Seeing the king's knights separated from his army, the Stanleys intervened; Sir William led his men to Henry's aid, surrounding and killing Richard.

[6] The Beauforts were originally bastards, but Richard II legitimised them through an Act of Parliament, a decision quickly modified by a royal decree of Henry IV ordering that their descendants were not eligible to inherit the throne.

[13] After bringing the young king to London, Gloucester had the Queen's brother Anthony Woodville, 2nd Earl Rivers, and her son by her first marriage Richard Grey executed, without trial, on charges of treason.

[40] Three groups, each with its own agenda, stood on Bosworth Field: Richard III and his Yorkist army; his challenger, Henry Tudor, who championed the Lancastrian cause; and the fence-sitting Stanleys.

[45] Richard's army broke through the Scottish defences and occupied the capital, Edinburgh, but Albany decided to give up his claim to the throne in return for the post of Lieutenant General of Scotland.

As well as obtaining a guarantee that the Scottish government would concede territories and diplomatic benefits to the English crown, Richard's campaign retook the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, which the Scots had conquered in 1460.

[57] However, after becoming king, Richard began moulding his nephew, John de la Pole, 1st Earl of Lincoln, to manage the north, passing over Northumberland for the position.

[59] Slender but strong and decisive, Henry lacked a penchant for battle and was not much of a warrior; chroniclers such as Polydore Vergil and ambassadors like Pedro de Ayala found him more interested in commerce and finance.

He surrendered after receiving no aid or reinforcement, but in 1484 escaped from prison and joined Henry's court in France, bringing along his erstwhile gaoler Sir James Blount.

[66] Sir William Stanley, however, was a staunch Yorkist supporter, fighting in the Battle of Blore Heath in 1459 and helping Hastings to put down uprisings against Edward IV in 1471.

The history of Scottish author John Major (published in 1521) claims that Charles had granted Henry 5,000 men, of whom 1,000 were Scots, headed by Sir Alexander Bruce.

[99][100] In their interpretations of the vague mentions of the battle in the old text, historians placed areas near the foot of Ambion Hill as likely regions where the two armies clashed, and thought up possible scenarios of the engagement.

Oxford, seeing the vast line of Richard's army strung along the ridgeline, decided to keep his men together instead of splitting them into the traditional three battles: vanguard, centre, and rearguard.

Northumberland and his men fled north on seeing the king's fate,[1] and Norfolk was killed by the knight Sir John Savage in single combat according to the Ballad of Lady Bessy.

[138] Henry dismissed the mercenaries in his force, retaining only a small core of local soldiers to form a "Yeomen of his Garde",[139] and proceeded to establish his rule of England.

[147] Elton points out that despite his initial largesse, Henry's supporters at Bosworth would enjoy his special favour for only the short term; in later years, he would instead promote those who best served his interests.

[158] Hicks states that the works of Vergil and the blind historian Bernard André, promoted by subsequent Tudor administrations, became the authoritative sources for writers for the next four hundred years.

[159] As such, Tudor literature paints a flattering picture of Henry's reign, depicting the Battle of Bosworth as the final clash of the civil war and downplaying the subsequent uprisings.

By portraying Richard as a hunchbacked tyrant who usurped the throne by killing his nephews, the Tudor historians attached a sense of myth to the battle: it became an epic clash between good and evil with a satisfying moral outcome.

[161] For Professor Peter Saccio, the battle was indeed a unique clash in the annals of English history, because "the victory was determined, not by those who fought, but by those who delayed fighting until they were sure of being on the winning side.

Elton considers the battle as just one part of Henry's struggles to establish his reign, underscoring his point by noting that the young king had to spend ten more years pacifying factions and rebellions to secure his throne.

[163] Mackie notes that contemporary historians of that time, wary of the three royal successions during the long Wars of the Roses, considered Bosworth Field just another in a lengthy series of such battles.

[179] The film depicts the clash between the Yorkist and Lancastrian armies on an open field, focusing on individual characters amidst the savagery of hand-to-hand fighting, and received accolades for the realism portrayed.

[180] One reviewer for The Manchester Guardian newspaper, however, was not impressed, finding the number of combatants too sparse for the wide plains and a lack of subtlety in Richard's death scene.

As time passes, writers of administrative and historical records find it necessary to identify a notable battle, ascribing it a name that is usually toponymical in nature and sourced from combatants or observers.

Basing his opinion on 13th- and 16th-century church records, he believes "Redemore" was an area of wetland that lay between Ambion Hill and the village of Dadlington, and was close to the Fenn Lanes, a Roman road running east to west across the region.

Furthermore, historian William Burton, author of Description of Leicestershire (1622),[188] wrote that the battle was "fought in a large, flat, plaine, and spacious ground, three miles [5 km] distant from [Bosworth], between the Towne of Shenton, Sutton [Cheney], Dadlington and Stoke [Golding]".

Holinshed stated in his chronicle that he found firm ground where he expected the marsh to be, and Burton confirmed that by the end of the 16th century, areas of the battlefield were enclosed and had been improved to make them agriculturally productive.

The inscription on the well reads: Near this spot, on August 22nd 1485, at the age of 32, King Richard III fell fighting gallantly in defence of his realm & his crown against the usurper Henry Tudor.

Thirty four lead round shot[210] were discovered as a result of systematic metal detecting (more than the total found previously on all other C15th European battlefields), as well as other significant finds,[211] including a small silver gilt badge depicting a boar.