We have reviewed Pinkie at some length because that battle has a detailed documentary record against which to interpret the physical evidence. Thanks to the remarkable sequence of drawings and detailed contemporary narrative accounts, an interpretation can be proposed even though the physical evidence is so fragmentary. Without the drawings a very different interpretation might have resulted, with the armies approaching each other from north-east and south-west, and the round shot representing a simple exchange of fire. At Bosworth we need to draw sufficiently from the documentary record to avoid a similar misinterpretation. So, our analysis will proceed by re-running the sequence of documented events, but set within the historic terrain and informed by the artefact scatter.

On 21 August 1485 the rebel army was marching south along Watling Street, from Tamworth to Atherstone. The same day, surely intending to force a battle, Richard marched out of Leicester towards Watling Street with an army comprising troops under the duke of Norfolk and probably also the earl of Northumberland. They almost certainly used the Roman road, known in its westernmost sector as the Fenn Lane, as this was still the principal route from Leicester to Atherstone. Thus he approached from the east after an easy day’s march, it being just 12 miles (19 km) from the city to Ambion Hill. It was probably there that he quartered his army that night, 1.5 miles (2.5 km) north-east of the place where he intended to fight. As a result, there will have been plenty of time that evening for Richard, with his senior commanders, to reconnoitre the battlefield to work out the tactical details for deployment and action the next day. No such opportunity was open to Henry and his commanders, because Richard’s forces were far too close. This immediately placed Henry at a disadvantage.

Ambion, with its steep slopes and hedged enclosures, would have provided a relatively secure location for a camp, should Henry make an attempt to ‘beat up’ the royal quarters, which was certainly a common tactic in later centuries. The hill also gives the best possible views across the whole landscape, especially westward towards the enemy quarters. Moreover, if on the next day Henry was to continue his march south along Watling Street, then Richard could easily march along the adjacent Market Bosworth to London road and intercept the rebels beyond Hinckley (Figures 8.1 and 4.14). But with the royal army so close to the Henry’s quarters a battle could hardly be avoided.

A substantial archaeological signature is only likely to have been left if a camp was attacked and pillaged after the battle. The late medieval finds from Ambion, noted in Chapter 6, hint that this may be the case there. However, it would have made far more sense for both armies to have broken camp at first light, so that their baggage train was ready to move with the army as on any other day of march. Then, if the enemy army did not engage but marched elsewhere, the army would be in a position to respond immediately. Where the location of the trains is known in later battles, then the decisions as to whether to move or not appears to have depended on the distance concerned. Thus at Naseby in 1645 the parliamentarian headquarters were more than 6 km from the initial deployment, which itself was a hasty response to a royalist manoeuvre. In this case the train followed the army and was eventually positioned 1.5 km behind the final deployment. The same happened at Pinkie in 1547, the English train accompanying the army on its march from its camp, as this lay well over 3 km from the location of their intended battle array. In contrast, at Edgehill in 1642 the parliamentarian train remained where the camp had been the night before, as this was only 2.2 km behind the place where the commander had chosen to deploy. So, at Bosworth, if the royal army had camped on Ambion Hill then the baggage train may have remained there, as it was a good defensive location just 2.2 km from where Richard had chosen to deploy his army. Whether an attack on a baggage train would yield a similar archaeological signature to an attack on a camp remains to be seen.

Now we know the battle was not fought near Atherstone, we can be confident that the compensation payments, made to that town and surrounding settlements, relate principally to losses caused by Henry’s army on the night before the battle (Figure 3.2). Had the money been for damage to crops during the fight, then surely Dadlington, Upton, Shenton and Stoke would also have been reimbursed. As it had the highest compensation payment and for the other reasons noted above, Merevale Abbey is most likely to have been the rebel headquarters. It seems likely that all the other settlements also quartered detachments of the army, though it is possible that some simply lost food and other goods to troops quartered in the other villages. From Merevale it was a 5.5 mile (9 km) march to the field. Given the distance, it is almost certain that the rebel train will have accompanied the army. Using the rate of march they achieved on other days, it probably took the rebel army 4 hours to rendezvous, draw up in line of march and then advance to the battlefield. With sunrise at 5:00 am, and with an hour or more of twilight before this in which to break camp, they may have reached the field by around 10:00 am.

From Watling Street Henry would almost certainly have marched along the Fenn Lane, which was the key element of the communication network (Figure 8.1). A more circuitous route via Lindley may have been possible, bringing them down across the heath and onto the battlefield from the south-west. This might explain the Brown Heath name for the battle, as well as Burton’s claim, in 1622, that his ancestor guided Henry to the battlefield. However, it seems an unlikely approach as it does not offer an obvious tactical advantage, nor would it have resulted in a marsh lying between the two armies – the key topographical detail in the accounts. If any troops approached from this direction, then it is more likely to have been Lord Stanley who is said, somewhat confusingly, to have arrived in the middle of the battlefield. Stanley had marched down Watling Street at least a day ahead of Henry. While Polydore Vergil says that, on the 21 August, Henry rode from his army for a meeting in Stanley’s camp at Atherstone, the implication is that this was early in the morning. So, during the day, Stanley could have marched on to more distant quarters before Henry’s army arrived in the Atherstone and adjacent villages. If not, then the royal scouts would have seen the two forces camped so close together and Richard would have known that Stanley was allied with Henry. As Polydore Vergil tells us, Stanley had previously moved on from Lichfield to Atherstone since he feared that if he openly sided with Henry, Richard would kill his son, Lord Strange. On the evening of 21 August it seems more likely that the Stanleys were in quarters much closer to Richard’s army. Even Crown Hill at Stoke Golding is an option, also providing an additional reason for its choice as the place where Henry was crowned.

When the rebel army arrived they found that Richard had chosen the ground and put his army in battle array. While a reading of some of the original sources might imply a predetermined battlefield, the fact that Henry made no attempt to reach the field before Richard, which gave the king the advantage of being able to deploy in the most advantageous position, seems to argue against this.

The place chosen was one where the road network was constrained by wetland, though unfortunately our interpretation is compromised by the remaining uncertainties over the historic terrain. For the present purpose we have assumed that Fowlismere was still open water in 1485. Further to the south-east we have depicted an area within which fen is known to have existed but where its extent in 1485 is unknown. This is taken to be the ‘marsh’ in the original accounts of the battle. Immediately to the west of this we have identified a second zone where fen may also have existed, but which has not yet been adequately tested. If the latter was fen then this will have major implications for the analysis which follows. It would provide an alternative for the ‘marsh’ around which Oxford manoeuvred, bringing in his attack against Norfolk from a more westerly direction. However, given the lack of direct evidence, in what follows we have assumed that in 1485 there was no fen in this second, western location. What seems fairly certain is that it was not Fowlismere around which they manoeuvred. While we have not confirmed the absence of battle archaeology across all the ground on its north side, a substantial area has been intensively surveyed and has produced no significant evidence. More importantly, the mere is likely to have been open water not fen, so does not match the description given by Polydore Vergil. The other feature that certainly did not have tactical potential was the Plash, as this was a temporary area of water and is unlikely to have been wet in the summer.