Richard III Falls at Bosworth, Ending the Wars of the Roses
A helmet lost in the melee, a halberd blow to the skull, and the last English king to die in battle
Quick facts
- Battle
- Bosworth Field, 22 August 1485
- Loser
- Richard III (killed)
- Winner
- Henry Tudor, becomes Henry VII
- Richard's remains identified
- 2012-13, University of Leicester
What happened
The National Archives describes how the Wars of the Roses began in the 1450s as noble rivals backed or challenged the weak King Henry VI. Decades of intermittent civil war between the houses of Lancaster and York culminated on 22 August 1485 at Bosworth Field, where Henry Tudor's forces defeated King Richard III. The University of Leicester's forensic examination of Richard's skeleton, discovered under a Leicester car park in 2012, found that he sustained multiple blows to the head from several different bladed weapons, evidence the university's team says shows he was attacked from all sides, probably by more than one person, after apparently losing his helmet in the fighting. One massive, fatal blow to the base of the skull, the university states, could have been caused by a weapon such as a halberd.
Why it matters
Richard III's death at Bosworth ended both his own reign and the Plantagenet dynasty that had ruled England since 1154, opening the way for Henry Tudor to take the throne as Henry VII and found the Tudor dynasty. Richard remains the last English king to die in battle, and Henry's subsequent marriage to Elizabeth of York united the warring houses of Lancaster and York.
How we know
The battle's outcome is recorded in contemporary and near-contemporary chronicles, and Richard III's cause of death was independently confirmed in 2012-13 through forensic osteological analysis of his skeleton by a University of Leicester team, which matched the remains to Richard through mitochondrial DNA and skeletal trauma consistent with historical battle accounts.
Sources
- The National Archives (UK). The Wars of the Roses · Primary sourcenationalarchives.gov.uk · The domain "nationalarchives.gov.uk" is on our Primary source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- University of Leicester. How Richard III died · Primary source (author-declared)le.ac.uk · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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Related timelines
- The Middle Ages → · The Wars of the Roses were England's chapter of a broader late medieval pattern of dynastic civil wars; see the Middle Ages timeline.