medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Dear colleagues,
as I work at the University of Leicester, the following caught my eye, and I thought I'd share it with you. The story is from the URL:
http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/artsandhumanities/story/0,12241,778819,00.html
Best wishes,
George
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George Ferzoco
School of Modern Languages, University of Leicester,
University Road, LEICESTER LE1 7RH, UNITED KINGDOM
office telephone ++ 44 (0)116 252 2654
secretaries' tel ++ 44 (0)116 252 2683 / fax ++ 44 (0)116 252 3633
e-mail [log in to unmask]
list owner, medieval-religion:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html
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Research puts key British battle over the county line
Martin Wainwright
Wednesday August 21 2002
The Guardian
Historians and heritage staff may have to pack up their bags and tramp across eight miles of the Midlands, after fresh research into one of the most decisive battles in the country's history.
Five hundred and seventeen years to the day after Richard III lost his crown to Henry Tudor at Bosworth field, near Leicester, evidence suggests the drama actually took place an hour's march down the B585, just across the county boundary in Warwickshire.
The verdict is based on a newly recovered French mercenary's account of the battle, which Shakespeare made famous by his last words for Richard "Crookback": "A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!" The historian Michael Jones has pieced together the memoir with analysis of cavalry tactics in 1485, place names and the sombre presence of an unexcavated burial mound.
This looms above the new site near Atherstone, Warwickshire, Dr Jones said yesterday, adding that local tradition held that the Yorkist and Lancastrian dead were heaped together underneath.
"The most exciting evidence, though, is the contemporary account, which was found by a very erudite, painstaking French scholar in the 19th century, the sort of man who lost himself in footnotes," he said. "His interest was in late 15th century military reforms in France, and the Bosworth letter was peripheral and got overlooked. But it tells a remarkable tale."
A soldier of fortune with Tudor, who was crowned Henry VII after Bosworth, the Frenchman gives a different picture from the cornered Richard's traditional desperate charge from a stronghold on the summit of Ambion Hill, where his standard now flies close to the visitor centre.
"The letter tells us instead that the king rode forward at the start of the battle with his whole cavalry division, in a well planned and large scale assault on Henry's position," said Dr Jones. "This is an extraordinary shift. If using cavalry was part of Richard's battle plan, he would not have deployed his forces on a narrow hilltop like Ambion, with little room for manoeuvre.
"The very different terrain also makes sense of the account of Polydore Vergil, the Tudor court chronicler, whose descriptions of Henry using the August sun to dazzle Richard do not conform to the Ambion Hill site."
The revisionist theory, published today in Dr Jones's book Bosworth - Psychology of a Battle, also highlights place-names near Atherstone such as Derby Spinney, a patch of thorny woodland close to the proposed new battlefield site.
Bosworth was lost for Richard by the late intervention of troops raised by Thomas, Lord Stanley - who Henry created Earl of Derby afterwards. "Stanley is famously supposed to have crowned Henry on the battlefield," said Dr Jones, "after the crown had been recovered from a thornbush."
The research was received calmly by Leicestershire county council, whose battlefield centre on the official site gets 25,000 visitors a year, with another 180,000 roaming the country park. A spokeswoman said the centre acknowledged an earlier rival theory, placing the battle two miles away near Dadlington village, and would not object to a third.
Dr Jones called for an archaeological dig at the supposed burial mound and other sites to see if traces of the battle, which involved an estimated 70,000 troops according to chroniclers, could be found.
Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited
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