Day of Decision: The Battle of Bosworth
The Wars of the Roses was a civil war fought over the crown of England in the later part of the 15th Century between two branches of the Royal House of Plantagenet, the House of Lancaster and the House of York. The Wars of the Roses was so called because adherents of Lancaster choose the red rose as their emblem and the adherents of York choose the white rose.
The conflict really started in 1399 when King Richard II was overthrown by his cousin, Henry Duke of Lancaster. Henry’s claim to the throne was weaker than that of King Richard’s immediate heir, Roger Mortimer, 4th Earl of March and a descendent of King Edward III’s second son. Nevertheless, Duke Henry became King Henry IV and solidified his hold on England.
Henry IV was succeeded by his son, King Henry V. Henry V was a mighty soldier, whose popularity soared among his subjects because of his victories in France, in particular Agincourt. However, King Henry V died in 1422 and he was succeeded by his infant son, Henry VI.
King Henry VI had the misfortune to have unpopular and incompetent regents running his kingdom for him, particularly the Duke of Somerset and the Duke of Suffolk. These men were blamed for botching the final stages of the Hundred Years War with France with the result that nearly all of England’s holdings in France, except for the port city of Calais, were lost.
Henry VI was not an improvement once he achieved his majority. In the best of times he was considered weak. In the worst of times he suffered from bouts of insanity. During one of those bouts, in 1453, a regency was established under a Lord Protector, Richard Duke of York.
Duke Richard considered that he had a claim to the throne of England greater that King Henry VI, as he was descended, through his mother Anne Mortimer, from Roger Mortimer, the designated heir to Richard II. Duke Richard imprisoned Somerset and put his own cronies in the regency as part of his plot to seize the throne.
Unfortunately King Henry recovered in 1455 and through the efforts of his queen, Margaret of Anjou, Duke Richard was driven from court. Duke Richard gathered an army of feudal retainers and allies and marched on London. He met a royal army at St. Albans on May 22nd, 1455 and defeated it. As a result, along with another bout of insanity on the part of the King, Duke Richard was restored as Lord Protestor and Queen Margaret was charged with the King’s care.
Fighting broke out again in 1459, when a Yorkist Army under Lord Salisbury defeated a Lancastrian Army at the Battle of Blore Heath. There ensued a see saw war that saw the death of Duke Richard of York at the Battle of Wakefield. His oldest son, Edward, took up the Yorkist cause, eventually driving King Henry and Queen Margaret out of the country. With the aid of Robert Neville, Earl of Warwick, styled “Kingmaker”, and having himself coroneted King Edward IV in June, 1461. By 1464, King Edward IV stamped out the last Lancastrian resistance in England.
By 1469, though, King Edward IV had a falling out with Warwick. King Edward had married Elizabeth Woodville instead of the French Princess Warwick had been negotiating for. As a consequence, the Queen’s family gained influence at court at the expense of Warwick.
Warwick raised the standard of revolt, allying himself with King Edward’s brother, George, Duke of Clarence. Warwick defeated King Edward at the Battle of Edgecote Moor and imprisoned the King. However, King Edward’s brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, arrived with a large force, liberated the King, and forced Warwick and George to flee the country.
Warwick then allied himself to Margaret of Anjou and, with the help of France, invaded England, drove King Edward and Richard out of the country in turn, and restored King Henry VI to the throne. King Edward, with the help of the Duke of Burgundy, invaded England, defeated the Lancastrian forces at the Battles of Barnet and Twekesbury, slew Henry VI’s son Prince Edward in battle, captured King Henry, and then murdered him.
The House of Lancaster seemed to have been defeated in detail. King Edward IV ruled in relative peace until his death in 1483. Edward’s twelve year old son was crowned Edward V, with Richard of Gloucester was Lord Protector. But King Edward V soon fell under the influence of his mother’s family, the Woodvilles, who sought to control the regency council.
Richard of Gloucester seized King Edward V and placed him in safe keeping in the Tower of London, along with his nine year old brother, Richard, Duke of York. Then he declared that his brother, Edward IV’s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville was illegitimate, making the two young Princes illegitimate as well. He had himself crowned King Richard III and soon after the two young Princes vanished, likely murdered under mysterious circumstances that remain controversial to this day.
Lancastrian hopes soon centered around Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond. Richmond’s father had been a illegitimate brother of King Henry VI and his mother had been descended from King Edward III. On August 7th, 1485, Richmond landed in Pembrokshire with a small army that consisted mainly of French mercenaries. Accompanied by his uncle, the Earl of Pembroke, and the Earl of Oxford, Richmond marched through Wales, gathering supporters. By the time he arrived in the English midlands, he had a force of five thousand men.
King Richard III gathered a royal army of eight thousand men, along with forces led by Baron Stanley and Sir William Stanley, whose loyalty he distrusted. The two armies met at the field near the village of Market Bosworth on August 22nd, 1485
The Battle
King Richard probably deployed his army on the Ambion Ridge with archers in front, infantry, armed mainly with long spears called bills, behind, and cavalry on the flanks. There was also a small royal guard of about a hundred heavy cavalry in the rear, where King Richard was with a good view of the battle. His plan was likely to bombard the Lancastrian Army with arrow and cannon fire and then envelope it on the flanks.
Richmond’s army approached, very likely in a similar array, with a small reserve of infantry and cavalry. The Stanley force was deployed separately from the two main armies, probably to the south, waiting to determine which side to come down in support of.
When Richmond’s Army got within about 1200-600 yards of King Richard’s position, Richard’s artillery opened fire. The Earl of Oxford, commanding Richmond’s main army, decided to attack King Richard’s right wing, executing a flanking maneuver, and closing in. The two armies closed as Richard’s men tried to maneuver on the uneven ground to meet the threat and soon the fighting was hand to hand. King Richard’s left seems to have been either unable or unwilling to get into the fight.
King Richard noticed that Richmond was in the rear, protected only by a small guard of mixed infantry and cavalry. Deciding to take the chance to reverse the situation, he personally led a cavalry charge with the intent of breaking through Richmond’s guard and killing him, thus ending the battle in one stroke.
As King Richard and his men, armored in heavy plate, thundered across the field, the Stanleys saw their chance. They moved in support of Richmond, rolling up King Richard’s flank, breaking the cavalry charge, and killing Richard. King Richard’s army took to its heels in full flight. The day was won by Richmond and his allies. Richmond henceforth was King Henry VII.
Aftermath
The final battle of the Wars of the Roses took place at Stoke Field in 1487, when a Yorkist army landed from Ireland in support of an imposter styling himself King Edward VI. The battle resulted in complete victory for Henry VII and from then on the Tudor dynasty was never seriously imperiled by a rival claimant to the throne.
King Henry VII set out to repair the damage done England by the constant wars of the previous century and a half. By the end of his reign England had a full treasury, a humming economy, and was a peace with its neighbors.
Nevertheless, the shadow of the Wars of the Roses hung over English politics for decades afterwards. It was fear of dynastic wars after his death that drove King Henry VIII to put aside his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, when she was unable to bear him a male heir. Since the Pope was not in a position to grant King Henry VIII a divorce, this meant a break of England from Rome and the start of a process of making England a Protestant country.
Ironically, though Henry VIII did get a male heir who succeeded him as King Edward VI, it was one of his daughters, Queen Elizabeth I, who proved to be the last and greatest of the Tudor monarchs. The voyages of exploration that she sponsored formed the basis of English naval power and began the building of a world wide British Empire, ensured that North America would be English speaking, and paved the way for a new country in the New World, the United States.
