Richard III

by Seward, Desmond

  Interestingly Commynes tells us that at first Richard had been against the treaty. It is an exaggeration to guess, with Professor Myers, that he was ‘honest and patriotic, as in the negotiations at Picquigny, when most of those around were corrupt’. We simply do not know his motives or what he felt; we only know that to begin with he did not like the treaty. Young as he was, he was clearly a realist. After Picquigny he visited Louis at Amiens and accepted magnificent presents, which included some fine plate and several superb horses.4 He probably sailed from Calais with his brothers on 18 September. It was the end of his one visit to France.

  Soon after, he was back at Middleham. Here he seems to have spent most of the next two years, though at the end of 1475 he was appointed a commissioner to inquire into treason and heresy in Dorset and Wiltshire. But his long-running quarrel with the Duke of Clarence was far from over, even if it now took the form of supporting the King against George’s dissatisfaction.

  For Clarence, that ‘quicksand of deceit’, as Shakespeare calls him, was impossible. He has bequeathed the impression of a golden boy, with all the good looks, splendid physique and glamorous charm of his elder brother. Rous describes him as ‘right witty and well visaged’, More as ‘a goodly and well featured prince’. His appearance was so unmistakably regal that it alarmed the Queen. Moreover, he seems to have been an unusually gifted speaker – Mancini heard he was ‘a master of popular eloquence’. He was brave and he was daring. But he was also chronically unstable, vacillating to a degree which indicates serious neurosis and perhaps paranoia. (His younger brother may well have shared the same affliction, though he never let it master his relations with Edward.) Professor Kendall suggests that Duke George’s difficult temperament owed something to being spoilt as a child at Fotheringay by his sister Margaret, but this is mere speculation, even if there is evidence that the two were fond of each other. A simpler, much more likely, explanation is that he suffered from a ‘second-son’ complex, a phenomenon not quite extinct even today among modern English families of great wealth and rank who still believe in primogeniture.

  In the last years of Clarence’s stormy career Richard stayed mainly in the North. He now had a family, if a very small one, his son Edward of Middleham having been born in late 1473 or early 1474.5 According to tradition the birth took place in the round tower at the south-west corner of Middleham Castle wall now known as ‘The Prince’s Tower’. He was given a ‘mistress of the nursery’, one Anne Idley whom Richard (in a letter to Sir William Stonor) calls ‘our right well beloved servant’. Little Edward took on desperate importance in an age obsessed by dynastic pretensions. He had a wretchedly unhealthy inheritance. His aunt would die in childbirth, his mother would die in her twenties, and we know how sickly had been his father’s own childhood. Richard therefore had something to distract him from his feud with Clarence – though the birth of an heir made him still more ambitious.

  Clarence may have been disappointed by the outcome of ‘the great enterprise of France’. An even worse disappointment awaited him. On 22 December 1476 the Duchess of Clarence died after a protracted illness in consequence of bearing a second son, and only ten days later Charles of Burgundy fell in battle against the Swiss. His widow urged Edward IV to let George marry her twenty-year-old stepdaughter Mary, the heiress to Burgundy. But, the Croyland writer informs us, ‘So high an exaltation of his ungrateful brother as that contemplated displeased the King. He made every possible objection and did everything he could to stop the marriage.’ Edward was successful and Mary later married the Archduke Maximilian.6

  Understandably Clarence was furious and, Russell continues, the two began ‘to regard each other in a most unbrotherly way’. Courtiers were seen ‘running to and fro, from one to the other, repeating every remark uttered by the brothers, even if they had said them in the most private rooms’. Edward also refused to let Clarence marry a Scottish princess. The Queen made matters worse by trying to obtain Mary’s hand for her brother Lord Rivers – a proposal contemptuously dismissed by the Burgundian court, much to Elizabeth’s humiliation. It increased her dislike of her brother-in-law, already strong enough. More comments, ‘Women commonly, not of malice but of nature, hate them whom their husbands love.’

  Duke George began to behave in a fashion which bordered on lunacy. He put about rumours that Edward was a bastard and had no right to the throne – rumours which would one day inspire Richard – and seems to have tried to foment armed disturbances in East Anglia. He refused ostentatiously to eat or drink during his rare visits to court, insinuating that he was frightened of being poisoned. He also claimed that his wife had been murdered. In April 1477 he sent nearly a hundred men to abduct a former waiting woman of the late Duchess, Ankarette Twynhoe, who was now in the Queen’s service. This clearly very respectable lady was accused of administering ‘a venomous drink, of ale mixed with poison’ to the Duchess of Clarence. She was beaten, robbed of her jewellery, and then dragged off without a warrant from her home in Somerset to Clarence’s castle at Warwick. Here she was hanged within twenty-four hours, after being condemned by a jury bullied into acquiescence by the Duke. In addition, with suicidal foolhardiness, he claimed that his wife had been bewitched by the Queen. (A charge of which Richard discreetly took note.)

  Already angry, Edward struck back in similar fashion. He arrested an astronomer of evil repute – ‘also known to be a great necromancer’ – Dr John Stacey of Merton College, Oxford, and had him tortured till he admitted that he had cast horoscopes of the King and his son to learn when they would die. Stacey implicated a member of Clarence’s household, Thomas Burdett – ‘a merchant dwelling in Cheapside, at the sign of the Crown, which is now the sign of the Flower-de-luce, over against Soper Lane’, More remembered – on a plainly trumped-up charge. Both were found guilty of having ‘imagined and compassed’ the deaths of King Edward and the Prince of Wales, Burdett being additionally and more plausibly found guilty of inciting rebellion. Both were hanged at Tyburn on 20 May 1477, protesting their innocence. Their execution was clearly meant as a last warning to George. Unabashed, the Duke burst in on a Royal Council at Westminster when Edward was absent and insisted on having read out Stacey’s and Burdett’s denials. He had gone too far. By the end of the following month he was in the Tower.

  Clarence’s trial took place at Westminster in January 1478. Richard was among those present. The King told the Lords of George’s scheming to destroy him and his family, of a ‘much higher, much more malicious, more un-natural and loathly treason’ than ever before, declared him ‘incorrigible’ and demanded a sentence of high treason. Accordingly Clarence was condemned to death and his children forfeited their inheritance. His mother, Duchess Cicely, protested at a public execution, so on 18 February he was murdered in the Tower, almost certainly drowned in a butt of malmsey – Mancini heard that he had been ‘plunged into a jar of sweet Falernian’, Commynes says specifically that it was malmsey, and that Clarence’s daughter afterwards wore a little wine cask at a bracelet on her wrist in memory of him. By a grim irony he was buried at Tewkesbury Abbey. He was still only twenty-eight.7

  It was a horrible way to die. One contemporary foreign source, the French chronicler Jean Molinet, says that the Duke himself suggested it to his brother – perhaps he had meant it as a joke. Beheading in private, strangling or smothering would surely have been preferable. (Or drowning at sea like their brother-in-law, the Duke of Exeter, whose murder has never been solved.) Not even the wildest legends of the Borgias contain so exotically cruel and inhuman a killing. Beyond question there was a dark and sinister side to Edward IV. The Croyland writer tells us that he believed the King ‘inwardly repented very often’ Clarence’s death, while More says, ‘Piteously he bewailed and repented it.’ Yet Polydore Vergil complains that, though he talked with many people who knew the court in those days, he could never obtain a convincing account of Edward’s true motives.8 We may guess that, like Machiavelli, the King thought that ‘a Prince, so long as
he keeps his subjects united and loyal, should not worry about being called cruel’.

  The Duke of Gloucester’s feelings about George’s end are unknown. Mancini reports he was so overcome by grief that he could not hide it. More, while admitting that in public he opposed Clarence’s killing, is not so sure. ‘Some wise men also think that his drift, covertly conveyed, lacked not in helping forth his brother to his death, which he resisted openly, howbeit somewhat (as men deemed) more faintly than he that were heartily minded to his welfare.’ Sir Thomas adds that the same observers thought it quite possible he was glad to see George out of the way in case it became feasible to aim at the throne. Vergil’s information, that the King frequently lamented how no one had pleaded for Clarence’s life, is significant; the youngest of the three brothers had not bothered.

  Richard’s anger was real enough, but it was anger at the triumph of the Queen and her kindred – even if he had stood aside and let them persuade Edward to destroy George. Undoubtedly his intercession would have saved his brother. One can only deduce that his failure to do so was deliberate. It is true that he would not obtain the rest of the Warwick estates, which went to the Crown. What he did gain was to become the nearest adult male in line of succession.

  Gloucester had won his battle with Clarence. Three days before his uncle’s bizarre death, little Edward of Middleham received one of his titles, being made Earl of Salisbury. Three days after it Richard became again Great Chamberlain of England, an office which he had surrendered some years previously to his late brother at the King’s request. At the very least this indicates a robustly unsentimental attitude.9 However, as Francis Bacon observes of the Plantagenets, ‘It was a race often dipped in their own blood.’

  Chapter Seven

  RICHARD IN THE NORTH

  ‘Free was he called of spending and somewhat above his power liberal; with large gifts he got him unsteadfast friendship.’

  Sir Thomas More, The History of King Richard the Third

  ‘He kept to his own domains and strove to make himself popular with the people round about by granting favours and in his administration of justice.’

  Dominic Mancini, De Occupatione Regni

  Anglie per Riccardum Tercium

  In the North Richard Gloucester became the mightiest subject that any English King has ever had. By the end of his time there, not even John of Gaunt or the King-maker had possessed more power or independence. It was not just because of his wide lands and many offices. It was a considerable achievement, since Northcountrymen were not easy to govern and the region held ancient loyalties to strongly entrenched families. Yet one may detect shortcomings.

  Beyond question the Duke’s overall administration was brilliantly successful. It laid the foundation of the Council of the North, which he set up when he was King and which lasted until Charles I’s time. This enabled Northerners’ problems to be taken care of on the spot instead of being referred to London. Always suspicious of Southerners, the Northcountry people must none the less have been flattered that Richard so seldom left them, not even to go to court which – Mancini heard – ‘he rarely visited’. There is no evidence that he graced Gloucester with his presence before he became King, nor that he ever went to his enormous estates in South Wales. As Anne’s husband, the Nevill’s clan, with their countless retainers, accepted him as a kinsman and gave him their loyalty. He strove consciously to be worthy of it. Like his Nevill grandfather, he immersed himself in Border politics, guarding his folk against Scots raiders. One may guess that he took on Northcountry qualities, perhaps mannerisms; conceivably a Yorkshire accent was among them. He was always on ceaseless progress throughout the region. It is indisputable that his firm hand and employment of northern officials won him golden opinions and devoted servants among the townsmen and among some of the gentry. But in the end Gloucester’s dependence on the North and, above all, his omnipresence there were to help contribute to his downfall.

  The North – England north of the river Trent – was a bleak, often rugged country. West of the Pennine Chain, the Lakeland hills of Cumberland and Westmorland and the sandy wastes and moors of Lancashire were generally poor and sparsely populated, though with pockets of good farmland. East of the Pennines, it was much more varied, rich wolds alternating with vast tracts of desolate moorland – even Derbyshire had its moors. York, the northern capital, was large, rich and prosperous, but the other two principal cities, Durham of the Prince Bishops and Carlisle, were comparatively small – Carlisle’s walls being ‘in compass scant a mile’, according to Leland.

  As a race the Northerners were all but intractable – in 1489 a mob lynched the Earl of Northumberland for failing to cut their taxes. They were hard men, harsh and dour. They grew rougher and more warlike still towards the Border, Shaftoes and Fenwicks being a byword for ferocity, a society organized for war. Their squires lived in fortified ‘peel’ towers, not just to defend themselves from the Scots but as protection against their neighbours. Robbery, rustling, arson and manslaughter were endemic. The South dreaded them. A proverb ran:

  Out of the North

  All ill comes forth.

  Gloucester was of course supreme in Cumberland, Westmorland and West Yorkshire, where the bulk of his estates lay. (A local speciality there was the ‘Carlisle axe’, a peculiarly vicious form of halberd.) In addition, although Warden of only the West Marches against Scotland, he had tacit authority over Lord Northumberland, who was the Warden of the East and Middle Marches. And, as Steward of the Duchy of Lancaster, Richard was all powerful in much of Lancashire as well. In substance, therefore, he was more or less viceroy of England north of Trent. Yet before he became King he would strengthen his position even further.

  The Duke was interested in every aspect of his new domain, down to its mineral wealth. He fell victim to the sales patter of some enterprising German miners – though one source says it was a certain George Willarby – who convinced him that silver would be found next to local deposits of copper. In 1475 he obtained the custody of mines in Westmorland from Edward IV, and he appears to have had copper mines operating at Keswick and Alston in Cumberland and also in Northumberland (jointly with the Earl). Ten per cent of the silver was to go to the King. There is no record of any being found.1

  Understandably Gloucester was frequently at York, an easy ride from his castle of Sheriff Hutton. The city boasted 12,000 inhabitants and sixty churches – with nine more outside the walls – as evidence of its prosperity. It contained countless artisans and tradesmen and still more merchants who, via the River Ouse and Kingston-upon-Hull, traded with the Low Countries, Germany and the Baltic. The Duke took calculated pains to flatter them all, dealing with such petty matters as the removing of illegal fish traps from the local rivers, and intervening in a disputed election for Mayor. Sometimes he managed to have them exempted from taxes. In 1476 when the King wanted to punish the city for riots, he persuaded him to relent. On one occasion he even sent a member of his household to be tried by the Mayor and Corporation for insulting a citizen of York.

  Richard also made a point of being present at the chief event in the city’s year. This was the Mystery Plays, which were performed by the guilds on Corpus Christi – a feast falling between late May and June. As many as 600 players took part in fifty or more scenes staged on wagons in the streets around the Minster.2 In 1477 the Duke and his Duchess tactfully joined the Corpus Christi Guild, one of the richest in York, since it had close connections with the wealthy Merchant Adventurers Company. Graciously they walked in the guild’s procession when it escorted the Host in its silver and beryl pyx to the great cathedral, led by priests in gorgeous vestments and acolytes carrying candles and burning incense as they chanted. Richard was never averse to a procession of this sort, having a marked taste for formal piety.

  His modern defenders make much of his popularity in York. But however rich its citizens may have been, they were politically negligible even though they paid good taxes and supplied soldiers. It is a
cliché among historians of the Wars of the Roses that the cities took little part in the struggle. The Duke should have concentrated his energies on winning more friends among the magnates.

  Durham had considerable status as the capital of what was almost an independent country, a palatine bishopric comprising Co. Durham itself together with parts of Northumberland and some places in Yorkshire. It was a buffer state between England and Scotland over which the Prince Bishop ruled like a king, striking his own money. It was frequently attacked by the Scots and, if he had little say in its administration, Gloucester had cause to be concerned about its military situation.