In Our Time - The Battle of Bosworth Field
Post categories: In Our Time
17:55, Friday, 27 April 2012
Editor's Note: This week Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Battle of Bosworth Field, the celebrated encounter between Lancastrian and Yorkist forces in August 1485. - CM
Hello,
A few after the programme reflections. One of the reasons, I was told, that the evidence for domestic wars is not as plentiful as that for foreign wars is that foreign wars were audited by the Exchequer, who liked to put down what every single man was paid and when he was paid and who he was, and so for foreign wars we have a very good idea of numbers, of names, of positions in society. For domestic wars there was a war chest and a noble would come along and ask for money to help him bring his men to battle, and the war chest would be opened, coins would be passed over and a bit of paper would change hands as a receipt. Most of these bits of paper, it turns out, disappeared.
It was also pointed out that the fighting in medieval wars was very often done by a handful of people who liked fighting and were trained to fight. They were trained troops and to manipulate a horse in full armour, with weapons to hand, needed a great deal of training and the will to kill had to be cultivated. This could extend down the scale, especially with bowmen, because at that time in the fifteenth century all adult men had to do archery practice in the towns as well as in the villages, and we know that they did because of reports that we have ('we' being the historians) of the accidents that occurred!
One of the contributors said that household retainers were very important to the lord leading his troops into the main throng of battle. They were like a mafia group who had great loyalty to each other - which came way before anything else - and that cohesion could be a tremendously important factor.
Lots of talk about longbows being very slowly overtaken by guns. There's a famous painting of knights in full armour firing guns from the shoulder in the 1470s in Burgundy. Knights in full armour with guns were also common in Germany. But the transition from longbows to guns took a long time. Longbows were still taken into the field of battle in the 1560s. Even at that time they had a faster rate of fire than guns and were more accurate. Unfortunately, they could not pierce armour which is where guns trumped them. There's a painting, I was told, of a knight in a field walking around like a porcupine with arrows coming out of his armour all over the place, but he, snugly inside the metal, unhurt.
Another reason for the difficulties in finding the battlefield around Bosworth was that the soil is very acidic and therefore arrowheads, which are a great indicator of numbers and so on, were not preserved.
And finally Shakespeare, who we did not get around to, may well have modelled his character of Richard III on a book by Thomas More, who himself saw Richard III as a model monster.
Then out into a rather sunny London - a change after the rain. I was rather looking forward to walking in the rain. I got dressed up for it, i.e. raincoat, cap and decent shoes. Spent forty minutes waiting to meet a friend to talk about a book. He was waiting for me in reception; I was waiting for him in the coffee room. Neither of us had the sense to look in the other's room.
Off to the office and then to a rough cut. I wanted to get down to the Lords to vote but things dragged out. It's that sort of time of year as we're getting ready for the big South Bank Show Sky Arts Awards, which are a model monster to produce, especially in the last week or two.
But had a wonderful walk in the rain on Hampstead Heath a couple of mornings ago. Absolutely sluicing down. Most of the morning walkers, therefore, not on the Heath. Something terrific about wearing the right clothes when it's sheeting with rain and feeling pelted in the face by hard, driving rain. Not quite as good as the hailstones which drummed me up in Cumberland two weeks ago. Like white marbles they were, bouncing on the road, bouncing on the roofs of cars.
No wonder we're interested in the weather in this country. There is so very much of it.
And dictating this now from home where I'm feeling a bit fed up, because I came back to work on a script and find that I have forgotten to bring the first draft of the script back with me. So will begin to read 'Candide' instead for next week.
Best wishes
Melvyn Bragg
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Comment number 1.
At 28th Apr 2012, Richard D wrote:Hello - this broadcast was a "best of class" episodes of I.O.T. thank you for facilitating - the series consistently provides the most outstanding radio content the Ö÷²¥´óÐã can (and should!) aspire to producing. Might I suggest the Elizabethan Magus John Dee would make a fascinating future programme (was it true visitors played in the garden of his house in Mortlake with solid gold bowls) ? And... can the I.O.T. archive be blessed with a search engine tool ? Thank you.
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Comment number 2.
At 28th Apr 2012, Christmas Evans wrote:It's appalling that a British Professsor of Mediaeval History cannot pronounce Machynlleth properly where Owain Glyndwr called a Parliament and a treaty with France was signed. Incidentally, IOT (apart from England generally) has a blind spot about Wales. Don't forget that hundreds of words the English associate so strongly with Englishness, Avon & Dover for example, are Welsh words, not to mention Cumbria,
Melvyn. Why not correct this bias by having a programme on the kingdom of Alt Clud which Norman Davies writes about in his book 'Vanished Kingdoms' and have a panel that can accurately pronounce Welsh please! It really is not difficult.
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Comment number 3.
At 28th Apr 2012, meic981 wrote:As another devotee of I.O.T, I echo the views of Richard D above with regard to the magnificence of its material over the years, and the luxurious availability of its archive; Melvyn Bragg has embodied the spirit and quality of the Ö÷²¥´óÐã's raison d'etre to inform culturally for a very long time. That said, most of the (British) historical subjects in I.O.T are invariably expressed through a very English perspective. In the case of Henry VII, if this programme had been produced in Wales it would have shown that, for the Welsh, the Bosworth victory meant that a Welshman was on the English throne (whereas for the English there was relief that the Wars of the Roses were over). This event was awaited ever since the 14 year old Henry accompanied his (pro-Lancastrian) uncle Jasper Tudor (Tudor being the anglicisation of Tudur, the dynasty from Anglesey who supported Owain Glyn Dŵr against Henry IV) to France in exile. When Henry landed in Wales 14 years later, it was to both collect Welsh forces en route and to rendezvous with the main force of Rhys ap Thomas from South Wales (he who slew Richard III) at Cefn Digoll. Wales was rewarded with a relatively peaceful period after this, until of course Henry's second son came to power. None of this came out from the assembled Historians. The magnetism of History is in assembling all perspectives, and if Melvyn Bragg ever has time in his very full life to discuss this aspect, I would be honoured.
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Comment number 4.
At 28th Apr 2012, lmh wrote:It was, as always, an interesting discussion. I echo the previous comments about Melvyn embodying the spirit of the Ö÷²¥´óÐã charter. Indeed, I refuse to answer the phone on a Thursday morning, while it is on. I should like to suggest another programme on Richard III. Why not investigate Shakespeare's evidence for the monster theory, his use of More's account and the latest evidence that seems to exonerate Richard from the deaths of the princes and implicates H7 himself? History is a contested area of knowledge and would gain a little more oomph! Also, as someone who has lived in Wales and can pronounce Machynlleth, I would not expect an English historian to be able to pronounce such a hard word(actually Mac-hunt-leth)
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Comment number 5.
At 28th Apr 2012, philthehombre wrote:Historians, like bankers, must surely be among the most blessed, for where one can be forever saved by the extraction of baill outs so too can the other by the dig ups of seemingly new evidence.
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Comment number 6.
At 28th Apr 2012, Christmas Evans wrote:Machynlleth a hard word! Whatever is the matter with you, Imh? These are academics for God's sake! My gripe about IOT's English bias is supported by the Boudicca programme. Here, England and the English were mentioned before the English had even arrived, and no-one noticed. I am a great fan of IOT but this is its lacuna. Nothing about the significance of Henry Tudur's landing in Wales was mentioned this week let alone the significance of his going to Machynlleth - see meic981's excellent contribution.
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Comment number 7.
At 29th Apr 2012, Buttle wrote:I am unable to use the Ö÷²¥´óÐã iPlayer to listen to this programme my computer appears to be too old. I can, however, listen to RTE Radio programmes. Can not a more basic "Listen Again" feature be instituted that even my old computer can handle ?
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Comment number 8.
At 30th Apr 2012, philthehombre wrote:Buttle, perhaps a springy new pc might be easier on the Ö÷²¥´óÐã's budget? Brings to mind, but only the most tangentialy, Sam Johnson's definition of an egotist as someone who sets fire to his neighbour's house to fry an egg.
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Comment number 9.
At 1st May 2012, John Thompson wrote:From the Battle of Bosworth Field we can see how deeply genealogy mattered to kingly succession for British history and British identity. Shakespeare deals with this subject in several of his plays like Richard II and Richard III and Macbeth.In Coriolanus we see that Coriolanus cannot equivocate or love the people and is not loved.Some like Richard III are both villain and victim.Elizabeth I was a popular monarch and loved by her subjects,whereas James I who followed was not loved and his union of England and Scotland was disliked by both sides.His court was known for its decadence and corruption.With the former Queen Elizabeth everybody knew where they stood,and were proud of English glory,fighting against the Spanish and the Pope.Again in the Wars of the Roses and the
battle for the crown between Henry Tudor and Richard III,you get this sense of the outsider,who is banished,lies low with the politic French, gathers an army of mercenaries and a swelling band of supporters,coming from Wales,where the Tudors originated,and utilizing the anti-Richard faction,based on Richard’s growing unpopularity,his deceits,betrayals and murders,that Henry with a little luck from the undecided Stanleys ,is
victorious and uniting both the houses of York and Lancaster by his marriage with Princess Elizabeth,daughter of Edward IV.And yet we know Richard was no coward and was more a fighter than Henry and stood his ground and did not run.We also don’t know yet if he did kill the 2 Princes in the Tower. Richard lost the battle not for any mythic reasons, but because of morale and loyalty problems in his army. Most of the common soldiers found it difficult to fight for a liege whom they distrusted, and some lords believed that their situation might improve if Richard was dethroned.According to Adams, against such duplicities Richard's desperate charge was the only knightly behaviour on the field. As fellow historian Michael Bennet puts it, the attack was "the swan-song of [mediaeval] English chivalry".
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Comment number 10.
At 3rd May 2012, Jamie wrote:Re Richard 111. His actions in 1483 make far more sense if you think he is the legitimate heir to the throne, it is highly possible that Edward iv was illegitimate. On his brothers death as legitimate heir but with the throne going to Edward V he and his family are in great danger as legitimacy is everything in this time and his actions in that year make far more sense in this context. In 1483 Richard 111 acts out of fear not greed. The really interesting question about Richard 111 is would you murder your brothers children to preserve the life of your own son?,I wonder how many people would answer that question.
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