Despite Edward’s murderous streak, he was mourned by his subjects, who admired his infectious zest for life and conviviality. Pleasing everyone who crossed his path had become second nature, while his scandalous private life only enhanced his popularity. During his last summer he invited the aldermen of London to ‘hunt and make merry with him’ at Windsor. Nothing earned the first Yorkist king more affection than this friendliness – ‘gat him either more hearts or more hearty favour among the common people’.28
14
The Suicide – Richard III
The story is not a long one, for the shadows begin from the moment of his accession to deepen round the last king of the great house of Anjou
William Stubbs1
A long-term plan?
According to Sir Thomas More, on the night Edward IV died a member of the royal household, William Mistlebrook, ran to the house of a City attorney called Richard Pottyer, who lived in Redcross Street without Cripplegate. Rapping urgently on the door, as soon as he was let in, he gave Pottyer the news of Edward’s death. ‘By my troth, man’, said the attorney, ‘Then will my master the duke of Gloucester be king!’2
More adds that some thought Gloucester had designs on the throne even when his brother was alive, ‘whose life he looked that evil diet should shorten’, but admits he cannot be sure about this. The Mistlebrook–Pottyer story is plausible, however. Sir Thomas says he heard it from his father, who at the time was living near Redcross Street, while both William Mistlebrook and Richard Pottyer have been identified by historians. Mancini commented in 1483 that there were people aware of Richard’s ‘ambition and deceitfulness, who never had any doubt where his scheming would lead’.3 It led to the dynasty’s suicide.
Until a hundred years ago everybody (apart from cranks like Horace Walpole) believed that Richard had murdered the ‘Princes in the Tower’. Stubbs spoke for almost all Victorians when he wrote, ‘Brave, cunning, resolute, bound by no ties of love or gratitude, amenable to no instincts of mercy or kindness, Richard III yet owes the general condemnation, with which his life and reign have been visited, to the fact that he left none behind him whose duty or whose care it was to attempt his vindication.’4 However, since the emergence in 1924 of the Fellowship of the White Boar (now the Richard III Society) he has found partisans who see him as another King Arthur. (One product of their point of view was Josephine Tey’s enjoyable if misleading novel The Daughter of Time.)
In 2012 Richard’s skeleton was found at Leicester, in a Franciscan friary demolished at the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Its spine is curved by scoliosis, which made one shoulder higher than the other. Far from being Tudor propaganda, as defenders have claimed, his nickname ‘Crookback’ was justified.
Youth
Richard was born on 2 October 1453 at Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire, the Duke of York’s seventh and youngest son. Stories of his coming into the world with hair and teeth are plainly hostile propaganda, while his scoliosis probably only developed during boyhood. After his father’s death in 1460 he was sent to Flanders for safety with his brother George, returning after Edward IV’s victory at Towton to be made Duke of Gloucester. He spent 1465–8 in the Earl of Warwick’s household at Middleham Castle in Wensleydale – which no doubt was how he acquired his attachment to the north country.
Unlike Clarence, Richard did not intrigue with Warwick, going into exile in Flanders with Edward and fighting for him at Barnet and Tewkesbury. Tudor chroniclers allege that he had a hand in killing the Lancastrian Prince of Wales, but there is no evidence for this (even if Stubbs thought it was true). We know from a Yorkist source, however, that he commanded the vanguard at Tewkesbury, where he presided over the drum-head court martials that condemned the captured Lancastrian commanders. He also hunted down the Bastard of Fauconberg. Some chroniclers heard he was in the Tower when Henry VI died, and a strong element of suspicion remains about his complicity.5
Richard’s appointments as Great Chamberlain and Lord High Admiral of England on 18 May 1471 was clearly a sign of Edward’s trust. In addition, he was given the Earl of Oxford’s estates with all Warwick’s lands north of Trent. Having prised Warwick’s daughter, Anne (the widowed Lancastrian Princess of Wales) out of the Duke of Clarence’s keeping, he first placed her in sanctuary at St Martin’s, then married her at Westminster Abbey in spring 1472 after the necessary dispensation from the Church – they were first cousins. He also obtained control of her mother, Warwick’s widowed countess, who was confined at Middleham for the rest of her life so that he could keep her dowry.
Clarence refused to hand over anything and the two young dukes argued their cases before the king at Sheen in February 1472, astonishing lawyers by their grasp of legal argument. Eventually an act of parliament divided the Warwick inheritance between them, Gloucester receiving the lion’s share. During the contest, ‘Clarence proved the more petulant and unaccommodating of the two’, writes Charles Ross (1981) – still Richard’s best biographer – ‘but both brothers showed a greed and ruthlessness and disregard for the rights of those who could not protect themselves which shed an unpleasant light on their characters’.6
At Christmas 1472 Richard sent sixteen men to Bromley Priory at Stratford-le-Bow, and they abducted the Dowager Countess of Oxford – confined there by King Edward as the mother of a leading Lancastrian. The old lady was dragged through the snow to Stepney where the duke was waiting in a house owned by a member of his household. He told her she must give him her estates or be taken to Yorkshire and imprisoned in one of his castles. Lady Oxford, ‘considering her great age, the great journey and the great cold which was then, of frost and snow, thought that she could not endure to be conveyed thither without great jeopardy of her life and [was] also sore fearing how she should be there entreated’. Terrified, she was brought to another house in Walbrook where she signed the deeds. ‘I thank God’, she cried, ‘I have those lands which shall now save my life.’ Her trustees were then bullied into accepting the transfer.7 The tale hints at a certain lack of chivalry in a young man of twenty.
Richard accompanied Edward IV to France in 1475, bringing the largest armed retinue of any English nobleman. Eager to fight, he stayed away from the meeting at Picquigny between his brother and King Louis, refusing Louis’s bribes. However, after seeing other magnates pocket them, he changed his mind and accepted rich presents.
Some observers thought he was behind his brother George’s destruction in 1478. Even if they were wrong, he certainly profited from it. Three days before Clarence was killed, Richard’s small son was created Earl of Salisbury, one of his uncle’s former titles, while three days later Richard became Great Chamberlain again, an office that had been taken from him in 1472 and given to Clarence.
Richard in the North
After 1478 Gloucester was seldom at his brother’s court, but in the North. Middleham and Sheriff Hutton were his favourite houses, but he owned many others, used on frequent progresses to York, Carlisle and Durham. Effectively a viceroy, he governed England down to the River Trent, anticipating the Council of the North.
Scottish privateers, operating from Leith, were a menace to English shipping. (It was not just a matter of losing cargoes; captured crew were thrown overboard.) However, fitting out ships and using Scarborough as a naval base, Richard swept the sea-lanes free of them. He must have sailed on board his patrols, since the Croyland writer mentions his ‘skill in naval warfare’.8 In 1474 one of his vessels captured a Scottish ship called the Yellow Carvel owned by the King of Scots and an embassy had to be sent to apologize. With a harbour guarded by an impregnable castle, the little port of Scarborough was ideal for his purpose, and later he created it a county in its own right.
Richard became a hero in the north country, acquiring a big following among the gentry and in the cities. ‘The popularity which he had won before his accession, in Yorkshire, where there was no love for the house of York before, proves he was not without the gifts which gained for Edward IV th
e lifelong support of the nation’, Stubbs admits.9 Much was thanks to his precautions against Scottish raiders, not only as warden of the Western Marches but along the entire border.
His standing was enhanced when war broke out between England and Scotland. Scottish raids over the border had revived while James III was dangerously pro-French, and in May 1480 Gloucester was made Lieutenant General with power to raise troops throughout the North. This did not deter the Earl of Angus from sacking Bamburgh, and in retaliation the duke and the Earl of Northumberland led a raid into Scotland. In November King Edward ordered preparations for a full-scale invasion, which he intended to lead in person but called off because of ill health. Even so, during the winter of 1481–2 English ships harried the Scottish coast while English troops besieged Berwick. In June 1482 Richard burned Dumfries and other towns in Galloway.
The invasion plan was revived, this time with Gloucester as commander. The aim was to replace James III with his brother Alexander, Duke of Albany, who promised to surrender Berwick and other border lands, besides repudiating any alliance with France. In return, the English would establish him at Edinburgh. Gloucester led 20,000 men across the border, informing King Edward of his progress by a species of pony express. On 24 July he routed a Scots force at the Battle of Hutton Field. No details survive, but it must have been a very minor engagement – the Scots could not find enough troops to oppose so large an army because James III was squabbling with his barons. Berwick surrendered as soon as Richard appeared, and he occupied Edinburgh. Unexpectedly, Albany abandoned any claim to the throne of Scotland in return for recovering his duchy. A truce was negotiated, but all Richard could extract was Berwick with a vague promise that the King of Scots’ son should marry Edward’s daughter Cecily. After only three weeks of expensive promenade militaire, he evacuated Edinburgh and disbanded his army. Yet the campaign put the seal on Richard’s popularity in the North. Besides occupying the capital of the hated Scots, he had knighted forty-nine northerners at Hutton Field, many of whom later served him loyally.
As a reward for regaining Berwick, when parliament met in January 1483, Edward created a palatinate for his brother, consisting of Westmorland and Cumberland, an independent principality in which the king’s writ would not run. He also made him hereditary warden of the Western Marches. Edward felt that a further war with Scotland was looming, and lacked the energy to fight it in person.
The man
Dark haired, with a thin, tight-lipped face and a sharp, watchful expression, in the best portrait (an early sixteenth-century copy) one has the impression of a highly strung, wiry little creature without an ounce of spare flesh. Because of the scoliosis that twisted his spine, he stood a foot less than his five feet eight inches, but made up for it by dressing splendidly, often in cloth of gold. Constantly looking round, fidgeting with a ring or the dagger at his belt, he chewed his lower lip when thinking. It is likely that he spoke with a strong Yorkshire accent and a dry rasping cough (due to roundworm). He was oddly pale, from the pain induced by his scoliosis. Yet clearly he was impressive. In 1484 a Scots ambassador told him, ‘nature never enclosed in a smaller frame such remarkable powers’.10
More tells us that he could be ‘merry’ and ‘companionable’, and his court was full of music and dancing, banqueting and feasting. He had a flamboyant streak, evident in the white boar that he chose as a personal emblem, worn by members of his household on doublets and bonnets or as a neck-badge. His motto was ‘Loyauté me lie’ (loyalty binds me) – an ironic choice in the light of future events.
He knew how to make people like and even love him. He acquired a number of committed henchmen, the best known being Sir Richard Ratcliffe, William Catesby and his childhood friend Francis, Viscount Lovell, whom he made his Lord Chamberlain. (Lovell was devoted to him in the same way Hastings had been to Edward IV, taking a dog for his crest in token of fidelity.) Yet he was a poor judge of character. The Duke of Buckingham, Lord Stanley and the Earl of Northumberland all had reason to be grateful to him – and all betrayed him.
We know nothing of Richard’s relations with his wife, except that in the end he saw her as an encumbrance. He was an indulgent father to their sickly only son Edward of Middleham, providing him with a chariot so he could follow the hunt. He also ensured that his two bastards (born before his marriage) were well provided for: Katherine became Countess of Huntingdon while John of Gloucester was made Captain of Calais. There are hints of womanizing after he became king.
Richard preferred falconry to hunting, while he took particular pleasure in bear-baiting (during which mastiffs savaged the animal to death) and appointed a royal ‘bear-herd’ in 1484. He also had a special bear-pit built at Warwick Castle11. Among his books were the Chronicle of John of Brompton, Aegidius on statecraft, Of the Rule of Princes by Giles of Bologna and William of Worcester’s Norman documents. He commissioned only one illuminated manuscript, a translation of Vegetius on war. Lighter reading consisted of a volume of tales (including two by Chaucer.) He owned a Lollard bible, indicating an inability to read Latin or French in which the scriptures were freely available. A love of heraldry is revealed by his founding the College of Arms. Fond of music, he employed minstrels and choirs. He enjoyed building, notably a great hall at Middleham Castle and a new chapel at Sheriff Hutton, while during his reign he added towers and a range of lodgings to Warwick Castle, as well as palatial apartments to Nottingham Castle, which became a frequent residence.
He converted Middleham parish church into a college of priests, who daily said Mass for him, his wife and his dead kindred. When he became king, he planned to add a huge chantry chapel to York Minster, with six altars served by a hundred priests, which in size would have rivalled the great chapel that Henry Tudor later built on to Westminster Abbey. Clearly, he intended it to be his burial place.
Constantly on pilgrimage and visiting shrines, Richard developed a cult for St Julian the Hospitaller, a parricide who killed his father and mother but was pardoned by God. (A prayer to Julian by ‘thy servant King Richard’ in his Book of Hours has a paranoiac quality.) He was prone to moralize, denouncing enemies as fornicators and adulterers – giving substance to More’s gibe that he posed ‘as a goodly continent prince, clean and continent of himself, sent out of heaven into this vicious world for the amendment of men’s manners’.12
The coups d’état of 1483
Whatever Gloucester’s plans may have been, Edward IV’s death took him by surprise and he found himself threatened by the Wydevilles, who formed a majority on the council. They denied his right to be more than a titular Protector, insisting the council as a whole must rule. But the Wydevilles had enemies, the most prominent being Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, with whom Richard immediately forged an alliance. Another ally was Edward IV’s treasurer, Lord Howard – later rewarded with the duchy of Norfolk.
He then mounted two coups d’état in quick succession. The young king’s governor, Earl Rivers, who was the queen’s brother and the Wydevilles’ leader, had gone to Ludlow to bring him to London for his coronation on 4 May. Richard and Buckingham met the earl in the most amiable way at Stony Stratford on 29 April, spending the evening carousing together. Next morning, however, despite Edward’s tearful protests, their men seized Rivers and his key lieutenants, eventually executing them without trial. The Wydevilles were unpopular, so the Londoners cheered Gloucester when he rode in with the king. Lord Hastings, an old enemy of the Wydevilles, was overjoyed. Terrified, Queen Elizabeth fled to sanctuary in Westminster Abbey, taking her younger son, the Duke of York. As Lord Protector, Richard chose a new date for his nephew’s coronation, amid general approval. This was his first coup.
The second coup followed after he had persuaded the queen to give him custody of York, who was sent to join his brother at the Tower of London – still a palace as well as a fortress. Having discreetly summoned troops from the North, at a council meeting on 20 June he suddenly called armed guards into the room and arrested the unsusp
ecting Lord Hastings, whom he accused of plotting with the Wydevilles and then had beheaded in the yard outside.
Now that Hastings, the one man who might have stopped Richard, had been eliminated, a friar announced at St Paul’s that the young king and his brother were bastards because of a marriage contract between Edward IV and Lady Eleanor Butler which predated the Wydeville marriage – he even alleged that the late king had himself been a bastard. Buckingham then made a speech at Guildhall, asking everyone to petition the Protector to take the throne, an invitation repeated by a delegation of peers and gentlemen. On 26 June Richard graciously accepted.
‘Richard III’
On 6 July, Richard III and Anne Neville were crowned at Westminster Abbey by Archbishop Bourchier of Canterbury, and every effort was made to make the occasion joyful, with pageants in the London streets. At the end of July, the new king went on progress, visiting the West Country, the Midlands and the North. He spent over a fortnight at York, whose citizens vied in producing displays and tableaux, the corporation giving sumptuous banquets for the royal party. On 8 September the ten-year-old Edward of Middleham was invested in the minster as Prince of Wales, with splendour worthy of a coronation.
‘He contents the people where he goes best that ever did prince’, wrote Dr Thomas Langton, Bishop of St David’s, who accompanied Richard. ‘For many a poor man that hath suffered wrong many days have been relieved and helped by him and his commands now in his progress. And in many great cities and towns were great sums of money give to him, which all he hath refused. On my troth, I never liked the condition of any prince so well as his. God hath sent him to us for the weal of us all.’ Breaking into Latin, the bishop marred this paean a little by adding, ‘I do not take exception to the fact that his sensuality [voluptas] seems to be increasing.’13
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