Bosworth: The Birth of the Tudors (38 page)

The defection of Arnold Butler was significant, not just for bringing the support of Pembroke with him, which ‘cheered the troubled minds of all’. Butler himself was a close friend and long-time acquaintance of Sir Rhys ap Thomas who, recognising Butler’s renowned skills as a soldier, had employed him to train young gentlemen, ‘according to the true military discipline of those times, in which they employed much labour, accustoming them daily (as if they had been in field) to the hardest duties of a soldier’. Could Butler’s defection be taken as a sign that Rhys remained sympathetic to Henry’s cause? Henry was uncertain of Rhys ap Thomas’s motives; having promised his support, remaining in the Tywi Valley, Rhys had decided to remain cautious. Richard’s servants Richard Williams and Sir James Tyrell continued to hold a strong grip on the region; in any case Rhys may have wished to pursue a deliberate policy of tracing Henry’s progress, shadowing him as he moved northwards in order to decide at a later stage whether to support or crush him.

It was in this atmosphere of extreme uncertainty and nervousness that Henry departed from Haverfordwest that same afternoon, setting out for Cardigan, twenty-six miles away. Five miles into the journey, Henry decided to pitch camp ‘at the fifth milestone’ towards Cardigan so that his soldiers might rest. Suddenly a rumour broke out and spread throughout the camp that Sir Walter Herbert, the Earl of Huntingdon’s younger brother, and Rhys ap Thomas had encamped near Carmarthen and ‘were not far away with a huge band of armed men’. Uproar immediately ensued, and in the panic ‘each man began to get ready his arms and test and prepare his weapons’ as ‘a certain degree of fear seized them all’. The fear that was evidently latent among Henry’s followers is understandable: not only had Herbert and Rhys ap Thomas been tasked with crushing any rebellion, but the entire region of South Wales remained both in Richard’s control and his pay. During Buckingham’s rebellion, if the act of attainder against the duke’s ninety-seven supporters is considered comprehensive, not a single Welshman rose in support, while twenty-two men residing in South Wales were rewarded with annuities. Among them was Sir Thomas Vaughan of Tretower, whose father had been executed by Jasper Tudor at Chepstow in 1471. Vaughan had ensured that a watch was sent into the surrounding countryside, and was instrumental in the capture of the Duke’s castle at Brecon. To many marching through the hostile countryside, victory must have at that moment seemed against all odds.

Henry decided to send a party of scouts on horseback to discover the true situation. When they reported back that ‘all was quiet’, nerves were calmed. In fact, the rumours were likely to have been caused by the sight of the arrival of Gruffydd Rede, whose family had been prominent in Carmarthen for generations, who having left Walter Herbert and Rhys ap Thomas’s camp had journeyed to join Henry, bringing with him a band of soldiers, ‘although few were properly equipped’. Rede was accompanied by John Morgan of Tredegar in Gwent, described as a man ‘of no mean authority among the Welsh’, who had been a royal officer in Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire during the 1470s. The defection of the two men ‘greatly heartened the spirits of all’, while their presence in Henry’s camp perhaps gave Rhys ap Thomas an effective line of communication to Henry, allowing him to negotiate terms for his possible desertion.

With three defections in the course of the day, momentum seemed to be gathering. It seems likely that, after a seventeen-mile journey and several delays both at Haverfordwest and in the temporary panic that Gruffydd Rede’s arrival had caused, there was little time in the day for any further march, and the army would have remained encamped at the fifth milestone.

They would need their rest; by the following morning of Tuesday 9 August Henry felt confident enough to begin the next and most difficult part of the march, leading his army up over the craggy Preseli Hills, the highest point of the journey where, several hundred metres above sea level, clouds can often descend over its highest point. It would be a lonely and punishing journey; the slow climb at times must have seemed endless as fields and pasture gave way to a desolate bracken-covered landscape. Crossing the ridge of the Preseli hills at Bwlch-y-Gwynt, ‘the Pass of the Wind’, Henry intended to reach Fagwr Llwyd, south of Cilgwyn, a seventeen-mile journey. The site lies a mile from the Cardigan road. Abandoned in the early twentieth century, the ruins of the farmstead remain marked by a clump of beech trees, yet the shape and size of the building is clearly discernible, overlooking the valley of the river Nevern, above the haven of Newport, which must have provided a good campsite for his army. Across the valley, Henry could view his next intended destination: Cardigan, where crossing the river Teifi, he would enter the Principality of Wales.

Resuming his march the next day on Wednesday 10 August, after a journey of nine miles, Henry and his army crossed the river Teifi at Cardigan, reaching the walled town where little resistance seems to have come from the castle there. Tradition records that Henry stopped at the Three Mariners Inn; despite the short journey, Henry decided that he would need to pause to gather further support from the Welsh gentry in the north. Now that he had entered the Principality of Wales, Henry felt able to formally set out his claim to the throne. Letters were written, to be sent out across the region. A copy of one of these letters survives, addressed to John ap Meredith ap Jevan ap Meredith, an influential squire who lived in the Eifionydd area of south Caernarfonshire:

There is no personal comment in the letter, suggesting that it may have been a standard missive, but it remains a fascinating insight into Henry’s own mind during his campaign to claim the throne. What is most striking is its tone of authority. Beginning with the traditional formula of royal letters, ‘By the King. Right trusty and wellbeloved, we greet you well’ and sealed under Henry’s own ‘royal’ signet, the letter outlined Henry’s clear intention to seize the reins of monarchy, speaking of ‘our subjects’ and ‘our realm of England’. The letter had also been carefully crafted to appeal to its Welsh readers. Not only was Henry setting out his claim as King of England, refusing to even acknowledge Richard’s title, he was positioning himself as the liberator of the Welsh, playing upon Welsh nationalism by claiming that he had come to restore their liberties, promising to deliver them from ‘such miserable servitudes as they have piteously long [stood] in’. It was a convincing
and powerful elucidation of Henry’s intentions, of which anyone reading the letter could have been in no doubt. Equally powerful was Henry’s royal assertion and threat that if men failed to come to his aid, they would face his ‘grievous displeasure and answer unto at your peril’. To those reading the letter, the message was obvious: no longer could they avoid taking sides. The time had come to make their decision.

As messengers hastened ahead of him with copies of his declaration, Henry’s forces left Cardigan, moving northwards, hugging the route along the coast. Stopping for water at Ffynnondewi at the fourteenth milestone north-east of Cardigan, Henry reached the country mansion of Llwyn Dafydd in the parish of Llandysillio-gogo. Henry’s resting place after a total journey of twenty-three miles may have been a house called Neuadd, belonging to Dafydd ab Ieuan. Standing over a narrow and secluded valley which runs down to Cardigan Bay at Cwmtydu, two miles south of Newquay, it is worth considering that the cove nestled there is the only viable location where ships might be safely landed on the Cardigan Bay, raising the question of whether Henry’s entire army had journeyed with him on land, or whether a small fleet may have traced the Welsh coastline, allowing more troops to disembark once Henry’s advance party had reached this next location. The resting place clearly had significance for Henry, who would later reward Dafydd ab Ieuan for his pains with a gift known as the Hirlas Horn, a drinking horn mounted on a silver stand, decorated with the Welsh dragon and a greyhound, the insignia of the Woodville family as well as being a Breton Celtic symbol, linked to the honour of Richmond, and with images of roses and the portcullis, the traditional insignia of the Beaufort family, engraved on a silver covering around the rim of the horn.

Earlier in the year, after it had seemed that Henry was too unprepared to launch an invasion of any significance, Richard had decided to withdraw some of the ships that he had placed in defensive positions guarding the Welsh coastline, including those based in the Milford Sound. Still he remained cautious. ‘Lest he might be found altogether unready’, he had ordered members of the nobility and gentry ‘dwelling about the sea coast, and chiefly the Welsh men, to keep watch by course after their country manner, to the intent that his adversaries should not have
ready recovery of the shore and come a land’. Polydore Vergil described how in time of war, on nearby hills lamps would be ‘fastened upon frames of timber’; ‘when any great or notable matter happeneth, by reason of the approach of enemies, they suddenly light the lamps, and with shouts through town and field give notice thereof; from thence others afterwards receive and utter to their neighbours notice after the same sort. Thus is the same thereof carried speedily to all villages, and both country and town arm themselves against the enemy.’ If Henry were to slip through his net, Richard was determined that he should know as soon as possible where his enemy had landed.

At Dale, the ideal position for such a beacon would have been at St Ann’s Head, at the top of the cliff face on the north side of the Milford Sound, which today remains the site of the coastguard and lighthouse. Located on the site in 1595 was an ‘old chapel decayed having a round tower builded like a windmill or pigeon house of stone’, twenty feet high and used by sailors as a navigation landmark. Though the beacon could be seen from the opposite side of the bay to the south, due to a rise in the land on Dale Peninsula, St Ann’s chapel would have been invisible inland on its own side. This helps to explain why, even if a beacon had been lit there, knowledge of Henry’s landing did not reach Haverfordwest in time before his arrival. The burning torch would however have been clearly visible four miles away across the mouth of the Haven, in the neighbourhood near Angle.

As a chain reaction of beacons were lit on the south side of Milford Haven, news soon reached the constable and steward of Pembroke Castle, Richard Williams, who had succeeded in the office from the Duke of Buckingham in January 1484. He had previously only been an usher of Richard’s chamber, but Richard’s trust in Williams was demonstrated by his substantial land grants to him in December 1484, when he was granted the lordship of the castle of Manorbier and the manor of Penally. Under his stewardship, the castle was put in a state of defence, with £113 14s 6d spent on fortifying the castle; the woods around the nearby town of Narberth were felled to supply fuel and wood for beacons. Realising that the first beacon must have been lit at Angle, indicating that Henry had finally landed there, Williams knew that he had no time to waste. He decided to ride the journey of 210 miles to Nottingham, managing an average speed of fifty-two miles
a day, a considerable feat considering that the expected distance covered by a mounted messenger was around thirty to thirty-five miles. To achieve such a distance, Williams would have had to ride through the night, making use of the king’s post-horses that were stationed every twenty miles which would allow him to maintain his breakneck speed.

When he arrived, Williams found Richard not at Nottingham Castle but at his hunting lodge at Bestwood Park. Lying to the north of Nottingham in Sherwood Forest, Bestwood Park had been a royal hunting ground since at least the twelfth century, where it remained well stocked. Covering 3,000 acres, a survey of 1607 reported that ‘there are in the park at least three hundred fallow-deer, and four and twenty red deer’. The park had been completely enclosed by Edward III in the 1360s; at the same time a timber-framed hunting lodge was constructed on the most attractive part of the estate. In 1593 it was reported to have contained thirty-eight rooms, built of lath and plaster, with a tiled roof. It was here that, according to the Crowland chronicler, news of his adversary’s landing was broken to the king.

Richard’s initial reaction was one of delight and rejoicing – ‘or at least he pretended to rejoice’, as the Crowland chronicler noted. According to Vergil, Richard believed that Henry’s forces would be ‘unprepared and weak’ compared to his own troops who he had stationed in Wales. He was confident that Henry ‘because of the small number of his men, was destined to have a bad end when he would either be compelled to fight against his will or be taken alive by Walter Herbert and Richard Thomas’.