BOSWORTH FIELD
Warwick, August 29, 1889.--It has long been the conviction of the
present writer that the character of King Richard the Third has been
distorted and maligned by the old historians from whose authority
the accepted view of it is derived. He was, it is certain, a superb
soldier, a wise statesman, a judicious legislator, a natural ruler of
men, and a prince most accomplished in music and the fine arts and in
the graces of social life. Some of the best laws that ever were enacted
in England were enacted during his reign. His title to the throne of
England was absolutely clear, as against the Earl of Richmond, and but
for the treachery of some among his followers he would have prevailed
in the contest upon Bosworth Field, and would have vindicated and
maintained that title over all opposition. He lost the battle, and he
was too great a man to survive the ruin of his fortunes. He threw away
his life in the last mad charge upon Richmond that day, and when once
the grave had closed over him, and his usurping cousin had seized the
English crown, it naturally must have become the easy as well as the
politic business of history to blacken his character. England was never
ruled by a more severe monarch than the austere, crafty, avaricious
Henry the Seventh, and it is certain that no word in praise of his
predecessor could have been publicly said in England during Henry's
reign: neither would it have been wholly safe for anybody to speak for
Richard and the House of York, in the time of Henry the Eighth, the
cruel Mary, or the illustrious Elizabeth. The drift, in fact, was all
the other way. The _Life of Richard the Third_, by Sir Thomas More,
is the fountain-head of the other narratives of his career, and there
can be no doubt that More, who as a youth had lived at Canterbury, in
the palace of Archbishop Morton, derived his views of Richard from
that prelate,--to whose hand indeed, the essential part of the _Life_
has been attributed. "Morton is fled to Richmond." He was Bishop of
Ely when he deserted the king, and Henry the Seventh rewarded him by
making him Archbishop of Canterbury. No man of the time was so little
likely as Morton to take an unprejudiced view of Richard the Third. It
is the Morton view that has become history. The world still looks at
Richard through the eyes of his victorious foe. Moreover, the Morton
view has been stamped indelibly upon the imagination and the credulity
of mankind by the overwhelming and irresistible genius of Shakespeare,
who wrote _Richard the Third_ in the reign of the granddaughter of
Henry the Seventh, and who, aside from the safeguard of discretion,
saw dramatic possibilities in the man of dark passions and deeds that
he could not have seen in a more human and a more virtuous monarch.
Goodness is generally monotonous. "The low sun makes the colour." It
is not to be supposed that Richard was a model man; but there are good
reasons for thinking that he was not so black as his enemies painted
him; and, good or bad, he is one of the most fascinating personalities
that history and literature have made immortal. It was with no common
emotion, therefore, that I stood upon the summit of Ambien Hill and
looked downward over the plain where Richard fought his last fight and
went gloriously to his death.
[Illustration: BOSWORTH FIELD]
The battle of Bosworth Field was fought on August 22, 1485. More
than four hundred years have passed since then: yet except for the
incursions of a canal and a railway the aspect of that plain is but
little changed from what it was when Richard surveyed it, on that gray
and sombre morning when he beheld the forces of Richmond advancing past
the marsh and knew that the crisis of his life had come. The earl was
pressing forward that day from Tamworth and Atherstone, which are in
the northern part of Warwickshire,--the latter being close upon the
Leicestershire border. His course was a little to the southeast, and
Richard's forces, facing northwesterly, confronted their enemies from
the summit of a long and gently sloping hill that extends for several
miles, about east and west, from Market Bosworth on the right, to
the vicinity of Dadlington on the left. The king's position had been
chosen with an excellent judgment that has more than once, in modern
times, elicited the admiration of accomplished soldiers. His right
wing, commanded by Lord Stanley, rested on Bosworth. His left was
protected by a marsh, impassable to the foe. Sir William Stanley
commanded the left and had his headquarters in Dadlington. Richard
rode in the centre. Far to the right he saw the clustered houses and
the graceful spire of Bosworth, and far to the left his glance rested
on the little church of Dadlington. Below and in front of him all was
open field, and all across that field waved the banners and sounded the
trumpets of rebellion and defiance. It is easy to imagine the glowing
emotions,--the implacable resentment, the passionate fury, and the
deadly purpose of slaughter and vengeance,--with which the imperious
and terrible monarch gazed on his approaching foes. They show, in a
meadow, a little way over the crest of the hill, where it is marked and
partly covered now by a pyramidal structure of gray stones, suitably
inscribed with a few commemorative lines in Latin, a spring of water
at which Richard paused to quench his thirst, before he made that last
desperate charge on Radmore heath, when at length he knew himself
betrayed and abandoned, and felt that his only hope lay in killing
the Earl of Richmond with his own hand. The fight at Bosworth was not
a long one. Both the Stanleys deserted the king's standard early in
the day. It was easy for them, posted as they were, to wheel their
forces into the rear of the rebel army, at the right and at the left.
Nothing then remained for Richard but to rush down upon the centre,
where he saw the banner of Richmond,--borne, at that moment, by Sir
John Cheyney,--and to crush the treason at its head. It must have been
a charge of tremendous impetuosity. It bore the fiery king a long way
forward on the level plain. He struck down Cheyney, a man of almost
gigantic stature. He killed Sir William Brandon. He plainly saw the
Earl of Richmond, and came almost near enough to encounter him, when
a score of swords were buried in his body, and, hacked almost into
pieces, he fell beneath heaps of the slain. The place of his death
is now the junction of three country roads, one leading northwest to
Shenton, one southwest to Dadlington, and one bearing away easterly
toward Bosworth. A little brook, called Sandy Ford, flows underneath
the road, and there is a considerable coppice in the field at the
junction. Upon the peaceful sign-board appear the names of Dadlington
and Hinckley. Not more than five hundred feet distant, to the eastward,
rises the embankment of a branch of the Midland Railway, from Nuneaton
to Leicester, while at about the same distance to the westward rises
the similar embankment of a canal. No monument has been erected to
mark the spot where Richard the Third was slain. They took up his
mangled body, threw it across a horse, and carried it into the town
of Leicester, and there it was buried, in the church of the Gray
Friars,--also the sepulchre of Cardinal Wolsey,--now a ruin. The only
commemorative mark upon the battlefield is the pyramid at the well, and
that stands at a long distance from the place of the king's fall. I
tried to picture the scene of his final charge and his frightful death,
as I stood there upon the hillside. Many little slate-coloured clouds
were drifting across a pale blue sky. A cool summer breeze was sighing
in the branches of the neighbouring trees. The bright green sod was all
alive with the sparkling yellow of the colt's-foot and the soft red of
the clover. Birds were whistling from the coppice near by, and overhead
the air was flecked with innumerable black pinions of fugitive rooks
and starlings. It did not seem possible that a sound of war or a deed
of violence could ever have intruded to break the Sabbath stillness of
that scene of peace.
The water of King Richard's Well is a shallow pool, choked now with
moss and weeds. The inscription, which was written by Dr. Samuel Parr,
of Hatton, reads as follows:
AQVA. EX. HOC. PVTEO. HAVSTA
SITIM. SEDAVIT.
RICHARDVS. TERTIVS. REX. ANGLIAE
CVM HENRICO. COMITE DE RICHMONDIA
ACERRIME. ATQVE. INGENTISSIME. PRAELIANS
ET. VITA. PARITER. AC. SCEPTRO
ANTE NOCTEM. CARITVRUS
II KAL. SEP. A.D. M.C.C.C.C.LXXXV.
There are five churches in the immediate neighbourhood of Bosworth
Field, all of which were in one way or another associated with that
memorable battle. Ratcliffe Culey church has a low square tower and
a short stone spire, and there is herbage growing upon its tower and
its roof. It is a building of the fourteenth century, one mark of this
period being its perpendicular stone font, an octagon in shape, and
much frayed by time. In three arches of its chancel, on the south side,
the sculpture shows tri-foliated forms, of exceptional beauty. In the
east window there are fragments of old glass, rich in colour and quaint
and singular. The churchyard is full of odd gravestones, various in
shape and irregular in position. An ugly slate-stone is much used in
Leicestershire for monuments to the dead. Most of those stones record
modern burials, the older graves being unmarked. The grass grows thick
and dense all over the churchyard. Upon the church walls are several
fine specimens of those mysterious ray and circle marks which have long
been a puzzle to the archæological explorer. Such marks are usually
found in the last bay but one, on the south side of the nave, toward
the west end of the church. On Ratcliffe Culey church they consist
of central points with radial lines, like a star, but these are not
enclosed, as often happens, with circle lines. Various theories have
been advanced by antiquarians to account for these designs. Probably
those marks were cut upon the churches, by the pious monks of old, as
emblems of eternity and of the Sun of Righteousness.
Shenton Hall (1629), long and still the seat of the Woollastons, stood
directly in the path of the combatants at Bosworth Field, and the
fury of the battle must have raged all around it. The Hall has been
recased, and, except for its old gatehouse and semi-octagon bays, which
are of the Tudor style, it presents a modern aspect. Its windows open
toward Radmore heath and Ambien Hill, the scene of the conflict between
the Red Rose and the White. The church has been entirely rebuilt,--a
handsome edifice, of crucial form, containing costly pews of old
oak, together with interesting brasses and busts, taken from the old
church which it has replaced. The brasses commemorate Richard Coate
and Joyce his wife, and Richard Everard and his wife, and are dated
1556, 1597, and 1616. The busts are of white marble, dated 1666, and
are commemorative of William Woollaston and his wife, once lord and
lady of the manor of Shenton. It was the rule, in building churches,
that one end should face to the east and the other to the west, but
you frequently find an old church that is set at a slightly different
angle,--that, namely, at which the sun arose on the birthday of the
saint to whom the church was dedicated. The style of large east and
west windows, with trefoil or other ornamentation in the heads of the
arches, came into vogue about the time of Edward the First.
Dadlington was Richard's extreme left on the day of the battle, and
Bosworth was his extreme right. These positions were intrusted to the
Stanleys, both of whom betrayed their king. Sir William Stanley's
headquarters were at Dadlington, and traces of the earthworks then
thrown up there, by Richard's command, are still visible. Dadlington
church has almost crumbled to pieces, and it is to be restored. It
is a diminutive structure, with a wooden tower, stuccoed walls, and
a tiled roof, and it stands in a graveyard full of scattered mounds
and slate-stone monuments. It was built in Norman times, and although
still used it has long been little better than a ruin. One of the
bells in its tower is marked "Thomas Arnold fecit, 1763,"--but this
is comparatively a modern touch. The church contains two pointed
arches, and across its roof are five massive oak beams, almost black
with age. The plaster ceiling has fallen, in several places, so that
patches of laths are visible in the roof. The pews are square, box-like
structures, made of oak and very old. The altar is a plain oak table,
supported on carved legs, covered with a cloth. On the west wall
appears a tablet, inscribed "Thomas Eames, church-warden, 1773." Many
human skeletons, arranged in regular tiers, were found in Dadlington
churchyard, when a much-beloved clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Bourne, was
buried, in 1881; and it is believed that those are remains of men who
fell at Bosworth Field. The only inn at this lonely place bears the
quaint name of The Dog and Hedgehog.
The following queer epitaph appears upon a gravestone in Dadlington
churchyard. It is Thomas Bolland, 1765, who thus expresses his mind, in
mortuary reminiscence:
"I lov'd my Honour'd Parents dear,
I lov'd my Wife's and Children dear,
And hope in Heaven to meet them there.
I lov'd my Brothers & Sisters too,
And hope I shall them in Heaven view.
I lov'd my Vncle's, Aunt's, & Cousin's too
And I pray God to give my children grace the same to do."
Stoke Golding church was built in the fourteenth century. It stands
now, a gray and melancholy relic of other days, strange and forlorn yet
august and stately, in a little brick village, the streets of which
are paved, like those of a city, with blocks of stone. It is regarded
as one of the best specimens extant of the decorative style of early
English ecclesiastical architecture. It has a fine tower and spire, and
it consists of nave, chantry, and south aisle. There is a perforated
parapet on one side, but not on the other. The walls of the nave and
the chancel are continuous. The pinnacles, though decayed, show that
they must have been beautifully carved. One of the decorative pieces
upon one of them is a rabbit with his ears laid back. Lichen and grass
are growing on the tower and on the walls. The roof is of oak, the
mouldings of the arches are exceptionally graceful, and the capitals of
the five main columns present, in marked diversity, carvings of faces,
flowers, and leaves. The tomb of the founder is on the north side, and
the stone pavement is everywhere lettered with inscriptions of burial.
There is a fine mural brass, bearing the name of Brokesley, 1633,
and a superb "stocke chest," 1636; and there is a sculptured font,
of exquisite symmetry. Some of the carving upon the oak roof is more
grotesque than decorative,--but this is true of most other carving to
be found in ancient churches; such, for example, as you may see under
the miserere seats in the chancel of Trinity at Stratford-upon-Avon.
There was formerly some beautiful old stained glass in the east window
of Stoke Golding church, but this has disappeared. A picturesque stone
slab, set upon the church wall outside, arrests attention by its
pleasing shape, its venerable aspect, and its decayed lettering; the
date is 1684. Many persons slain at Bosworth Field were buried in Stoke
Golding churchyard, and over their nameless graves the long grass is
waving, in indolent luxuriance and golden light. So Nature hides waste
and forgets pain. Near to this village is Crown Hill, where the crown
of England was taken from a hawthorn bush, whereon it had been cast,
in the frenzied confusion of defeat, after the battle of Bosworth was
over and the star of King Richard had been quenched in death. Crown
Hill is a green meadow now, without distinguishing feature, except that
two large trees, each having a double trunk, are growing in the middle
of it. Not distant from this historic spot stands Higham-on-the-Hill,
where there is a fine church, remarkable for its Norman tower. From
this village the view is magnificent,--embracing all that section of
Leicestershire which is thus haunted with memories of King Richard and
of the carnage that marked the final conflict of the white and red
roses.
[Illustration: _Higham-on-the-Hill._]
[Illustration]