Bosworth: The Birth of the Tudors by Skidmore Chris

Author:Skidmore, Chris [Skidmore, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2013-05-22T23:00:00+00:00

PART THREE:

‘THIS OUR ENTERPRISE’

9

MARCH TO WAR

It was shortly before sunset on Sunday 7 August when at half-tide and under a clear sky, the fleet of thirty ships led by Guillaume de Casenove’s flagship, the Poulain of Dieppe, turned inwards into the mouth of Milford Haven. The fleet had been at sea for seven days, though a ‘favourable wind’ had eased their journey. Sailing past the sheer-faced red sandstone cliffs several hundred feet high, hidden from view to the left was their intended destination, the small rocky inlet that formed Mill Bay.

Shielded by two large promontories, the bay was out of sight from the village of Dale and its castle a mile and a half away, where Henry’s landing went unnoticed. Henry had learnt that the previous winter, Richard had sent a ‘cohort’ of men to be stationed there, in order to ‘turn him away from the shore’, yet arriving onshore, there was no sight of armed resistance, no troops shadowing the cliffs or boats skirting the haven, as Henry must have feared, remembering his experiences in Plymouth nearly two years previously.

Henry’s immediate sense of relief was obvious. According to the chronicler Robert Fabyan, ‘when he was come unto the land he incontinently kneeled down upon the earth, and with meek countenance and pure devotion began this Psalm: Judica me deus, & discern causam meam’ (Psalm 43: ‘Judge me, O God, and distinguish my cause’). When Henry had finished reciting the psalm ‘to the end’, he ‘kissed the ground meekly, and reverently made the sign of the cross upon him’. Afterwards, he commanded those around him to ‘boldly in the name of God and Saint George to set forward’. In spite of Henry’s Welsh ancestry, and the location of his landing, it would be the English saint and chivalric hero that Henry would seek to emulate. As the ships were unloaded, one of the principal banners unfurled was one of ‘the image of St George’, though Henry’s Welsh descent was also represented with a second banner of a ‘red fiery dragon beaten upon white and green sarcenet’. Following traditional chivalric precedents, Henry also decided upon landing to knight eight of his most prominent followers – Edward Courtenay, Philibert de Chandée, John, Lord Welles, John Cheyney, David Owen, Edward Poynings, John Fort and James Blount, men who would then have been expected to take up roles as commanders within the army. It was a significant moment, the implications of which everyone watching the ceremonies being performed would have understood: Henry was formally asserting his claim to be the fount of virtue, something only a king could legitimately claim. In knighting his men, Henry was staking out his own claim to be king.

A fragment of the jubilant landing scene is preserved in a eulogy to a Carmarthenshire squire who was present at the landing: ‘You conducted … your king from the water once when chieftains landed and mustered … There were seen our gallant ones and a throng like York fair and the

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