that too bears a remarkable
resemblance to one at Bosworth. At Bosworth the inhabitants of
Stoke Golding are reported to have watched the battle from their
church tower, although the tower holds few people safely. At Blore
Heath, according to Jean de Maurin's Chronicle, Queen Margaret
of Lancaster observed the fighting from Mucclestone Church Tower,
until, realising the day was lost, took flight. John Gillingham
in his book The Wars of the Roses says 'as a story this
one is typical of local tradition, its fundamental uselessness
half concealed by the veneer of topographical precision'. Exit
Queen Margaret, shoes of her horse reversed to prevent pursuit,
the inhabitants of Stoke Golding, and how many other local traditions
that go to make up the Bosworth legend?
Why has
no account of the battle come down to us from a local source,
if so many people were just standing about watching? It is tempting
to believe that someone obviously had a very good shredding machine
with 'destroy anything good about Richard III or useful to Ricardian
historians' written on it! Polydore Vergil may have had his bonfires
when preparing Henry Tudor's version of things, but how come so
much disappeared? We know more about Senlac/Hastings than Bosworth!
To accept
Dr. Williams and the tradition for a moment, why was Bosworth
fought in a constricted space to the north west of Ambien when
to the south there lay a vast, open plain? Standing in the open
fields a hundred yards to the north of Dadlington Church looking
towards Ambien Hill one is confronted with an obvious site for
a mediaeval battle. The hill Dadlington stands on slopes gently
down to the bed of the valley of the Tweed, where it meets the
old Roman road that runs across the plain of Redemore from the
west, in a straight line, to Sutton Cheney and beyond to Leicester.
At the point where the road meets the Dadlington-Shenton road,
on the south-west side of Ambien, it is still known as Fenn Lane,
a possible clue to the position of the marsh (of which more anon.)
View
toward Ambion from Dadlington. Photo by the author.
Coming along
Fenn Lane from the west, the direction of Henry Tudor's approach,
one progresses across a wide, flat plain, that stretches south-east
to Stoke Golding, north to Ambien Hill, and east, seemingly forever.
Standing on Dadlington hill, looking across the plain, one gets
perhaps the best possible aspect of Ambien Hill. The hill is at
its highest, approximately 400 feet, at the western end, the place
where the tradition places the fighting, then slopes gradually
down to the east where, one and a half miles on, it reaches Sutton
Cheney. The west facing end of the hill, that is the end facing
Shenton and the so-called King Richard's Field with its monument
to the king at 'the place he was killed' is only 352 yards wide.
The southern escarpment is a fairly gentle slope, although it
remains forbidding enough to discourage an approaching army from
attacking directly.
If one stands
at Dadlington and imagines the Royal armies drawn up along the
length of the hill on the morning of August 22nd 1485, one gets
a vivid impression of the awesome task facing Henry Tudor and
his followers. To quote Vergil,
on the morning of the battle 'King Richard drew forth his whole
host out of their tents, and arrayeth his vanward, stretching
it forth of a wonderful length.' This Richard would not have been
able to do on the western end of the hill, 352 yards not being
a particularly wonderful length, and it seems inconceivable to
me that Richard would have displayed his men to the south first,
then ordered them to change round to the west in order to fight.
Thus we
have the King on the summit of Ambien Hill, in the best position
to see all of the surrounding countryside; the Duke of Norfolk
and his son the Earl of Surrey commanding the vanguard, stretched
out along the edge of the hill, facing to the the south, with
the army of the Earl of Northumberland to their left, on the gentler
slopes by Sutton Cheney, probably facing Lord Thomas Stanley,
drawn up on the slopes by Dadlington, sitting neatly, as was his
wont, between the two opposing sides. Thomas' brother, Sir William,
already declared a traitor by the King, sat to his brother's west,
near Stoke Golding, at the rear of Henry Tudor's army, but not
actually a part of it.
The positions
and motivations of the Stanleys are crucial to our understanding
of the battle, and hence there actual location. Dr. Williams has
both Stanleys camped to the north of Ambien hill, a convenient
place for them to be if they were to intervene on Henry's behalf
at Shenton, but a total contradiction to the evidence and any
tactical sense. For a start, they would have had a clear view
of the King's movements, but none of Henry's until he had moved
up from his encampment on Whitemoors, and around the hill. We
also know the Stanleys were divided into two armies, one nominally
for the King, one against. Williams has Thomas taking up a position
to the north of his brother, close to Market Bosworth itself.
In other words, behind the lines of a declared traitor. This positioning
makes nonsense of the tradition of Richard sending to Stanley
to bring his power, as the King's herald would have had to ride
straight through the lines of Sir William Stanley to reach him,
as well as being tantamount to a declaration to Richard of his
sympathy to Henry, not something our Thom would have done before
the fighting.
One thing
is clear in all accounts of the battle, lord Thomas Stanley hovered
between the armies, not showing his hand until he absolutely had
to. As Professor Ross states in his biography of Richard III,
Williams' positioning of Lord Thomas to the north of Ambien Hill
'scarcely amounts to a vantage point between the two armies.'
He also adds that 'this is just one of many inaccuracies in this
account.'
According
to the 'Song of Lady Bessy', an account of the battle probably
written in the early sixteenth century, upon hearing of Tudor's
progress from Wales, the Stanleys moved south from Cheshire to
intercept Henry and block the London road. But with their two
separate armies the brothers were able to play the Stanley family
game of having somebody on the winning side, and while Lord Thomas
retreated before Tudor's forces, William was able to aid Henry
in his triumphal entry into Shrewsbury.
It was at
this point, with William making this unmistakable declaration
for Henry, that King Richard declared him traitor. Yet in spite
of this, according to 'The Song,' when news reached him that Thomas
was under attack at Lichfield, he dashed off to help him, thus
putting his brother's allegiance to the King, if it was the King
attacking him, and there is some doubt about this, in jeopardy.
another ballad account, that of 'Bosworth Field', substitutes
Tamworth for Lichfield. But both places are en route from Wales
to London, through Leicester. William does not join with his brother,
but holds his distance, camping in the fields by Stoke Golding,
while TThomas, making a show of siding with the King, puts up
his tents near Stapleton, to the south east Ambien hill.
To help
our confusion the Croyland Chronicle states that the Stanleys
spent the night before the battle at Atherstone, to the west of
Ambien, and behind the Tudor camp. Whichever is the correct one,
all accounts written near the time place the Stanleys in two separate
armies, and, Croyland apart, all accounts place them to the south
west of Ambien hill and the King. As to the hills used by the
participating armies as mentioned by Vergil Crown Hill seems most
logical for Sir William Stanley's camp, and Dadlington for Lord
Thomas. Crown Hill is where the legend has it that Stanley placed
the crown on Henry Tudor's head, and this is feasible if Sir William
had camped there the night before and after bravely (!) saving
Henry's butt in the battle, withdrew back there to celebrate the
victory.
Dadlington
in turn would have provided Lord Thomas with the best view of
the area after Ambien, while he was deciding which side of the
fence to jump down on. Gairdner, writing in the nineteenthth century,
suggested the earthworks to the south of Sutton Cheney between
Dadlington and Stapleton on Harpers Hill, were Lord Stanley's,
but there would have been little time for such work to have taken
place before the battle. It would however have put him in a beautiful
position, in clear view of both armies, but nearer to the King.
Gairdner
then goes on to put Sir William on Hangman's Hill near Sutton
Cheney, north of his brother, behind the royal lines. A far too
dangerous place for a declared traitor, and an impossible one
from which to mount a rescue operation on Henry Tudor's left wing,
as all writers on the subject agree he did. All writers but Dr
Williams place the Stanleys to the north of Ambien Hill, but this
would have been a totally illogical position for them to be in,
if they were to move to the north west of the King on the morning
of the battle.
One final
mystery involves the Stanleys. In a letter to Rome, written weeks
after the battle, relating to the papal dispensation needed for
the marriage of Henry Tudor and Elizabeth of York, Lord Thomas
stated he had known Henry personally from the 24th of August 1485,
two days after the battle. Is this a simple Mediaeval clerical
error? In view of the uproar caused by Henry VII's dating of his
reign from the 21st, the day before Bosworth, I think the actual
date of the battle would have been well known. Did Lord Stanley
not in fact meet his stepson until well after the battle? Had
he made some sort of non intervention pact with the King when
he attended the council in Leicester the day before?
Sir William
alone got the spoils of the battlefield, Thomas having to be content
with the title of Earl of Derby. Henry was strangely (no pun intended)
unwilling to make his mother a duchess, for to do so would have
made Thomas Stanley a duke. Was Thomas's earldom simple recognition
of his being married to the new king's mother? Then again, why
did Sir William get no title? Was Henry punishing him for having
delayed his entry into the fight for so long? Or did he see how
easily the Stanleys changed their allegiance?.
Any investigation
of Bosworth throws up many questions like these, but perhaps the
biggest question mark of all hangs over the head of Henry Percy,
Earl of Northumberland. Why did he do nothing in the battle? Was
he the villain of the piece, as most Ricardians would have us
believe. What were his reasons for non participation? With the
Stanleys there was an, albeit it tenuous, family connection with
Henry Tudor. Had Northumberland met secretly with Henry before
the battle and made a deal with him? This seems unlikely. We know
he was approached by Henry's agents earlier in the year, and that
he rebuffed them. None of the chronicles suggest that a meeting
with Henry took place, and as he had joined with King Richard
at Leicester on the 20th, it would have been nigh on impossible
for him to slip away for a couple of hours, particularly if Richard
held his loyalty in doubt.
It has often
been suggested that Northumberland was simply jealous of Richard's
popularity in the north and wanted to see him out of the way.
This holds no water, as by the very fact of his being king, Richard
would have been forced to spend most of his time in the south,
and thus was well out of the way. Other reasons for his dislike
of the king have been put forward: Richard's refusal to grant
him wardenship of the the northern marches for life, Richard placing
his nephew Lincoln at the head of the Council of the North, a
position Northumberland felt he should have had himself. But in
all of this, what treatment could he expect from this unknown
quantity called Henry Tudor?. Although the Percies hardly had
a good record in loyalty to the English crown, i do not think
this Percy was considering treason. Perhaps the earl did not take
part in the battle because he was simply not called on, that the
fighting was all over and the king dead before he knew what was
happening. Or perhaps he simply could not get into the battle
because of the marsh.
It seems
to me most likely, even more so when one looks at what happened
after the battle, that on the morning of the 22nd of August, the
troops of the northern counties, under the Earl of Northumberland,
were drawn up on the king's left wing, stretched out along Ambien
hill near to Sutton Cheney, facing the forces of Lord Thomas Stanley
in Dadlington fields, or at a slight angle to them, effectively
neutralising the doubtful northern lord. And between the two forces
there lay a marsh.
The actual
position of the marsh is the most difficult problem of all when
discussing Bosworth field, or Redemore Plain, as it was known
until the early 16th century. "Redemore" means "the place of the
reedy marsh", but where exactly was it? Vergil says "there was
a marsh betwixt both hosts which Henry of purpose left on the
right that it might serve his men instead of a fortress by the
doing thereof, also he left the sun at his back." This reference
might give Northumberland the get out, and prove Henry a better
general than thought before, although it is more probable that
Oxford was in charge, but it also causes us a problem with the
reference to the sun. If Henry was coming across Redemore plain
in the early morning, and all the evidence suggests the battle
was over by 10 o'clock, then the sun would have been in Henry's
face, not at his back. the possibility exists that he moved along
the old Roman road until he encountered the marsh at the old Tweed
crossing, then turned north west to circuit the marsh, at which
point Vergil's statement would have been accurate. Even Shakespeare,
quoting Holinshed, has Richard rushing into action when told 'the
enemy is past the marsh?'
Did Henry
move past the marsh and form up to face Richard on the plain?
It appears that Norfolk attacked early, so that Henry's troops,
under the Earl of Oxford, had to plant their standards firmly
in the ground and attempt to give no quarter. Professor Griffiths
in his book The Making of the Tudor Dynasty has Henry camped
at Merevale the night before, and that the march to meet the king
occupied so much time of the next day that the sun was likely
to have been at his back when the fighting began. but This does
go against all the available sources that, as I have already said,
suggest that the fighting began early in the morning. Perhaps
it is best to avoid confusion and do what Professor Ross did and
assume that Vergil 'simply got his facts wrong.'
As for the
marsh, let me go back to Peter Foss. 'All the flat area between
Fenny Drayton and Dadlington was a fen; it was known to be a fen,
and the Fenn Lanes takes its name from this area. One could imagine
the fen becoming more pronounced at the point where the spur of
the hills began to rise from the flat plain, and especially where
there is a confluence of a number of tributaries. The only evidence,
geographically speaking, of a large area which seems to have been
systematically drained, as this area is known to have been in
the sixteenth century'. Holinshed, writing in 1577, mentioned
the drainage, 'is at the confluence of the tributaries of the
Tweed river under Greenhill Farm, which lies to the north east
of Dadlington, and where, significantly, the route of the Roman
road is lost between the Tweed crossing and Mallory Park. The
evidence is that the Roman road was probably always diverted north
westward up the flank of the hill. In other words, the flank of
the hill that was Northumberland's position. "Could this," Foss
asks, "have been the site of an undrainable marsh?"
Could it
indeed? I believe that the marsh, our marsh, stretched along,
and around, the area of the Tweed brook, and to the east of the
Roman road, where its tributary joined it. The Tweed is crossed
at two points in this area, as it was in 1485; by the old Roman
road at the point it veers off to the north east, and by the Dadlington
to Shenton road just north of the Fenn lanes. Either of these
crossings can be claimed as our Sandeford, the spot Richard is
said to have fallen at. Dr Williams, as inventive as ever, has
Sandeford to the north west of Ambien hill, where he tells us
the inhabitants of Sutton Cheney crossed the Sence brook when
returning from the sand pits of Shenton. There was in fact no
crossing point near Shenton of this brook, the Shenton to Sutton
Cheney road along the north of Ambien hill not then existing.
I would like to suggest that the marsh stretched along the northern
side of the old Roman road, from the Tweed crossing point, towards
Sutton Cheney, and that its extent was deceptive in 1485, there
having been a particularly hot, dry summer.
I believe
that Oxford lined up his troops on the morning of August 22nd
1485, to the north of this marsh, on the open plain, with Henry
on his left flank facing Richard, but slightly back from the main
engagement, in a reinforcements position. Northumberland, like
Richard, not understanding the treacherous nature of the ground,
lined up on the king's left wing. Holinshed in his Chronicles
states that Richard's armies "marched out of the camp unto the
plain" and that at the crucial time in the conflict "Richard rode
out of the syde of the range of the battell" to confront Henry.
This is,
of course, a direct challenge to the the romantic tradition, which
even Rosemary Horrox alludes to in her recent book on Richard,
the notion of Kendall's "swansong of English chivalry" charge
down Ambien hill and into legend, as they say of El Cid
at the end of that film. But in fact, if Richard charged so magnificently,
if it were such a wonderful sight that many stopped fighting in
awe to watch, why do no contemporaries, or near contemporary,
bother to mention it. After all, even his enemies recalled how
brave was his end.
So what
happened?
Richard
had never before sat and watched a battle he had a command in,
nor significantly, had his brother King Edward. Was Richard on
this August morning again trying to emulate his famous predecessor
by fighting the right wing of his battle and leading by example?
Is Shakespeare's Richard, his "warlike sovereign", in fact an
accurate description of him for once?
Back to
Vergil. "While the battle continued thus hot betwixt the vanguards...
King Richard understood first by espials where Earl Henry was..
wherefore all inflamed with ire, he strick his horse with the
spurs, and runneth out the one side without the vanwards against
him". In other words, Henry was at the rear of his army when Richard's
spies spotted him, and the King was in the midst of the fighting
on his right wing, on the slopes below the west end of Ambien
hill. Richard did not see Henry riding off for help, because he
did not do this.
Thus when
the King of England rode out of his battle to hunt down his rival,
he did not cross in front of the forces of Sir William Stanley,
a stupid and dangerous manoeuvre, to say the least. On hearing
of Norfolk's death, his frustration boiled over. Having ridden
out of the right wing with his household around him, probably
20 or 30 knights, including Ratcliffe, Kendall, and Brackenbury,
he clashed with Henry's forces at the crossing point of the Tweed,
on the present Dadlington to Shenton road. "Henry perceavyed King
Richard comme uppon him, and because all his hope was then in
valyancy of armes, he receayved him with great courage."
With all
the dust and confusion of battle, Sir William Stanley, from his
position slightly to the north of Stoke Golding, was the only
commander in a position to see what was happening, and came charging
up from the south to support Henry and destroy the King. Or as
Vergil put it "as loe William Stanley with thre thowsand men came
to the reskew." On the far distant left wing Northumberland would
have been able to see none of this. As Croyland states, "while
fierce fighting was going on before the king's position, where
the Earl of Northumberland stood, with a large and well equipped
contingent, no adversary could be seen; no blows were given and
none received."
If the marsh
was extended along that part of the terrain as I have suggested,
perhaps the Earl would not have been able to enter the battle.
Perhaps he was not sent for. The way the royal army was spread
out along the hill would have made communication difficult before
the battle. but, as Ross suggests, "communications in mediaeval
armies were bad once battle had been joined, and Northumberland's
men could only have been committed to the fighting by a sophisticated
right hook flanking manoeuvre, which even disciplined modern armies
find hard to achieve." A.J. Pollard has recently compared Richard
to Henry V, rather difficult to understand in view of the result
of Bosworth, but he does say that Richard "charged recklessly
and impulsively before Northumberland's men had been brought into
action. A tactical blunder rather than a betrayal may have cost
Richard the battle, his crown, and his life".
Northumberland
did eventually submit to Henry, but not on the battlefield, and
the new king sent him straight off to prison, unlikely way to
treat a conspirator whose inactivity had helped him win. The minute
news of Richard's death reached him, Northumberland withdrew,
while his troops, being less dignified, fled in disarray back
towards Cadeby, Leicester, and the north. Weapons found in the
region of Sutton Cheney in 1748 are said likely to have been discarded
by Northumberland's troops as they fled.
As for the
tradition, Dr Williams states that on hearing of Richard's demise,
his troops broke and fled across Redemore plain towards Stoke
Golding and the south, which conveniently explains why "heaps
of bones" have been dug up in Dadlington churchyard, how the Stanleys
found themselves on Crown hill, chasing these fleers as they were,
and why there are no burial pits on Ambien hill, but does not
explain why these men, most of whom came from the midlands and
the north should break and flee south, straight through the opposing
army.
To stand
beneath the Dragon of Cadwallader in the old Shenton station,
the position, Dr Williams would have us believe, of Henry Tudor's
army, and look up at the White Boar standard on the hill above,
begs many a question, chief amongst which is this: why, if his
rival was so close, did the King feel the need to charge down
the steepest part of the hill to get to him, when a flight of
arrows, or a simple cannonade, would have rid Richard of his problem
in no time at all, and with a minimum loss of life? Was the King
suffering from a deep depression, having lost his wife and son
so recently, a mood that made him act stupidly, throwing all to
chance, or the will of god?
In a marvellous
article about Richard III as a soldier, in Richard III: A Mediaeval
Kingship, Michael Jones concludes that 'Bosworth was the first
battle he had commanded, and one he should not have lost,...being
in a position to overwhelm Tudor's forces.'
I have drifted
into the realms now of tactics. But that is another story. Back
to the actual site of the conflict.
In 1642,
not too many miles from Bosworth, another king of England found
himself on a hill, watching a battle. This too was being fought
on a large flat plain, at the very foot of a long steep escarpment,
known as Edgehill. The battle was called at the time Edgehill,
and has been known as such ever since. Not the name of the nearest
market town, Kineton, nor of the plain below, Radway Plain. If,
as the tradition suggests, the battle we now call Bosworth Field
was fought on and around Ambien Hill, why is it not known as the
battle of Ambien Hill, the most pronounced topographical feature
of the area, as was that civil war conflict? Remember that until
1511 and Henry VIII's letter of licence to Dadlington church,
our conflict was known as Redemore Plain, and only by the second
decade of the sixteenth century it had become 'Bosworth Feld,
also called Dadlington field.' Dr Colin Richmond again: 'so far
nothing said or published since the beginning of 1985 has impelled
me to alter my view that it was around Dadlington and not about
Ambien Hill the Battle of Bosworth was fought, all of the battle,
I might add.'
About
the author: Paul
Trevor Bale has
worked in the film and television industries as an Editor since
leaving school in 1966 when the choice between going to Leicester
University to study History, and working on a feature film, was
to the movie mad kid he then was, no choice. He's continued a passionate
interest in the fifteenth century since then, and his lifelong ambition
has always been to direct the film he has written on the story of
the real Richard Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester, and King of England.
His many credits include "Rumpole of the Bailey", "Edward and Mrs
Simpson", and movies with Katheleen Quinlan, Katherine Hepburn,
and a James Bond. He lives in London, but will travel anywhere,
and enjoys doing so whenever the opportunity presents itself.
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