"My kingdom for a pork pie" just didn't sound dramatic enough

"A horse! A horse! my kingdom for a horse!"
                                                        
                                                             King Richard III       (V, iv)

Separated from his horse at the Battle of Bosworth Field, Shakespeare's Richard III stands as one of the poet's most ambiguous characters: a man of action, yet introspective; in character Machiavellian yet not without a sense of guilt that haunts his sleep. A man physically lame yet of considerable prowess with sword in hand, horse or no horse.

But above all, the quintessence of evil, at least until Shakespeare penned the lines that created Iago in Othello and Edmund in King Lear.

The actual battle of Bosworth took place in 1485, a definitive clash between Yorkist and Lancastrian, with the Earl of Richmond emerging victorious from the scrape to marry a daughter of the House of York. The marriage brought peace to England under the symbol of the Tudor Rose. Richard bit the dust but lived on in the pages of Shakespeare, making Richmond look like a tedious goody-goody.

Pictured above are a pair of rowel spurs, c1650, from the collection of Agecroft Hall. Made of steel and German in origin, they measure about six inches in length. Rowel spurs, which began to predominate in northern Europe beginning in the fourteenth century, were an improvement over the older "prick spur" design: the small spiked wheel of a rowel spur was more humane as far as the horse was concerned. The older spur design simply stabbed into the sides of the animal and probably drew blood far more often than not.

The use of spurs in Europe dates back at least as far as the Celts of the sixth century BC; they were also used by the Greeks and Romans further south. It's interesting to note that the appearance of stirrups on war horses in Europe during the early medieval period had an enormous impact, making riders far more effective in battle because they were more stable on their mounts. It became less difficult to swing a sword and manuever without falling off one's mount, which would cause shame and embarrassment if nothing else.

As far as the real, historical Richard III is concerned, there's been an enormous amount of debate, still ongoing, as to whether he was really all that bad, or whether his reputation suffered simply because he ended up on the losing side of the struggle for lasting possession of the English throne. It was in the best interests of the ascendant Tudors to make the origins of their rule look as attractive as possible; besmirching Richard III could have been just part of the propaganda campaign. Did Richard really have the two young sons of his brother Edward IV murdered in the Tower of London, clearing his way to the throne? There is, among other organizations, a Richard III Society that stoutly maintains his innocence.

Quite probably, we'll never know for certain.