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The Battle of Bosworth 1485: A watershed moment?

This Saturday 22nd August marks the 530th anniversary of The Battle of Bosworth Field. Fought between the armies of Richard III, Yorkist King of England, and Henry Tudor (a relative outsider with Welsh blood), the battle has for a long time been seen as a pivotal moment in British history marking the distinctly 'medieval' age from the modern. Much light has been shed on the battle recently thanks to the discovery of the remains of Richard III -- so much so, in fact, that the tragedy of his death has been played up almost as much as Henry VII's victory itself was in the initial years after the event. It is worth pausing to reflect on the real meaning of the Battle of Bosworth, whether it really was as pivotal as it has been made out to be, and why British historians (amateurs and professionals alike) tend to see it as a watershed.

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17th August 1510 - the execution of Edmund Dudley

On 17th August 1510 Edmund Dudley, notorious minister, lawyer, and general agent of King Henry VII was beheaded on Tower Hill, over a year following his arrest for alleged treason against Henry VIII. After a spectacular rise to power he had fallen just as quickly, demonised as one of “the king’s long arms with which he reached out from one end of England to the other and took what was his.” This view of Dudley’s career has survived virtually unscathed to the present day thanks to the writings of Polydore Vergil and Francis Bacon, though recent research by Steve Gunn, Mark Horowitz, and James Ross has led to something of a ‘rehabilitation’ of his character.

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Imagining State and Society using the ‘Body Politic’ Organic Analogy

The use of metaphors and analogies to define world visions was a common feature of medieval literature. The Bible had provided a stock selection of imagery for the later intellectual world: from the more simple metaphors such as the apple representing sin, the snake as Satan, to far more complex ideas like the various references to trees as a way of picturing the wider society or even the king.The majority of these were organic metaphors, ones which took notions and ideas present in the familiar natural world and used them to either represent or to clarify a more complicated concept. From a modern perspective it is easy to take such analogies for granted, particularly because they form such a large part of common parlance. Paul Archambault however argued that recognising the varieties between different analogies, and between different uses of the same analogy, was paramount to understanding the political views of the author and potentially the general worldview of contemporaries of the medieval and early modern periods. No author used analogies for the state or for society loosely, for they might too easily reveal political inclinations.

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Paradise

Paradise - “a walled-in garden” (ave.)

From an Iranian language called Avestan, a “pairidaēza” was an enclosed garden for royalty. Surely still a modern-day definition match for many, minus the royalty bit.

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Lucrezia Borgia, the femme fatale of Renaissance Italy. Now, we all know the infamous Borgia family mainly from the corrupt Borgia Pope, Alexander VI, but Lucrezia was a star all on her own. She may or may not have helped kill one of her husbands (most likely did with her brother, Cesare), possibly sat on the papal throne in the absence of her father (actually documented) and was a renowned beauty with heavy blonde hair, a lovely complexion, brilliantly white teeth, hazel eyes which changed colour, a slender neck and a natural walking grace.

She, however, would lead a difficult life; married at 13 and caught in a messy divorce at 17 on the grounds of his impotency (to hide the waning need for her husband’s political connections) where her husband accused her of incest, followed by an illegitimate child. Then, in her second marriage, Cesare allegedly said “what was not finished at breakfast would be complete by dinner” in reference to the failed assassination attempt on her new husband, who would be dead later that day, again due to his lack of utility in Borgia political strategy. A widower at 20, she would be plagued by rumours and a scheming family but in this, she managed to ensure the best tutors for her surviving children (including her illegitimate son) and died at 39 years old, after her third husband died and left her the Duchess of Ferrara.

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Henry VII: “innovator” or “renovator” of the English monarchy?

In commemoration of the five hundredth anniversary of the death of Henry VII Mark Horowitz considered the ongoing historiographical debates surrounding his reign: “either the last medieval king or the first modern king,” he wrote, “a renovator following previous modes and methods of ruling… or an innovator”. Did Henry VII merely copy his predecessors, or did he craft his own style of kingship?

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