Henry VII

by S B Chrimes

  The government of France was in no hurry, and indeed in no position to extend much practical help to Henry as yet. Many months of uncertainty were to elapse before vague promises were converted into material assistance. The fact was that the French court itself was in grave difficulties and unable to come to a decisive conclusion on the question as to whether it would or would not give assistance to Henry’s project for overthrowing Richard III. Even when the decision was reached to allow and help Henry to start an expedition, the help given was not, it seems, on anything but a very modest scale. No doubt the French government did not view the enterprise as much more than a diversion to hamper Richard III from giving aid to Brittany, and could scarcely have imagined that Henry would achieve the full measure of success that he did. Moreover, if the expedition had not been prepared and launched when it was, the chances are that a little later on, when French policy achieved its more immediate ends in Brittany and had little to fear from Richard III’s possible intervention, no help at all would have been forthcoming for Henry. At the very time when Henry was completing his preparation and was about to set out, French intervention in Brittany with the connivance of the rebel Breton lords procured the downfall and death of Peter Landois on 19 July 1485. On 7 August Henry was to land in Milford Haven; on 9 August, the government of Charles VIII signed the Treaty of Bourges with Duke Francis II, bringing hostilities with Brittany to an end for the time being. Whatever hopes recalcitrant Bretons may still have entertained for help from Richard III were, as it turned out, to be dashed by the battle of Bosworth. In the space of little more than a month, the destinies of France, Brittany, and England for some time to come were given a decisive twist.1

  But as the early months of 1485 wore on, Henry’s own position suffered setbacks. He was able, indeed, to make a show of consolidating his prestige by effectively preventing Richard III from recovering his grip upon Hammes Castle.2 Richard III, when he heard of the flight from there of the earl of Oxford and its captain James Blount, sent a substantial part of the garrison of Calais to recover Hammes. Those still in the castle defended it and sent for aid from Henry’s party. Henry therefore dispatched the earl of Oxford and a force to relieve the besieged. Thomas Brandon with thirty men succeeded in entering the castle and reinforced its defence with such effect that the besiegers allowed the garrison to depart freely, and the whole force left to join Henry in Paris. Richard III at this stage appears to have discounted the chances that Henry would be able to procure support from the French court sufficient to enable him to invade England; he relaxed his vigilance, withdrew his ships and soldiers from the stations they had taken up to ward off attack, and contented himself with keeping a watch on the likely coasts, especially in Wales; and organized a system of beacons to give warning of any future incursion.

  But Richard’s agreement with Queen Elizabeth bore some fruit, to Henry’s embarrassment. Her eldest son, Thomas, marquis of Dorset, was persuaded to try to abandon Henry’s cause; partly because of his estimate of Henry’s chances, and partly because of Richard III’s wiles. Thomas fled from Paris secretly by night, and hastened towards Flanders. This desertion by a man who was acquainted with all their plans greatly disturbed Henry and his party, and they at once sought permission from Charles VIII to arrest him. Permission was given and search parties were sent out. One of Henry’s friends, Humphrey Cheyney, overtook the marquis at Compiègne and managed to persuade him to return to the fold. This disquieting episode contributed to hardening Henry’s resolve that he must soon adventure all, lest others should seek to desert him and his opportunities be lost. He obtained a ‘slender supply’ from Charles VIII, borrowed from him and other private friends, and leaving behind as pledges the unreliable marquis and also John Bourchier, he set out for Rouen. Whilst he was busy organizing ships at the mouth of the Seine, more disturbing news reached him. Richard III’s queen, Anne Neville, had died on 16 March, and the rumour (so we are told) was that Richard himself might seek to marry his niece Elizabeth, and that he had married off her sister Cecily to an obscure man of no reputation. The latter allegation was certainly false, and the former had no substance. But the rumour alarmed Henry greatly – it ‘pinched him by the very stomach’ (in Polydore Vergil’s vivid phrase) - for if he could not himself eventually marry one of Edward IV’s daughters, he feared that some of his friends would forsake him. He consulted a few of his party, and it was decided that in the circumstances it would be profitable to draw to the cause Walter Herbert, &lsquoa man of authority among the Welsh’ and the son of Henry’s former guardian, and to raise the prospect of a marriage with Walter’s sister.1 The difficulty was to communicate any message. Messengers were sent to Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland, who had married Walter Herbert’s eldest sister, Maud, but, no doubt fortunately as it turned out, none of the messengers was able to reach him.

  From the reverse direction it was easier to receive messages, although presumably it was at about this time that Henry was writing in semi-regal style to some of his friends at home, warning them to be ready to support him when he arrived. A specimen of such a letter1 reads as follows.

  Right trusty, worshipful, and honourable good friends, and our allies, I greet you well. Being given to understand your good devoir and intent to advance me to the furtherance of my rightful claim due and lineal inheritance of the crown, and for the just depriving of that homicide and unnatural tyrant which now unjustly bears dominion over you, I give you to understand that no Christian heart can be more full of joy and gladness from the heart of me your poor exiled friend, who will, upon the instance of your sure advertise what powers ye will make ready and what captains and leaders you get to conduct, be prepared to pass over the sea with such forces as my friends here are preparing for me. And if you have such good speed and success as I wish, according to your desire, I shall ever be most forward to remember and wholly to requite this your great and most loving kindness in my just quarrel.

  Given under our Signet

  H.R.

  I pray you give credence to the messenger of that he shall impart to you.

  Already some time previously, Thomas, Lord Stanley, his brother Sir William, Gilbert Talbot, and others had secretly conveyed messages of goodwill to Henry. Now from out of Wales, John Morgan sent word that Rhys ap Thomas and John Savage2 were wholly on Henry’s side, and that the faithful Reginald Bray had collected ‘no small sum of money’ with which to pay soldiers, and advised Henry to set out for Wales as soon as possible. Anxious to avoid any further delay, with all its risks and uncertainties, Henry finally sailed from the Seine with some four thousand men and a fleet of ships, backed by a soft south wind, on Monday, 1 August. How many ships he had acquired, we do not know. As to men, he may have had a hard core of perhaps three to five hundred Englishmen who, as refugees, had joined his forces at one time or another in Brittany or France; but the bulk were such rabble as he had been able to recruit in Normandy,1 captained by Philibert de Chandeé, a man who had some status in Brittany and who apparently had entertained Henry at an earlier stage of his exile.2

  The expedition sailed, so far as we know, without incident, into Milford Haven, and landed at Mill Bay,3 the first beach and cove round St Anne’s Head, on the north side of the west haven, a little before sunset on Sunday, 7 August. Probably a small force was also landed near Angle immediately opposite on the other side of the haven, with a view to striking up to Pembroke Castle.4

  Having landed, out of sight of Dale Point, Roads, and Castle, which he believed might be occupied against him, Henry and his forces marched up the hill and over the headland and took Dale Castle without difficulty. He apparently knighted1 a number of his leaders that day, spent the night at Dale and at dawn set out for Haverfordwest, ten miles to the north. All depended now on how much opposition he would meet in Wales, and how many men would join him before the inevitable confrontation with Richard III or his agents. The uncertainties and anxieties of the march through Wales were great.2 But the disaster which might
easily have overcome Henry and his forces did not happen. As it turned out, although fears were to dog his journey most of the way, he met with no opposition at all in Wales, and none the whole way to Bosworth itself, except the token shutting of the gates of Shrewsbury against him for one night. Although there was no opposition in Wales, there was no great rush to join forces with him. A few joined him from Pembroke, and from places en route,3 but it was not until 12 August that his greatest anxiety was allayed - whether or not Rhys ap Thomas,4 the leading Welsh figure in the region, would join or oppose him. Henry’s promise to give him the ‘lieutenancy’ of Wales should he be successful, apparently sufficed to bring Rhys over to him, with a substantial force at Newtown. Rhys ap Thomas, the son of a substantial landholder in Wales, was born in 1449 and spent some of his youth with his father at the Burgundian court, from which he returned in 1467. For a time he had supported Lancaster but switched to Edward IV, who gave him some recognition and grants: and he ostensibly continued to support York in the person of Richard III. It is probable however that he was won over to Buckingham’s scheme in 1483, even though he took no overt action. According to the family history1 his tutor in early days had been none other than Lewis, the physician to Margaret Beaufort and Queen Elizabeth, and who was thus an excellent channel through which to win over Rhys. Through these means, and also through Morgan of Kidwelly, and John Morgan, later bishop, and others, not only was a personal quarrel between Rhys and Buckingham tided over, but Rhys was persuaded to espouse Henry’s cause. Letters were exchanged between Rhys and Henry after Buckingham’s death, and Henry probably had good reason to suppose that Rhys would come to his aid on arrival in Wales. But Richard III had grown suspicious of Rhys’s reliability in 1483–4 and had extracted an oath of allegiance from him and demanded his young son as a hostage. Rhys confirmed his allegiance but declined to send his son because of his tender age of four to five years. Doubtless Rhys was obliged to move very cautiously, and we can dismiss the family legend that he warmly welcomed Henry at Dale, and made speeches whilst Henry’s French soldiers remained on board ship. Vergil specifically refers to the anxiety Henry felt on the march up to Shrewsbury, and there are no grounds for supposing that he met Rhys before the arrival at Newtown.

  Map I Henry of Richmond’s march to Bosworth, 1485

  With the encouragement of Rhys’s arrival Henry could continue the march into England with less apprehension, and reached Shrewsbury on 17 August. In the meantime he had sent secret messages to his mother Margaret, and Lord Stanley and his brother Sir Gilbert Talbot,1 and others, intimating his intention to cross the Severn, penetrate into Shropshire, and, if possible, advance towards London. The replies he received at Shrewsbury were welcome so far as they were in cash, and at least hopeful in so far as they were promises that his friends would be ready to do their duty in time convenient. But the question very soon was - when exactly would the time be convenient?

  He could not hope to win a major battle with Richard III unless he could obtain much stronger support than he had so far acquired, not even with the reinforcement of Sir Gilbert Talbot, an uncle of the fourth earl of Shrewsbury of the Talbot line, with some five hundred men, which he received at Newport, probably on 18 August. Everything would depend on how far the Stanleys would commit themselves to his cause; only they could command large enough forces to turn the scale, and of Richard III’s principal supporters, only they had shown any inclination to change sides. Without them, the hazards confronting Henry were daunting in the extreme. But the difficulties and dangers besetting the Stanleys were acute also. Lord Stanley’s eldest son and heir was in Richard III’s hands as a hostage, and there was every reason to suppose that the king could command ample forces with which to overwhelm the Stanleys on their own. The Stanleys, therefore, were compelled to move very warily.

  At last, when Henry reached Stafford, probably on 19 August, Sir William Stanley with a small retinue made contact with him, had a short talk with him, and withdrew. What transpired between them we do not know, but presumably sufficient was said to enable Henry to continue the march forward, but it was disquieting enough to give him food for thought. With only twenty men with him, he lost contact with his forces marching on to Tamworth, and spent a very uneasy night as best he could, but was astute enough to pass off his dangerous adventure with a plausible and encouraging tale to his men, when he rejoined them in the morning. That day he was able to meet both the Stanleys at Atherstone1 and to take counsel with them as to the battle that could not be long delayed, for Richard III with the main body of his troops was now very near. But the Stanleys still did not openly join forces with him, and he had to take what comfort he could from the fact that John Savage and others with a ‘choice band’ did join him that evening. On Monday, 22 August, the issue was to be finally joined.

  Richard III had taken up his quarters at Nottingham, probably from the middle of June, to await eventualities, being uncertain as to where Henry would make his landing. On 21 June he ordered the chancellor to reissue the proclamation against ‘Henry Tydder and other rebels’ which had been issued first on the previous 7 December, and this was done on 23 June.2 Commissions of array were also sent out to many shires for the mustering of troops. He did not refuse permission to Thomas, Lord Stanley, steward of his Household, to depart to his estates, although he must have realized that such a request was highly suspicious, and would agree only on condition that Stanley’s son George, Lord Strange, was sent for and obliged to act as his deputy whilst he should be away. A hostage was thus taken and given, but the event would show how effective this would be in restraining Stanley’s actions.

  As news of Henry’s movements at the mouth of the Seine doubtless reached him, Richard III once again desired to have the Great Seal near him for all eventualities; he sent an instruction on 24 July to the chancellor in London to send it up to him, and received it on 1 August, the day on which Henry set sail. But it was not until 11 August that Richard III got word that Henry had made his landing on 7 August.3 The king summoned the duke of Norfolk, the earl of Northumberland, Viscount Lovel, Sir John Brackenbury, and others to muster their forces and join him at Leicester. But notwithstanding the lateness with which he had received the vital news, Richard III did not himself move with any unseemly haste. Perhaps he assumed that Henry’s puny forces would soon be crushed in Wales, by Rhys ap Thomas in the south, or by Sir William Stanley in the north. But just before he set out he received Lord Stanley’s excuses for not obeying an instruction to return to Nottingham, and by the time his son Lord Strange had been interrogated, Richard could have perceived few grounds for further complacency. For Strange disclosed that his uncle Sir William and John Savage had secretly conspired to join Henry, even though his father, so he said, intended to continue to support the king, and offered to write to Lord Stanley to beg him to come at once with all his forces. Sir William Stanley and John Savage were forthwith proclaimed traitors.1 Also before he left Nottingham, the gravest and most menacing news of all was brought to him. On the same date, 19 August, he learned that two days earlier Henry, unharmed and unmolested, had reached and entered Shrewsbury. All hopes that the threat would be confined to Wales, and Henry’s career terminated there, were dashed. Further information indicated that the rebels had moved on to Stafford, and then apparently changed course to Lichfield, which Lord Stanley had evacuated three days earlier, and in the region of which Sir William Stanley was hovering. Decision could not be delayed any longer, and at last, on Friday, 19 August, Richard III moved and made for Leicester. By the night of Sunday, 21 August, all the forces of both sides were encamped in the vicinity of Ambien Hill, about four hundred feet high, set in Redmore plain, roughly midway between the villages of Shenton and Sutton Cheney, less than two miles south of Market Bosworth.

  Many attempts have been made to reconstruct in detail what exactly happened at the battle of Bosworth, but mostly in vain. Plans of precise positions and movements on the field are necessarily conjectural, for no reli
able contemporary account of them was written, or at any rate has survived, and the most likely description, that by Polydore Vergil, was composed some twenty years or more after the event. If his account, based upon what Henry and other surviving participants may have told him, can be accepted, some broad conclusions can be formulated, but later embroiderings and conjectural suggestions must be set aside as invalid if we are to avoid deluding ourselves into imagining that we know more about the realities of the event than we do, or are ever likely to do.2 It is not certain, but most probable that early on Monday, 22 August Richard III arrayed his forces along the top of Ambien Hill, with archers in front under the command of John Howard, duke of Norfolk, with himself and a choice force of men somewhere to the rearwards. Probably still further to the rear Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland, stood with his forces, but as Vergil does not mention him at all until he surrendered without having struck a blow, it is difficult to be dogmatic about his position. It is equally uncertain where exactly Thomas, Lord Stanley, and his brother Sir William, and their forces were located, but it would seem that the two forces were separate and positioned somewhat to the flanks of the main arena, but which one was to the right and which to the left, cannot be ascertained for certain. But as Henry sent a message before the battle to Lord Stanley to come and join him, it can be assumed that he was readily accessible and in a position where such a move would have been possible, and probably he was stationed below the hill and to Henry’s right flank. The brusque reply that Henry received to the effect that he should put his own forces in order and that Stanley would come with his army well appointed naturally vexed and appalled him, for this attitude was not what he expected, and is conclusive evidence that the Stanleys were determined to keep on the winning side, whichever that might prove to be.