Read Bosworth: The Birth of the Tudors Online
Authors: Chris Skidmore
Tags: #England/Great Britain, #Nonfiction, #Tudors, #History, #Military & Fighting, #History, #15th Century
Bosworth: The Birth of the Tudors (62 page)
Ten wounds had been identified on the remains. Eight had been inflicted to the skull area, with two elsewhere on the body. Of course, these wounds are ones that were severe enough to have cut through bone, thereby leaving a permanent mark or damage to the skeleton itself. There could have been other wounds to the body – through soft tissue and organs – of which there is no longer any trace.
The most noticeable wound is at the back of the head, where an entire slice of bone has been sheathed, leaving a flap of bone hanging off still attached to the skull. The slice wound seems consistent with other similar remains found in gravepits at other medieval battle sites, which suggests massive cranial trauma caused by one particular weapon – the halberd. The weapon, mounted on a pole around 6 feet (1.8m) tall, consisted of an axe blade with a spike at its top together with a hook for grappling with and pulling down combatants. It was able to cut clean through bone without leaving any splinters, as can be witnessed on the Greyfriars skull. We can only speculate, but the Burgundian chronicler Molinet describes how, when Richard found himself stuck fast in the marsh into which his horse had leapt, ‘one of the Welshmen then came after him and struck him dead with a halberd.’ There is also an intriguing line in a poem by the Welsh poet, Guto’r Glyn, written shortly after Bosworth, praising the efforts of Sir Rhys ap Thomas during the battle. One stanza relates how ‘He slew the boar, shaved his head’ (Lladd y baedd, eilliodd ei ben). This may demonstrate that an understanding of exactly how Richard had been killed, with the back of his head being literally shaved off by the blow from a halberd, was already common knowledge among the Welshmen in Henry Tudor’s army who had witnessed the king’s final moments.
The halberd wound opening up the skull would have certainly caused almost instant loss of consciousness, with death following shortly afterwards, especially given that the axe blade would have cut into the brain tissue. If the blade had penetrated 2¾ inches (7cm) into the brain, death would have been instantaneous. If this injury had not quite killed Richard, another visible wound would certainly have done so. To the left of the slice wound, in the base of the skull is a smaller injury caused
by a bladed weapon, most likely a sword. We know exactly how far the sword had been thrust through the skull, as a mark is present on the inner surface of the skull, directly opposite the entry point, a distance of 4
⅛
inches (10.5cm). In effect, the blade had been thrust straight through Richard’s brain and did not stop until it impacted with the bone on the other side of the skull.
Three further shallow wounds have been identified on the outer surface of the vault of the skull. Although only slight wounds that shaved away a small area of bone, highly consistent with where the blade of a weapon such as a sword or halberd, the wounds would not have been immediately fatal, but would have bled heavily. More noticeable is a small rectangular or diamond-shaped wound that has pierced through the top of the skull, leaving a visible hole, though not deep enough to have been fatal. It would have been inflicted by a small spiked weapon; the aperture of the hole in the skull is too small to have been caused by a halberd or a poleaxe, but instead seems more likely to have been the result of a rondel dagger, which often bore a diamond-shaped, four-sided blade, being thrust down or pressed into Richard’s skull.
Matching this skull wound, there is also small rectangular ‘punch mark’ on the cheekbone, just below the left eye. Given the delicate nature of the bone around this area, the fact that the wound did not cause more damage suggests that it must have been performed from behind, possibly as someone grappled with Richard, perhaps attempting to stab him in the eye. Strikingly, however, the ‘punch mark’ is so similar in size and shape to the head wound that it is likely to have been caused by the same weapon that inflicted the square wound that cuts through the top of the skull.
There is also a small cut mark on the lower jaw, caused by a bladed weapon, consistent with a knife or dagger. Of course, none of the wounds to the skull could have been inflicted while Richard was wearing his helmet. Either he had lost his helmet in battle, or else it had been forcibly removed. It may be possible that the cut mark on the jaw was caused by the chin strap to Richard’s helmet being deliberately cut away to expose the king’s bare head. In this case, Richard’s death would have been more of an execution on the battlefield than the result of an injury sustained while fighting. Perhaps Richard, having been brought down off his horse in the marsh, found himself surrounded by Henry
Tudor’s Welsh troops. As he continued to fight, he was attacked from behind and held; perhaps his visor was lifted, allowing for the dagger to be gouged into his cheek. Incapacitated, the leather straps of his helmet were forcibly cut away, which also inflicted cuts to his jaw, nicking the jawbone. With his helmet removed, Richard was now at the mercy of his captives: we cannot know the exact sequence of events, but as the halberd axe came crashing down onto the back of Richard’s head, before the sword thrust through his brain, death would have been at least swift. Then, perhaps in some kind of ritualistic fashion, the rondel dagger that had been used to inflict the wound to Richard’s face was pressed down into the top of his exposed and bloodied skull.
Richard’s body would later have been stripped of its armour and, as the Crowland chronicler reported, ‘many other insults were heaped upon it,’ though the chronicler added, somewhat curiously, these were ‘not exactly in accordance with the laws of humanity’. The wounds to the body of the skeleton may reveal what the chronicler had in mind. The two wounds on the postcranial skeleton are likely to have been inflicted after armour had been removed from the body. One, a cut mark on a rib, did not penetrate the ribcage; the other, located on the right pelvis, would have been caused by the blade of a knife or dagger, that must have had been thrust from behind in an upward movement. According to the university’s research: ‘detailed three-dimensional reconstruction of the pelvis has indicated that this injury was caused by a thrust through the right buttock, not far from the midline of the body’. The sources recording the events after the battle concur, describing how Richard’s naked body was flung over the back of a horse as it was carried back to Leicester. Could this have been the perfect opportunity for someone along the route to take a dagger and thrust it into Richard’s corpse, performing the ultimate ‘humiliation injury’?
What is clear from the Greyfriars skeleton is that, unlike other grave finds of those who died in other battles during the civil wars, such as the mass graves discovered near Towton, the face of the victim had not been touched after death. Unlike many of the Towton deaths, whose faces were deliberately destroyed or hacked apart as part of the ‘humiliation injuries’ performed to ensure that the bodies might go unrecognised and therefore never returned to their families, it is clear that Richard’s face was to be preserved intact. His body, going on public
display in Leicester, needed to be recognised as the body of the king. Richard III was dead: there would be no return for the Yorkist king.
The remarkable discovery of Richard’s remains beneath a car park in 2012 reminds us that while history can only be the study of the past that survives, we can always hope to make more discoveries, unearthing further relics of the past, whether from the ground or in the archives. The story of Bosworth remains very much alive.
Chapter 1: Fortune’s Wheel
The family background of the Tudors is covered in R.A. Griffiths and R.S. Thomas,
The Making of the Tudor Dynasty
(Stroud, 1985),
chapters 1
and
2
. Henry VI’s reign and its decline is covered in extensive detail by R. Griffiths,
The Reign of Henry VI
(London, 1981), B. Wolffe,
Henry VI
(London, 1981) and J.L. Watts,
Henry VI and the Politics of Kingship
(Cambridge, 1996). Owen Tudor’s relationship with Katherine of Valois is discussed in Griffiths and Thomas,
chapter 3
; S.B. Chrimes,
Henry VII
(London, 1972)
chapter 1
and
Appendix A
and R.A. Griffiths, ‘Queen Katherine of Valois and a missing statute of the realm’,
Law Quarterly Review
, XCIII (1977), pp. 248–58. Owen Tudor’s arrest is described in Tyrell and Nicholas (eds.),
A Chronicle of London
(1827), p. 123 with further details in
Foedera
, ed. T. Rymer (20 vols, 1704–35), vol. X, pp. 685–6, 709–10 and
Calendar of Patent Rolls (CPR) Henry VI
, vol. III, pp. 182, 225, 283, 285, 344. For Edmund and Jasper Tudor’s upbringing see J. Blacman,
Henry the Sixth
, ed. M.R. James (Cambridge, 1919). The Tudor’s rise to power is covered in R.S. Thomas, ‘The political career, estates and connection of Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke and duke of Bedford (d. 1495)’ (University of Wales, Swansea, Ph.D. thesis, 1971); H.T. Evans,
Wales and the Wars of the Roses
(Cambridge, 1915); Griffiths,
Reign of Henry VI
and Griffiths and Thomas,
Making of the Tudor Dynasty
,
chapters 3
–
5
.
The course of the civil wars of the fifteenth century is best covered by J. Gillingham,
The Wars of the Roses
(London, 1981) and C. Ross,
The Wars of the Roses
(London, 1981). The most modern popular treatment is T. Royle,
The Wars of the Roses
(London, 2009). For the campaigns, their impact on society, and the nature of war in the fifteenth century, A. Goodman,
The Wars of the Roses: Military Activity and English Society, 1452–97
(London, 1981) and the same author’s
The Wars of the Roses: The Soldiers’ Experience
(Stroud, 2005) are invaluable, while the individual battles are chronicled in P.A. Haigh,
Military Campaigns of the Wars of the Roses
(Stroud, 1995). For Richard, Duke of York, see P.A. Johnson,
Duke Richard of York 1411–1460
(Oxford, 1988).
Margaret Beaufort’s background and life is covered in M.K. Jones and M.G. Underwood,
The King’s Mother. Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby
(Cambridge, 1992) and M.K. Jones, ‘Richard III and Lady Margaret Beaufort – a re-assessment’ in P. Hammond (ed.),
Richard III: Loyalty, Lordship and Law
(London, 1986). Details of Henry Tudor’s early life can be found in B. André, ‘Vita Henrici Septimi’ in
Memorials of King Henry VII
, ed. J. Gairdiner (London, 1858) and H. Owen and J.B. Blakeway,
A History of Shrewsbury
(2 vols, London, 1825). John Fisher’s recollections of Henry’s birth are printed in
The English Works of John Fisher
, part I (Early English Text Society, extra series, XXVII, 1876) and also J. Gairdiner (ed.),
Letters and Papers illustrative of the Reigns of Richard III and Henry VII
, vol. I (London, 1861), pp. 422–3.
Chapter 2: To Conquer or Die
Jasper Tudor’s fortunes and rise to prominence at court can be tracked in the grants awarded to him registered in the patent rolls:
CPR 1452–61
, pp.130, 180–1, 267, 486–7, 494, 532–3, 534, 550, 565, 574, supplemented by R.S. Thomas’s thesis. The looming conflict between the houses of Lancaster and York is covered in the works by Gillingham and Royle. The battle of Wakefield has recently been reassessed by H. Cox,
The Battle of Wakefield Revisited
(2010). The account of Owen Tudor’s death is in the
Chronicle of William Gregory, skinner
, ed. J. Gairdiner,
The historical collections of a citizen of London in the fifteenth century
(Camden Society, new series XVII, 1876), p. 211. Jasper Tudor’s letter is printed in W.W.E. Wynne, ‘Historical Papers (Puleston)’ in
Archaeologia Cambrensis
I (1846) pp. 145–6. The Yorkists’ act of attainder against Jasper Tudor is printed in
Rotuli Parliamentorum
(6 vols., Record Commission, 1767–7), vol. V, pp. 478–81. The grant of Henry Tudor’s wardship to Sir William Herbert is recorded in
CPR 1461–67
, p. 114 while details of his upbringing can be found in Vergil, p. 134 (full details in the notes to
chapter 3
below),
CPR 1485–94
, p. 332 and André, pp. 12–13.