The Battle of Bosworth 1485: A rebel army wins the day.
On the 22nd August 1485 Henry Tudor brought a small rebel army to face the much larger Royal army of King Richard lll.
Writers of the time mention a marsh between the two armies. The Stanleys, whose loyalty to either side was unknown, were positioned between the two armies, but to one side; probably to the South.
Richard’s army was said to be twice the size of Henry’s.
The battle started with Richard’s guns opening fire on Henry’s advancing army.
Then archers on both sides loosed their arrows to try and thin out the enemy forces.
Henry’s army was led by John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, who took the main army around the marsh and attacked King Richard’s right flank, commanded by the Duke of Norfolk and the Earl of Surrey. One writer says that fire from the King’s artillery forced this action by Oxford.. This clash of the vanguards was an even fight with each side getting the upper hand at times, but then Oxford pulled back and reformed his men….
Meanwhile, the Yorkist Earl of Northumberland, standing with a sizeable army supporting Richard’s left flank, did not move, possibly because of the marsh in front of him and the stationary Stanley army on his flank.
The Earl of Oxford attacked Norfolk’s army again, but this time using a wedge formation which splits Norfolk’s lines and pushes the Royal vanguard back.
With the battle not going his way, Richard saw Henry Tudor with only a small force of soldiers on the field. He rallied his mounted knights and led a mounted charge across the battlefield trying to kill Henry.
Richard was frustratingly close to killing Henry, even felling his standard bearer, but Henry’s bodyguard protected their leader well.
At this point Sir William Stanley joined the battle – not to help his king, but on Henry’s side.
Richard was unhorsed, White Surrey, his mount, being stuck in the marsh, but he vowed to fight or die as the King of England rather than to leave the field. He was surrounded and attacked by men with swords and halberds and was killed ‘fighting in the thickest press of his foes’.
With their king dead, Richard’s forces started to crumble, the Duke of Norfolk was killed, close to a windmill and his son the Earl of Surrey was wounded and captured. The victorious Oxfords chased down Norfolk’s men and a route followed as men tried to escape.
According to tradition, Sir Reginald Bray found Richard’s Battle coronet, which had been knocked from the king’s helmet, in a hawthorn bush. Henry was unofficially crowned as King of England by one of the Stanley bothers at Crown Hill, Stoke Golding, which overlooked the Battlefield.
A Battlefield Lost and Found
The earliest memorial to Bosworth is King Richard’s Well on Ambion Hill, which was surrounded in stone in the early 19th century.
Based on the written theories available in 1973 Leicestershire County Council chose Ambion Hill Farm to be the location for the Country’s first Battlefield Interpretation Centre to commemorate and tell the story of the events of 22nd August 1485. A trail was set up around the hill and flags dotted about the landscape marked the possible starting positions of the armies. A stone marking Richard’s possible death site was erected near to the village of Shenton.
Since the first exhibitions were opened within the cow sheds of the farm in September 1974, there were several phases of development, including a major extension in 1985 creating new galleries, including a chapel of rest, and temporary exhibitions including Towton and Mary Rose displays.
In 2005 a Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) grant enabled the updating of the exhibition in the light of more recent thinking about the battlefield. This included a gallery dedicated to how the location of the Battlefield had been lost to history and how, with HLF Funding, work was underway to locate the scene of the action which had been hotly debated for 30 years.
The HLF funded Bosworth Battlefield Survey, led by Dr Glenn Foard of the Battlefields Trust, ran for five years, combining documentary, topographical and fieldwork research. The Project aimed to piece together the landscape of 1485, including Shakespeare’s famous marsh, and to locate any evidence of the Battle. A metal detecting survey of a huge area of land finally recovered a unique collection of medieval lead cannon balls and a light scatter of small items lost by combatants in the Battle.
The most iconic find from the survey is the Bosworth Boar, a small silver gilt badge, which was found by Carl Dawson close to the Fenn Lane in 2009.
The Battlefield Survey proved that the Battle was fought about a mile south west of Ambion Hill, on either side of the Fenn Lane.
A press conference in 2010 achieved international interest.
The flags were removed from the landscape and Richard’s Stone was brought back to the Centre.
In 2010 the external trail was refreshed with the new understanding of the Battlefield location and a memorial sundial was created on the top of Ambion Hill, with views across the actual battlefield. A second flag pole was then added to fly Henry’s battle standard next to Richard’s.
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