ABSTRACT

On 22 August 1485 Henry Tudor, earl of Richmond, won one of the successive battles of the Wars of the Roses near the Leicestershire township of Market Bosworth. The England which Henry VII came to rule was the product of war and plague. The evil effects of the wars did not lie in material destruction or any stagnation of life. Bastard feudalism began in military organisation, with the indentures for service through which fourteenth-century armies were recruited. The captains of the wars gathered round them men eager to fight and make a profit, and they retained them by indentures which specified the services to be done and reward to be given. Henry VII did not take over a country without administrative institutions or the means of government; nor did he perhaps succeed to a parliamentary state which had broken down and needed rebuilding by despotism.