It is more than 500 years since the Battle of Bosworth saw the death of Richard III and ushered in the Tudor dynasty.

Since then scholars have argued over the precise location of the battle with several different locations given serious consideration.
 
Now a team of historians and archaeologists says it has found the site - and it is not where everyone thought it was.
 
It is one of Shakespeare's most memorable scenes.
 
The hunchback Richard III, thrown from his horse and maddened with blood lust, offers up his kingdom in exchange for a replacement steed.
 
Today the spot where he is supposed to have met his end - a victim of treachery rather than military genius - is marked by a roughly-cut stone memorial in a quiet grove.
The plaque upon it reads simply: "Richard, the last Plantagenet King of England, was slain here 22nd August, 1485."

Except that he was not.
 
According to a team of battlefield experts and historians the location of the battlefield was two miles to the south and west. At the moment they are being no more precise than that because they fear the activities of illegal treasure seekers.
 
The investigators have been checking soil samples, analysing peat deposits and carrying out searches with metal detectors. They have also been studying ancient documents and maps for clues.
 
Using references to places like Redmore (or Reed Moor) and Sandyford (a sandy crossing in the marsh) they have built up a picture of the landscape at the time of the battle.

There have been other clues such as Crown Hill, long thought to have had some connection with the crowning of Henry VII after the battle.
 
And the study has thrown new light on the use of medieval artillery. They have found 22 lead shots fired by the smallest hand-held gun of the time and from the largest cannon of the time.
 
All of which presents a problem for the Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre which has become popular with tourists, schoolchildren and students. Thousands have attended lectures on the subject and walked for two hours over the battlefield trail.
 
When the location has been debated before, visitors have expressed mixed feelings.
 
Many said the precise location of the centre was less important than the quality of educational displays and exhibitions. Others said they would be disappointed not to be able to walk the actual field of battle.

Dr Glen Foard, from the Battlefields Trust, who has led the search, said: "For me the most important thing about the discoveries at Bosworth is that it opens the door for archaeology to explore the origins of firepower.

"In collaboration with the University of Leeds we want to trace this story across Europe."

Through sexual liaisons with EDWARD IV and several prominent courtiers, Elizabeth Shore, better known as Jane Shore, became entangled in the political intrigues that led to the usurpation of RICHARD III and the revival of civil war in the 1480s.

 

One of Edward IV’s many mistresses, Shore was, according to Sir Thomas More’s HISTORY OF KING RICHARD III, the king’s favorite— less for her beauty than for her engaging personality. “Proper she was and fair. . . . Yet delighted not men so much in her beauty, as in her pleasant behaviour. For a proper wit had she, and could both read well and write, merry of company, ready and quick of answer, neither mute nor full of babble, sometimes taunting without displeasure and not without disport” (Ross, Richard III, p. 137).

 

The daughter of a LONDON merchant and the wife of William Shore, a London goldsmith, Jane Shore may have become the king’s mistress in about 1470. Although Edward never allowed his lovers to become political figures, Shore, again according to More, exercised a benign influence over the king, tending to mollify him when he was angry or displeased with anyone.

 

Upon Edward’s death in April 1483, Shore may have become the lover of Thomas GREY, marquis of Dorset, and then of his rival, William HASTINGS, Lord Hastings. If this second relationship occurred, it may have involved her in politics, for on 13 June 1483, at a council meeting in the TOWER OF LONDON, Richard, duke of Gloucester, charged Shore and Queen Elizabeth WOODVILLE with trying, on Hastings’s urging, to destroy him through sorcery. The accusation led to Hastings’s summary execution and to Shore’s arrest. Forced soon after to do public penance as a harlot by walking through London dressed only in her kirtle (underskirt or gown) and carrying a lighted taper, Shore was afterward imprisoned in Ludgate. Although it is possible that Shore participated, perhaps as a go-between, in anti-Gloucester plots involving either Hastings or Dorset, her active cooperation with her late lover’s wife in sorcery is most unlikely. Both contemporary writers, like More and Polydore Vergil in his ANGLICA HISTORIA, and many modern historians believe that Gloucester’s charges were largely invented to destroy Hastings, who was loyal to EDWARDV and thus a serious obstacle to the duke’s plan to take the throne.

 

While in prison, Shore charmed the king’s solicitor, Thomas Lynom, who sought permission to marry her, Shore’s husband having presumably died. Richard III (the former duke of Gloucester) told his chancellor, John RUSSELL, bishop of Lincoln, to dissuade Lynom from such a foolish action, but he gave permission for the match should the solicitor be adamant. Whether or not the marriage occurred is unclear, for beside the fact that she was still living in London in poverty in Henry VIII’s reign, almost nothing is known of Shore’s life after 1484.

 

Further Reading: Ross, Charles, Edward IV (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 1998); Ross, Charles, Richard III (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981); Seward, Desmond, The Wars of the Roses (New York:Viking, 1995).