Richard III of England - Death at The Battle of Bosworth Field

Death At The Battle of Bosworth Field

On 22 August 1485, Richard met the outnumbered forces of Henry Tudor at the Battle of Bosworth Field. He was astride his white courser (a white horse). The size of Richard's army has been estimated at 8,000, Henry's at 5,000, but exact numbers cannot be known. The traditional view of the cause of the King's famous cries of 'Treason!' before falling has been that during the battle Richard was abandoned by Baron Stanley (made Earl of Derby in October), Sir William Stanley, and Henry Percy, 4th Earl of Northumberland. However, the role of Northumberland is not clear; his position was with the reserve — behind the King's line — and could therefore not easily have moved forward without a general Royal advance, which did not take place. Despite his apparent affiliation with Richard, Baron Stanley's wife, Lady Margaret Beaufort, was Henry Tudor's mother. The switching of sides by the Stanleys severely depleted the strength of Richard's army and had a material effect on the outcome of the battle. Also the death of John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, his close companion, appears to have had a demoralising effect on Richard and his men. Perhaps in realisation of the implications of this, Richard then appears to have led an impromptu cavalry charge deep into the enemy ranks in an attempt to end the battle quickly by striking at Henry Tudor himself. Accounts note that Richard fought bravely and ably during this manoeuvre, unhorsing Sir John Cheney, a well-known jousting champion, killing Henry's standard bearer Sir William Brandon and coming within a sword's length of Henry himself before being finally surrounded by Sir William Stanley's men and killed. The Welsh accounts state that Sir Wyllyam Gardynyr killed King Richard III with a poleaxe. The blows were so violent that the king's helmet was driven into his skull. The account reads, "Richard’s horse was trapped in the marsh where he was slain by one of Rhys Thomas’ men, a commoner named Wyllyam Gardynyr." Another account has Rhys ap Thomas himself slaying the king. Richard III was the last English king to be killed in battle.

Polydore Vergil, Henry Tudor's official historian, would later record that "King Richard, alone, was killed fighting manfully in the thickest press of his enemies". Richard's naked body was then exposed, possibly in the collegiate foundation of the Annunciation of Our Lady, before being buried at Greyfriars Church, Leicester. In 1495 Henry VII paid £50 for a marble and alabaster monument. According to one tradition, during the Dissolution of the Monasteries his body was thrown into the nearby River Soar, although other evidence suggests that a memorial stone was visible in 1612, in a garden built on the site of Greyfriars. The exact location was then lost, owing to more than 500 years of subsequent development, until the archaeological investigations of 2012 (see the Archaeological investigation section) revealed the site of the garden and of Greyfriars church. There is currently a memorial ledger stone in the choir of the Cathedral, as well as a stone plaque on the bridge where his remains were allegedly thrown into the Soar.

According to another tradition, Richard consulted a seer in the city of Leicester before the battle who foretold that "where your spur should strike on the ride into battle, your head shall be broken on the return." On the ride into battle his spur struck the bridge stone of the Bow Bridge; legend has it that, as his corpse was being carried from the battle over the back of a horse, his head struck the same stone and was broken open.

Henry Tudor succeeded Richard to become Henry VII and sought to cement the succession by marrying the Yorkist heiress Elizabeth of York, Edward IV's daughter and Richard III's niece.