To the evident discomfort of many, including Edward’s close friend William, Lord Hastings, the steward of the household Thomas, Lord Stanley, and more traditional members of the aristocracy such as Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, the Woodvilles had slowly been tightening their grip upon some of the key offices of state: by the beginning of 1483, the queen’s brother, Anthony, Earl Rivers was the master of the Prince of Wales’s household, his brother Sir Edward Woodville was shortly to take command of the navy while another brother Lionel was Bishop of Salisbury. The Marquess of Dorset was deputy-governor of the Tower of London.
The Woodvilles seemed to hold every card. The young king remained in the possession of Earl Rivers at Ludlow, while Dorset had seized all of the king’s treasure and munitions in the Tower, which he was now guarding. At the first meeting of the council, they sought to press home their advantage. Their military strength was increased with the council’s decision to give command to Sir Edward Woodville of 2,000 men at a cost of £3,670 to set sail with the royal fleet at the end of April, ostensibly to tackle ongoing piracy in the Channel. The date of the coronation was also hastily arranged; despite calls from some ‘who said that everything ought not thus to be hurried through’ and that the ceremony should wait for Richard’s return from the north, the date was quickly fixed for 4 May. ‘We are so important,’ Thomas Grey, the Marquess of Dorset, is reported to have replied, ‘that even without the king’s uncle we can make and enforce these decisions.’
The Woodvilles made it clear that it would be unacceptable for Richard to become sole protector, fearing that if he did so, they ‘would suffer death or at least be ejected from their high estate’. When it came to a vote, their superior numbers meant that instead, it was resolved that ‘the government should be carried on by many persons among whom the duke … should be accounted the chief’. In a tense showdown, other members of the council were not going to allow the Woodvilles to get their own way entirely; ‘the more foresighted members’ argued that the family ‘should be absolutely forbidden to have control’ of the king until he reached his majority. An argument also broke out concerning the number of horsemen that should accompany the king into London, with Hastings protesting that he would rather flee to Calais, where he was captain of the garrison there, than await the king’s arrival with a large army. Hastings’ determination to limit the new king’s retinue grew out of fear: ‘He was afraid that if supreme power fell into the hands of the queen’s relatives they would then sharply avenge the alleged injuries done by that lord. Much ill-will, indeed, had long existed between Lord Hastings and them.’
Eventually Queen Elizabeth, ‘desirous of extinguishing every spark of murmuring and unrest’, agreed to his demands, writing to her son’s household in Ludlow that his numbers that accompanied him to the capital should be limited to 2,000 men. It was to prove a significant concession, the full consequences of which Elizabeth and the Woodvilles had underestimated. They had also underestimated Hastings, who had no intention of not allowing the dead king’s wishes to be observed. Hastings was a devout Yorkist, whose father had been a retainer to Richard, Duke of York. Hastings’ star rose with Edward’s accession to the throne; he followed him into exile, and was rewarded for his loyalty with the lieutenancy of Calais, replacing Rivers who had angered Edward by planning to go on crusade in Portugal. During the 1470s, as his wealth and influence increased, including his appointment as Lord Chamberlain, Hastings emerged as Edward’s chief adviser and confidant. He intended to remain loyal to his former master’s wishes to the last.
Hastings also understood that unless Richard was granted the protectorship, his own future at court was under threat. Queen Elizabeth had never forgiven Hastings for being ‘the accomplice and partner’ of the king’s ‘privy pleasures’, especially since he had quickly taken to living with the dead king’s mistress Elizabeth Shore immediately after Edward’s death. Hastings had apparently also continued to maintain ‘a deadly feud’ with the queen’s son, Thomas, Marquess of Dorset, resulting from a quarrel over mistresses that they both ‘attempted to entice from one another’; two days before his death, Edward had attempted to reconcile the two men, though ‘latent jealousy’ still remained.
For these reasons Hastings remained convinced that as the king’s brother, Richard was the best person to act as the young king’s guardian. The duke was also Hastings’ ‘long standing’ friend ‘in whom he had the greatest trust’, from whom he probably hoped he might receive advancement if Richard was granted the protectorship. He now sought to do everything in his power to ensure that this happened.
After the council meeting had ended, Hastings sent messengers to Richard, informing him of the outcome of the council meeting and its decision to prevent Richard from taking up his position as Protector. He urged Richard to leave the north immediately and to ‘hasten to the capital with a strong force’; at the moment he felt ‘alone in the capital’ and believed his life was ‘not without great danger, for he could scarcely escape the snares of his enemies’.
Hastings was confident, however, that if Richard brought a ‘strong force’ with him, he would easily be able to match the two thousand troops that Rivers had been limited to bringing to London for the coronation. He also broached a more radical course of action, urging Richard to intercept Edward and his household before they had the chance to enter the capital. Richard would need to take the young king ‘under his protection and authority’ before he entered London, seizing his household men around him ‘before they were alive to the danger’.
Receiving Hastings’ message, Richard understood that he needed to act fast. He began to mobilise his forces to march south, but to avoid this being seen as an overtly hostile act, he sent letters to both Queen Elizabeth and the council seeking to reassure them of his loyalty to Edward V. In his second letter, however, Richard insisted that he was best placed to act as his nephew’s protector. Making the contents of this letter public, it was reported that
he had been loyal to his brother Edward, at home and abroad, in peace and in war, and would be, if only permitted, equally loyal to his brother’s son, and to all his brother’s issue, if perchance, which God forbid, the youth should die. He would expose his life to every danger which the children might endure in their father’s realm. He asked the councillors to take his deserts into consideration, when disposing of the government, to which he was titled by law, and his brother’s ordinance. Further, he asked them to reach that decision which his services to his brother and to the State alike demanded: and he reminded them that nothing contrary to law and his brother’s desire could be decreed without harm.
The letter apparently had ‘a great effect’ on the public, who ‘now began to support him openly and aloud, so that it was commonly said by all that the duke deserved the government’. A popular general, whom Parliament had formally congratulated several months earlier for his victories over the Scots, Richard had seemingly won the people over to his side. Marching to London, he was determined to claim guardianship of his nephew and seize control of the office he believed was rightfully his own.
News of Edward IV’s death had been slow to reach Ludlow, where the new king had been residing, devoting himself to riding, hunting and ‘other youthful exercises’, with a messenger only reaching the prince to inform him of his father’s death and his accession five days later on 14 April.
As Prince of Wales, Edward had been guarded at Ludlow by his uncle Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers. Rivers had been chosen as the Prince’s mentor on account of his learned background; fluent in several languages, he was one of the most cultured figures at the Yorkist court. Rivers had also built up a reputation as an excellent jouster who had fought at Barnet and Tewkesbury. An influential patron of literature, he was considered ‘a kind, serious and just man’.
As soon as Rivers received news that Edward had acceded as king, he prepared to depart from Ludlow for the capital ‘with all convenient haste’, yet a delay of almost ten days to collect
an adequate number of forces meant that Richard was able to dictate proceedings. Sending letters to the young king and Rivers, enquiring ‘on what day and by what route he intended to enter the capital’, he asked if ‘they could alter their course and join him, that in their company his entry to the city might be more magnificent’.
Rivers had little reason to decline Richard’s request; he certainly had no reason to suspect the duke, whom only several weeks before he had accepted as an arbitrator in a dispute he was having with his Norfolk neighbours. On 24 April the young king and Rivers set off from Ludlow with no more than the 2,000 soldiers that the council had agreed should accompany him.
Richard had departed from York on 23 April with a retinue of 600 ‘gentlemen of the north’. Encouraged by Hastings’ messages, the duke had left the north knowing that he was not alone in his determination to face down the Woodvilles. In the weeks since Edward’s death, he had sought support from members of the nobility who might be considered hostile or threatened by their takeover. In doing so, the duke had ‘allied himself’ with Henry Stafford, the second Duke of Buckingham, ‘uniting their resources’. Buckingham had never forgotten how he had been forced to marry one of the queen’s sisters as an eleven-year-old boy; embittered that he had gained nothing from the marriage which he had ‘scorned’ on account of its ‘humble origin’, he hoped to take his own revenge on ‘the queen’s kin’.
By 29 April both Richard and Buckingham had reached Northampton, where they received news that Rivers and Prince Edward were fourteen miles away at Stony Stratford. On the evening of 29 April, leaving the new king and his household at Stony Stratford, it was arranged for Rivers and Sir Richard Grey to ride to Northampton, where they were greeted by Richard ‘with a particularly cheerful and merry face, and sitting at the duke’s table for dinner, they passed the whole time in very pleasant conversation’. After dinner, they were joined by the Duke of Buckingham, and they continued their conversation late into the night.
The following morning, they set out to rejoin the young king. Just outside the town, Richard and Buckingham struck. Rivers and Grey were arrested and sent under close guard ominously to Pontefract Castle, in the heart of Richard’s northern estates. Both dukes now hurried to intercept the king, who had remained at Stony Stratford and was unaware of Rivers’ arrest. When Richard arrived he ordered the arrest of his servants and his chamberlain, the aged Thomas Vaughan. Orders were sent out for the rest of the household to depart ‘at once, and that they should not come near any places where the king might go, upon pain of death’.
Richard approached the young king with a ‘mournful countenance’, explaining to him why he had been forced to arrest Rivers and Grey and dismiss his household, claiming these ‘puny men’ had been responsible in part for his father’s death, encouraging the debauchery that had ruined his health. Richard further claimed that he had discovered plans to ambush him on the road to the capital, and that it was ‘common knowledge that they had attempted to deprive him of the office of regent conferred on him by his brother’. For the sake of the young king’s security, Rivers and the entire household needed to be ‘utterly removed’ since they were prepared, Richard believed, to ‘dare anything’.
Edward, who in spite of his young age was already displaying signs of ‘talent and remarkable learning’, was not convinced. Refusing to believe his uncle, he defended Rivers and his servants, telling Richard that they had been appointed by his father, ‘and relying on his father’s prudence, he believed that good and faithful ones had been given him’. He had seen ‘nothing evil’ in them himself, and wished to keep them. Edward’s independence of mind must have been disturbing for Richard. It was clear that while the king might be too young to govern by himself, he was certainly no child, with the force of character to express his own opinions. Bishop John Russell believed that the king possessed a ‘gentle wit and ripe understanding, far passing the nature of his youth’. To hear him defending his Woodville relations, Richard must have recognised that he could hardly rely upon the king’s support; though his uncle, Richard must have been a remote and unknown figure to Edward, in contrast to his mother’s family, with whom the king had grown up and whose influence was evidently already deep set. The king continued to argue with his uncle, declaring that he had ‘complete confidence in the peers of the realm and the queen’ to make arrangements for his minority, yet he eventually agreed to submit himself to his uncle’s authority, realising that he was powerless to refuse Richard’s demands.
When rumour of what had taken place at Stony Stratford reached London, Queen Elizabeth fled in the night with her children into sanctuary at Westminster. By the morning, confusion reigned as the capital began to take sides. ‘You might have seen the partisans of one side and of the other, some sincerely, others dissimulating because of the confusing events, taking this side or that’. A rumour began to spread that Richard had brought his nephew ‘not under his care, but into his power, so as to gain for himself the crown’.
In this atmosphere of fear and uncertainty, Richard knew that his entrance into the capital would need to be carefully stage-managed. To counter the rumours that he intended to claim the crown as his own, Richard made full use of letters, sent to the council and the city authorities, to repeat what he had told Edward, that ‘he had rescued him and the realm from perdition, since the young man would have fallen into the hands of those who, since they had not spared either the honour or life of the father, could not be expected to have more regard for the youthfulness of the son’. In contrast, ‘no one save only him had such solicitude for the welfare of King Edward and the preservation of the state’.
The self-appointed saviour of the nation, when Richard entered London with Edward on 4 May ‘in regal style’, with a force of 500 men, each solemnly dressed in black, he brought with him cartloads of weapons, stamped with the Woodville arms, that were supposedly to have been used in an armed takeover that the duke now claimed he had thwarted. Playing the role of the loyal uncle of the king, determined to do what was in his nephew’s best interest, Richard ordered that every nobleman in the capital together with the mayor and aldermen of the city of London ‘take the oath of fealty’ to the king; it was taken that ‘this promised best for future prosperity’ and was ‘performed with pride and joy by all’.
Richard’s entrance into London had seen him effectively acclaimed as the king’s official Protector. Richard himself was confident that he could act as the king’s regent ‘on account of his popularity’, while it was reported that members of the nobility ‘even said openly that it was more just and profitable that the youthful sovereign should be with his paternal uncle’.
At the next meeting of the council on 10 May, Richard was appointed Lord Protector, with the appointment scheduled to last until at least the king’s coronation, which was now set for 22 June. Everyone ‘now hoped for and awaited peace and prosperity in the kingdom’. Hastings, having himself helped to engineer the transfer of power, was ‘bursting with joy over this new world’, grateful that it had taken place ‘without any killing and with only so much bloodshed in the affair as might have come from a cut finger’.
In spite of his new authority, ‘commanding and forbidding in everything like another king’, it soon became clear to Richard that power was not quite what it seemed. He would soon feel bridled by the council; as the Crowland Chronicler remarked, he might only govern ‘with the consent and the good will of all the lords’. When Richard attempted to have Rivers and Grey condemned as guilty of treason for planning to ambush him and conspiring his death, he was blocked, with the council refusing to do so, casting doubt on the evidence that any ambushes had been planned and arguing that even if they had been planned, since Richard was not Protector then, no treason had been committed.
The decision must have prompted Richard to reassess the vulnerability of his own position. He had been granted the protectorship for a period of six weeks only, until the coronation, when the decision would be review
ed. By that time, the tables might have once again turned in favour of the Woodvilles. With Rivers and Grey now potentially soon to be freed, it would not be long before they would seek revenge for their treatment. He had wrested control of the king from the Woodvilles, preventing their immediate dominance in the vacuum of power following Edward IV’s death, but they remained far from crushed, and their presence in London was acutely felt. Before fleeing into sanctuary, after hearing news of Richard’s capture of the king, they had attempted to assemble an army; this had ultimately been in vain, since the noblemen they approached ‘were not only irresolute, but altogether hostile to themselves’, but the city remained divided along factional lines, with men loyal to the Woodville party flocking to the queen’s side at Westminster. Queen Elizabeth’s flight into sanctuary had taken the king’s younger brother Richard, Duke of York, out of Richard’s grasp, and left a potential alternative power base within the capital. ‘A great cause of anxiety which was growing,’ the Crowland Chronicler wrote, ‘was the detention in prison of the king’s relatives and servants and the fact that the Protector did not show sufficient consideration for the dignity and peace of mind of the queen.’ Sir Edward Woodville also remained at large, having escaped from the capital the day before Richard’s arrival, setting sail with the royal fleet.
Richard had immediately set about strengthening his own position and dismantling the Woodvilles’, replacing Archbishop Rotherham, a friend of the queen’s, with John Russell, Bishop of Lincoln, as chancellor. He also ordered the Woodville lands to be seized, even though there were no legal grounds for the forfeiture. It was the first sign that Richard was prepared to flout the law for his own advantage.
Bosworth: The Birth of the Tudors Page 15