Richard III

by Chris Skidmore

  For the moment, a fragile truce between both sides remained. ‘The King himself hath good language of the Lords of Clarence, of Warwick’, Sir John Paston wrote shortly after Edward’s return to the capital, ‘saying they be his best friends.’ Yet even Paston recognised that behind Edward’s façade of unity and forgiveness, ‘his household men have other language, so that what shall hastily fall I cannot say’.44

  If the crisis of 1469 had shaken Edward into realising that he could no longer rely on his cousin Warwick or his brother Clarence for support, the events of the summer had marked a turning point in the king’s relationship with his other brother, Richard. The duke had stuck loyally by his side, raising men on his behalf in his hour of need: whereas previously Edward had struggled to find a role for Richard, the king now recognised that his brother had emerged as a mainstay of support for his regime. With few friends to count as his own, Edward also understood that Richard needed to be rewarded for his services. Following the execution of many of the king’s closest advisers, and with both Warwick and Clarence barely able to be trusted, Richard would be given a series of important grants of titles, offices and lands to reflect his new position. On 17 October, he was appointed Constable of England, an office vacated by the execution of Richard Woodville, Earl Rivers, two months previously. Woodville had been granted the office on the understanding that it would pass to his son Anthony; however, any claim seems to have been ignored or set aside. It seems that the appointment had been made with the queen’s tacit support, for two days later Elizabeth granted Richard the stewardship of her land with an accompanying fee of £100.45 The same day, on 19 October, Richard was awarded a further £100, with the king ordering the Exchequer to ‘make ready payment immediately after the sight of this our letter without any longer delay of the sum of £100 which we have assigned and granted unto him towards the provision of such certain things and stuff as we have commanded him to buy and ordain to his use and wear at this time’.46

  No one could have been prepared for the events that were about to unfold. Late in February 1470, rebellion broke out once more, this time in Lincolnshire. Once again, it rapidly became apparent that the shadowy hand of Warwick was pulling the strings. Chastened by the dire consequences of his complacency the previous year, this time Edward moved swiftly to crush the rebellion, marching northwards with an army. Before the rebels could join forces with Warwick and Clarence as intended, Edward managed to catch and disperse the insurgents at ‘Lose-Cote field’ on 12 March. During the battle, the rebels had cried Clarence’s name out loud as they advanced. Sir Robert Welles was captured wearing the duke’s livery, while treasonable messages from both Clarence and Warwick were found inside an abandoned helmet.47 Interrogating the captured rebels confirmed Edward’s worst suspicions, for they ‘knowledged and confessed the said duke and earl to be partners and chief provocateurs of all their treasons. And this plainly, their purpose was to destroy the king, and to have made the said duke king.’48

  Edward journeyed to York, where he proclaimed both men ‘his great rebels’, demanding that they appear before him. If they disbanded their forces and promised loyalty, reconciliation was offered, though no promises of pardon were made. For Warwick and Clarence, there was no other choice but to take flight across the Channel, taking Clarence’s heavily pregnant wife, Isabel, and Warwick’s younger daughter, Anne Neville, with them. The earl had hoped to disembark at Calais; however, he had underestimated the resolve of the lieutenant, Lord Wenlock, who made it clear by firing warning shots to sea that the earl was not welcome to land. The trauma was too much for Isabel, who went into premature labour on the voyage: her child, a son, died soon after birth and was buried at sea. Unable to land, Warwick had little choice but to head for the Normandy coast, and into the arms of the French king, Louis XI.

  For Louis, Warwick’s unexpected arrival seemed at first more a hindrance than a help, and he spent weeks attempting to persuade the rebels to depart. Warwick’s response was to make him an offer so remarkable that he could hardly refuse. In return for the French king’s support for an invasion, Warwick agreed to place the Lancastrian king, Henry VI, currently languishing in the Tower, back upon the throne. Still, Margaret of Anjou, now residing in exile in France, where she had been since fleeing the realm after the arrest of Henry VI in 1465, would need to be persuaded of the merits of the scheme. This was no easy task. At a meeting with Louis in June, a ‘very hard and difficult’ Margaret told the French king directly that she ‘might not, nor could not pardon the said Earl, which hath been the greatest causes of the fall of King Henry, of her, and of their son’. It would take a further month before the queen was finally persuaded to meet Warwick on 22 July at Angers, when the earl fell to his knees in front of Margaret, begging her ‘pardon for the injuries and wrong done to her in the past’.49 It was a full fifteen minutes before the queen allowed the earl to rise. The display was enough to convince the queen of the earl’s conversion.

  As a sign of this conversion, and in order to seal the agreement, the earl would marry his younger daughter, Anne, to Prince Edward, the son of Queen Margaret of Anjou and Henry VI. England would then renounce its friendship with France’s rival, Burgundy, and instead ally itself with the French. Forged out of desperation on Warwick’s part, the agreement was a masterstroke on the part of the French king, who on this occasion fully lived up to his nickname: ‘the universal spider’. An agreement was reached, to be sealed by the marriage. Clarence was to be cut out of the deal altogether.

  King Edward must have recognised that his victory over Warwick and Clarence in their flight to France was a pyrrhic one. Portents foretold of future division and strife: ‘there appeared a blazing star in the west, and the flame thereof like a spear head, the which divers of the King’s house saw it, whereof they were full sore adread’.50 While the earl remained at large, he would remain free to return. Duke Charles of Burgundy, having now inherited the kingdom from his father, frantically tried to warn his brother-in-law in a stream of letters detailing Warwick’s negotiations with the French king. Yet, for the moment, it seemed that Edward paid little notice, not recognising the seriousness of Warwick’s preparations for a forthcoming invasion, or perhaps refusing to believe that the earl would really throw his lot in with his nemesis, Margaret of Anjou, in what must have seemed a fantastical proposal.

  In spite of recent warnings and reports from his spies that Warwick’s invasion was imminent, Edward found himself caught by surprise. For weeks, rumours of Warwick’s impending invasion had filled the capital. Edward wrote on 7 September that he had received information that his ‘rebels and traitors’ with the help of ‘our ancient enemies of France’ intended to land in Kent; he proposed to travel to the region shortly.51 Yet the king had underestimated the speed at which Warwick’s preparations had progressed. On 9 September, Warwick and Clarence, together with their followers on board a fleet of sixty ships provided by King Louis, sailed from the Seine port of Honfleur. Six days later the Lancastrian army landed at Dartmouth and Plymouth, where Warwick issued his own proclamation in the name of Henry VI, the ‘very true and undoubted King of England’ in the ‘hands of his rebels and great enemy Edward, late the Earl of March, usurper, oppressor’.52

  Hearing news of the rebels’ landing, Edward had quickly departed from York, aiming for London. The king had only reached Doncaster, however, when he was woken in the middle of the night by his minstrel, Alexander Carlisle, with the news that not only had Warwick’s brother, John Neville, marquess of Montagu, chosen to defect to join his brother’s side, but that Montagu’s army was closing in around the king, and was only a few miles from Edward’s camp, and ‘coming for to take him’. Edward was stunned by the defection and ‘greatly marvelled’ at the news that had apparently been brought by defectors from Montagu’s own camp.53 Arming himself and placing guards around his tent, Edward nervously awaited further news. When confirmation came that Montagu’s army was swiftly approaching, Edward decided that his onl
y safety lay in flight. Edward knew that he had to reach the nearest available port with ships available to escape the country as soon as he possibly could. He was accompanied by his brother-in-law Earl Rivers, Lord Hastings and the earl of Worcester, together with Lords Saye and Duras, and his brother Richard.

  The port of Bishop’s Lynn (now King’s Lynn) was the nearest friendly port; however, it was located on the south side of the Wash. The crossing was a dangerous one, and out of the several hundred men who chose to make the journey, a few men drowned before the party drew into the harbour of the port on the night of Sunday, 30 September. Earl Rivers commanded significant regional influence in the area, and would have ensured that Edward was received favourably: the town’s accounts reveal that the king ‘tarried there until Tuesday and then took ship overseas’.54

  It was at this point that the king’s party decided to separate. Lying at anchor several Dutch ‘hulks’ – flat-bottomed merchant ships – and a small English vessel were now commandeered for the king’s use. Edward and his party set sail on Tuesday, 2 October, Richard’s eighteenth birthday, with members of the nobility placed in separate ships.

  Richard was to travel separately from his brother, possibly accompanied by Earl Rivers, and may have sailed several days later, while the earl of Worcester set sail towards Huntingdon to seek further support. Richard was certainly absent from the king’s flight across the Wash, for he does not appear in the records detailing the king’s arrival at King’s Lynn.55 Edward meanwhile began his journey across the North Sea with several hundred followers, ‘who possessed no other clothes than the ones they were fighting in; they did not have a penny between them and scarcely knew where they were going’.56 A strong westerly wind ensured that the crossing was a rapid one, certainly no longer than thirty-six hours, though the ships were pursued by several Hanse ships, which caused the fleet to scatter and the king’s ship to be driven ashore on 3 October.

  With low tide approaching, the king and his men had little choice but to anchor and run aground in the bay harbour of South Texel. Followed by the Hanse ships, who waited in the mouth of the bay for high tide to board and ransack the ships, they were rescued by local residents, who helped them ashore, forcing the Hanse ships to sail away. Later, the chronicler Philippe de Commynes placed Edward’s survival in the hands of Louis de Bruges, Seigneur de la Gruthuyse, the duke of Burgundy’s governor of Holland. ‘The king was completely penniless and gave the ship’s master a robe lined with fine marten’s fur, promising to reward him better in the future’, Commynes later wrote, describing how ‘There never was such a beggarly company. But my lord of Gruthuyse dealt honourably with them, because he gave them several robes and paid all their expenses for the journey to The Hague in Holland, where he took them, and then informed the Duke of Burgundy about this event.’57

  As news of Edward and Richard’s flight abroad spread, an astonished Warwick made his journey to the capital unopposed. Queen Elizabeth, by now heavily pregnant, fled to sanctuary at Westminster. Meanwhile, dazed and confused, Henry VI was taken from the Tower, where he was discovered ‘not so worshipfully arrayed as a Prince, and not so cleanly kept as should seem such a Prince’. Cleaned up and given new clothes, Henry was brought to Westminster with ‘great reverence’, much to his bewilderment.58 A sermon was preached by John Goddard, proving ‘by certain bills’ that Edward had no claim to the throne, and that Henry was the rightful king.59 Several days later, Warwick, together with Clarence and Thomas, Lord Stanley, entered the city through Newgate. The earl’s first actions were to journey to the Tower, where he knelt before King Henry, pleading forgiveness for his past actions. Henry was then led once more out into the streets, paraded in a new long blue velvet gown, to St Paul’s, where he made an offering. This time, it was Warwick by his side, who would hold power in all but name. Once more, the earl had proved himself to be a kingmaker: this time, however, he was determined to wield real authority. He styled himself ‘lieutenant to our sovereign lord, King Henry the Sixth’, whose restoration was now officially described as ‘our readeption of our royal power’.60

  By 13 October, Edward had been reunited with Hastings and Rivers at The Hague. Strangely, almost a month after Edward’s arrival in Holland, there is no record of Richard being present in his brother’s company. It is only by the second week of November that Richard’s arrival in Holland is finally documented. The bailiff accounts of the city of Veere record: ‘Item paid by order of my Lord of Boucham the bailiff of Veere which he had loaned when my lord of Gloucester travelled in Holland 3 pounds, 2 shillings, 3 pennies.’61 Yet the accounts suggest that Richard’s arrival was somewhat unexpected: there is no wine to greet him, and no lord present to receive him as a royal visitor. If Richard was not with his brother Edward at the time of his arrival in Holland, where exactly was he? And why did it take Richard almost a month to be reunited with his brother in exile?

  One possible answer is found in the chronicle of Adrian de But, a Cistercian monk residing at Les Dunes Abbey, on the road between Bruges and Calais, who recorded how ‘the younger brother of the now fugitive King Edward … Duke of Gloucester, put up as much resistance as he could’. While de But noted the help that had been given to Edward by Charles the Bold, he also described how Edward was now ‘with his younger brother, the Duke of Gloucester, who had come to him from England with many men’.62 It seems plausible that instead of taking flight from King’s Lynn with Edward, Hastings and Rivers, Richard had remained behind in England, acting as a recruiting agent for men who wished to join the king in exile.

  Eventually they were reunited at The Hague. The English party remained there until Christmas. De Gruthuyse’s hospitality was lavish, providing the exiles with new clothes and covering their living expenses, while his library of illuminated manuscripts, filled with histories and chivalric romances, must have made a significant impression upon his guests. Yet despite the warm reception provided by de Gruthuyse, both Edward and Richard could not have failed to notice that Duke Charles remained distinctly lukewarm about the sudden and unexpected arrival of his brothers-in-law.

  In fact, Charles’s reaction to the news of Edward’s surprise landing could hardly have been more hostile. ‘The duke was extremely alarmed by this news and would rather the king had been dead, since he was very uneasy about the earl of Warwick who was his enemy and now had mastery in England’, wrote the chronicler Commynes.63 Yet it was not so much Warwick’s influence at home that made Charles nervous, rather his friendship with the French king, Louis XI. Wanting peace with England to continue, Charles was unwilling to be drawn into a prolonged civil war abroad, the victor in which seemed far from certain. For the moment, the duke preferred to keep Edward and his company at arm’s length, limiting his contact with them to messengers and official correspondence. Edward and his small band of exiles were to be left waiting, pondering their eventual fates. For the king himself, the sudden nature of his flight and the seemingly hopeless spectre of his exile must have come as a shocking blow. ‘Less than a fortnight before, he would have been astounded if anyone had said to him “The earl of Warwick will drive you out of England and make himself her master in eleven days”‘, remarked Commynes, who had access to many of the courtiers who had accompanied Edward in his flight, adding, ‘what excuse could he find after suffering this great loss through his own fault, except to say, “I didn’t think that such a thing could possibly happen?”‘64

  For Richard, the sudden shift in fortune must have reminded him of his first exile as a child, ten years previously, when he had been sent with Clarence to the Low Countries, safe from harm. At that time he had learnt how fickle men’s favour could be; it was here that he witnessed how his treatment in the care of his foreign hosts altered almost overnight with his transformation from an insignificant son of a dead nobleman to the brother of a king. Now it was a different story, with Clarence on the other side of the Channel, enjoying the favour of the newly restored Lancastrian court. Judging by Duke Charles’s
delayed reaction to his arrival, the signs were hardly promising. For the second time in his life, Richard was cast out into the cold.

  Warwick understood that moderation in the treatment of his enemies would be essential if he was to stand a chance of bringing peace to the kingdom. No attainders were issued against the Yorkists, while those who had fled into sanctuary were given protection by a proclamation forbidding any disturbance of sanctuaries. This was to the benefit of Queen Elizabeth, who gave birth to her first son, Edward, on 2 November, helped in her confinement by Elizabeth, Lady Scrope, who had been sent by Henry VI, ‘by the advice of our council’.65 What would have once been a cause of celebration, the birth of a son and Edward IV’s heir, a Yorkist Prince of Wales, was now just another inconvenience to Warwick and the newly re-established Lancastrian regime; in a sign of how devastating contemporaries viewed their triumph over Edward IV to have been, the birth of the child went largely unremarked.

  Without the ability to reward his supporters with grants of land from the forfeited estates of his enemies, the earl’s position would remain weak. A far greater problem for Warwick, however, was the agreement he had reached with Louis XI. In committing his new regime to an alliance with France, Warwick had set himself on a direct course against Burgundy. The earl himself seems to have been blinded to the risk that such a policy of aggression might place upon England’s trade relationship with the Netherlands, having been seduced by the French king. Louis had already organised three days of thanksgiving for Henry VI’s restoration in October. The following month he sent his ambassadors to England to agree the terms of a treaty between the two countries, where, according to the Milanese ambassador, they were received with ‘a marvellous demonstration of love and affection’.66 On 28 November, Louis XI signed a treaty with Prince Edward of Lancaster, on behalf of his father, Henry VI, which included a secret pact to make war with Burgundy until the duchy was completely subdued.67 In the document, Louis was referred to tellingly as Louis, ‘King of France’, suggesting that Warwick, in his desperate search for support, was willing to recognise the Valois title to the French kingdom, something which every English king since the mid-fourteenth century had refused to do. On the same day, a dispensation for Prince Edward to marry Warwick’s daughter Anne was finally granted, allowing the couple to marry two weeks later, at Amboise, on 13 December.