The principal object, surely sufficient in its own right to quell any lingering doubt that the battlefield has been located, is the silver-gilt badge in the shape of a boar (Figure 6.2). A manuscript listing those serving in Edward IV’s French expedition of 1475 depicts the personal heraldic badges of the leaders. They include the earl of Oxford and Richard, duke of Gloucester, later Richard III. Both had a boar as one of their heraldic devices but, on this list, it is only Richard whose badge is depicted as a boar.²¹ The white boar badge was used by Richard III’s household and followers between the early 1470s and 1485. Royal wardrobe accounts for 1483 record thousands of boar badges produced for Richard’s coronation and the investiture of his son.²² The majority that have been found are of base metals, particularly copper alloy or lead alloy, though others will have been made of cloth. On the PAS database there are nine heraldic badges in the form of a boar, of which two are silver-gilt (Bosworth and Stillingfleet), one silver and six copper alloy.²³

The fact that the Bosworth badge is silver-gilt shows that it was owned by a person of importance who was of at least of knightly status.²⁴ Just three other such silver-gilt livery badges are known, all similar but not identical to that from Bosworth. The first was found at Chiddingly, East Sussex in 1999 and is now in the British Museum; the second was found in 2012 at Stillingfleet, Yorkshire.²⁵ The third is unprovenanced but depicted in a book of metal-detecting finds.²⁶

Given the rarity of late medieval silver and silver-gilt heraldic badges on the PAS database, the fact that two have come from Bosworth and another, in the form of a cockerel, has come from Towton, seems to indicate that they were commonly worn by high status individuals when they went into battle.²⁷ Indeed proof of this is provided at Flodden in 1513. As that battle began the Admiral, commanding the English vanguard, sent a desperate instruction to his father, who commanded the main battle which was still marching up. He urged him to deploy immediately to the left of the vanguard, as he feared the wide battle array of the Scots would overwing him. To ensure his father believed such an unexpected instruction was from him he ‘sent to hys Father the erele of Surrey hys Agnus dei that honge at hys brest …’. There is also Waurin’s accoumt of the battle of Northampton, where the earl of Warwick ordered ‘that all who bore the ravestoc nowe’, that is the badge of Lord Grey of Ruthin, were to be spared.²⁸