It is no doubt a good thing to conquer on the field of battle, but it needs greater wisdom and greater skill to make use of victory.
Polybius, Histories
Richard’s body was put on public display for two days at Greyfriars church, probably in a place of honour. A tomb made of alabaster, with an effigy of Richard on top, was later erected on the orders of Henry. However, the tomb was torn down during the Reformation and whether his remains are still in the church grounds or, as legend has it, thrown into the River Soar, is not known.
Henry also spent two days at Leicester, before sending a proclamation around his new kingdom announcing his accession. With the old administration totally destroyed, Henry had to start again, and it was another month before the business of running the country began in earnest. Sir Robert Willoughby was sent to Sheriff Hutton to arrest Edward, Earl of Warwick, the son of the late Duke of Clarence and last of the male Plantagenets. Willoughby also brought with him Elizabeth, the daughter of Edward IV and Henry’s future bride. Elizabeth and her mother were escorted back to London, while the 10-year-old Edward was made a prisoner in the Tower.
Henry made a triumphal entry into London on 3 September, having been met by the mayor and aldermen at Hornsey, who, dressed in all their splendour, escorted him to St Paul’s Cathedral. Henry then set about rewarding all those who had helped him: his uncle Jasper was made Duke of Bedford; Philbert de Chandée was made Earl of Bath; Thomas Stanley became Earl of Derby; Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devon; and Sir William Stanley was also given key offices. Henry’s official coronation was held on 30 October and eight days later he held his first Parliament.
His first act was to repeal Titulus Regius, the statute that declared Edward IV’s marriage invalid and his children illegitimate. His second action was to declare himself king from the day before the Battle of Bosworth Field. This meant that anyone who had fought for Richard would be guilty of treason, although, surprisingly, only twenty-eight of Richard’s supporters were named in the act of attainder that followed. Richard’s nephew and designated heir, John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln was spared – a decision that Henry would come to regret.
Henry honoured his pledge of December 1483 and married Elizabeth of York on 18 January 1486 at Westminster, uniting the warring houses and giving his children a strong claim to the throne. His heraldic emblem, the Tudor rose, a combination of the white rose of York and the red rose of Lancaster, reflected the unification of the two houses.
Henry’s first main concern was how to secure the throne, which he did by dividing and undermining the power of the nobility. His principal weapon was the Court of Star Chamber which revived an earlier practice of using a small group of the Privy Council as a personal or prerogative court, able to cut swiftly through the cumbersome legal system. Serious disputes involving the use of personal power, or threats to royal authority, were dealt with accordingly. Henry allowed the nobles to continue with their regional influence as long as they remained loyal to him.
This, however, was not enough as, less than a year after he was crowned, whilst at Lincoln, Henry became aware of a rebellion by Francis Lovell, Richard’s lord chamberlain, along with Humphrey and Thomas Stafford. Together they planned to raise troops and kill Henry as he travelled to the north of England. Henry had them followed, finding the Staffords in Culham church near Abingdon where they were arrested. Sir Richard Edgecombe and Sir William Tyler were sent to arrest Lovell; however, he managed to escape, first joining fellow rebels at Furness Falls and later fleeing to Margaret of York in Flanders. Sir John Conyers, who was also suspected of being involved in the revolt, lost his stewardship of Middleham Castle and had a £2,000 bond imposed.
John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, fled to his aunt Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, at Mechelen (Malines) on 19 March 1487. Here, Margaret provided him with financial and military support in the form of 2,000 German mercenaries, under Martin Schwartz. He was also joined by a number of Yorkist supporters, including Lord Lovell, Sir Richard Harleston, the former governor of Jersey, and Thomas David, a captain of the English garrison at Calais. In April, the army landed in Ireland, claiming that a boy called Lambert Simnel was the Earl of Warwick (who was, in reality, a prisoner in the Tower). On 4 June 1487, de la Pole, his army boosted by a body of Irish troops, crossed over to England. Here they were joined by a number of the local gentry led by Sir Thomas Broughton. In a series of forced marches, the Yorkist army, now numbering some 8,000 men, covered over 320km (200 miles) in five days. On the night of 10 June, at Bramham Moor, outside Tadcaster, Lovell led 2,000 men on a night attack against 400 Lancastrians, led by Lord Clifford. The result was an overwhelming Yorkist victory. On 12 June, de la Pole outmanoeuvred King Henry’s northern army, under the command of the Earl of Northumberland, by ordering a force under John, Lord Scrope, to mount a diversionary attack on Bootham Bar in York. Lord Scrope then withdrew northwards, taking Northumberland’s army with him.
De la Pole and the main army continued south. They met with a body of Lancastrian cavalry under Lord Scales outside Doncaster, and three days of skirmishing through Sherwood Forest followed. Eventually, Scales was forced to retreat to Nottingham; however, the fighting allowed Henry time to bring up substantial reinforcements under the command of Lord Strange, who arrived at Nottingham on 14 June. The next day they began moving north-east toward Newark after receiving news that Lincoln had crossed the River Trent. At around 9 a.m. on 16 June, Henry’s vanguard, commanded by the Earl of Oxford, encountered the Yorkist army on the brow of a hill by the River Trent at the village of East Stoke. The Yorkists were surrounded on three sides and attacked immediately. However, the unarmoured Irish were cut to pieces and the German mercenaries, unable to retreat, fought to the last man. The battle lasted for three hours and de la Pole, Fitzgerald, Broughton and Schwartz were all killed in the fighting. Only Lord Lovell escaped and, according to legend, died hidden in a secret room at his house, while Simnel was captured and made a servant in the royal kitchen by Henry. Twenty-eight Yorkists were attained in the aftermath, but the Irish were pardoned. Following the death of his older brother John, Edmund de la Pole became the leading Yorkist claimant to the throne. Henry allowed him to succeed as Duke of Suffolk in 1491, although some time later Edmund’s title was demoted to the rank of earl.
Three years later a man appeared claiming to be Richard, the younger of the Princes in the Tower. Known as Perkin Warbeck, he won the support of Edward IV’s sister Margaret of Burgundy and in 1491 landed in Ireland, but found little support. Returning to the European mainland, he was first received by Charles VIII of France, but was expelled in 1492 under the terms of the Treaty of Etaples, in which Charles had agreed not to shelter rebels against the Tudors. However, the Duke of York, as Warbeck became known, was rapidly gaining popular support across Europe and was proving to be an embarrassment to Henry. Warbeck was even recognised as King Richard IV of England by the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I. England began to fracture again, with many Yorkist supporters re-emerging in the belief that Warbeck was to be the heir to the Yorkist dynasty. Others, discontent with Henry’s rule, joined them. Henry sent spies to Margaret of Burgundy in Flanders, claiming to be Yorkist supporters. Here they discovered the names of many of the conspirators, who were promptly arrested and charged with treason. The list included Lord Fitzwalter, Sir Simon Mountford, William Daubeney and Robert Ratcliffe, as well as a number of priests. Significantly, the list also included Sir William Stanley, who had helped Henry to the throne in the first place. William was beheaded on 10 July 1495.
On 3 July 1495, funded by Margaret of Burgundy, Warbeck landed at Deal in Kent, but his small army was routed and 150 of his men were killed before he even disembarked. He was forced to return to Ireland, where, finding support from the Earl of Desmond, he laid siege to Waterford. In the face of fierce resistance, he later fled to Scotland where he received support from the king, James IV. An army was raised, crossing the River Tweed at Coldstream on 19 September 1496. They were at Hetoune (Castle Heaton) on 24 September, where miners demolished four towers. An English army under Lord Neville advanced from Newcastle to meet them and, with dwindling supplies, Warbeck’s army returned home. After signing a peace treaty with England, James sent Warbeck back to Ireland where he once again laid siege to Waterford. This time four English ships chased him away after only eleven days.
At the beginning of 1497, another rebellion was fomenting in Cornwall, this time over heavy taxation. Michael Joseph (also known as An Gof – the smith), a blacksmith from St Keverne, and Thomas Flamank, a lawyer of Bodmin, incited many of the people of Cornwall into armed revolt against the king. An army of 15,000 gathered at Bodmin and marched into Devon, and from there they headed for Kent where they hoped to gain additional support. They were joined en route by James Touchet, Baron Audley, who acted as a ‘political’ leader.
After being rebuffed by the men of Kent the army marched on London, arriving at Guildford on 13 June. The royal family had moved to the Tower of London for safety, whilst in the rest of the city there was a feeling of panic. It was said that there was a general cry of ‘Every man to harness! To harness!’ as citizens armed themselves, lining the walls and gates. Meanwhile, Henry sent an army of 8,000 men under Giles, Lord Daubeney, to Hounslow Heath. Lord Daubeney sent out a force of 500 mounted spearmen and they clashed with the Cornish at ‘Gill Down’ outside Guildford on 14 June. The Cornish army marched to Blackheath, but by this time many had returned home and only 9,000–10,000 remained.
Meanwhile, Henry had been assembling an army of over 25,000 men to counter the threat and, after carefully spreading rumours that he would attack on the following Monday, Henry moved against the Cornish at dawn on Saturday 17 June 1497. Lacking cavalry and artillery, the Cornish placed a body of archers at the bridge at Deptford Strand, with the rest of the army near to the top of the hill on Blackheath. Two of the three royal ‘battles’ under Lords Oxford, Essex and Suffolk wheeled round the right flank and to the rear of the Cornishmen. Once the Cornish were surrounded, Lord Daubeney and the third ‘battle’ were ordered into frontal attack. A group of spearmen under Sir Humphrey Stanley moved forward, breaking through the Cornish archers, while Lord Daubeney and his men poured across the bridge and engaged the Cornish head on. The two other ‘battles’ then attacked and the Cornish army was cut in pieces. Estimates of the Cornish dead range from 200 to 2,000 and a general slaughter of the broken army was well under way when An Gof gave the order to surrender. An Gof, Audley and Flamank were all captured and executed. As punishment, Crown agents extracted severe monetary penalties against the county, which caused some parts to be impoverished for many years to come.
On 7 September 1497, hoping to capitalise on the Cornish people’s resentment in the aftermath of their uprising, Warbeck landed at Whitesand Bay, near Land’s End, in Cornwall. He proclaimed that he would put a stop to extortionate taxes levied to help fight a war against Scotland and was warmly welcomed. He was declared ‘Richard IV’ on Bodmin Moor and his Cornish army of some 3,000 strong marched on Exeter, where they were twice beaten off. Lord Daubeney was again sent to deal with the rebellion, but when Warbeck heard that scouts were at Glastonbury he panicked and fled to sanctuary in Beaulieu Abbey in Hampshire. Warbeck eventually surrendered and was imprisoned, first at Taunton and then the Tower. Henry reached Taunton on 4 October 1497, where he received the surrender of the remaining Cornish army; the ringleaders were executed and others fined.
Warbeck was held in the Tower alongside Edward, Earl of Warwick, and it appears that the two tried to escape at some point during 1499. In his confession, possibly obtained under torture, Warbeck said he was Flemish and born to a man called John Osbeck (also known as Jehan de Werbecque) in Tournai. In 1491, aged about 17, he was taken to Cork in Ireland where he learnt to speak English. He then claimed that upon seeing him dressed in silk clothes, some of the Yorkist citizens of Cork demanded to ‘[do] him the honour as a member of the Royal House of York’. He said they did this because they were resolved in gaining revenge on the King of England and decided that he would claim to be the younger son of King Edward IV. Despite the confession, his true identity is still a mystery and a number of historians have suggested that his story was to try to avoid execution. However, on 23 November 1499, he was drawn on a hurdle from the Tower to Tyburn and was hanged as a commoner after reading out the confession. Five days later Edward was beheaded, allegedly for treason.
Not all of Richard’s supporters stayed loyal to the Yorkist cause, however. Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, spent three years in prison after Bosworth, but eventually was restored to the earldom. In 1499 he was recalled to court and accompanied the king on a state visit to France in the following year. Surrey was an executor of the will of King Henry VII and played a prominent role in the coronation of King Henry VIII, in which he served as earl marshal. He would also go on to command the English army at the Battle of Flodden, crushing a much larger Scottish army, and on 1 February 1514 was created Duke of Norfolk. Meanwhile, Edmund de la Pole, who was now the Yorkist heir, had fled England in 1501 with the aid of Sir James Tyrrell, seeking the help of Maximilian I. In 1506, Maximilian’s son, Phillip of Burgundy, was blown off course while sailing to Castile and unexpectedly became a guest of Henry VII. Whilst in England, Phillip was persuaded to hand Edmund over to Henry on the proviso that he would not be harmed.
On 21 April 1509, Henry died of tuberculosis at Richmond Palace and was buried at Westminster Abbey. His second son, Henry VIII, succeeded him and ruled for the next forty-five years. There remained a Yorkist party within the court led by Lady Salisbury, Margaret Pole, daughter of the Duke of Clarence, and Henry Courtenay, Marquis of Exeter. The marquis was the son of Catherine, the youngest daughter of Edward IV, and therefore heir to the throne after the Tudors. Like his father, Henry VIII was plagued with rebellion, but he was not so forgiving and would eventually eradicate the Yorkist line. In 1513 he had Edmund de la Pole executed. His younger brother, Richard, declared himself Earl of Suffolk soon after and remained the leading Yorkist claimant until his death at the Battle of Pavia on 24 February 1525. However, the biggest threat to Henry’s rule came in 1536, when 9,000 men marched on London. It was known as the ‘Pilgrimage of Grace’ and was essentially a protest against the political and economic situation.
In 1538, Henry Courtenay was accused of a plot to depose Henry. He was arrested and then executed by decapitation with a sword on Tower Hill on 9 January 1539. Margaret Pole was also arrested for her alleged involvement in the plot and on the morning of 27 May 1541, aged 68, she was executed at the Tower of London on Henry’s orders. Frail and ill, she refused to lay her head on the block and, as she struggled, the inexperienced executioner’s first blow made a gash in her shoulder rather than her neck. It took ten more blows to complete the execution and, with the final blow, the Plantagenets were no more.