Original subtitles

In October 1399

a prisoner was secretly taken from his cell in The Tower of London.

He was the eighth Plantagenet King to rule England,

Richard II.

It was said that as he was taken along the Thames,

he was wailing and loudly lamenting that he had ever been born.

Three months later, he was found starved to death.

The man responsible for Richard's downfall

was another Plantagenet, his cousin Henry of Lancaster.

Henry had deposed Richard and installed himself as King.

It was a kind of original sin

from which the Plantagenets would never recover.

A French chronicler commented,

"Something acquired wickedly cannot last long."

The House of Plantagenet was now fatally divided along lines

that would never be reconciled.

The usurpation and murder of an anointed King violated sacred taboos

and undermined the foundations of Plantagenet power.

The right to rule of future Plantagenet Kings

would now be in doubt

and they would have to fight to keep their grip on the throne.

Plantagenet turned against Plantagenet

in the battle for the crown

and they dragged England into decades of brutal civil war.

Within less than a century, four Plantagenet Kings

met violent deaths at the hands of their own relatives.

This was the bloodiest episode in the whole history of

the English monarchy, and this death of Kings, this royal blood-letting,

ended in the complete destruction of the Plantagenet dynasty.

In the summer of 1381,

thousands of armed peasants stormed the city of London.

They set fire to palaces and property.

Nobles, lawyers and foreigners were hunted down and killed.

This became known as The Peasants' Revolt,

the greatest uprising in the history of medieval England.

The Plantagenets were confronted by the most serious threat

the lower classes had ever posed to royal power.

And sitting on the throne was a boy King.

Richard II had been crowned four years earlier at the age of ten.

He was forced to flee from his own subjects.

Richard was just 14 years old.

He sought refuge here in the Tower of London.

It must have been terrifying as he looked out from the top of a turret

to see his capital engulfed in flames,

and everyone looked to him to bring an end to the violence.

This was the first real test of his kingship.

A new tax had triggered the riots.

It was levied in the name of the King

to pay for the Plantagenets' war against the French monarchy.

It was a poll tax imposed on every man and woman

over the age of 14, regardless of income.

It inflamed resentment against the great inequalities

in medieval society.

According to the chronicler Henry Knighton,

the rebels outside were demanding

that every man in the Kingdom of England should be free

and remain free of the yoke of servitude forever.

A particular target of their hostility was the boy King's

inner circle, the councillors who had been ruling on his behalf.

These powerful officials were responsible for levying

the reviled poll tax, and they would face the wrath of the rebels.

One of the King's closest advisors and his Chancellor

was Simon Sudbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

In terror, he'd also taken refuge in the Tower.

On the third day of rioting he was here in St John's Chapel

praying for his life.

The insurgents broke in

and seized him along with the King's treasurer.

Their heads were hacked off and paraded through the city on pikes.

On the fourth day, in a bid to end the riots,

Richard rode out to negotiate with the rebels.

Some open ground here, just outside the city walls,

was chosen for the meeting,

a place called Smoothfield or Smithfield,

used for tournaments, fairs and festivals.

The King was meeting the people on their own territory -

this was a promising start.

But with the royal forces vastly outnumbered by the rebels,

Richard was placing himself in a perilous position.

The peasants' leader was called Wat Tyler.

He approached the King

and repeated the demands for freedom and equality.

The King agreed, but then a scuffle broke out.

Tyler lashed out with his dagger

and the Mayor of London plunged his sword into Tyler's neck.

These are the gates of the Priory

that stands on the edge of Smithfield.

Just behind me was where Wat Tyler was stabbed

and was seen to fall from his horse.

The rebels drew their weapons to avenge him. At that moment,

the future of the Plantagenet dynasty hung in the balance.

But Richard took the initiative.

He spurred his horse forward into the crowd and pledged,

"I will be your King, your captain and your leader."

The mood changed.

With the added assurance of a charter granting them pardons

and freedom, the rebels began to disperse.

Richard had single-handedly turned the tide of rebellion

and he'd seen for himself the impact of his royal power.

Richard's encounter with his subjects at Smithfield

was a defining moment in the young King's reign.

Four years earlier at his coronation he'd been anointed with holy oil,

which was believed to set him apart from his subjects,

making him God's anointed.

Triumph here at Smithfield confirmed Richard's self-belief

in his God-given right to rule,

a conviction that dominated the rest of his reign.

In the Middle Ages it was believed that kingship was ordained by God,

and Richard had complete faith in his divine right to rule.

He tried to demonstrate his elevated status,

not through war like many of his Plantagenet predecessors,

but through royal displays of ritual and ceremony, architecture and art.

This altarpiece reveals how he saw his place in the world

and his relationship with God.

This is the Wilton Diptych,

one of the most beautiful paintings ever produced in medieval England.

It was commissioned by Richard II in the 1390s,

although it shows him as a much more youthful figure,

perhaps at the time of the meeting with the rebels in Smithfield.

Behind him stand his patron saints, John the Baptist,

Edward the Confessor and Edmund King and Martyr -

the last two, like Richard himself, English Kings.

Opposite them stands the Virgin Mary holding the Christ Child

surrounded by angels.

Every angel wears a badge of the white hart, Richard's own symbol.

Christ is blessing this banner,

which has at the top a red cross flag and a tiny orb.

Analysis under a microscope has revealed that within that orb

is a painting of a green island with a white tower set in a silver sea -

England.

Richard is receiving his kingdom from Christ himself.

This perfectly expresses Richard's exalted sense of kingship,

but his high conception of royal status

led to a political earthquake that destroyed him

and would ultimately result in

the extinction of the Plantagenet dynasty itself.

Richard's sense of superiority as God's anointed ruler

continued to grow.

He demanded to be treated with ever-greater reverence

and devised elaborate new court rituals

to set himself above his nobles.

Richard was the first English King who insisted

on being addressed as "Your Highness".

One chronicler describes how he had a throne set up in the chamber

where he sat after supper,

watching everyone, but addressing no-one.

Whenever he looked at anybody, however grand they were,

they had to bend the knee.

But the men he was abasing included

some of the greatest nobles in the land.

They were outraged by his arrogance.

Like all Plantagenet kings,

Richard's power was dependent on the support of his nobles.

He relied on them to supply him with money and troops.

But Richard made no effort to win their favour or respect.

He alienated them still further by surrounding himself with a clique

of favourites, many of low birth, on whom he lavished land and titles.

In 1387, the established nobility,

as well as members of Richard's own family, took up arms against him.

When Richard was 20, a group of his nobles,

including his cousin Henry of Lancaster,

seized control of the government by force

and executed his favourite knights.

But Richard had his revenge.

Within 11 years all his chief enemies were either killed

or exiled, including Henry, who was banished for ten years.

Henry was the son of England's wealthiest

and most powerful landowner, The Duke of Lancaster.

He was Richard's first cousin

and they had played together as children,

but they grew up to be very different.

Henry was a great knight, a champion jouster

and popular with the nobility.

He had four sons, while Richard was childless.

Seeing Henry as a threat, Richard resolved to remove him.

Henry's ten-year banishment was a terrible punishment,

but he still expected to inherit his father's lands,

the Great Duchy of Lancaster.

But Richard took yet further revenge.

When Henry's father died,

the King confiscated all the lands that should have come to him.

With nothing left to lose, Henry determined to return to England

and reclaim his inheritance.

When Henry arrived in Yorkshire in July 1399,

barons from across the country flocked to his banner.

They feared that if Richard could confiscate his own cousin's lands,

then no-one's property was safe.

They began to back Henry as a replacement for the King.

Henry's timing was perfect.

Richard was away in Ireland, fighting to maintain English rule.

In his absence, Henry could muster support unopposed.

When Richard finally got back to England,

he found that even his closest friends

and household retainers were beginning to desert him.

Richard realised his support was collapsing.

According to the chronicle of Dieulacres Abbey,

he set off secretly in the middle of the night

accompanied by only 15 companions.

He fled from castle to castle looking for refuge and support.

He found none.

Eventually Richard met with Henry's envoys, who escorted him here,

to the great castle at Flint.

Their ancestor Edward I had built it during his conquest of the Welsh

and now it was to be the site of a momentous meeting

between the two Plantagenet cousins.

Henry approached the castle accompanied by a force

thousands strong, among them the nobles who had deserted Richard.

This display of military might against the anointed monarch

set a dangerous precedent for future Plantagenet kings.

Richard was here inside the keep,

and Henry entered to meet his cousin.

Later, Henry's supporters claimed that Richard then promised

to renounce the throne,

but given his views of Kingship that's likely to be pure propaganda.

What is not in doubt is that Richard was now Henry's captive.

The King who had set himself above all others

was nothing more than a powerless prisoner.

Just six weeks later, on 30th September 1399, Henry's seizure of

the throne was publicly confirmed at a ceremony here at Westminster Hall.

Parliament assembled beneath the magnificent hammer beam ceiling

that Richard II had had constructed.

It was announced that on the previous day,

Richard, a captive in the Tower, had abdicated,

and 39 charges against him were read out.

Then Henry stood up.

"I, Henry of Lancaster claim this kingdom of England and the crown."

The assembled lords gave their consent and led him to the throne.

Henry had won the crown, but he would have to fight to keep it.

Richard's misrule had turned many against him, but in an age

of deeply held religious belief, he was still God's anointed ruler.

In deposing him, Henry had committed a grave sin.

Four months later, he was guilty of an even greater crime.

In February 1400, it was announced that the former king had died.

In all probability, Richard had been starved to death on Henry's orders.

Henry had broken the sacred rules of kingship

that underpinned Plantagenet power.

His struggle for legitimacy didn't end with Richard's murder.

Henry had not inherited his throne but usurped it,

deposing and killing an anointed King to do so.

And so his right to his throne was questioned, both at home and abroad.

Plots, uprisings and conspiracies marked his reign.

And although he managed to hold on to his throne, he had broken

a great taboo, and others would find it easier to do the same.

Henry's usurpation created a fatal schism

within the Plantagenet family.

Henry's House of Lancaster was descended

from the third son of Edward III,

but another Plantagenet line descended from the second son.

In the future, these descendants could claim

a greater right to the throne than King Henry IV and his offspring.

Doubt over Henry's right to rule

cast a shadow over his own heir, Henry V.

When he came to the throne at the age of 26,

he was already a famous warrior and a strong, forceful leader.

He was determined to prove his right to the throne

through victory in battle.

He decided to go to war to win a prize

that had obsessed the Plantagenets for generations.

The Plantagenets had their origins in the French county of Anjou

and at its height their empire included not only England,

but most of France.

Since 1340, they'd even claimed to be Kings of France.

Henry V determined to cross the Channel and claim his birthright.

He began in Normandy, laying siege to the port of Harfleur.

After five weeks, the town was forced to surrender.

Henry marched at the head of his army towards Calais,

nearly 200 miles away.

By then, the French had amassed a huge army

and tried to prevent him crossing the River Somme.

Henry's forces found a place to ford the river,

but their path was barred by the enemy at the village of Agincourt.

What happened here at Agincourt on 25th October 1415

has been immortalised by Shakespeare.

It's the most famous battle of the entire Plantagenet era

and Henry V displayed qualities

that made him the most celebrated of all the Plantagenet warrior kings.

At the outset, defeat looked certain.

The English soldiers were exhausted, starving and battle-weary.

They were also vastly outnumbered.

The odds were overwhelmingly against the English,

but Henry believed he had God on his side.

When one of his knights said that he wished

they had 1,000 more soldiers, Henry replied,

"I would not have one man more even if I could,

"for those that I have here are God's people.

"These humble few will conquer the pride of the French."

But Henry didn't rely on God alone.

Henry was a gifted tactician.

He drew his army up between two woods that

stood here on the field of battle on either side at that time, so

the French couldn't outflank him and had to advance on a narrow front.

The French were forced to attack across a muddy field.

Their elite cavalry charged,

only to be cut down by the English longbowmen.

Those who survived the arrows were caught in a quagmire

between the two armies.

The battle turned in favour of Henry's humble few.

With victory in their sights,

the English began rounding up French prisoners.

According to the chivalric code of honour

their lives would be spared...

...but a cry suddenly went up

that French reinforcements were about to launch a fresh attack.

Henry knew that his forces couldn't withstand another assault

and secure the prisoners.

He was afraid they would escape and rejoin the battle.

With deliberate ruthlessness, he ordered the prisoners to be killed.

But the second assault never came.

Seeing so many of their men killed, the French fled the battlefield.

The prisoners had been needlessly slaughtered.

Henry's desire to win had led him

to break the revered conventions of chivalry.

Victory had come before honour.

Henry's qualities as a brave soldier and a calculating general

had helped the English win a great victory.

It became a founding symbol of the English underdog

triumphing against the odds.

And in the medieval period it was believed

that the outcome of battles was determined by God's will.

Henry's victory showed that he had God's favour.

The question mark over the Lancastrians' right to rule

was removed for the time being.

Agincourt was just the beginning of Henry's plan of conquest.

Over the next five years he took France castle by castle,

town by town.

By 1420 he'd reclaimed many of the lands lost

by his Plantagenet predecessor, King John.

He now controlled more than a third of France.

This was a spectacular triumph

against the Plantagenet's age-old enemy.

Henry owed his success as much to French weakness

as to English strength.

The King of France, Charles VI, suffered from mental illness

and the country was being torn apart by civil war.

All this enabled Henry to win his resounding victories,

and next he negotiated this extraordinary treaty

with the French king,

signed here in the heart of Champagne in the city of Troyes.

Here Charles promises that after his death

the crown and the kingdom of France,

with all its rights and appurtenances,

will remain with King Henry and his heirs forever.

And here he commands his nobles that when he is dead

they shall recognise Henry as their liege lord,

sovereign and true King of France.

Henry was now recognised as the heir to the French throne

and in the meantime he would serve as Regent of France.

The French King's son, the Dauphin, was disinherited.

And on 2nd June 1420,

the Plantagenet seizure of the French throne

was secured through a magnificent diplomatic marriage.

Henry married the daughter of the French King,

Catherine of Valois, at a dazzling ceremony here in Troyes.

Henry had realised a Plantagenet dream -

he was in effect now King of England and of France.

At the wedding, Henry and his English followers revelled wildly.

According to one French chronicler,

it was as if at that moment he was king of the whole world.

18 months later, Henry V's new queen gave birth to a son.

The Plantagenet ambition to rule a French and English empire

had finally been achieved.

But Henry's joy was short-lived.

In the medieval period it was births and deaths in the ruling dynasties

that determined the destinies of kingdoms.

And now the history of Western Europe was transformed

suddenly by two deaths.

While campaigning in France, Henry died of dysentery,

that common disease of soldiers' camps,

and Charles of France soon followed him to the grave.

Henry V's son, a baby of ten months old,

was now King of England and of France.

The English coronation of the young Plantagenet prince, another Henry,

took place in Westminster Abbey in November 1429.

His French coronation in Notre Dame in Paris came two years later.

Henry VI is the only monarch ever to be crowned

both King of England and King of France.

It was a Plantagenet triumph.

But it wasn't to last.

By the time of Henry VI's coronation in Paris,

the tide was already beginning to turn against the English.

The French nobles rallied to the dispossessed Dauphin,

a unified French force was beginning to emerge

and the English were overstretched.

Only another great warrior king could save the Plantagenet empire.

Henry VI was the House of Lancaster's third Plantagenet King.

As he grew up, the shadow of his grandfather's usurpation

of Richard II's throne seemed to have passed.

But Henry turned out to be no warrior,

nor was he a gifted leader.

He was a simple, pious man

who devoted himself to good works and charitable causes.

Unlike his father, Henry didn't lead armies in France.

Instead he lavished time, money and energy on this,

his personal project, Eton College.

He laid the foundation stone himself

and supervised its development down to the smallest detail.

Henry founded the school in 1440 to educate children

selected from the lower ranks of society.

There were plans to build the largest chapel in England,

where people would gather to pray for the soul of the king.

Here in the college library are the original charters for the school.

These documents describe everything from the services

that were held in the chapel to the dimensions of the building.

And in this magnificent charter

we see Henry kneeling beneath the royal arms and his crown,

presenting the college to the Virgin Mary.

This was clearly something very close to his heart.

And this page records instructions made by the king

about the dimensions of the church

and sometimes there are crossings-out and corrections -

the church was getting bigger.

And Henry's approval of all this

is recorded by his signature at the top of the page.

This was a worthy project,

but many saw it as a dangerous distraction

from more important royal duties.

While Henry was worrying about the exact dimensions

of the buildings here at Eton,

the French territories conquered by his father

were slipping from his grasp.

By now the French had crowned the Dauphin as Charles VII of France.

He created France's first standing army,

his soldiers equipped with the latest artillery.

Meanwhile Henry was caught up with his school for the poor.

His own parliament became exasperated.

They said the cost of Eton was extravagant and vexatious.

They wanted him to continue hostilities, but Henry,

driven by his own piety, sought peace.

In 1444, in an attempt to secure a truce,

Henry made an extraordinary secret deal with the French.

He agreed to marry Charles VII's niece, Margaret of Anjou.

And here in the college library is a rare picture of Margaret.

She's shown kneeling next to her husband,

the King, in the college chapel.

Usually when the terms of a dynastic marriage were hammered out,

the bride came with a handsome dowry.

Not this time.

Instead, in a startling move, Henry promised to hand over

the strategic French county of Maine to his bride's family.

This was where the first Plantagenet king had been born.

No Plantagenet had ever surrendered land in France so easily -

and it didn't bring peace.

The French were rapidly reclaiming Plantagenet territory.

In 1448, Maine was formally ceded to France.

Two years later Normandy fell,

then in 1453, the Plantagenets' oldest and most prized.

French possession was taken.

Gascony had been in their hands since the formation of the dynasty.

Now it, too, was lost at the Battle of Castillon.

All that remained under English rule was a tiny enclave around Calais.

In just one generation, Henry V's spectacular legacy had vanished.

The Plantagenet lands in France were lost

and they would never be recovered.

But future English Kings were slow to abandon their claim.

It wasn't until 1800 that George III finally acknowledged reality

and gave up his official title, King of France.

For Henry VI, news of the fall of Gascony was devastating.

Within a week of the terrible defeat

he collapsed into a catatonic stupor.

His condition may have been inherited

from his maternal grandfather, King Charles VI of France.

He wasn't even aware when his wife gave birth to a son,

a new Lancastrian heir to the throne of England.

France was lost and the King was mad.

The absence of royal leadership showed once again

the fragility of dynastic rule,

a system that was only as strong

as the King or Queen who sat on the throne.

And with Henry VI mentally ill,

doubts about the Lancastrian regime came back to haunt the Plantagenets.

Waiting in the wings was a cousin who thought

he had a claim to the throne just as good as Henry VI and his young son.

Richard, Duke of York

was a descendant of Edward III's second son

and he believed his right to the throne was greater than Henry's.

Henry of Lancaster had taken the throne through military might -

now Richard of York felt empowered to do the same.

He signalled his intent to take power

by calling himself Richard Plantagenet.

He was the first to use the Plantagenet family name

since the foundation of the dynasty.

Ludlow was one of his most important power bases.

As Henry VI lapsed into mental illness,

Duke Richard began to advance the claims

of his branch of the Plantagenets.

St Laurence's Ludlow contains hidden evidence of his family pride

and his dynastic ambition.

Richard of York's ancestors had worshipped in the church

in Ludlow for generations.

These small, decorative ledges are known as misery cords

and they were carved onto the back of choir stalls for weary choristers

and clergy to lean on during long services.

All kinds of scenes are represented.

Here is the medieval idea of womanhood.

A little bit further down a countryman is warming himself

by the fire while his winter stocks and stores hang around him.

And here is a wrestling match, a popular sport in the Middle Ages.

But some of the carvings have a much more political edge.

There's a white hart, emblem of Richard II,

the king whom the Lancastrians had deposed and killed.

And here is a superbly carved falcon and fetterlock,

the personal badge of Richard Duke of York.

And here is the white rose,

the famous symbol of The House of York

under which they fought as they made their bid for the throne.

In his catatonic state Henry VI was incapable of ruling on behalf of

the Lancastrians, but this would be no easy takeover for the Yorkists.

The King's wife Margaret struggled ferociously

to secure her son's right to the throne.

Shakespeare would later call her "the she-wolf of France".

In their dynastic wars with France the Plantagenets had united England

by harnessing a growing sense of nationhood.

But now, as the dynasty split into warring factions,

the country was divided by The Houses of Lancaster and York.

Once again the Plantagenets dragged England into civil war.

The nobility was forced to take sides.

Many members of the leading families were killed

and the power struggle became ever more bitter, bloody and vengeful.

The war raged across England,

no side able to gain a decisive victory.

After five years of conflict,

the Yorkists were gaining the upper hand,

but then they suffered a devastating defeat.

In 1460, Richard, Duke of York himself

was killed in battle at Wakefield,

his head cut off and displayed on the walls of York,

wearing a paper crown - the only crown he ever wore.

But the Yorkist torch was taken up by his son, Edward.

Aged just 18, tall and handsome,

he would prove to be a formidable warrior.

After The Battle of Wakefield he seized control of London

and had himself proclaimed king.

There were now two Plantagenet kings in England,

but only one crown.

The battle to determine which Plantagenet was the rightful king

took place here at Towton in Yorkshire on Palm Sunday, 1461.

In the midst of a snowstorm, almost every man of noble birth

in England turned up with his army, tens of thousands of men.

This would be the bloodiest battle ever fought on English soil.

The Yorkists were drawn up on the ridge behind me,

they were led from the front by Edward,

an imposing sight at 6'3" and a brave fighter.

But Henry, the Lancastrian king, was far from the battlefield.

Un-warlike and mentally unstable, he had sought safety in York

along with his wife and son.

It was up to his loyal nobles to defend his cause.

The Lancastrian king was supported by the majority of the nobility

and commanded the greater army.

But Edward's men had the advantage.

The wind was behind them

and carried their arrows into the midst of the Lancastrian lines.

Lancastrian arrows, firing into the wind...

...fell short.

They were forced to charge.

The Plantagenets had created a rift through the nation...

...that even tore families apart.

"There was great killing on both sides," wrote one contemporary,

"and for a long time it was unclear who would have the victory.

"So furious was the battle and the slaughter so great and pitiable,

"for father did not spare son, nor son father."

The turning point came as dusk fell.

Yorkist reinforcements arrived and attacked the Lancastrian flank.

Henry's men fell into confusion and fled.

The Lancastrians were pushed back by the Yorkists

and began to fall down the hill.

Thousands of panic-stricken men were now seeking an escape.

As they tumbled down the slope they found they had to cross the river

that runs at the foot of the hill through the woods.

In the mayhem, many were crushed or drowned,

many more killed by their enemies.

The dead began to pile up in the river.

The retreating Lancastrians were forced to clamber over

what one chronicler called "bridges of bodies".

Another contemporary wrote,

"Many a lady lost her best beloved in that battle."

28,000 men were reported dead.

Even 300 years later it was noted that,

"Farmers oft discover the miserable remains of soldiers."

In 1996 workmen digging foundations came across a medieval mass grave.

40 skeletons were identified.

Men and boys between the ages of 15 and 50.

The butchered victims of Towton.

The evidence of these skulls shows that these men died

from savage blows to the head.

Here a sweeping cut across the forehead.

And here a crashing blow on the side of the head.

This one has the characteristic square wound

inflicted by a war hammer.

On occasion there are cuts on the side of the skull,

which might suggest perhaps that an ear was cut off as a trophy.

The way these men were slaughtered indicates

the brutal vindictiveness of The Battle of Towton.

There was no magnanimous chivalry here.

Many of the men fighting in the battle were out to avenge

their fathers or their brothers or their sons or their friends.

This was family politics on a national scale.

The Plantagenets had torn the country apart.

The Yorkists were victorious.

Henry VI, Queen Margaret and their son fled into exile.

For the second time in less than a century

the anointed King of England had been usurped.

Edward had all the qualities to be a great king.

He was magnanimous, diplomatic and purposeful.

He won the support of most of his barons.

His accession was seen by many

as the dawning of another golden era for the Plantagenets.

But Edward had a weakness -

the perceptive French diplomat Commines says that

he loved his pleasure and his ease more than any other ruler,

for he thought about nothing except the ladies.

He describes Edward as young

and more handsome than any man of his time,

and reports that when the King went hunting,

he had extra tents brought along for all his ladies.

In 1464, while Edward was hunting near the village of Grafton Regis,

he met a young widow named Elizabeth Woodville.

Chroniclers described her as the most beautiful woman in England.

Edward became infatuated with her.

According to legend, this is where Edward and Elizabeth met.

It's said that she resisted his advances,

and according to some that she even drew a dagger to protect her honour.

The only way the young king could have her was to marry her,

and quickly and secretly that's what he did.

But Edward had broken a cardinal rule of dynastic politics

by marrying not for a great dowry or political advantage,

but moved by passion.

Marriage was a crucial opportunity for the great families of Europe

to advance their political and dynastic ambitions.

Every Plantagenet king had gained advantage through marriage

to a wealthy, high-born woman from Europe, most of them French.

Now, for the first time in more than 400 years,

the King of England had married an English woman

from the lower ranks of the aristocracy.

She wasn't even a supporter of The House of York.

Elizabeth Woodville had no great fortune -

her father was a Lancastrian knight

and her first husband had been killed

fighting for The House of Lancaster.

She brought no great political or material advantage.

Even more outrageously,

the King had made the marriage without consulting his great nobles.

Edward's marriage was a major political miscalculation.

Edward didn't even tell his most loyal supporter and friend,

the Earl of Warwick. He was so outraged by Edward's secret marriage

that he deserted him, sailed for France

and allied himself with the exiled Henry and Margaret.

In 1470, Margaret of Anjou made a final bid for power

on behalf of the Lancastrian cause, backed by the Earl of Warwick.

They managed to overthrow Edward IV and send him into exile,

but the following year he was back

and he inflicted a crushing defeat on them.

Henry VI's heir was cut down as he fled from the battle.

Shortly afterwards, the former King himself was murdered.

After 20 years of civil war,

England now enjoyed a time of peace and stability under Edward IV.

The King presided over a flourishing court,

described by one European visitor as,

"The most splendid in all Christendom."

Edward commissioned beautiful manuscripts

from the best illuminators in Europe.

And he oversaw the building of a new royal banqueting hall

here at Eltham Palace, south-east of London.

The hall was one of the most expensive

building projects of the age.

It was a statement of the scale and grandeur of Edward's ambition.

When the hall was complete, Edward held court here

with Elizabeth at his side. They had two healthy young sons,

and the future of the Plantagenet dynasty seemed assured.

But not everyone at court was happy.

Elizabeth had ten brothers and sisters

and they did tremendously well

out of their beautiful sister's new royal connections.

The rise of these new favourites, the Woodvilles,

was resented by the old nobility

and by some members of the Plantagenet family itself.

Richard was Edward's youngest brother.

Although not physically strong,

he was a successful military leader

and he'd been Edward's most dependable supporter.

Now his loyalty was about to be tested.

On 9th April, 1483, Edward IV died suddenly.

His 12-year-old son was proclaimed Edward V.

But he was too young to take power.

Richard saw an opportunity to win the crown for himself.

Over the last century, two kings had already been violently deposed.

It's not surprising that Richard felt able

to make a bid for the throne.

Edward's death was followed by a power struggle between

his younger brother Richard and Richard's rivals, the Woodvilles.

Fearing that they would be the power behind the throne,

Richard made sure that he got custody of the young King, Edward IV

and his little brother.

The two princes were placed in the Tower of London.

They were never seen again.

The gossip in the courts of Europe

concluded that Richard had them murdered.

It's never been proved,

but Richard wouldn't be the first Plantagenet wicked uncle to be

accused of killing a nephew who stood between him and the throne.

On 6th July, 1483, Richard was crowned.

With a helping hand from Shakespeare, he's been painted as

one of the greatest villains in English history.

But his actions were driven

by the same dynastic ambitions that drove his ancestors.

This latest usurpation, however, would lead directly

to the downfall of the dynasty.

Richard's suspected murder of the young princes caused outrage.

The Plantagenets had often been brutal in their pursuit of power...

...but the killing of innocent children was an abomination.

Both Lancastrians and some Yorkists now turned against Richard.

The Lancastrians backed a man whose claim to the Plantagenet throne

was tenuous - Henry Tudor.

Henry had been living in exile and had won the support

of the Plantagenet's perennial enemy, the French King.

In August 1485, he landed at Milford Haven

with thousands of French troops.

He marched east, gathering Welsh and English support along the way.

Richard rode out to meet them.

The two armies met near the Midlands town of Leicester.

Richard's forces camped here, a few miles from Bosworth.

Tudor propagandists later reported that on the night before the battle.

Richard saw hideous images, as it were, of evil spirits,

haunting him, and they would not let him rest -

clearly a sign of a guilty conscience.

But for Richard the battle offered an opportunity

to prove that he was God's chosen monarch.

Richard wore the royal crown on his battle helmet and declared,

"This day I will die as King, or win."

His army was far superior in numbers,

but the loyalty of his men was in doubt.

As the battle began, his soldiers

seemed to be fighting half-heartedly.

But then Richard saw an opportunity to bring the battle to a swift end.

Richard caught sight of Henry Tudor, surrounded by only a small retinue,

and he charged directly at him with a few loyal knights.

The chronicler John Rous says that although Richard was small

and physically weak, he fought like a noble knight.

He cut down Henry's standard-bearer

and almost slashed his way to Henry himself,

but then he was betrayed.

One of his most powerful nobles, Lord Stanley,

was watching the battle unfold from a distance.

He commanded up to 5,000 men,

but his allegiance was in doubt.

When he saw Richard isolated and vulnerable,

he threw in his lot with the Tudors.

Stanley's troops were then unleashed upon the Plantagenet king.

The recent discovery of Richard III's body

in a Leicester car park

confirms the chronicler's reports of what happened next.

The King was abandoned, but he chose not to flee.

The last Plantagenet monarch was cut down by a lethal blow to the head.

Even his enemies admitted Richard's courage.

They describe him fighting manfully in the thickest press of his enemies

and describe how, "In battle and not in flight King Richard died

"like a noble ruler, most bold in the field."

The last Plantagenet King of England

was stripped naked and slung over a horse.

His corpse was paraded along the road to Leicester

for all men to wonder upon.

He was later carelessly buried in a hastily dug grave.

The crown Richard wore into battle

was discovered in the carnage at Bosworth.

It was placed upon the head of the new king, Henry Tudor.

When the Plantagenets won the English crown

three centuries earlier,

England had been devastated by decades of civil war.

Now a civil war between two branches of their own family

had brought about their downfall.

But the longest-ruling dynasty in English history

had helped transform the culture and politics of the British Isles.

They'd inspired and provoked the emergence

of many of the country's distinctive institutions and laws.

And adopted symbols that represent the nation to this day.

For 331 years this single family's ambition, cruelties and achievements

had shaped the history of much of Britain and France.

Now Henry Tudor led England into a new world.

The Tudors sought their empire not in France but across The Atlantic,

and they would hunt down

any remaining Plantagenet claimants to the throne.

This once mighty dynasty ended in oblivion.