Richard III

by Chris Skidmore

  There was no way that both Berwick and Calais could continue to be funded simultaneously. A choice would eventually have to be made. Perhaps it was disagreements over these costs, in addition to the ‘great business’ of the coronation, that kept the council meeting running for four hours. Or maybe Stallworth’s cryptic comment that there was no one ‘that spake with the Queen’ at the meeting, indicated deeper divisions and tensions over the status of the Woodvilles in the run-up to the coronation less than a fortnight away. Certainly Stallworth’s revelation that the marquess of Dorset’s goods had been confiscated, and that the prior of Westminster was in ‘great trouble’ for acting as an intermediary between Dorset and the queen in sanctuary at Westminster, having had ‘certain goods delivered to him by my Lord Marquess’, suggests that Richard had managed to intercept some form of communication between Queen Elizabeth and her son, currently in hiding outside sanctuary.13

  Yet something must have taken place at the council meeting to change Richard’s mind. For the following day, on 10 June, Richard chose to put in motion a plan to destroy the queen and the Woodvilles for ever. Richard wrote a letter under his own private signet to the mayor of York, John Newton:

  The Duke of Gloucester, brother and uncle of Kings, protector, defendor, great Chamberlain, Constable and Admiral of England.

  Right trusty and well beloved, we greet you well, and as ye love the weal of us, and the weal and surety of your own self, we heartily pray you to come unto us to London in all the diligence you can possible, after the sight hereof, with as many ye can make defensibly arrayed, there to aid and assist us against the queen, her blood, adherents and affinity, which have intended and daily doth intend to murder and utterly destroy us and our cousin, the duke of Buckingham, and the old royal blood of this realm, and as it is now openly known, by their subtle and damnable ways forecasted the same, and also the final destruction and disinheritance of you and all other the inheritors of prosperity and honour, as well of the north parts as other countries that belong to us; as our trusty servant, this bearer, shall more at large show you, to whom we pray you give great credence, and as ever we may do for you in time coming fail not, but haste you to us hither.

  Given under our signet, at London, the xth day of June.14

  It was just one of a succession of letters that Richard had begun to compose. The following day, he wrote in his own hand a private letter to Ralph, Lord Neville:

  To my Lord Neville, in haste.

  My Lord Neville, I recommend me to you as heartily as I can; and as ever ye love me, and your own weal and security, and this Realm, that ye come to me with that ye may make, defensibly arrayed, in all haste that is possible, and that ye will give credence to Richard Ratcliffe, this bearer, whom I now do send to you, instructed with all my mind and intent.

  And, my lord, do me now good service, as ye have always before done, and I trust now so to remember you as shall be the making of you and yours. And God send to you good fortunes.

  Written at London, xi of June, with the hand of your heartily loving cousin and master,

  R. GLOUCESTER.15

  Whether there was actually a genuine plot against the duke or not, both letters reveal much about Richard’s own mindset. There is no indication that Richard had turned against the king himself; on the contrary, Richard’s authority stems from the fact that he is the ‘uncle and brother of kings’, stressing his male descent to the crown. The comparison between the ‘queen, her blood, adherents and affinity’ and the ‘old royal blood of this realm’ suggests that Richard himself either viewed a factional conflict taking place at court, or equally recognised that he was able to exploit an already existing and common understanding that the Woodvilles were newborn, a caste apart from the traditional nobility. By making mention of the duke of Buckingham, Richard appealed not just to the fact that any quarrel was not just between himself and the Woodvilles alone, but the Woodvilles and the rest of the nobility, of which Buckingham could be considered to be the pre-eminent representative; mention of Buckingham’s name also suggests that the duke was also complicit in Richard’s sudden decision to turn against the Woodvilles.

  Richard’s suggestion that the queen had used some form of prophecy or magic, ‘their subtle and damnable ways’, and ‘forecasted’ his and Buckingham’s death also harks back to earlier arguments employed against the Woodville family, most notably the accusations of witchcraft and prophecy surrounding Elizabeth’s mother, Jacquetta of Luxembourg. While Richard’s letter to Ralph, Lord Neville gives no explanation for why he should journey to the capital with an armed retinue – Richard no doubt expected Neville’s loyalty without the need to justify his demands – the duke appealed to Neville’s own safety, ‘as ever ye love me, and your own weal and security’.

  Why had Richard chosen to send the letters now? The duke must have calculated the time it would take for troops to assemble and then make the long journey from the north. The bearer of both letters, Richard Ratcliffe, did not leave the capital until 11 June, however, for he also took with him Richard’s letter to Lord Neville, written the same day. York did not receive Richard’s letter until Sunday, 15 June. It had the desired effect.

  Shocked by Richard’s assertion that he was under threat from a conspiracy organised by Queen Elizabeth, the city council at York agreed that, ‘for as much as my lord of Gloucester good grace hath written to the city show that the queen and her adherents intendeth to destroy his good grace and other of the blood royal’, Thomas Wrangwish, William Welles, Robert Hancock, John Hag, Richard Marston and William White, together with 200 horsemen ‘defensibly arrayed’, should ride to London. Ratcliffe had arrived with additional instructions from Richard, to be given by word of mouth to the city; these are revealed in the city’s resolution that it would assemble its forces to arrive at Pontefract ‘at Wednesday night next coming [18 June] there to attend upon my lord of Northumberland to go to my said lord of Gloucester good grace’.16

  Either by some kind of prearrangement or by some understanding, the earl of Northumberland had arrived in the city several days beforehand.17 As soon as he arrived, on 15 June, Ratcliffe must have taken the opportunity to pass on another letter, now missing, to the earl. Almost immediately Northumberland must have set off on a forty-mile journey on horseback to Hull, for on 16 June the earl approached the port with a ‘proclamation … of the behalf of my lord duke of Gloucester protector’ that all men being between the ages of sixty and sixteen ‘should be ready to attend of my said lord of Northumberland at Pontefract the morning after and Sunday then next as it were plainly contained in the said proclamation’.18 The port’s reaction was hardly enthusiastic: it was agreed that twelve men would be sent to Pontefract for the following Sunday [21 June], with each man to be paid 12d for twenty days. The ‘proclamation’ from Richard that Northumberland must have obtained from Ratcliffe suggests that Richard had already conceived that a northern army consisting of men from both York and Hull, in addition to the private retinues of northern lords such as Neville, should gather at Pontefract on 21 June, three days later than had been initially planned.

  There was no chance, therefore, that the army being gathered under the leadership of Northumberland and Ratcliffe would have reached London in time for the king’s coronation. There would be enough time, however, for the northern army to arrive in the capital by 25 June and place pressure on Parliament to approve Richard’s plans for the continuation of his protectorate. What is striking, however, is that Richard gambled everything on Northumberland accepting his plans and siding with him against the Woodvilles. In delegating the raising of an army to the earl, Richard seems to have known that Northumberland would have been present in York at the time of the arrival of his letters. Whatever message had been passed to the earl by Ratcliffe, Northumberland immediately agreed to Richard’s demands; had the two men already come to some prearranged pact?

  Even then, there was no guarantee that the army would materialise as planned. The city authorities
in York assiduously began their preparations to gather men for the march to Pontefract. On 16 June, it was agreed that four assessors should be sent into every parish, together with four collectors of money and purveyors of horse, and that 200 soldiers in York and 100 soldiers from Ainsty should be mustered, with each soldier being paid 12d a day, though ‘every soldier shall pay for his own jacket’. Aldermen were to wear jackets of silk and the captains jackets ‘of chamlet’ with a spare horse paid for by the chamber. Yet it was soon clear that the parish of St Saviour’s was struggling to recruit men, being ‘greatly impoverished’, and so was allowed to send only two men.

  Possibly due to this lack of enthusiasm, a second proclamation was issued in the city on 19 June, four days after the initial call to arms from Richard. Still dated by the reign of ‘regis Edwardi quinti’, the proclamation largely repeated Richard’s letter to the mayor, but subtle changes in the wording of the text indicate the pressing need to raise men faster than was currently happening. Stressing that Richard ‘straightly charges and commands that all manner of men in their best defensible array, incontinent after this proclamation made, do rise up and come up to London to his highness in the company of his cousin the earl of Northumberland, the lord Neville and other men of worship by his highness appointed’, the language of the proclamation had become more urgent; instead of asking the citizens to ‘aid and assist us against the queen’, the proclamation now called on men ‘to aid and assist him to the subduing, correcting and punishing of the queen’. Where, before, Richard’s letter explained that the Woodvilles intended his and Buckingham’s murder and destruction, as well as ‘the old royal blood of this realm’, this was now widened to include ‘also the noble men of their companies’. ‘Therefore in all diligence’, the proclamation added as a rallying cry, ‘prepare yourself and come up as ye love their honours, weals and sureties, and the sureties of yourself and the common weal of this said realm.’19

  Still the city remained uncertain whether it was acting on behalf of Richard in his private capacity as duke of Gloucester or on behalf of the city itself, undertaking royal orders. These doubts caused further delays, until eventually, on 21 June, it was agreed the ‘cunisaunce’ of the duke of Gloucester should be carried to Pontefract, while every soldier arriving at Pontefract should wear the cognisance of the city, ‘and then if the captains of this city think it to be done, every soldier of this city to wear the cognisance of the city and also the cognisance of my said lord of Gloucester’. Even with a week to prepare a band of soldiers to be at Pontefract for 21 June, York had still failed to assemble its men on time to depart the city, causing even further delays to the assembly of a northern army that Richard would have hoped to be marching southwards already.20

  As the city authorities fussed over the details of what livery badges their soldiers should wear on the long march to the capital, the same day a writ arrived in the city, cancelling the Parliament due to assemble in four days’ time, and instructing the sheriffs that ‘it shall not need to any citizen to go up for the city to the parliament’.21 Events in London, the citizens of York would soon learn, had taken a sudden and violent turn that had transformed everything.

  Few could have known of Richard’s letters ordering a northern army to assemble against the queen and the Woodvilles. No doubt Buckingham had been consulted by the duke. Yet there is a sense of urgency in Richard’s letters which suggests that they had been penned in response to a development that had occurred around the time of the four-hour council meeting on 9 June, which suggests that Richard would have had little time to make his intentions known to other possible allies.

  It was now only a matter of time until Richard’s true intentions against the Woodvilles would become known. With his letters condemning the queen and ‘her blood’ now in the hands of Richard Ratcliffe galloping towards York, the duke’s plot was laid. There could be no turning back.

  8

  ‘GREAT CONFUSION AND GREAT FEAR’

  With the letters now dispatched, Richard had just a short window of time to secure support for his second coup. He recognised that he needed more than just Buckingham’s support if he were to remove the Woodvilles entirely. Reaching out for Hastings’s support once more seemed an obvious solution. As someone who had already calculated that the Woodvilles’ ascent to power under Edward V would prove disastrous to his own interests, William, Lord Hastings, had been prepared to co-ordinate and aid Richard’s and Buckingham’s coup at Stony Stratford in late April. The Crowland chronicler reported how Hastings, ‘who seemed to wish in every way to serve the two dukes and to be desirous of earning their favour’, had been delighted at the establishment of Richard’s protectorship, ‘and was in the habit of saying that hitherto nothing whatever had been done except the transferring of the government of the kingdom from two of the queen’s blood to two more powerful persons of the king’s’.1 According to Thomas More’s later account, William Hastings and Richard were close friends, with More observing that ‘undoubtedly the protector loved him well’.2

  According to More, Richard used William Catesby to discover whether Hastings could be won over to his plan, while Dominic Mancini would later write how he believed Buckingham had been given the task of sounding out Hastings’s loyalty. Catesby was a Leicestershire gentleman whose rise had seen him become a close associate of Hastings, but had more recently become linked to the duke of Buckingham. Catesby was already a steward of one of Buckingham’s manors in Northamptonshire, and by March 1481 was one of the duke’s feoffees.3 In May, when Catesby had been appointed chancellor of the earldom of March, he had been placed under the orders of the duke of Buckingham. With his close links to Catesby, it seems possible that Buckingham could have used Catesby as an intermediary with Hastings.

  According to More, Catesby, ‘whether he essayed him or essayed him not’, reported back how he had found Hastings ‘so fast, and heard him speak so terrible words, that he durst no further break’. Catesby urged Richard to act to remove Hastings, believing he could not be trusted to support the Protector’s next moves against the Woodvilles. For More, Catesby had his own agenda to pursue: with his estates located close to Hastings’s new castle at Kirby Muxloe, Hastings’s fall would prove too good an opportunity to ‘obtain much of the rule that the lord Hastings bare in his country’.4 Buckingham also had every reason to cast suspicion on Hastings, in order to gain possession of his duchy of Lancaster offices in the north Midlands. It is no coincidence that John Rous believed Richard had been ‘strongly encouraged in these things by Henry, duke of Buckingham’.5

  Beneath any self-interest that Catesby or Buckingham may have displayed, it seems that Hastings had indeed been growing increasingly suspicious of the direction Richard’s protectorship was headed. More believed that ‘the Lord Chamberlain of very trust showed unto Catesby the mistrust that others began to have in the matter’, while, according to the Crowland chronicler, within a few days of Richard’s arrival in the capital, Hastings had begun to have second thoughts: while Hastings had been ‘extremely elated’ at the transfer of power from the Woodvilles to the king’s uncle, ‘in the course of a very few days after the utterance of these words, this extreme joy of his was supplanted by sorrow’. The Crowland chronicler’s view is supported by a later account by the Tudor historian Polydore Vergil, who described how Hastings ‘when he saw all already thrown into confusion, repenting his action, brought together a gathering of his friends in the basilica of St Paul’s for consultation’. While the gathering agreed that ‘nothing good would come from such a beginning of assumed protection’, they were willing to give Richard the benefit of the doubt, at least for the duke to justify his actions to the council. ‘All the residue thought that there was no need to use war or weapon at all’, concluding that they would ‘tarry while duke Richard should come and declare what the matter was, why he had cast them who had the prince in government into prison’. Wanting to ‘avoid variance and contention’ amongst the nobility, they agreed that �
�this resolution finally liked them all, because in appearance it stood with the profit of the commonwealth’.

  Hastings seems to have placed himself at the head of the dead king’s household men, who wished to see an immediate coronation and a seamless transfer of power to the young King Edward V as the best solution to continue the Yorkist dynasty. Richard had, according to Vergil, become aware of Hastings’s desire ‘to press and urge that Prince Edward at last should be crowned’. Mancini had heard how Hastings ‘had been from an early age a loyal champion of Edward, and an active soldier’, while Thomas Rotherham, ‘though of humble origin, had become, thanks to his talent, a man of note with King Edward, and had worked for many years in the chancery’. John Morton, Mancini had been told, ‘was of great resource and daring, for he had been trained in party intrigue since King Henry’s time’.

  It was the ‘ability and authority of these men’, Mancini had learnt, ‘those who had been the closest friends of his brother, and were expected to be loyal to his brother’s offspring’, that had caused Richard to fear his position, considering that ‘his prospects were not sufficiently secure’ without their removal or imprisonment. Mancini wrote how Richard, through Buckingham, ‘learnt that sometimes they foregathered in each other’s houses’.6

  For Richard, Hastings’s power was equally disconcerting. It was perhaps for this reason that the duke had refused to grant Hastings any additional office aside from confirming his position as Master of the Royal Mint, while at the same time extending Buckingham’s vice-regal powers into Wales. Nevertheless, Hastings’s command at Calais had seen hundreds of additional soldiers join the garrison since Edward IV’s death; already Hastings had threatened the Woodvilles, in April, by claiming that he would depart the country for Calais, and there was no reason why he might not carry out a similar threat again. Many of the new recruits had come from Hastings’s own regional power base in Derbyshire, suggesting that he was strengthening his grip on the loyalty of the garrison. He had also begun to recruit to his own private retinue. On 13 May, Hastings signed an indenture with Thomas Green, recruiting him into his service. Green was to give Hastings ‘faithful and true service during my life, in war and peace, with as many persons defensibly arrayed as I can or may make, whensoever I be by the said lord or any other in his name thereto required, at the costs of the said lord during my life.’7 Amongst the entire nobility, Mancini believed, ‘because of his generosity’, Hastings’s popularity was unrivalled.