| |
| 1483 |
| |
| Edward V, age 12, the elder son of Edward IV and the tool of the competing ambitions of his paternal uncle, Richard, duke of Gloucester, and his maternal uncle Earl Rivers. Gloucester arrested Rivers, confined Edward and his younger brother in the Tower of London, had the boys declared illegitimate, and assumed the throne as Richard III. The children disappeared, probably murdered. According to a theory promoted by the Tudors after 1485, they were smothered in their sleep on Richard's orders. Their death provoked great public indignation. (In 1674, archaeologists unearthed in the Tower skeletons of two boys age 12 or 13 and 10, the ages of the princes in 1483.) | 1 |
| |
| 1483–85 |
| |
| Richard III. He aborted a rebellion conceived by Morton, bishop of Ely, and led by the duke of Buckingham; the latter was beheaded. Richard and Henry, earl of Richmond, both sought to marry Edward IV's daughter, Elizabeth of York, now heiress to the throne. As she was Richard's niece, the relationship scandalized even Richard's followers. | 2 |
| |
| 1485 |
| |
| The landing at Milford Haven of Henry, earl of Richmond, a remote descendant of Edward III, led to widespread defections among Richard's supporters. Henry defeated Richard (Aug. 22) on Bosworth Field (Leicestershire), where Richard fell. The crown of England was supposedly found on a rosebush. The battle marks the end of the Wars of the Roses and the beginning of the House of Tudor, by virtue of victory in battle and later act of Parliament. | 3 |
| Cultural movements. The Italian humanist Poggio Bracciolini's visit (1418–23) to England. The Paston Letters (1422–1509), a remarkable collection of the correspondence (in the vernacular) of a middle-class English family. Eton College founded by Henry VI. | 4 |
| Humphrey, duke of Gloucester (d. 1447), influential patron of classical learning and Italian humanism, was the donor of 279 classical manuscripts to Oxford, the nucleus of the university library. Sir John Fortescue (d. c. 1476), chief justice of the king's bench, wrote On the Governance of the Kingdom of England and De Laudibus Legum Angliae, contrasting the “political” (i.e., constitutional) spirit of the English common law with the absolutism of the Roman law, and comparing the French monarchy unfavorably with the English. | 5 |
| Caxton's printing press set up at Westminster (1476) under the patronage of Edward IV. Malory's Morte Arthure printed (1485), the first book in poetic prose in the English language. | 6 |
| |
| |
