The Battle of Bosworth Field (22 August 1485) was the last significant battle of the Wars of the Roses. The Lancastrian army, commanded by Henry Tudor, defeated the Yorkist army of King Richard III of England, who was killed in battle; Henry won the title of King of England on the battlefield, the last English monarch to do so. The battle marked the end of the rule of the House of York and the rise of the House of Tudor.
History[]
On 7 August 1485, Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond arrived unopposed on the southwest cosat of Wales, intending to seize the throne for himself. As a descendant of Catherine of Valois, the mother of the late Lancastrian king Henry VI of England, Tudor had a rightful claim to the throne. King Charles VIII of France gave Henry his backing when Henry publicly declared that he intended to marry Elizabeth of York to end the Wars of the Roses, and, when rumors emerged that the widowed King Richard III of England planned to marry Elizabeth himself, Henry sprung into action. Henry and his mercenary army gathered support among Henry's fellow Welshmen, and he also gathered support as he made for London. Henry's force was met by Richard III's army at Market Bosworth in Leicestershire, where the last major battle of the wars would be fought.
Richard initially had numerical superiority, starting out with 18,000 troops. However, Thomas, Lord Stanley and his force of 6,000 men defected to Henry's army, the Earl of Northumberland did not engage in the battle, and many of the Duke of Norfolk's men fled the battlefield after facing stiff resistance from the Earl of Oxford's men. Abandoned by his men, King Richard gambled everything on a charge across the battlefield to kill Henry and end the fight. However, Richard found himself surrounded by Stanley's men, and he was killed in battle. After the battle, Henry was crowned King of England below an oak tree in nearby Stoke Golding, and the Tudor dynasty emerged as the winners of the Wars of the Roses.
Aftermath[]
After Henry dismissed his mercenaries, established his rule over England, and married Elizabeth of York, it seemed as if the war was over. However, Yorkist sympathizers under Francis, Viscount Lovell, Sir Humphrey Stafford, and Humphrey's brother Thomas - who had lost their lands and titles after Bosworth - left the sanctuary of Colchester Abbey in April 1486 and attempted to incite an armed rebellion. Lovell travelled to Yorkshire while the Staffords went to Worcestershire, and King Henry, who was in Lincoln on his first royal procession at the time, set out with his large procession and reached York on 23 April. The rebels were failing to gain traction due to the lack of a central Yorkist figure, and Jasper Tudor, Duke of Bedford issued pardons to all rebels except for Lovell. Lovell fled to Burgundy and met with Edward IV's sister Margaret of York, while the Staffords in Worcestershire were crushed after Lovell's flight. Many other smaller bouts of unrest were quickly quelled.
In Burgundy, Lovell discovered that many other Yorkists, including Captain Thomas David and deserters from the Calais garrison and John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, were also in exile there, and the Yorkists quickly banded together. Meanwhile, Henry imprisoned Edward Plantagenet, 17th Earl of Warwick, who was a potential rival to the throne as the nearest male heir of the Yorkist line. When an Oxford priest noticed a striking resemblance of the Earl of Warwick in Lambert Simnel, he claimed that the Earl had escaped imprisonment, and Lincoln realized this was an opportunity to rally the Yorkist lords at Margaret's cost. This plot ultimately resulted in the final Yorkist defeat at the Battle of Stoke Field.