The Battle of Bosworth ended the Wars of the Roses
On this day · 22 August 1485
On a Leicestershire field, Richard III became the last English king to die in battle and the Tudor century began.
On 22 August 1485, near Market Bosworth in Leicestershire, two armies decided the English crown. Richard III, last king of the House of York, led a force perhaps twice the size of the rebel army brought from exile by Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond. It should have been a comfortable royal win.
It was not. Crucial nobles, above all the Stanleys, held back or switched sides at the decisive moment. Richard charged toward Henry’s standard, was unhorsed, and was cut down “fighting in the thickest press of his foes” — the last English monarch killed in battle. Henry was acclaimed king on nearby Crown Hill.
The crown, it is said, was plucked from a thornbush and set on Henry’s head.
Crowned Henry VII, he founded the Tudor dynasty and later married Elizabeth of York, knitting the warring houses together. Bosworth effectively closed the decades-long Wars of the Roses and the long Plantagenet line, opening a chapter that ran to 1603.
Sources & references
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