Remembering The Battle of Bosworth by Catherine Hokin

The first of these Welsh kings was Henry who defeated all the other kings at the Battle of Boswell and took away all their roses. After the battle the crown was found hanging up in a hawthorn tree at the top of the hill. This is memorable as being the only occasion on which the crown has been found after a battle hanging up in a hawthorn tree at the top of the hill.

With thanks to 1066 and All That by Sellar and Yeatman



As Sellar and Yeatman put it in 1066 and All That - probably still my favourite historical book of all time which may explain a lot - History is not what you thought. It is what you can remember. One of the things many people are pretty certain they can remember is the Wars of the Roses, which ended (or didn't but we'll get to that) 533 years ago today on the 22nd August 1485 with the Battle of Bosworth. History buffs or not, ask a sample of your friends about this time period and I guarantee they'll all have some sense of it. Whether it's the lost princes in the Tower, the ill-fittingly romantic name, Richard and his hunch-back, or his car-park discovery, the Wars of the Roses and its characters still resonate. They also inspire great passion. My father was a member of the Ricardian Society and a war-gamer whose sand-table battles (ask your parents) re-enacted every twist of that August day. As I said many times when my novel about Margaret of Anjou came out, he was so obsessed with the conflict that, as a child, I was fairly certain that it was still going on. And who can forget the Channel 4 documentary after the discovery of Richard III's body and Philippa Langley's face when she looked at that re-created head.

 Bosworth Memorial

Perhaps one of the reasons the Battle of Bosworth still attracts such attention (apart from the fact that a king died) is that it still courts controversy. We have no eye-witness accounts - all our knowledge of the day's events is derived from documents written after the fact and under a regime with a need to remember history in its own particular way if it was going to have any kind of a future. Some sources in fact come even later - for example there was no real attempt to analyse the use, type and position of troops  for nearly another 200 years. The site itself has long been a matter of dispute - the stone marking the spot of Richard's death is at Ambion Hill, near Sutton Cheney in Leicestershire. In 2010, after a major archaeological project, the actual site of the battle was announced as being 3km away from the memorial. Part of the evidence which relocated the battle site were 22 pieces of lead shot, ranging from gunshot to grapefruit-sized canonballs. Not only did this discovery change the location, it also dispelled a myth that the armies fought each other with bows and arrows rather than firepower.

 Stanley Coat of Arms

Controversies over the site are one thing but the issue of treachery - and that of Lord Stanley in particular - is quite another blood-boiler. Listen to my father and William Stanley made Attila the Hun sound like Winnie the Pooh. The version he subscribes to has the hitherto loyal Stanley turning his coat at the last minute, swooping his troops down the hill behind Richard in a shock move that ensured the king was butchered. That Stanley declared for Henry at the last minute is as certain as anything in this battle can be but the idea of the attack having no deeper roots than a self-serving decision on the day as been re-examined by historians such as David Hipshon. He cites Stanley's failure to support Richard not as a sudden change in loyalty but as coming out of a 20 year power-struggle in Lancashire; a personal score being settled in a bigger political arena. And I can already hear the cry - "tomaytoes/tomatoes: it's still treachery!"

Reconstructed head of Richard III

The site, the type of weapons used, who turned coat and who didn't: it all disappears into the mist when we get to what happened to Richard himself. Oh the ire it used to raise. The stories of his removal from the battlefield are told in a number of the chronicles which later reported the battle. According to Vergil, the body was ‘nakyd of all clothing, and layd uppon an horse bake with the armes and legges hanginge downe on both sides’, a scene the Crowland Chronicle described as a ‘miserable spectacle in good sooth’. His body was then taken back to Leicester, his head supposedly hitting the stones of Bow Bridge as it was carried across. Most accounts agree that the body was put on public display for two days at Greyfriars church. Some then have the corpse interred in a plain unmarked tomb inside the church, others talk about an alabaster tomb, with an effigy of Richard on top, being erected at a later date on the orders of Henry VII. If that ever existed it was lost, as was the King with the most commonly believed story having him tipped unceremoniously into the River Soar.

 Leicester Council Sign

Except, of course, he wasn't. In 2012, an archaeological excavation discovered a battle-damaged skeleton in a Leicester City Council car park, believed to be the site once occupied by Greyfriars Priory Church. The body showed that the skeleton had 10 wounds, eight of them to the head, inflicted in battle and suggesting the soldier had lost his helmet. A blade had hacked away part of the rear of the skull. In 2013 DNA testing identified ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ the remains as those of Richard. The University of Leicester identified the skeleton as a result of radiocarbon dating, comparison with contemporary reports of his appearance, and comparison of his mitochondrial DNA with that of two matrilineal descendants of Richard’s eldest sister, Anne of York. So we had Richard but we didn't have an end to the arguing with both York and Leicester campaigning to host his remains - a battle Leicester's tourism department won.

Was 1485 the end of the Wars of the Roses? Not for Henry VII who lived under the shadow of pretenders and resurrected dead princes throughout his reign and probably never sat that comfortably on his throne. And, beyond a categorisation date of the here ends/here starts type, not for historians who still have so much of the battle left to pick over. And don't forget there's another controversy to come: the lost princes, one of history's ultimate cold cases. There's bones, they've never been tested and Philippa Langley is on the case...

Looking backwards and forwards by Mary Hoffman

Since I have the first-of-the-month position in which to write History Girls posts, I can take the opportunity to wish all our Followers a very happy and fulfilling 2016.

And I can, Janus-like, look back over 2015 and forwards to the coming year, in which the History Girls will turn five! Watch out for a special birthday party on 1st July.

Statue of Janus in the Vatican Museum

First, we have lost some of our regular History Girls and gained some new ones. We say goodbye to  Laurie Graham, Christina Koning, Eleanor Updale and Clare Mulley and au revoir to Louisa Young, who leaves us a monthly poster but will be back as a Reserve and also a guest in 2016. Eleanor and Louisa have been with us since the beginning and we wish them all well..

In their place we welcome Vanora Bennett, Katherine Clements, Katherine Webb, Miranda Miller and Julie Summers. You can read about the new HGs on the About Us page. People only ever leave us because of pressure of work and sometimes they come back; the door is always open.

Looking back over last year shows we had a slew of anniversaries, from VE Day (70 years) on 8th May

VE Day celebrations in London (Imperial War Museum)

to the sealing of Magna Carta (800 years) on 15th June.

Magna Carta 12 97 version

 And there was the Evacuation of Dunkirk (75 years) at the end of May/beginning of June;

The Little Ships, Chatham (Colin Smith Creative Commons)

the Battle of Waterloo (200 years) on 18th June

Artist: Thomas James Barker

 and the Battle of Agincourt (600 years) on 15th October.

15th century miniature

It's a bit heavily biased towards the military and the political, perhaps because History being "about chaps" tends to show up in commemorations. What do we take from the celebration of these dates in the calendar? The Battle of Britain Memorial Service (also 75 years autumn 2015) created more column inches over Jeremy Corbyn's non-singing of the National Anthem than anything about what was actually being remembered and honoured.

Photo credit: Beata May

But there's a world of difference between a battle victory for the British at Waterloo and that at Agincourt. In both cases the French were on the losing side (though Wellington said it was a close-run thing) but the more recent conflict led to eighty years of peace in Europe. Whereas Henry V's victory in France against a force far superior in numbers came bang in the middle of what we loosely call the Hundred Years War and marked the high point of English possessions in France.

After Henry died young his infant son, Henry Vl was crowned king of England and France but it was downhill all the way after Agincourt in terms of England claiming territory across the Channel. That was an ambition that seemed obvious and right to English kings for reasons the woman in the street now (and possibly then)would find incomprehensible.

Borders are artificial politically-imposed boundaries but they do at least make some sense when marked by a large geographical feature like a stretch of water. In our era, when Superpowers from countries thousands of miles away from a conflict feel they have a right (or to put it more charitably, a duty) to intervene with bombs and drones and soldiers, the whole notion of sovereign states is differently undermined.

"Truly to speak, and with no addition,
We go to gain a little patch of ground
That hath in it no profit but the name.
To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it"

says the Norwegian Captain to Hamlet in explanation of his massed forces marching on Poland.

Hamlet Why, then the Polack never will defend it.

Captain Yes, it is already garrison'd.

Which brings me to next year's major anniversary, at least for me. Not a battle or a treaty or a natural disaster but the 400th anniversary of  the death of Shakespeare on 23rd April. The History Girls really must do something special for that. My own personal celebration of the life of my favourite writer will include publishing on that date my YA novel Shakespeare's Ghost. The cover came yesterday and you will be seeing more about it here.

BBC 2 will continue its very successful The Hollow Crown series with the first tetralogy (to be written, though later historically) of the three Henry Vl plays and Richard lll. The previous cycle had a very memorable Ben Whishaw as Richard ll, Jeremy Irons as Henry lV and Tom Hiddleston as Prince Hal/ Henry V. The ubiquitous Benedict Cumberbatch will play Richard lll and Geoffrey Streatfeild his older brother Edward lV. I can't wait!

By coincidence I have just finished reading Dan Jones' The Hollow Crown, the sequel to his The Plantagenets. it is very readable indeed and it's such a complicated period of battles, treachery, familial in-fighting and summary executions that one needs a clear guide.

But back to 2016. There are a host of anniversaries coming up from the Battle of Hastings (950 years) on 14th October

to the Great Fire of London (350 years) in September.

Artist Rita Greer 2008

And from January to December there are bound to be mentions of the 80th anniversary of the succession and abdication of Edward Vlll.

Here on The History Girls we have a stellar list of guests lined up, including Tracy Chevalier and Alison Weir.

It only remains for me to wish you all the very best that 2016 can bring and preferably no battles!

Anniversaries by Mary Hoffman

by Carfax2 (creative commons)

Everybody knows that 2012 saw the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, the 60th anniversary of her accession to the throne. And in 2013 those who wish to celebrate her long reign can do it all over again with the 60th anniversary of her Coronation. I heard a Yeoman Warder carefully explaining to a family at the Tower of London on Sunday that it took a year between accession and coronation not just because of preparing the ceremony but all the crests and headed notepaper that had to be changed.

It was the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens' birth too - a fact we celebrated with a party here on the History Girls blog. Adèle Geras even baked him a cake!

But there were many other anniversaries less written and talked about. Here are some of them:

The film Jules et Jim, directed by François Truffaut, was first shown in Paris 50 years ago
100 years ago the National Biscuit Company began selling the Oreo
Captain Robert Scott made the last entry in his diary and died not long afterwards 100 years ago
100 years ago, the Titanic sank

50 years ago Coventry Cathedral was reconsecrated and Benjamin Britten's War Requiem first performed there.
150 years ago the Rev. Charles Dodgson invented a story about a girl and a white rabbit
Nelson Mandela was arrested in Johannesburg 50 years ago
150 years ago Debussy was born

The Battle of Borodino took place between Russian and Allied Forces 200 years ago, resulting in stalemate with huge loss of life
250 years ago a six-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart gave his first public performance
200 years ago the Brothers Grimm published the first volume of their Kinder- und Hausmärchen.
The Cuban missile crisis was 50 years ago

Some of these I remember though Mozart was a bit before my time. And some had more personal significance than others. Growing up in the '60s, I really did think we might all be wiped out in a Nuclear Holocaust and it might happen before I could fascinate men in the way Jeanne Moreau did in Jules et Jim. I was in hospital recovering from having my appendix taken out (by Enid Blyton's husband) when the "old king" died. And I sang in Britten's War Requiem in the Netherlands and the UK.


But there was an even more personal anniversary in 2012, just before Christmas: my husband and I celebrated 40 years of marriage and it got me wondering about the names for these milestones and when they were invented. There's an association for the first 15 wedding anniversaries (though I don't remember getting any leather on my third or silk on my twelfth) then it all goes quiet till the 20th (China).

Wikipedia tells me, "The historic origins of wedding anniversaries date back to the Holy Roman Empire, when husbands crowned their wives with a silver wreath on their twenty-fifth anniversary and a gold wreath on the fiftieth." (I'm going to work on that gold wreath idea for ten years' time). Most of the other anniversary associations seem to have been invented by jewellers in the late 1930s.

So, disappointingly, it seems the commercial imperative was what named them.

But a big milestone in one's own life or the public celebration of an event remembered in one's lifetime underlines how rapidly the present becomes part of what now constitutes History. A novel set even fifty years ago would definitely count as historical fiction.

And what of 2013?

200 years since the publication of Pride and Prejudice, 100 since the riots at the first performance of The Rite of Spring, Benjamin Britten's centenary (on 22nd November, Saint Cecilia's Day - was ever anyone named and born so appropriately?), 50 years since the Beatles released their first LP and Sylvia Plath killed herself.

Like every year it will be a mixture. On this first day of the year are there any public or private that you look forward to celebrating?