BOSWORTH FELD
BOOKS BY A. L. ROWSE History The England of Elizabeth The Expansion of Elizabethan England The Elizabethans and America Ralegh and the Throckmortons Sir Richard Grenville of the Revenge Tudor Cornwall St. Austell : Church, Town, Parish The Early Churchills The Later Churchills The Churchills The Spirit of English History The Use of History All Souls and Appeasement The End of an Epoch Literature William Shakespeare: A Biography Shakespeare's Sonnets: Edited with an ntroduction and Notes Christopher Marlowe: A Biography Shakespeare's Southampton : Patron of Virginia The English Spirit (Revised Edition) Times, Persons, Places A Cornish Childhood A Cornishman at Oxford West-Country Stories Cornish Stories Poems of a Decade Poems Chiefly Cornish Poems of Deliverance Poems Partly American Poems of Cornwall and America A History of France. By Lucien Romier Translated and Completed
BOSWORTH FELD and the Wars ofthe Roses A. L. ROWSE Palgrave Macmillan
A. L. Rowse 1966 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1966 First published in the United States by Doubleday in The Crossroads of World History Series, edited by Orville Prescott, 1966 First published in the United Kingdom in 1966 MACMLLAN AND COMPANY LMTED Little Essex Street London WC2 also Bombay Calcutta Madras Melbourne SBN 978-1-349-00042-5 DO 10.1007/978-1-349-00040-1 SBN 978-1-349-00040-1 (ebook)
To David Trefry and Raleigh Trevelyan whose ancestors fought in these campaigns
Contents LST OF LLUSTRATONS viii PREFACE ix PROLOGUE 1 CHAPTER. The Character and Reign of Richard 5 CHAPTER. The Revolution of 1399 25 CHAPTER. Uneasy Lies the Head 39 CHAPTER V. Henry V, the Hero-King 59 CHAPTER V. A Child-King: Henry V 87 CHAPTER V. Richard of York and Margaret of Anjou 109 CHAPTER V. The Wars of the Roses 127 CHAPTER V. Edward V: The Yorkist Experiment 151 CHAPTER X. Yorkist Rule 173 CHAPTER X. Richard ll's Usurpation 185 CHAPTER X. Bosworth Field 205 CHAPTER X. Tudor Sequel 223 CHAPTER X. The Mirror of Literature 249 CHAPTER XV. Shakespeare's Vision of the Conflict 269 EPLOGUE 291 NOTES 295 NDEX 305
List ofllustrations PLATES. Richard facing page 34 2. Richard yields the.crown to Bolingbroke 35 3. Henry Bolingbroke leads Richard to London, 1399 50 4. Henry V: from the tomb in Canterbury Cathedral 50 5. Henry V 66 6. Queen Catherine : funeral effigy 67 7. The Child-King Henry V 82 8. Margaret of Anjou 83 9. Henry V 114 10. Edward V 115. Elizabeth Woodville, wife of Edward V 130 12. Richard 131 13. Lady Margaret Beaufort 224 14. Henry V: funeral effigy based on a death mask from Westminster Abbey 225 15. Elizabeth of York, wife of Henry V 240 16. Henry V: bust by Pietro Torrigiani 241 Plates 10, ii, and J2 are reproduced by gracious permission of Her Majesty the Queen ; plates l, 6,13,14, and 15 by court esy ofthe Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey (photographs supplied by the Warburg institute) ; plates 2, 3, and 7 by courtesy of the British Mu seum ; plates 5 and 9 by courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery; plates 8 and i6 by courtesy ofthe Victoria and Albert Museum (crown copyright reserved) ;andplate 4from Henry V, Part, The New Cambridge Shakespeare, by courtesy ofthe Cambridge University Press. TABLE AND MAPS Genealogy of the Houses of Lancaster and York xii-xiii England in the fifteenth century xiv France in 1430 follo wing page 154
PREFACE am very grateful to my old friend Mr. Orville Prescott, the editor of this series, for his invitation to step aside from my chosen field of Tudor studies to undertake this subject. Without his per suasion and encouragement should not have thought of it-though it is, after all, the immediate prelude to that period. Since my undergraduate days have been interested in the fifteenth century, and in the years since have enjoyed the suggestive conversation of tho se eminent authorities Professor E. F. Jacob and Mr. K. B. McFarlane. hope hav e made good use of the instruction th at they-perhaps not always consciously-have provided. The subject of the Wars of the Roses has recently shown that it has not lost its power to fascinate the large TV public in Britain, as it exerted its spell upon people in the sixteenth century, especially the Elizabethans. With them it called forth ballads, laments, narrative poems, narrative prose, histories, biographies, chronicle plays. Shakespeare devoted to the subject a unique canvas-in breadth, depth and extent-with his eight plays covering the whole century from Richard to Richard. Thus it has been a great advantage to be able to make so much use of the reflection of historical events in the mirror of literature -the book is in some sense a bridge between these two disciplines, too much divorced in this age of specialisation. t is not only that literature is part of the material of history, but history is--one should need no reminding-an important branch of literature. am much indebted to Professor Jack Simmons for his scholarly help and for guiding me around Leicestershire, in particular around Bosworth and the site of the battle; and to Mr. Peter Lewis, of All Souls College, for reading my typescript and cor-
x PREFACE recting some errors. am grateful to Dr. John E. Pomfret, Director of the Huntin gton Libr ary, for his constant encouragement, to the Library service for procuring books from neighbouring Californian libraries when necessary, and to all the staff there-where this book was written-for their unvarying and obliging kindness. Oxford, nd ependence Day, 1965 A. L. ROWSE
The Houses of Lancaster and York Edward= Phillippa of Halnault 1=~""Edward,..."",P- Richard Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March Lionel, Duke of Clarence Edmund Mortimer, = Philippa Earlof March Roger Mortimer, Earl of March' Anne Mortimer = Richard.Earl of Cambridge's., M"~'h'T'"" V ",""Vp'::;::;1 Margaret= Henry V of Anjou Edward V = Elizabeth Woodville EdwardV* Richard,' Duke of York Richard, Duke of York. = Cecily Neville Edmund,Earl of Rutland' Elizabeth = Henry V ~ House of Tudor. George, Duke of Clarence" = sabel Neville! 5 daughters Courtenay, Earls of Devon, et 01. h Edward.'Prince ofwales* Richard Jl *C Neville Edward, Earl of Margaret, Countess of Edward, Prince of Wales Warwick' Salisbury* f Earls of Huntingdon. House of Stafford *Kiled in battle.executed ormurdered.
Edmundof Langley, Duke ofyork Thomasof Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester> Jasper, Duke'ofBedford Houseof Stafford, Dukesof Buckingham. Houseof Bourchier, Earls ofessex. Houseof Howard, Dukesof Norfolk.