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