Behind his lifeless corpse, his lifelong friends battled to reach him, but William Stanley’s reinforcements blocked their efforts. It was as well Richard never saw John Kendall’s arm struck from his shoulder by a sword on one side as a Stanley battle-ax cleaved his helmet like parchment on the other and his brains, like pink and white worms, spilled out onto the ground. Or saw Rob Percy speared through the gut, still clinging to his horse as men-at-arms surrounded him and dragged him to the ground, ripping his tabard and harness from him as he lay dying. They did not notice the little silver boar fall from the tabard to be buried in the mud for centuries.

“Long live King Henry!” was the last thing Rob heard, but with his final breath he managed to cry, “God save King Richard, the one true king.” Thus Rob Percy died, ever the loyal friend.

A grisly battlefield tradition was taking place where Richard lay. Henry allowed the soldiers to strip Richard naked and take pieces of his harness as souvenirs. As one billman pulled off the padded gambeson under Richard’s breastplate, a small pouch of green velvet fell unheeded to the mud, its auburn contents ground beneath the soldier’s boot.

“Tie the usurper to the back of a horse!” Henry commanded, basking in his victory. “He deserves no better treatment. Take him to the Greyfriars to bury but instruct them to lay him out so the people see that the tyrant Richard is well and truly dead.”

Three men easily lifted Richard’s battered, bloodied body onto a pack horse brought forward for the task, and as they tied his hands and feet under the animal’s belly, a sadistic, bloodthirsty Frenchman drew his dagger and viciously stabbed Richard between the buttocks, roaring: “Va te faire foutre, salaud!”

It was only then in his nakedness that Richard’s cruel affliction was exposed and witnessed by a thousand men as York Herald was forced to ride the horse through the battlefield and onto the road for Leicester. As Richard’s ignominious last journey began, and having learned of Richard’s death, the royal army was already fleeing—Francis Lovell and Richard’s son along with it.

“Christ’s nails, he be but a runt!” Shouted a soldier sporting Oxford’s streaming-stars badge, his leather jerkin black-stained with blood. Laughter, jeering and pointing now accompanied Richard between the columns of victorious troops, while the herald forced back tears of humiliation for Richard and dared look neither right nor left.

“Spawn of the devil!” shouted another. “Look at his ’ump. By God, ’tis monstrous,” and many crossed themselves as the pale misshapen body jostled past.

“I’ll say this for him,” one stouthearted Englishman in Thomas Stanley’s turncoat force called out. “He may have been crookbacked and a usurper, but for a runt he fought with courage and died like a king.”