The death of Richard III on the battlefield brought the Plantagenet monarchy to an end and cleared the way for Henry Tudor to establish a new royal dynasty.
THE UNIVERSAL RECORD
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Brad Socha | August 21, 2026 | 8:29 AM EST
On August 22, 1485, King Richard III led his army into battle against the forces of Henry Tudor near Bosworth in Leicestershire. By the end of the fighting, Richard was dead, Henry had won the crown, and England had entered a new political era.
The Battle of Bosworth was one of the decisive engagements of the Wars of the Roses, the long struggle for power associated with the rival houses of Lancaster and York. Richard’s death ended his two-year reign and made him the last Plantagenet king of England. Henry Tudor became Henry VII, founding a dynasty that would rule England for more than a century.
More than 500 years later, the battle gained an extraordinary modern epilogue when Richard’s lost remains were discovered beneath a parking lot in Leicester.
Richard III Faces Henry Tudor
Richard became king in 1483 following the death of his brother, Edward IV. Edward’s young son was initially expected to succeed as Edward V, but the marriage of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville was declared invalid and their children illegitimate. Richard, Duke of Gloucester, took the throne as Richard III.
His accession was deeply controversial. Edward V and his younger brother Richard, Duke of York, remembered as the Princes in the Tower, disappeared after being lodged in the Tower of London. Their ultimate fate remains uncertain, and historians continue to debate responsibility for their disappearance.
Against this unsettled political background, Henry Tudor emerged as Richard’s principal challenger. Henry had spent much of his life outside England and possessed a claim to the throne through his mother, Margaret Beaufort, whose ancestry descended from the Lancastrian line.
Henry sailed for Britain from France in August 1485 and landed in Wales. As he advanced toward England’s interior, supporters joined his army. Richard gathered a substantially larger royal force and moved to intercept him.
A critical uncertainty surrounded the powerful Stanley family. Thomas Stanley was Henry Tudor’s stepfather, but Richard held Stanley’s son, Lord Strange, as a hostage. Thomas Stanley and his brother William brought thousands of troops to the area but initially remained apart from the two main armies.
On the morning of August 22, the opposing forces confronted one another in the countryside southwest of the traditional battlefield location at Ambion Hill. Modern archaeological research has substantially refined historians’ understanding of where the main fighting occurred.
Historic England notes that contemporary and near-contemporary accounts vary in reliability and sometimes contradict one another, making a precise reconstruction of every movement impossible. Current evidence nevertheless places the core battlefield in the low-lying landscape around Fenn Lane.
Richard’s Final Charge at Bosworth
Richard’s army appears to have considerably outnumbered Henry’s. Historic England estimates Henry’s force at roughly 5,000 men and Richard’s at between 10,000 and 15,000, although medieval troop numbers should be treated cautiously.
Henry’s troops were led in the main fighting by John de Vere, Earl of Oxford. As the battle developed, Richard saw an opportunity to attack Henry directly.
The king launched a mounted charge toward his rival.
It was an extraordinarily consequential decision. Richard and his household troops penetrated toward Henry’s position, but the intervention of forces commanded by Sir William Stanley helped turn the fight against the king. Richard was surrounded and killed.
Exactly how every moment of his final combat unfolded cannot be established with certainty. What is clear is that Richard did not survive the battlefield. At 32, he became the last English king to die in battle.
His death effectively decided the contest. Henry Tudor emerged victorious and became King Henry VII. Bosworth did not completely end the Wars of the Roses, Henry faced further resistance, culminating in the Battle of Stoke Field in 1487, but it destroyed Richard’s regime and ended Plantagenet rule.
Henry’s accession founded the Tudor dynasty. His marriage to Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV, helped unite competing dynastic claims. Their descendants would include Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, placing Bosworth at the beginning of one of the most consequential periods in English history.
Richard’s body, meanwhile, was taken to nearby Leicester and eventually buried at the church of the Franciscan Grey Friars. The friary was later dissolved and demolished during the English Reformation, and the precise location of his grave disappeared from public knowledge.
For centuries, stories circulated that Richard’s remains had been removed and even thrown into the River Soar.
They had not.
In 2012, archaeologists from the University of Leicester, working with the Richard III Society and Leicester City Council, excavated the former Greyfriars site, by then partly covered by a parking lot. They uncovered a battle-scarred skeleton with severe scoliosis in the remains of the friary church.
Scientific investigation included osteology, radiocarbon dating, archaeological evidence, genealogy and DNA analysis. In February 2013, the University of Leicester announced that the remains were those of Richard III. Subsequent analysis placed the probability of the identification at greater than 99.999 percent.
Richard was reinterred at Leicester Cathedral in March 2015.
The discovery gave an unusually tangible ending to a story that began on the battlefield in 1485. Bosworth did more than remove one king and elevate another. It ended the rule of a dynasty that had occupied the English throne in various branches for centuries and opened the age of the Tudors.
More than five centuries after Richard rode into his final battle, archaeology and genetics brought England’s last king killed in combat back into the historical record.
Sources:
Historic England — Battle of Bosworth (Field) 1485
https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1000004
Historic England — Bosworth Battlefield: Power, Protest & Progress
https://historicengland.org.uk/campaigns/100-places/protest-power/
University of Leicester — Richard III: Discovery and Identification
https://le.ac.uk/richard-iii
University of Leicester — Overview of the Grey Friars Project
https://le.ac.uk/richard-iii/grey-friars
University of Leicester — DNA Results and Identification of Richard III
https://le.ac.uk/richard-iii/identification/genetics/dna-results
About the Author
Brad Socha is the founder of The Universal Record, focused on sourced, factual global reporting. Coverage includes international news, geopolitics, technology, and major developments.