Richard III

by Chris Skidmore

  The man who had placed Richard on the throne, who had been his kingmaker, now intended to turn against him.

  Buckingham’s new alliance with the Woodvilles seems bizarre, and undoubtedly stunned Richard, yet most sources are in agreement about the reasons behind it. One chronicler described how ‘many knights and gentlemen, of Kent and other places, gathered them together to have gone toward the Duke of Buckingham, being then at Brecknock … which intended to have subdued king Richard’. The chronicler was clear that Richard had ‘also put to death the ii children of king Edward, for which cause he lost the hearts of the people. And thereupon many Gentlemen intended his destruction.’20 According to the Crowland chronicler, just when ‘the people round about the city of London’ and in the counties of Kent, Essex, Sussex, Hampshire, Dorset, Devon, Somerset, Wiltshire and Berkshire ‘began considering vengeance’, there was ‘public proclamation’ that the duke of Buckingham, having removed himself to Brecknock in Wales, was ‘repentant of what had been done’, especially once ‘a rumour arose that King Edward’s sons, by some unknown manner of violent destruction, had met their fate’.21 And Robert Fabyan, writing in 1504, described how ‘the foresaid grudge increasing, and the more forasmuch as the common fame went that king Richard had within the Tower put unto secret death the II sons of his brother … for the which, and other causes had within the breast of the duke of Buckingham, the said duke, in secret manner, conspired against him, and allied him with divers gentlemen, to the end to bring his purpose about’.22

  It seems as though men were convinced that Edward V and his brother, Richard, had not only disappeared from view, but were now dead. From the outset, there had been endless speculation and comment as to how exactly the princes had died. None are conclusive, though taken together they reflect a fairly unanimous contemporary verdict that the princes were slain during Richard’s reign, almost certainly in the summer of 1483. The Great Chronicle states that there were rumours still abounding after Easter 1484, commenting that ‘much whispering was among the people that the King had put the children of King Edward to death’.23 English sources from various regions came to the same conclusion. Robert Ricart, the mayor of Bristol, wrote in the calendar year for September 1483 to September 1484 that ‘in this year the two sons of King Edward were put to silence in the Tower of London’;24 more precisely, in Colchester, on or around 29 September, Michaelmas Day, the town clerk, John Hervy, penned his end-of-year entry in the Colchester Oath Book, describing not only Edward V as an illegitimate king, but also as the ‘late son of Edward IV’.25

  On the continent, it was a similar story. Just a few days earlier, on 23 September, in the recently completed Sistine Chapel, Pope Sixtus IV held a mass for the dead ‘for Edward, king of England’. Whether this refers to Edward IV or Edward V is debatable; however, regulations governing papal ceremonial stated that a requiem mass should be held as soon as the pope had received news of a royal death. Similar honours had been paid only ten days before on 13 September to Louis XI, after the pope had received news of the French king’s death two days earlier. A delay of five months to perform a requiem mass for Edward IV seems unlikely, especially since Edward IV’s death was known in Rome by 16 May, when a letter of condolence was sent from the papacy to Queen Elizabeth. Furthermore, news of Edward V’s deposition had already reached the Vatican by 8 August, when a letter had been dispatched to Richard III. If Pope Sixtus believed that Edward V was dead by 23 September, one possibility is that he discovered the news from Angelo Cato, the Italian archbishop of Vienne, and Dominic Mancini’s patron, who was an old friend and correspondent of Pope Sixtus.26

  The fact of the princes’ deaths seems to have been taken as an almost universal truth by most foreign commentators. On the continent rumour soon spread that Edward V and his brother had been killed, and was the topic of open discussion in France. Before his death in late August 1483, Louis XI was reported by Commynes to have believed that Richard had murdered his nephews, for which the French king considered him ‘extremely cruel and evil’.27 A genealogical roll, though dating much later, around 1513, also mentions that Thomas Warde, a chaplain to Edward IV, who had been sent to France in 1483 to collect the king’s pension and was still in France when the king died, was at the French court when Louis was informed ‘that Richard duke of Gloucester the protector had put his nephews to silence and usurped the crown upon them’.28

  The linking of the news of the princes’ deaths with Buckingham’s sudden decision to rebel against Richard raises questions about Buckingham’s own involvement in the affair. Did the duke already know of the princes’ fate, or could he have been responsible for releasing the news that the princes were dead? A short Latin account of Richard’s reign in the Bodleian Library describes how Richard, ‘being afraid that his nephews might prevent him from reigning with the approbation of the kingdom’, then ‘first taking counsel with the Duke of Buckingham, as said, removed them from the light of this world, by some means or other, vilely and murderously … Alas, that such noble princes, heirs to so rich a kingdom’, the short chronicle continued, ‘should thus end their lives, innocent of any offence that merited such violence!’29 The notes of a London citizen written around the same time stated that ‘This year King Edward V, late called Prince of Wales, and Richard Duke of York his brother, King Edward IV’s sons, were put to death in the Tower by the vise of the Duke of Buckingham’ – in other words, on his advice or by his design.30 Philippe de Commynes also believed that it was Buckingham who ‘had put the two children to death’, though in three separate other places in his Memoirs he places the responsibility on Richard, who ‘had his two nephews murdered’.31

  Another continental source, the Dutch Divisie Chronicle, written around 1500, suggests that the princes had possibly been murdered by Buckingham, though adding that ‘some say’ that Buckingham spared one of the children, ‘which he had lifted from the font and had him secretly abducted out of the country’.32 Nothing can be proved either way, for the clues provide no leads; nor can they be taken as conclusive evidence, apart from providing a sense of the foreboding conclusion that the fate of the two boys had already been sealed.

  Years later, around 1508, Polydore Vergil wrote how Richard ‘in truth did not hide the slaughter but after a few days allowed rumour of the boys’ deaths to be spread abroad, so namely (it is to be believed) the populace, now no male heir of Edward lived, might bear the king good will’. If this was the case, Richard’s actions seriously backfired. When news of the princes’ deaths began to spread across the realm, ‘all the people were filled with confusion and mourning … They ran in different directions all together, raging, certain that they would not have done such a thing. They cursed at the power of the cruelty, savagery and ferocity of the deed and especially bewailed that they were unable to avenge such an inhumane act.’ In particular, the household men of Edward IV ‘bore it impatiently’, judging ‘the common loss rightly knowing that a most barbarous tyranny had now invaded the state’. When Queen Elizabeth, still remaining in sanctuary, discovered the news of her sons’ deaths she ‘fell suddenly to the ground and lay for a long time half-alive’. The sound of her weeping and howling ‘filled the religious house with noise’, as, inconsolable, Elizabeth ‘beat her breast’ and tore out her hair.33

  The existence of rumours, speculating as to the whereabouts of Edward V and his brother, Richard, duke of York, clearly fed on the removal of the two boys from public sight and their continued absence. It is noticeable that talk of the fates of the princes changed from the opportunity to rescue them from captivity, with the Crowland chronicler’s observation that meetings were formed, ‘to plan the princes’ deliverance from captivity’, with discussion even of moving the Yorkist princesses from sanctuary to the continent, in case any ‘fatal mishap’ should befall their brothers.34 All this took place with a complete lack of knowledge as to what was happening behind the Tower walls: Dominic Mancini could report how ‘many men’ supposedly burst into tears at
the mention of Edward V’s name, ‘and already that there was a suspicion that he had been done away with’, yet no one really knew anything for certain.35 It is only when mention of Buckingham is brought into the rumours that the ‘common fame’ turns from rumours of plans to rescue the living princes into stories of the princes’ deaths by violence. But the change in direction and tone of the rumours does nothing to prove either way that the princes were certainly dead, or that Buckingham had been involved; we cannot be sure that the circulation of rumours during the summer and autumn of 1483 was not intended to stir up public support for rebellion against Richard, playing on already present fears and emotions.

  The rumours can be threaded into a narrative, but what really matters is not their content or veracity, but the fact of their existence at all. Both commentators, chroniclers and the public seem to have been overwhelmingly affected by the thought that Richard would have not only struck down and killed his own kin, but would have killed children. In a society scarred by violence and civil war, moral boundaries still remained, limits beyond which its members, even kings, could not stretch without consequences.

  It is striking that, while Richard had been able to depose Edward V, many if not most of Edward IV’s household men had been prepared to, perhaps temporarily, go along with the plan. Edward V would be replaced, removed from the throne and placed in the Tower. Richard would rule, ensuring the stability of the Yorkist dynasty; possibly, they considered that when Edward V finally came of age, they could change their minds, forcing Richard from the throne. For the moment, Richard’s accession had taken place in a swirl of brutal force. The threat of violence from the descent of thousands of armed men from the north made it seem that resistance to Richard’s usurpation of the throne was impossible. Faced with a choice of submission or inevitable destruction, most in Edward IV’s household chose to acquiesce in Richard’s triumph. Few can have believed the logic of Richard’s, or Buckingham’s, arguments that somehow Edward IV’s ‘pre-contract’ with a former love interest from nearly twenty years ago would have ruled that the children of Edward IV were to be declared illegitimate. Attempts to free the princes suggest that already by late July preparations were being established to bring Edward V to the throne once more.

  Yet, once again, men seem to have underestimated the lengths Richard was prepared to go to defend himself. The very thought that Richard would have been prepared to kill his own nephews would have been an anathema in medieval society: children were to be honoured, as innocents themselves, as representations of Holy Innocents, the children slaughtered by Herod three days after the birth of Christ. Innocents’ Day, 28 December, was regarded as a sacred day, on which people abstained from setting out on journeys or beginning new tasks, while the Massacre of the Innocents was frequently portrayed in medieval art. The most moving of the plays in the Corpus Christi cycles fixate also on the Slaughter of the Innocents. The disappearance of the two princes, and the rumours surrounding their deaths, stemmed from the moral shock as the reality gradually dawned that Edward and Richard would not be reappearing from behind the Tower walls. As the Great Chronicle noted, rumour superseded rumour, driving forward further rebellion, since ‘when the fame of this notable foul fact was dispersed through the realm, so great grief stroke generally to the hearts of men, that the same, subduing all fear, they wept everywhere, and when they could weep no more, they cried out, “Is there truly any man living so far at enemity with God, with all that holy is and religious, so utter enemy to man, who would not have abhorred the mischief of so foul a murder?”‘36

  In the margin of the Great Chronicle, a reader paused to write, ‘Innocentes, Mors Innocentium’, as if in complete acceptance and agreement that an act of horrific and ungodly proportions had taken place. What exactly had happened, and who exactly had committed it, will remain disputed: what cannot be doubted is the overwhelming degree to which it was believed that Edward V and his brother were now dead, and that the responsibility for this lay with their uncle, their Protector, the nation’s unexpected king.

  The most telling reason that the rumoured deaths of Edward V and his brother were believed is in the sudden catapulting of Henry Tudor onto the political scene, as a potential replacement candidate for the throne. The Crowland chronicler wrote that ‘all those who had begun this agitation, realising that if they could not find someone new at their head for their conquest it would soon be all over with them, remembered Henry, earl of Richmond, who had already spent many years in exile in Brittany’.37 The author of the Great Chronicle believed that ‘word sprang quickly of [Henry Tudor who] made speedy provision to come into England to claim the crown as his right, considering the death of King Edward’s children, of whom as then men feared not only to say that they were rid out of this world’.38 The Crowland chronicler wrote how Buckingham, having become ‘repentant of what had been done’ that he would be considered ‘captain-in-chief of this affair’, approached John Morton, the bishop of Ely, imprisoned at his residence at Brecknock, for advice. Morton suggested that the duke write to Tudor, ‘inviting him to hasten into the kingdom of England as fast as he could reach the shore to take Elizabeth, the dead king’s elder daughter, to wife and with her, at the same time, possession of the whole kingdom’.39

  Polydore Vergil, basing his account on the testimonies of first-hand accounts told to him over twenty years later, told a similar story. At first, Morton, ‘suspecting treason’, refused to listen to the duke, yet ‘when he saw that his mind was made up and in good faith he conversed freely with him … The duke disclosed everything to the bishop of Ely and informed him that the lines of Edward and Henry VI were joined by affinity, and thus at the same time this union might be restored to the realm … The manner was this, that Henry earl of Richmond who, it was reported, after the news of Edward’s death, had been released by the duke of Brittany. They should send to him to come to the realm in all haste and to help him, if he would first promise on oath that, after obtaining the realm, he would take as his wife Elizabeth the eldest daughter of King Edward.’40

  Morton agreed; yet it seems too much of a coincidence that the bishop in captivity was able to swiftly arrange for a servant of Margaret Beaufort, named Reginald Bray, to journey at speed to Margaret to inform her ‘of all that had been decided’. It seems that Margaret Beaufort had already been plotting. ‘After learning of the slaughter of Edward’s sons’, Vergil wrote, Margaret ‘began to hope well, thinking it to be an act of God, as namely the bloodlines of Henry VI and Edward might be mixed’, if her son Henry might be able to marry Edward IV’s eldest daughter, Elizabeth.

  First, however, Margaret would need the support of Queen Elizabeth in sanctuary. Surrounded by John Nestfield’s troops as the queen was, it seemed an impossible task. But Margaret had a solution: her physician, Lewis Carleon, she had learnt, had also treated the queen; few might suspect him, and he might be allowed to pass through the armed cordon to converse with her. According to Vergil, Carleon ‘did not delay approaching the queen’. Carleon, who must have known the queen’s mind also, chose to suggest that the plan had been devised by himself rather than ordered by Margaret Beaufort, who as a former Lancastrian was still held in suspicion. This was ‘pleasing’ to Elizabeth, who, believing the plot was taking place at her own instigation, ordered Carleon to return to Margaret, living in Thomas, Lord Stanley’s London house, with the message that she should ‘promise in her name that she would do her best to get all the friends of her husband Edward to follow her son Henry, if now he would swear, after obtaining the realm, to marry her daughter Elizabeth, or another of her daughters, if the first were to die, before he came to the realm’. Having agreed to these conditions, Margaret then appointed Reginald Bray to ‘take charge of the conspiracy’, ordering him ‘as secretly as he could’ to ‘draw others of the nobility to their side, who would be able to help’.

  Of course, Vergil’s later account may have been written to provide Margaret Beaufort with a central role in the conspiracy; Mar
garet, he wrote, was ‘commonly called the head of that conspiracy’. Yet Margaret’s involvement in the rebellion can be judged from the number of her kinsmen and servants who were to be listed among the rebels, including John Cheyne, John Heron, Thomas Lewkenor and John Welles. Significantly, it does seem that Lewis Carleon was implicated in the rebellion. In a surviving manuscript of his astrological tables, Carleon wrote that he had been forced to redraw his work, since the original papers had been lost ‘through the pillaging of king Richard, while I was imprisoned in the Tower of London’.41

  Within a few days Bray had recruited former knights of Edward IV’s household, including Giles Daubeney, Richard Guildford, Thomas Rameneye, John Cheyne ‘and many others’, while Queen Elizabeth ‘likewise hastily made her friends partners of the deliberation’. Margaret employed Christopher Urswick, a Lancastrian who had been recommended by Carleon and who was described by Vergil as ‘a priest of good character and shrewd in setting things in motion’, who, after taking an oath of secrecy, made him her confessor and confidant. Urswick would be given the task of travelling to Brittany to inform Henry Tudor of the conspiracy planned in his name. Yet just before Urswick was about to make his journey, Margaret learnt of Buckingham’s intention to raise a rebellion against Richard. There was to be an immediate change of plan. Instead, Margaret ordered that Hugh Conway should travel to Brittany ‘with a not inconsiderable sum of money’, in order to disclose the plan, ‘and to exhort him to return, and principally urge him to arrive in Wales, where he would find aid prepared’. Soon afterwards, Richard Guildford and Thomas Rameneye were also sent across the Channel to Brittany. When Henry had been informed of his mother’s message, ‘raised in spirits’, he appealed to Duke Francis for help to make the journey to England. In spite of Richard’s recent embassy under Thomas Hutton that had attempted to win back favour with Brittany, Duke Francis ‘gave very willingly’.