Bosworth 1485 by Michael K. Jones

Author:Michael K. Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus
Published: 2015-11-23T16:00:00+00:00

Alien they seemed to be:

No mortal eye could see

The intimate welding of their later history.

How their collision happened will be the surprising part of the story. Few could have anticipated it. For while Richard re-emerged as a royal duke within a restored dynasty, Henry returned to the careful supervision of his Breton captors.2

Tudor’s Breton experience shaped his outlook, encouraging him to take the stance of an onlooker, and giving him a uniquely different insight into the convolutions of court politics. An extraordinary self-control in adversity, along with a personal remoteness and the keeping of distance, are key to understanding this man. Taken together they imbued him with a deep-seated caution that can be seen in the way he handled all his affairs. One consequence of his long period abroad would have been that Henry Tudor was little known to the majority of the English aristocracy. At first glance it seems most surprising that this obscure figure takes centre stage at Bosworth. But a number of unforeseen circumstances were to push him dramatically into the limelight.

Henry was Margaret Beaufort’s only offspring. Although he had spent little of his childhood with her, she, now married to the steward of Edward IV’s household, the powerful regional magnate Lord Stanley, emerged as an astute negotiator and protectress of his fortunes. By the end of Edward’s reign she was seeking to engineer his return, with a planned marriage to a daughter of the Yorkist King that would ensure Henry lands, title and status. As Richard III prepared for his coronation she and her husband met with him at the palace of Westminster, still in pursuit of this end. However, the attempt to rescue the princes in the Tower seems to have alerted her to the possibility that Richard might not survive as King, and she now plotted with his Woodville opponents, introducing for the first time the proposal that he might marry the eldest daughter of Edward IV, Elizabeth of York. This intended marriage, to a woman regarded by many as rightful heir of the house of York after the death of her brothers in the Tower, was to transform Tudor’s prospects.

In the autumn of 1483 Henry Tudor participated in a rising to overthrow Richard III. Tudor commentators later enhanced his role in this rebellion, claiming its purpose was to put him on the throne, when in reality his part in it was unclear and Richard’s former supporter the Duke of Buckingham may have intended to seize the crown himself. The rising flopped and Tudor’s part in it was hardly heroic: sailing to join it, his supporters became dispersed in a storm and on discovering the state of affairs he declined to land at all but shipped off again, eventually returning to Brittany.

This first clash between the two rivals was hardly auspicious for Tudor’s hopes. However, in the aftermath of the rising, Yorkists who had supported it joined him in Brittany, forming a court-in-exile. Their influence led to the formal betrothal of Henry to Elizabeth of York on Christmas Day 1483 at Rennes Cathedral.

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