Lord Rivers and his nephew reached Northampton on Tuesday 29 April. But when Gloucester and Buckingham rode in that afternoon, the royal party had already gone on to Stony Stratford, fourteen miles further south. (Stony Stratford was an important staging-post on the road to London, being where Watling Street crosses the River Ouse.) Plainly Rivers was in no mood to wait – he had been joined at Northampton by the King’s younger half-brother, Lord Richard Grey, who may well have brought a letter from Dorset urging him to make haste. Hearing of the Dukes’ arrival, Rivers went back with a small escort to explain to them that he had gone on to Stony Stratford only because there was not enough accommodation in Northampton for both retinues. Tactfully he addressed Richard as ‘My Lord Protector’, although everyone knew very well that he and his followers were determined to deny the office to the Duke. For their part, Gloucester and Buckingham greeted him with the utmost amiability and friendliness, inviting him to stay for supper – he could spend the night at the inn next door. (The inn was probably the Talbot, formerly at what are now Nos. 81–83 in the High Street, whose timber frame has been obscured by a nineteenth-century brick façade.)
According to Mancini, Rivers and Gloucester ‘passed a great part of the night in conviviality’ before going to bed. (In striking contrast to the ‘austere’ image of the Duke created by modern historians.) More, on the other hand, implies that they merely spent the evening together, Gloucester making Rivers ‘friendly cheer’ and then saying goodnight ‘very familiar, with great courtesy’. But he adds that after the Earl had retired, Richard and Buckingham sat up talking until dawn with a few trusted friends, including Richard Ratcliff.
The inn in which Rivers and his men were staying must have been the usual rambling half-timbered structure of the period, very like the Tabard in The Canterbury Tales. Its guests would be dispersed in sleeping quarters up and down many long galleries. In ‘the dawning of the day’ the two Dukes – who had apparently not been to bed – sent orders to their men to muster as quietly as possible. They then obtained the keys of Rivers’s inn and locked all the outer doors, besides setting up road blocks on the route to Stony Stratford so that no one could pass. When the Earl awoke and found himself shut in, he ‘marvellously disliked it’. But he put on a brave face and went to Gloucester and Buckingham, demanding to know what was happening. Their answer was to accuse him of trying to turn young Edward against them, after which they arrested him.
The two Dukes then took their entire force and galloped the fourteen miles to Stony Stratford as fast as possible. There they found the little King already on horseback and about to leave. He was with Richard Grey and two gentlemen of his household – his aged Chamberlain, Sir Thomas Vaughan, a veteran Yorkist who had carried him in state processions when he was a baby, and Sir Richard Haute, yet another kinsman of the Queen. Gloucester ‘did not omit or refuse to pay every mark of respect to the King his nephew, in the way of uncovering his head, bending the knee or other posture required of a subject’, the Croyland chronicler observed sardonically. It is likely that he told them he had important news which could only be imparted privately and that they went back into their inn, since Mancini says that Edward was separated from his soldiers during the scene which followed. After offering him his condolences on the death of the late King, Richard warned the boy that his father’s friends had ruined his health by encouraging him in his vices and would try to do the same with his son – they must be removed. Grey protested indignantly but Buckingham told him to hold his tongue. Gloucester continued that these people were plotting his own death and preparing to attack him on the way to London or in the capital itself – everybody knew they planned to stop him becoming Protector. He also insisted that Rivers and Dorset were scheming to rule young Edward and the realm for themselves and intended to ‘destroy the old nobility’, and that not only had Dorset seized the Royal Treasury but he had taken money from it.
‘What my brother Marquess hath done, I cannot say,’ Edward replied with surprising self-possession, ‘but in good faith, I dare well answer for my uncle Rivers and my brother here that they be innocent of any such matters.’ The Duke of Buckingham broke in rudely: ‘They have kept the dealing of these matters far from the knowledge of your good Grace.’ When the boy went on to say that he had complete confidence in the ability of his lords and the Queen to govern his Kingdom, Buckingham again interrupted roughly to say that it was ‘not the business of women but of men to rule Kingdoms and if he had any confidence in her he had better relinquish it’. Edward gave in to his uncle of Gloucester – while the Dukes were respectful enough, it was abundantly clear that they were insisting and not merely asking. They then arrested Grey, Vaughan and Haute. They also dismissed all the King’s household servants, many of whom he must have known throughout his short life, sending them home and replacing them by reliable men of their own. Even his tutor, John Alcock, Bishop of Worcester, was sent away. The boy wept, ‘but it booted not’.
Richard and Buckingham returned to Northampton for a triumphant dinner. (This, the main meal of the day, was eaten between 9.00 a.m. and noon.) During it Gloucester was in such a good mood that he sent a dish from his table to Lord Rivers, ‘praying him to be of good cheer and all should be well’. As with so many other vivid scenes in his history, More’s version of the affair at Northampton and Stony Stratford may not perhaps be completely accurate, but nevertheless it plainly contains many details which can only have been obtained from eyewitnesses. Richard’s amiable gesture towards Rivers gives us a fascinating glimpse of his almost Italianate combination of courtesy and cynicism – far from all being ‘well’, with hindsight we know that he must have had every intention of killing Rivers as soon as possible. Two days later he sent the prisoners to his strongholds in the North, where they would soon be beheaded without trial. As soon as he became Protector he at once seized their estates, although they had not been found guilty of any crime.
The news reached London a little before midnight on the following day, Thursday 1 May. More says that on hearing it the Queen broke into lamentations, ‘in great flutter and heaviness, bewailing her child’s ruin, her friends’ mischance and her own misfortune’, and cursed her mistake in persuading her brother from gathering an army. She at once took sanctuary in the Abbot’s Lodging at Westminster, bringing with her the nine-year-old Duke of York and her daughters. Dorset made a feeble attempt to find troops, but quickly despaired and joined his mother at Westminster. She was having all her furniture brought with her; there was ‘much heaviness, rumble, haste and business, carriage and conveyance of her stuff into sanctuary, chests, coffers, packs, bundles, trusses, all on men’s backs, no man unoccupied, some lading, some going, some discharging, some coming for more’. (Even at this terrifying moment her avarice did not desert her.) However, when the Lord Chancellor, Archbishop Rotherham of York, came in the middle of the night bringing a message which he had received from Lord Hastings, he found Elizabeth Woodville sitting ‘alone a-low on the rushes, all desolate and dismayed’. She was not reassured by her old enemy’s message that ‘all shall be well’ – it is ironical that it was exactly what Gloucester had been telling her brother. ‘Ah, woe be to him!’ she cried, referring to Hastings, ‘for he is one of them that labour to destroy me and my blood.’ After leaving her the Great Seal – presumably as a kind of placebo since there was little use she could make of it – Rotherham returned to his palace by the Thames. It was already dawn and when he looked out from his window he saw that the river outside Westminster was crowded by boats manned by the Duke of Gloucester’s retainers, who were intent on stopping anyone getting in or out.
Most people in London were horrified. Many gentlemen put on their armour. Mancini reports that ‘a sinister rumour’ started to circulate that Gloucester intended to seize the throne, and More too says that it was generally believed that the Duke was attacking not just the Woodvilles but the little King himself. Next day a group of peers met anxiously to discuss the situation. However,
Hastings, whose loyalty was known by everyone to be impeccable, persuaded them that Richard had no designs on the crown but was merely protecting himself against the Woodvilles. The alarm began to die down – what was left of it would be quickly dispelled by the Duke when he arrived in the capital on Sunday 4 May. Even so, Mancini tells us, ‘Some, however, who realized his ambition and his cunning, always suspected where his enterprise would lead.’
Before Edward V and his escort reached London, they were met at Hornsey Park by the Lord Mayor, Aldermen and Sheriffs of the City on horseback, clad in red, and by 500 members of the twelve great livery companies, also mounted but wearing violet. The long cortège continued to the Bishop of London’s palace next to St Paul’s Cathedral, where the King was to lodge. Everyone was delighted by the respectful way in which the Duke of Gloucester treated his nephew, a small yet striking fair-haired figure in purple velvet. As they rode to St Paul’s, Richard, still in mourner’s black, repeatedly bowed low from the saddle and presented him to the cheering crowds – ‘Behold your Prince and Sovereign Lord!’
At the same time, the Duke’s servants showed the spectators four cartloads of armour they had brought with them, shouting, ‘Here be the barrels of armour that these traitors had privily conveyed in their baggage to destroy the noble lords!’ More comments that any intelligent man was sceptical, while Mancini says the armour was meant for the Scottish war. Nevertheless, most people were quite convinced of the Woodvilles’ evil designs, muttering it was good enough evidence to hang them.
From being under a cloud, Gloucester now became trusted to the point of adulation. His violence at Northampton and Stony Stratford was explained away as being necessary ‘to part the Queen’s proud kindred from the Prince’ (Edward V). All too many people were glad to see the Woodvilles go down – the Croyland chronicler says that Lord Hastings was ‘bursting with joy at the way events were turning out’. The next Council made Richard Protector of the Realm and of the King, with absolute power. More remarks, ‘The lamb was betaken to the wolf to keep.’ At the same Council the Great Seal was removed from Archbishop Rotherham – who had somehow retrieved it from the Queen – and Dr John Russell, Bishop of Lincoln, was appointed Lord Chancellor in his stead. More informs us that the change was due to Rotherham having made a fool of himself over the seal, but Mancini thought the Archbishop was replaced because he ‘would be faithful to Edward IV’s heirs, come what may’. The Primate none the less remained a member of the Council. Russell was very unwilling to accept his promotion. Although, in More’s words, ‘a wise man and a good and of much experience and one of the best learned men undoubtedly that England had in his time’, the Bishop was plainly not a strong personality. Later, if Dr Hanham is correct, he dealt so briefly in his continuation with the usurpation because he ‘felt a personal responsibility’ for Edward V’s fate. Some members of the Council were dismissed, though naturally Hastings was retained. Among others who remained were Lord Stanley and Dr Morton, Bishop of Ely – as will be seen, the latter was a peculiarly tough and wily prelate.
The general public was further reassured when the Council chose a new date for the King’s Coronation. Parliament was summoned to meet three days after. No less soothing, an order was given for coins to be struck in the name of Edward V.
Gloucester emphasized his total supremacy in his letters and proclamations, styling himself grandiloquently ‘Brother and Uncle of Kings, Duke of Gloucester, Protector, Defender, Great Chamberlain, Constable and Admiral of England’. Even his nephew’s coinage bore as a mint mark Richard’s badge of a boar’s head. By 14 May he was asserting himself in earnest, sending ships to sea to intercept and arrest Sir Edward Woodville, who only just managed to escape. On the following day the Duke of Buckingham was made Constable, and Steward of all Royal castles in Wales and on the Welsh Borders and also of all those in Wiltshire, Dorset and Somerset, while Lord Howard was given great offices and created a Privy Counsellor. One suspects that these rewards to his closest allies were meant to whet their appetites. Buckingham would never rest content without the Bohun lands.
Nor would Howard without the Dukedom of Norfolk, even though at the moment it might still happen to belong to Edward V’s brother. Howard’s little cousin Anne Mowbray, Duchess of York and Norfolk, had died in 1481. Through his Mowbray mother he was one of the two co-heirs, certainly to the Earldom and arguably to the Duchy, to whom her inheritance should have reverted. However, Edward IV had had no intention of letting it pass from her child ‘widower’ and early in 1483 had an Act of Parliament passed which confirmed its possession by his younger son; moreover, the late King had given lavish compensation to the other co-heir, William Berkeley, but nothing to Howard. The latter and his own very formidable son, Sir Thomas, must have at once realized that the present situation offered a glittering prize. Richard had something to give them which they coveted more than anything else, and he knew it. Old Howard’s magnificent gift to him on 15 May of a covered gold cup weighing 65 ounces was not without significance.
It has been suggested that the prospect of Edward’s coming of age forced the Lord Protector to seize the throne. The little King was already displaying distinct signs of character – as at Stony Stratford – and would reach his majority when he was fifteen, which was less than three years away. He might well rehabilitate and reinstate the Woodvilles. As has been seen, the two previous Dukes of Gloucester had perished at the hands of their nephews’ men.3 ‘Probably it was fear for his own safety and future which inspired his action, rather than any deeply laid plan,’ is Professor Ross’s explanation of the ensuing usurpation by Gloucester. But this argument ignores the extreme likelihood of Richard having made contingency plans in case his brother should die. More states, again and again, that this was the impression received by many contemporaries with whom he had spoken, even if the Duke was so secretive that no one ever really knew what was in his mind. It was also Mancini’s impression. Certainly the extraordinary smoothness of Richard’s seizure of power and then of the crown would seem to indicate the most careful planning. He had another motive, only recently identified. Early in May his dominance of the North had been weakened by the death of his ward George Nevill, son of the late Marquess Montagu and nephew of Warwick the King-maker. While an Act of Parliament gave the boy’s estates to Gloucester, it stipulated that they must revert to the Nevills, the Duke being allowed to keep them only for his lifetime. It was unlikely that the Council would retrieve Richard’s position with further grants of land.4
Up to now Gloucester had been so popular – he was out of London during the uproar which followed his first coup at Northampton and Stony Stratford – that he may well have believed that the country could not fail to welcome his ascending the throne. Very probably he had heard vaguely of the events in Milan only three years before, when Ludovico Sforza had seized the Duchy from his half-witted nephew. But it was different in England. Edward V was far from half-witted, a most promising and attractive boy. His youth and good looks aroused English sentiment of the strongest sort.
Some time in the middle of May the young monarch was moved to the Tower of London. In the fifteenth century the Tower was still a palace, a refuge of the court at times of danger, with many luxurious apartments – including a great banqueting hall – which survived until Cromwell’s day. There was nothing necessarily sinister about the move. The Protector’s ostensible motive may have been to keep the boy as far away as possible from his family at Westminster.
For Edward’s mother was still in sanctuary. Much more worrying, so was his brother, the Duke of York. There was no point in deposing Edward V while his heir remained out of reach, to provide a focus for future disaffection. As the days went by, Richard grew anxious. He had to strike before the Coronation, which was supposed to take place on 22 June.
On 16 June the Council met at the Tower to discuss the continuing embarrassment of the Duke of York being in sanctuary. The Protector and the Duke of Buckingham produced various disingenuous argu
ments to persuade the other members that York ought to join his brother. Richard blamed the Queen’s ‘malice’, saying that she was trying to discredit the Council. He added that it was bad for the boy to have no one of his own age to play with and to be entirely in ‘the company of old and ancient persons’. He then suggested that the octogenarian Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Bourchier – an acknowledged kinsman of the House of York – should go and remonstrate with the Queen. Bourchier agreed to try, though he told the Council it was possible he might fail because of ‘the mother’s dread and womanish fear’. Buckingham said angrily that her attitude was due not to womanish fear but to ‘womanish frowardness’ – perversity. He continued that she knew perfectly well there was nothing to be afraid of and, in a long and eloquent speech on sanctuaries in general, argued smoothly that they were intended for adult criminals, not little boys. ‘But I never heard before of sanctuary children.’
A party at once set off by boat for Westminster up the Thames. It included the Protector himself, Buckingham, Howard, Bourchier and Russell. A member of the Lord Chancellor’s staff who was in London at the time, Simon Stallworth, noted on that day ‘at Westminster a great plenty of harnessed men’ (men in armour). When the party arrived from the Tower, the two Dukes waited in the Star Chamber, while the old Cardinal, accompanied by Howard, went in to the Queen. Bourchier began by telling her that the King was missing his brother, quite apart from everyone else regretting that he was in a sanctuary for criminals. In any case he would have to be let out to take part in the forthcoming Coronation. His mother replied that no one could look after him better than she. The Cardinal then said that all the Council wanted was for her to be with both her sons in suitably regal accommodation. Elizabeth answered that she was not prepared to put herself in the same danger as her kinsmen.
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