The castle would now, yet again, find itself as a Crown possession, this time falling into the hands of the Duke of Gloucester – better known to history as King Richard III. His brave and yet bloody death on the field of Bosworth in 1485 is well-documented by modern archaeologists, who found traces of over 50 wounds to his skeleton when he was found, underneath a present day Leicester car park!
Richard had exchanged Chirk Castle for lands in Yorkshire with Sir William Stanley (whose treachery was to be the main reason for the King’s defeat at Bosworth). It is believed that Stanley may have been responsible for considerable building and repair at Chirk, but in 1495, he was involved in further underhanded plotting, this time against the first Tudor, King Henry VII. Stanley was found guilty of treason as part of the Perkin Warbeck rebellion, and beheaded on Tower Hill in London.
From this point, for most of the next 100 years, Chirk was in the tight grip of the Tudors, who rewarded favoured servants with posts at Chirk Castle - but even these tenures were marked by tragedy.
Henry VIII’s illegitimate and beloved son, Henry Fitzroy, who was for a while associated with Chirk Castle, died in 1536 of ‘the sweating sickness’ (which may have been tuberculosis) at the age of 17.
Lord High Admiral Thomas Seymour, another short-lived tenant, was executed for treason in 1549, but 14 years later Elizabeth I granted Chirk to her favourite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. He died after a seizure brought on by malaria in 1588.
Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick, died in 1591 - in agony after an operation to remove a gangrenous leg, but John, 2nd Baron St. John of Bletso, MP for Bedfordshire, did survive long enough to sell Chirk Castle to Sir Thomas Myddelton for £5,000, before he then died peacefully!
The times were bloody, we know, but this is quite a record – and the castle was only 300 years old when this blog ends, not even half the age it is today.