Richard III

by Seward, Desmond

  His reading, as with most noblemen of the age, is likely to have been very limited. (Almost certainly he read aloud to himself, since this was then the custom.) Apart from religious works, few books which belonged to Richard have been identified. Among them are Aegidius on statecraft, a Tristan, William of Worcester’s collection of documents about Normandy, and the so-called Chronicle of John of Brompton; the last was a history of Britain supposedly written by an Abbot of Jervaulx, a monastery known to the Duke since childhood and where he maintained a stable of horses. Two others were clearly favourites. A book of tales, including two by Chaucer, bears the inscription ‘tant le desiree R. Gloucestre’ in his own hand, while an English translation of Vegetius’s De Re Militari – the standard treatise on war for medieval man – is the only illuminated manuscript which is known to have been commissioned by him.

  Yet it is not too fanciful to discern an enthusiasm for the fashionable literature of the day. To some extent – in his own eyes at any rate – Richard seems to have modelled himself on the heroes of the knightly romance. Indeed, his own death can be seen as positively Arthurian; it is ironical that the Morte d’Arthur was printed during the last weeks of his life. His motto and badge, his interest in heraldry, all reveal the obsession with chivalry displayed by most great princes at that time.

  By now the Duke of Gloucester had clearly acquired a considerable reputation as a military commander. ‘A courageous and most daring prince’, the Croyland chronicler calls him. ‘In warfare such was his renown that any difficult or dangerous task necessary for the safety of the realm was entrusted to his direction and generalship,’ says Mancini. ‘No evil captain was he in the war, as to which his disposition was more meat than for peace,’ comments More, who adds that the Duke had both defeats and victories but never for want of bravery or ability. Yet while contemporary Englishmen hailed Richard as a hero for his exploits on the Border, he never actually commanded an army in a pitched battle until Bosworth. All his experience was of raiding and guerrilla warfare, and ultimately it failed him. Professor Charles Ross, the most authoritative historian of the Wars of the Roses, admits that the Duke’s gifts as a soldier have been inflated – ‘His military ability remains an open question.’

  Perhaps Richard reveals a little of himself in the pattern of his religious life, which has never been properly examined. He must have absorbed something of his mother’s piety to judge from his spiritual reading. Some years ago a manuscript English Bible, Wycliff’s translation, was discovered in a New York library. Its history is unknown but the name ‘Richard Gloucester’ is written in it in his hand. If one is going too far in ascribing his desire to read a forbidden work – forbidden in the vernacular – to fear of personal damnation, it at least shows intense curiosity in the meaning of his religion. He was certainly no Lollard, and impeccably Catholic in believing in penance and atonement, in the efficacy of good works and the intercession of saints. He venerated relics, and was constantly going on pilgrimage, visiting shrines barefoot, taking part in religious processions and endowing chantries to pray for the souls of his dead kindred. Plainly the next world was very real to him. The fact that none of this inhibited a complete lack of scruple indicates a certain ability to lose touch with reality and a weakness for self-deception. But Milton (in Eikonoklastes) was very wide of the mark in discerning in Richard ‘a deep dissembler, not of his affections only, but of his religion’.

  At the end of 1482 the Duke of Gloucester rode down to London to receive a hero’s welcome and to spend Christmas with his brother and attend the forthcoming Parliament. It is more than likely that during his stay at court he was unpleasantly reminded yet again of just how dangerous were the Queen and the Woodvilles, and that he tried to strengthen his links with the anti-Woodville faction. More says specifically that ‘he was well aware of, and helped to maintain a long-continued grudge and heart-burning between the Queen’s kindred and the King’s blood’ – the latter being Hastings and the ‘old nobility’.

  When Parliament met in January 1483, it was full of praise for the Duke’s conduct of the war with Scotland. At the King’s request it passed legislation to give him the hereditary Wardenship of the West Marches, a hereditary right to the office of Constable of Carlisle (together with the castle and to all Crown lands in Cumberland), besides virtually regal powers over the county and also over the thirty miles of Scots Border country he now controlled – with the same powers over any more Scots territory he might overrun. He was even authorized to naturalize Scots as Englishmen under his own seal, receiving exactly the same palatine powers as the Prince Bishop of Durham. He had been given, in fact if not name, an independent principality of his own in the North West.

  For the Earl of Northumberland all this must have been very bitter news indeed. It looked as though the Percys had finally – and permanently – lost their position as the leading family of the North of England.

  It was typical of Gloucester that he should ask Parliament to exempt the northern counties from the latest round of taxation. As More discerned, he was prodigal in buying unreliable support. It was not a realistic policy, could not be continued when he became King, and would end only in disappointed expectations and unpopularity.

  In the last days of February he said a no doubt grateful goodbye to Edward IV, who must have been failing visibly. He never saw him again. There may be some truth in stories of the King’s dejection at his setbacks in foreign policy, the opportunity missed in Scotland and the realization that Louis XI had acquired half of Burgundy by betrothing the Dauphin to its heiress, and by his reconciliation to the titular Habsburg Duke at the Treaty of Arras. In any case gluttony and whoring had ruined his once magnificent constitution. The Croyland writer refers to him at this time as ‘a man of such corpulence and so fond of boon companionship, vanities, debauchery, extravagance and sensual enjoyments’.

  The French chronicler Basin records that on Good Friday 1483 Edward suffered a terrible fit of indigestion, from stuffing himself with fruit and vegetables. Mancini, who was then in London, recounts how just after Easter the King went in a small boat to watch some fishing, presumably on the Thames: ‘Being a tall and very fat man, though not exactly misshapen, he let the damp cold chill his guts … and caught a sickness from which he never recovered.’ Shortly after the fishing expedition he seems to have had a stroke – Commynes says it was an apoplexy – but his doctors could not diagnose what was wrong. Nevertheless, Edward himself soon ‘perceived his natural strength so sore enfeebled that he despaired all recovery’. Not long before he died, he summoned Hastings and the Woodvilles to his bedside, begging them to be reconciled – he was so weak that he could not stay sitting up and finished his plea lying on his side. Everyone shed tears and shook hands, even Dorset. Edward IV died on 9 April 1483. ‘I was the King and kept you from your foe,’ wrote the poet laureate Skelton in his funeral elegy.

  The news reached Richard, apparently at Middleham, two days later. It was brought by one of Hastings’s men, who must have ridden like the wind. Having seen a good deal of his brother in recent months, the Duke cannot have been entirely surprised.12

  More tells of an ominous incident:

  [The] same night that King Edward died, one called Mistlebrook, long ere the day sprung, came in great haste to the house of one Pottyer dwelling in Redcross Street without Cripplegate; and when he was with hasty rapping quickly let in, the said Mistlebrook showed unto Pottyer that King Edward was departed. ‘By my troth, man,’ quoth Pottyer, ‘then will my master the Duke of Gloucester be King.’

  Sir Thomas adds (in his Latin version of the History) that he heard this story from his father, who was then living in Milk Street in the same ward as Redcross Street. William Mistlebrook and Richard Pottyer undoubtedly existed and have been identified by modern historians; shortly after Gloucester had indeed become King, the latter was appointed an attorney of the Duchy of Lancaster in Chancery – hitherto he may have been the Duke’s attorney in Chancery. Plainly Pottye
r knew his master only too well.

  Chapter Eight

  ‘PROTECTOR AND DEFENDER’

  ‘Richard, Brother and Uncle of Kings, Duke of Gloucester, Protector, Defender, Great Chamberlain, Constable and Admiral of England.’

  A proclamation of June 1483

  ‘I pray God he may prove a Protector, rather than a destroyer.’

  Sir Thomas More, The History of King Richard the Third

  A power struggle was inevitable. During Henry VI’s minority Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, had been titular Protector, but the government had really been controlled by the Beauforts. The Woodvilles intended to do the same, to rule England during the minority of Edward V; probably they hoped to recreate the regime, under Elizabeth’s control, which had briefly existed in 1475 during his father’s absence in France. Neither they nor the twelve-year-old King ever stood a chance against Richard, who was to bring off one of the most brilliant double coups d’état in history.

  At the beginning the Woodvilles were apparently unassailable and should have come to an arrangement with Gloucester without too much difficulty. Yet within three weeks they had been outwitted and destroyed and Richard was an all-powerful Protector – within another seven he was King. Few seizures of power have gone off with such smooth precision. The most plausible inference is, as both Mancini and More suggest, that Gloucester had long been preparing for it.1

  At least one great nobleman knew which way the wind would blow. More states that – ‘as I have for certain been informed’ – the Duke of Buckingham dispatched a trusted agent called Persivell to Richard at York as soon as Edward IV died. Gloucester ‘caused him in the dead of night after all other folk departed to be brought unto him in his secret chamber’. The messenger told him that his master was ready to help him in any way he wanted, with ‘a thousand good fellows if need be’. He was sent back to Buckingham, still at his principal estate in Brecon, with thanks and secret instructions.

  As he played so important a part in subsequent events, it is necessary to know something of Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham. Like the House of York he was doubly descended from Edward III (through Thomas of Lancaster and John of Gaunt). His father and his maternal grandfather – the second Duke of Somerset – had both perished at St Albans in 1455, his other grandfather at Northampton in 1460, while all his Beaufort uncles had been slain. After the shadowy figure of Henry Tudor, Buckingham was therefore the Beaufort heir to the throne. With such a background he had been understandably mistrusted by Edward IV. And ever since being forcibly married to a Woodville at the age of eleven he had detested his in-laws with a venomous hatred which was reciprocated. As the greatest of the ‘old nobility’, he was their natural enemy. Besides resenting the deliberate exclusion from public life which he had had to suffer under the late King, the Duke coveted the vast Bohun estates, to which he had an arguable claim. Desperately haughty and ambitious – ‘a proud minded man and evilly could bear the glory of another’ – he was furious at the way he had been treated. Moreover, it is likely that he secretly regarded the pretensions of the House of York as being no less upstart than those of the House of Woodville, and he would be just as ready to pull down Richard III as Edward V – probably he had always been a Lancastrian at heart. His motto souvent me souvient (‘often I remember’) is ominously revealing – he laboured under a permanent grudge. However, at the moment he was motivated principally by hatred of the Woodvilles.2

  Not quite thirty – only a little younger than Richard – ‘Harry Buckingham’, as he signed himself, was not only immensely rich, but very clever and very enterprising. More heard that he was strikingly handsome and impressive in appearance, and a marvellously persuasive speaker. He seems to have possessed genuine personal magnetism. Undoubtedly Gloucester was to succumb to his charm. It was yet another instance of his fatal inability to judge men, for among Buckingham’s many gifts was that of concealing his true feelings.

  As has been said, the Woodvilles must have seemed in a very strong position indeed in the weeks after Edward IV’s death. They were in the South and the Duke of Gloucester was in the North. Their leader, the tough and able Lord Rivers – ‘as valiant of hand as politic in counsel’ – already had custody of Edward V, as his Governor. In London the Marquess of Dorset, their second-in-command, took possession of the Royal Treasury at the Tower, and on the coast Sir Edward Woodville was appointed Captain of the King’s Ships. Above all, their party was in a majority on the Council, which met despite Richard’s absence, and which was perfectly legal. ‘We are quite important enough to make laws and govern by ourselves, without the King’s uncle,’ announced Dorset. Some members of the Council, led by Lord Hastings – still Lord Chamberlain – proposed that Gloucester should be made Protector as stipulated in Edward IV’s will. But the Woodville party insisted that the Council as a whole must rule; while the Duke of Gloucester might belong to it, he could only be ‘chief councillor’. They argued, perhaps rather unskilfully, that if the entire administration were entrusted to one man, he might try to usurp the throne. The Council also fixed the date of the Coronation for Sunday 4 May.

  Unfortunately power had gone to the Marquess of Dorset’s head. He was issuing orders in his name and in that of Rivers, describing themselves respectively as ‘Brother Uterine to the King’ and ‘Uncle to the King’. The rest of the Council grew resentful. Hastings burst out furiously that the blood of the Queen’s kindred was too base for them to govern the realm. When it was suggested that Edward V should be escorted to London by a large army, the Lord Chamberlain demanded to know if it was intended for ‘use against the people of England’ and threatened to withdraw to his garrison at Calais. Privately he sent frantic letters and messages to Richard, warning him that he must act quickly if he hoped to regain control of the government from the Woodvilles.

  All the ‘old nobility’, and not only Buckingham and Hastings, were anxious to block a Woodville takeover. Skilfully Gloucester warned everyone who disliked the Woodvilles – ‘some by mouth, some by writing and secret messengers’ – that they were all in danger if ‘our well-proved ill-willers’ got control of the King and the government. Indeed, save for the threat by the Woodvilles the English magnates might very well have tried to limit his powers as Protector, as had been done with Duke Humphrey sixty years previously. But in the circumstances they could not afford to bargain and they therefore accepted Richard’s leadership. As for the rest of the country, he set about arousing widespread indignation by fabricating rumours of plots by the Queen’s kindred. Among these rumours seems to have been the story that they had divided the late King’s treasure among themselves. In reality no such treasure existed. Edward had left only £1,200 in cash, so that his jewels were sold to pay for his funeral.

  At the same time the Duke wrote disarmingly to the Council. He stressed how he had always been loyal to his brother and promised to be equally loyal, not only to Edward V but to any sister who might succeed him – should the boy die, ‘which God forbid’. He was ready to defend them with his life. He also begged the Council to remember his claims when deciding the new government, citing his own rights and Edward IV’s will. Richard ensured that his letter was widely circulated. It made a noticeable impression on public opinion which began to support him ‘openly and loudly’, according to Mancini – ‘It was commonly said by everyone that the Duke ought to have the government.’

  Gloucester’s most urgent problem was to stop the King reaching London ahead of him. If he were crowned, the Woodvilles would be able to argue that this precluded a Protector, as had happened after the crowning of the young Henry VI, when the then Protector’s powers had at once passed to the Council. Edward was at Ludlow, where he had been spending his childhood, together with his uncle, Earl Rivers. We now know that their only hope would have been to hasten to the capital as fast as possible or to gather a large army. But they delayed to celebrate St George’s Day, the festival of the Knights of the Garter, on 23 April. More alleges that Richard’s
agents tricked the Queen – presumably already alarmed by Hastings’s outburst – into sending word to Rivers not to bring too big an escort in case it should provoke a hostile reaction. In the event, when the King set out unhurriedly for London on 24 April he did so with ‘a sober company’ of some 2,000 men, though most of these were probably unarmed servants. Gloucester and Buckingham had written to ask if they might join him en route and accompany him when he made his ceremonial entry into his capital. They ‘wrote unto the King so reverently and to the Queen’s friends there so lovingly’, More tells us, that Rivers agreed to meet them at Northampton.

  Meanwhile, Richard, in black from head to foot and attended by 300 retainers similarly clad, took part in a Requiem for Edward IV at York Minster on 20 April. During the Mass he wept, shedding ‘plenteous tears’. When it was over he took the oath of fealty to the new King, making all the northern nobility present swear allegiance. Then, probably on the same day, he and his men rode south in their mourning. Through Persivell he had again been in contact with the Duke of Buckingham, whom he told to rendezvous with him at Northampton, but to bring only 300 men instead of ‘a thousand good fellows’ – no doubt to avoid arousing suspicion.