1485. The Battle of Bosworth Field is not yet two hours old, and already the Wars of the Roses are heading towards a dramatic conclusion. The Yorkist King Richard III is facing down an attempt to usurp his throne by the last Lancastrian claimant to the throne, Henry Tudor, Earl of Pembroke. The main nobles are holding back their armies, waiting to see who gains an early advantage. Eager to finish the battle before Lord Stanley brings his forces in on Tudor's side, the household squadron of King Richard III makes a desperate charge into the Lancastrian force. Forcing their way through to Henry Tudor's personal bodyguard, the Earl and the King came to blows around their standards. The fate of England hung in the balance.
At this distance, it is very hard to know exactly what happened. In William Shakespeare's play Richard III he has Richard and Henry fight a dramatic duel, while more contemporary chroniclers recount Henry Tudor simply being swamped by sheer force of numbers. Either way, it doesn't matter. By the time Tudor's bodyguard broke and fled, the Earl of Pembroke was dead and Richard III had carried the day.
Richard's victory at Bosworth Field helped to finally secure his position on the throne, after two years of chronic uncertainty following the death of his brother in 1483. Although Edward IV had originally intended his son Edward to take the throne, Richard stepped into the breach after it became known that Edward and his brother were illegitimate. Their tragic death at the hands of agents of Henry Tudor in 1485 helped to cement Richard further; not only were there no credible alternative monarchs, few wanted to switch to a family which practised infanticide.
Secure on the throne, Richard was able to continue with the reforms he had started to bring in during the first two years of his reign. The ideas of bail and the Court of Appeal, which are cherished parts of our justice system, were introduced under Richard. His Council of the North, founded before 1485, was followed by the Council of the West in 1487, the Council of the South in 1488 and the Council of the Marches in 1495. These are the forerunners of our modern English regional government structures. Richard also continued the improvement in the royal finances begun under Edward IV, which helped to leave such an excellent legacy for his son. Marriage was also foremost in Richard's mind, and in 1487 he married Isabella of Aragon as part of an alliance with Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. This marriage gave him a son, Richard IV, who was born in 1491, thus ending the uncertainty over the succession. In future years, he ended the bitter warfare on the Scottish border by signing the Treaty of Perpetual Peace with James IV of Scotland in 1502. Although peace was less than perpetual, the marriage of Richard's daughter Anne to James would prove to be of immense significance later on. Meanwhile, his sponsorship of John Cabot ensured that England and later Britain came to rule the vast stretch of North America which is modern Canada.
Richard III died in 1503, if chroniclers are to be believed a hugely popular monarch, and one who left his son Richard IV (1503-1547) a large amount of money. Richard IV was the model of a Renaissance prince; athletic, a good fighter, interested in learning and staunchly Catholic; his defence of the Pope against the accusations of Martin Luther are widely credited with helping to keep England in the Catholic fold, hence why the House of Lords still contains Church bishops and abbots to this day and many of our laws reflect the Church's conservatism in their rejection of abortion and the difficulty in obtaining divorce, much to the annoyance of secularists.
In turn, Richard IV's three children would all succeed him: Edward V (1547-1553), Margaret (1553-1558) and Anne I (1558-1603). Edward V is remembered as an ineffectual boy king, whilst Margaret was the first Queen of England, and her attempts to root out heresy proved divisive even in as staunchly Catholic country as England. Anne I's reign is, by contrast, remembered as a Golden Age for England, in much the same way as the Richard III and IVs' reigns are. There was a great outpouring of culture, most obviously William Shakespeare's plays but in many other areas too. England began to build an overseas empire, and saw off the Spanish Armada in 1588.
However, by the end of Anne's reign things were going badly wrong. Her war with Spain had dragged on for too long and was deeply unpopular, the Late Plantagenet Inflation spiral had set in, plague was rampant in London, oppression of dissidents was seemingly relentless and, worst of all, Anne was childless; cultivating the image of the Virgin Queen was all very well until it came to the succession. The Privy Council was forced to turn to her only living relative: James VI of Scotland, who rode south to become James I of England. The long years of the Plantagenets were over; the reign of the Stuarts had now begun.
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