Richard III

by Seward, Desmond

  Molinet says that ‘when [Richard] found himself alone on the battlefield, he rode after the others, but his horse galloped into a marsh from which it could not free itself and then a man from Wales came up and struck him dead with a halberd.’8 Molinet is borne out by the Welsh poet Guto’r Glyn, who writes how the boar’s head was shaved by Rhys ap Thomas, although it is more likely that one of Rhys’s foot soldiers did it – a halberd was not a gentleman’s weapon. Dismounting and finding himself surrounded, Richard had taken off his helmet, supposing that even rebels would respect a sovereign. However, instead of deference, they aimed swords, pole-axes and halberds at his unprotected head, inflicting terrible wounds. Streaming with blood, he fought back until a final halberd blow ended his agony and the King of England went down into the mud.

  The royal army fled immediately after Richard’s death. Oxford pursued, killing many. In all, nearly a thousand men died in the battle. Lovell escaped, but Catesby was captured – to be executed shortly afterwards. One of the Stanleys placed the King’s coronet on Henry VII’s head. Northumberland rode down from the hill to kneel and pay homage, and to be put under arrest. The battle of Bosworth (as it was later named) had lasted only two hours. Perhaps it was over by as early as 8 o’clock in the morning.

  The Croyland chronicler was revolted by the bestial way in which Richard’s corpse was treated – after it had been stripped, insults were heaped on it ‘not exactly in accordance with the laws of humanity’. More speaks of it being ‘hacked and hewed of his enemies’ hands, harried on horseback dead, his hair in despite torn and tugged like a cur dog’ Someone stabbed him through the right buttock with a dagger or a sword, as further humiliation.

  A halter was strung round the dead monarch’s neck. Finally the mangled remains, covered in blood and mud, were taken back to Leicester for a pauper’s burial on the crupper of Blanc Sanglier’s horse, the pursuivant being made to carry his late master’s banner of the white boar in mockery.9 For two days it was hung up naked and for the first time men other than valets or tailors could see his crookback. Then it was thrown into a rough, hastily dug grave at the Grey Friars priory – the beggars’ church – without shroud, coffin or requiem.

  The Great Chronicle of London records wonderingly,

  Richard late King, as gloriously as he was by the morning departed from that town so as irreverently was he that afternoon brought into that town, for, his body despoiled to the skin and nought being left about him so much as would cover his privy member, he was trussed behind a pursuivant … as an hog or other vile beast. And so, all too bestrung with mire and filth, was brought to a church in Leicester for all men to wonder upon. And there lastly indifferently buried. And thus ended this man with dishonour as he that sought it, for had he continued still Protector and have suffered the childer to have prospered according to his allegiance and fidelity, he should have been honourably lauded over all …

  The author of ‘The Most Pleasant Song of the Lady Bessy’ imagines Elizabeth of York waiting for her uncle at Leicester and taunting his corpse:

  How like you the killing of my brethren dear?

  Welcome, gentle uncle, home.

  The scene is of course pure fantasy, yet the sentiment surely expresses the feelings of most contemporary Englishmen. The reign of Richard III had been a nightmare, not least for the King himself.

  EPILOGUE

  ‘God never gave this world a more notable example, neither in what unsurety stands this worldly state, or what mischief works the proud enterprise of a high heart, or finally what wretched end ensues from such pitiless cruelty.’

  Sir Thomas More, The History of King Richard the Third

  ‘One should avoid being despised and hated.’

  Machiavelli, Il Principe

  Henry VII later erected a very modest tombstone over his rival in the Grey Friars’ church at Leicester. Made of coloured stone, it cost a mere £10. 1s. 0d. This disappeared at the Dissolution of the Monasteries, when the friary was demolished. Some sources said that Richard’s bones had been dug up and thrown into the River Soar, while his coffin was supposed to have been used as a horses’ drinking trough. Scholars were therefore astonished when the skeleton was found under a car park in September 2012.

  Much has been made of the dismay shown by the Mayor and Corporation of York at the news of Bosworth. Yet there is no other record whatever of any regret throughout the entire Kingdom. Everywhere King Henry was accepted without demur. So marked a lack of opposition is surely significant.

  Some of the Household were attainted, and a few were executed. Most made their peace with Henry, like Sir Ralph Assheton, who lived until 1489 when – according to tradition – he was murdered by his tenantry. Another who did so was Sir James Tyrell. Sir Marmaduke Constable survived to command the left wing at Flodden and contribute to the terrible defeat of the Scots in 1513. (A lengthy and somewhat boastful list of Little Sir Marmaduke’s military exploits, on a brass plate over his tomb, tactfully omits his campaigns with Richard.)

  21. Roger Wake (c. 1452–1503) of Blisworth, Northamptonshire – a direct descendant of Hereward the Wake. Catesby’s brother-in-law, he fought for Richard at Bosworth but survived the battle and was pardoned by Henry VII. From a brass at Blisworth.

  After allowing a decent interval to elapse, emphasizing that he owed nothing to her claims, the new King married Elizabeth of York. Bacon, Henry Tudor’s first biographer, says that ‘he shewed himself no very indulgent husband towards her, though she was beautiful, gentle and fruitful. But his aversion towards the House of York was so predominant in him, as it found place not only in his wars and councils, but in his chamber and bed.’ She bore him several sons, of whom the future Henry VIII alone survived her, and died in childbirth in 1503. Her mother, Elizabeth Woodville, had quickly fallen out with her son-in-law; deprived of her briefly restored estates, she led ‘a wretched and miserable life’ in poverty at Bermondsey Abbey until her death in 1492.

  Richard’s sister, Margaret of York – the dowager Duchess of Burgundy – lived on in the Low Countries as a childless widow till 1503. King Henry confiscated her English lands, but she possessed rich estates abroad from where ‘mine old lady of Burgundy’ plotted ceaselessly if unavailingly against her brother’s supplanter until her dying day.

  However, some of the dead King’s men refused to accept the new regime. In 1486 Sir Humphrey Stafford tried to raise Worcestershire, but failed and was beheaded. Although it was a long time before the Yorkist cause was finally extinguished, it was crippled by a lack of acceptable Pretenders. In 1487 an Oxford baker’s boy, Lambert Simnel, was transformed into Clarence’s son, Warwick – although the Earl was still alive, a prisoner in the Tower of London – with Margaret of York’s money and the support of the Earl of Lincoln, of Francis Lovell and of various Irish magnates; he was crowned in Dublin as ‘Edward VI’. An army of Yorkist die-hards, of Irish kerne and German mercenaries then invaded England. The battle of Stoke ended this extremely dangerous challenge the same year, Henry being once again indebted to Oxford’s superlative generalship.

  The new dynasty was then menaced by a young Flemish adventurer, Perkin Warbeck, who posed as the Duke of York, Edward V’s brother, and styled himself ‘Richard IV’. Perhaps fittingly, in 1495 the arch-traitor Sir William Stanley was executed for intriguing with Warbeck; as Bacon puts it, Henry had recalled ‘that Stanley at Bosworth-field, though he came time enough to save his life, yet he stayed long enough to endanger it’. The wretched Warwick was later to be another casualty of Warbeck’s ambition.

  Lincoln’s brothers took up the claim, and it was for harbouring one of them that Tyrell lost his life. In 1525 Henry VIII was beside himself with joy when Richard de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk – the ‘White Rose’, briefly recognized by the French as King of England – was killed at Pavia. In 1541 Henry beheaded the last living Plantagenet, Clarence’s daughter, the aged Countess of Salisbury, together with many of her kinsmen, largely because of their Yorkist blood
. The ultimate Yorkist victim was Clarence’s great-grandson Sir Arthur Pole, who had approached Mary, Queen of Scots, offering to forego his right to the English throne if she would create him Duke of Clarence and was found guilty of treason – however Elizabeth spared his life because of his royal blood and he died a prisoner at the Tower in 1570.

  ‘Neo-Yorkism’, and attempts to rehabilitate Richard III, began with the eccentric antiquarianism of the early seventeenth century. It was made fashionable in the eighteenth by Horace Walpole and his taste for perversity and Gothic fantasy. Fuelled by Victorian romanticism, it reached its apogee in 1906 with the publication of Sir Clements Markham’s impassioned defence of the King, a wildly romantic book which inspired Josephine Tey’s Daughter of Time, but whose very special pleading has been increasingly refuted by new discoveries – not least by that from the skeleton at Leicester.

  Nevertheless, the White Legend continues to appeal to every Anglo-Saxon lover of a lost cause and, in particular, to lady novelists. All these latter-day champions of Richard share a marked characteristic of their hero, an invincible reluctance to face facts. They cannot accept the stark reality, the tragic grandeur, of the Black Legend.

  NOTES

  Introduction: THE BLACK LEGEND

  1 According to Ross, something has been written about Richard III in every single generation since his death five hundred years ago (Richard III, p. xix). Smetana even composed a peculiarly dreary tone poem about him.

  2 This sinister parallel was noted by at least one contemporary, the Croyland writer, who commented, ‘A similar death of a King of England, slain in a pitched battle in his own kingdom, has never been heard of since the time of King Harold, who was an usurper.’

  3 In History Today, iv (1954).

  4 Kendall, Richard III: The Great Debate, p. 27.

  5 Nevertheless, Lander acknowledges that More ‘is more careful in sifting a rumour from truth than is generally admitted (Government and Community, p. 371).

  6 For instance Mancini’s eyewitness account of Richard’s usurpation; the entry in the records of the Mercers’ Company noting Richard’s extraordinary public denial of being glad at his wife’s death and of intending to marry his niece; and the almost certain identification of the Croyland writer with Richard’s Lord Chancellor.

  7 ‘car estant en plus grand orgueil que ne, fut cent ans avoit, roy d’Angleterre’ (Commynes, Mémoires, II, p. 233).

  8 See Hanham, Richard III and his Early Historians, Ch. 4: ‘The “Second Continuation” of the Croyland Chronicle: A Monastic Mystery’.

  9 As Gairdner observes, ‘More is not a writer who would have glossed over a fact to please the court’ (History of the Life and Reign of Richard the Third, p. 124).

  Chapter One: THE DIFFICULT BIRTH

  2 See Lander, ‘Marriage and Politics in the Fifteenth Century: The Nevilles and the Wydevilles’, in Crown and Nobility.

  3 See Wolffe, Henry VI.

  4 See Storey, The End of the House of Lancaster, p. 136.

  5 See Leland, Itinerary in England and Wales.

  6 See Bonney, Historical Notices in Reference to Fotheringay.

  7 For Fastolf Place, see M. Carlin, in the Ricardian, V, 72 (1981), p. 311.

  Chapter Two: ‘OUR BROTHER OF GLOUCESTER’

  1 In contrast to Kendall, who believes that Richard joined Warwick’s household in 1461 (Richard the Third, p. 45), Ross shows convincingly that he did not do so until late in 1465 at earliest (Richard III, p. 7).

  2 For Middleham, see Peers, Middleham Castle.

  3 ‘Another prolific family which greatly improved its hitherto very modest fortunes in Richard’s employ was that of Metcalfe of Nappa, five miles up the dale from Middleham’ (Ross, Richard III, pp. 50–51).

  4 The most extensive study of the Earl is Kendall’s Warwick the Kingmaker but, like his Richard the Third, it relies too much on a vivid and romantic imagination.

  5 See Armstrong, ‘The Piety of Cecily, Duchess of York’.

  6 For Lord Lovell, see ‘Francis Lovell, Viscount Lovell’, in Dictionary of National Biography and Complete Peerage, VIII, pp. 223–6.

  7 For the Nevill feast, see Scofield, The Life and Reign of Edward the Fourth, I, pp. 399–400.

  8 Mancini was writing in 1483, but this lurid story was circulating as early as 1468, according to the Milanese poet Antonio Cornazzano in De mulieribus admirandis (see English Historical Review, 1 xxvi (1961), pp. 660–72).

  9 See Wavrin, Anchiennes Cronicques d’Engleterre, pp. 458–9.

  10 Commynes, who had seen both the King and Richard in the flesh, attests to Edward IV’s striking good looks – ‘fort beau prince’ (Mémoires, I, p. 197).

  Chapter Three: WARWICK TRIES TO UNMAKE A KING

  1 No one really knows why Clarence turned against Edward – ‘George, Duke of Clarence, was for some secret, I cannot tell what cause, alienated in mind from his brother King Edward,’ says Vergil (Anglica Historia, p. 120).

  2 For Desmond, see ‘Thomas FitzGerald, eighth [sic] Earl of Desmond’, in Dictionary of National Biography, Complete Peerage, IV, pp. 247–8 and Richard’s letter in Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Reigns of Richard III and Henry VII, I, pp. 67–8.

  Chapter Four: THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE

  1 See Myers, ‘The Outbreak of War between England and Burgundy in February 1471’, pp. 114–15.

  2 ‘lequel [Montagu] estoit très vaillant chevalier’ – ‘who was a very valiant knight’ (Commynes, Mémoires, I, p. 214).

  3 According to a later tradition. No contemporary account – including Historie of the Arrivall of Edward IV in England or a letter from Margaret of York – makes any mention of Richard commanding the van at Barnet, despite Kendall’s claims for his contribution to the victory.

  4 Hutton, in The Battle of Bosworth Field, p. xxxiii, says that two of his squires – John Milwater and Thomas à Par – were killed at his side but does not cite any contemporary authority.

  5 For a report of Richard being wounded at Barnet, see Adair, ‘The Newsletter of Gerhard von Wesel, 17 April 1471’.

  6 See Blyth, ‘The Battle of Tewkesbury’.

  7 At Tewkesbury Richard was undoubtedly in at least nominal command of the right, according to Historie of the Arrivall.

  Chapter Five: THE END OF THE HOUSE OF LANCASTER

  1 As Constable, Richard had the right to condemn men to death out of hand for treason, without jury or witnesses. See Keen, ‘Treason Trials under the Law of Arms’.

  2 For Fra’ John Langstrother, see Dictionary of National Biography and King and Luke, The Knights of St John in the British Realm.

  3 History of the Life and Reign of Richard the Third, p. 14.

  4 Richard the Third and his Early Historians, p. 116.

  5 ‘hereunto King Edward gave no answer, only thrusting the young man from him with his hand, whom forthwith those that were present [which] were George, Duke of Clarence, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, and William, Lord Hastings, cruelly murdered’ (Vergil, Anglica Historia, p. 152). Neither Ross nor Lander accepts this ‘later story’.

  6 ‘he took it to so great despite, ire and indignation, that, of pure displeasure and melancholy, he died’ (Historie of the Arrivall, p. 38).

  7 ‘tua de sa main ou feit tuer, en sa présence, en quelque lieu à part ce bon homme le roy Henry’ (Commynes, Mémoires, I, p. 216). In September 1486, in verses addressed to Henry VII, Pietro Carmeliano accused Richard of having murdered Henry VI (Memorials of King Henry the Seventh, p. lvii). Writing about the same time, Bernard André says that he did so on Edward IV’s orders (Memorials …, p. 23). However, Ross agrees that Richard ‘may have been the agent, not the director, of King Henry’s murder’ (Richard III, p. 22).

  8 ‘The continual report is that Richard, Duke of Gloucester, killed him with a sword, whereby his brother might be delivered from all fear of hostility’ (Vergil, Anglica Historia, p. 156).

  9 See Richmond, ‘Fauconberg’s Kentish Rising of May 1471’.

&n
bsp; Chapter Six: THE RIVALRY WITH CLARENCE

  1 For Richard’s illegitimate children, see P. Hammond in the Ricardian, V, 66 (1979), pp. 92–6, and 72 (1981), p. 319.

  2 For the persecution and despoliation of Lady Oxford, see Hicks, ‘The Last Days of Elizabeth, Countess of Oxford’.

  3 For the heraldic significance of the boar, see Guillim, Displays of Heraldrie, p. 188.

  4 ‘très beaulx présens, comme de vaisselles et de chevaulx bien accoustrez’ (Commynes, Mémoires, II, p. 67).

  5 However, some authorities believe that Richard’s son was not born until 1476. See Hammond, Edward of Middleham, Prince of Wales, pp. 35–6.

  6 For Edward IV to have permitted such a marriage between Clarence and the heiress of Burgundy would have meant certain involvement in a potentially ruinous continental war with France and the Habsburgs.

  7 For the drowning in malmsey, see Mancini: ‘in dolium mollissimi falerni mersus vitam cum morte commutaret’ – ‘and exchanged life for death by getting immersed in a cask of sweet Falernian’ (De Occupatione Regni Anglie, p. 62); and Commynes: ‘Le roy Edward fist mourir son frère, duc de Clarence, en une pippe de malvoisye’ – ‘King Edward made his brother, the Duke of Clarence, die in a pipe of malmsey’ (Mémoires, I, p. 533).