Richard III

by Chris Skidmore

  Edward’s victory against his enemies was complete. ‘Upon this occasion’, the Crowland chronicler observed, ‘many were struck with surprise and astonishment, seeing there was now no enemy left for him to encounter.’3 The Lancastrian dynasty was effectively over. As the author of a tract known as the ‘Arrivall of Edward IV’ noted, ‘it appeared to every man at eye the said party was extinct and repressed for ever, without any manner hope of again quickening; utterly despaired of any manner of hope or relief’.4

  The three brothers, Edward IV, George, duke of Clarence, and Richard, duke of Gloucester, presented what seemed a united front: the Yorkist dynasty in all its pomp. But behind this display of unity lay the reality that the dynasty had nearly been torn apart by division and disloyalty. Clarence had himself been a prime mover in the rebellion that had led to Edward IV’s forced exile to Burgundy, and an ally of Warwick, only coming back into his brother’s fold and gaining his pardon at the eleventh hour. Victory had been achieved not without its costs, and indeed not without new loyalties that the king had come to depend upon in his years of greatest crisis. His brother Clarence may have failed him, but Richard, duke of Gloucester, still aged just eighteen, had proved an invaluable companion and campaigner. With his military record unsurpassed, the past year, which had seen exile alongside his brother and the experience of two hard-fought battles, now placed him arguably as the king’s most important ally and support. For Richard, recovering from his wounds, his first taste of battle had proved not only his usefulness and loyalty to his brother, but had shown that he could withstand the brutality of combat. Leading the Yorkist vanguard, he had managed to hold his own in a ‘sharp fight’. If the battle at Barnet was a rite of passage, Richard had come of age. For the first time, his own fortunes had begun to transform him from obscure younger brother to powerful lord in his own right, rewarded with land and office. From this moment, Richard, duke of Gloucester, would continue to hold the centre stage of fifteenth-century politics. Richard’s reputation as a loyal brother had been forged in the tumultuous events of 1471: yet it was a reputation that already was not without controversy.

  That same night, Henry VI was found dead in the Tower of London. The coincidence would not go unremarked upon. The Yorkist version of the story attempted to suggest that the former king had died of grief, discovering that night the death of his son and the end of his cause, ‘not having, afore that, knowledge of the said matters, he took it to so great dispite, ire, and indignation, that, of pure displeasure, and melancholy’, he died two days later.5 Other chroniclers told a different tale. ‘I would pass over in silence the fact that at this period King Henry was found dead in the Tower of London’, the Crowland chronicler remarked; adding only, ‘may God spare and grant time for repentance to the person, whoever he was, who thus dared to lay sacrilegious hands upon the Lord’s anointed!’ Cryptically, the chronicler hinted that he knew who had committed the deed. ‘He who perpetrated this has justly earned the title of tyrant, while he who thus suffered had gained that of a glorious Martyr.’6

  Henry’s body was exhibited at St Paul’s Cathedral for several days, before being carried by barge ‘solemnly prepared for the purpose, provided with lighted torches’, to Chertsey Abbey, and there ‘honourably interred’. Ceremony, no matter how honourable, could not mask the sinister rumours that now swirled around the capital. After Henry’s body had been ‘chested’, one chronicler wrote, his coffin had been brought to St Paul’s, where its lid was opened, placing the king’s face on display, ‘that every man might see him’. Yet it was noted that ‘in his lying there he bled on the pavement there’, while afterwards, the corpse having been brought to Blackfriars, ‘there he bled new and fresh’.7

  If Henry had been silenced in the Tower, the finger of blame pointed immediately at his successor, King Edward. ‘King Edward caused King Henry to be secretly assassinated’, the Milanese ambassador in France reported, ‘he has, in short, chosen to crush the seed’.8

  If Edward had been responsible for the king’s death, giving the order for his execution, then, it was said, another had performed the deed, or followed through with the king’s wishes. Richard, duke of Gloucester, had not yet turned nineteen, but already he had been appointed Constable of England in reward for his services to his brother the king, having loyally served him throughout his exile the previous year; as Constable, Richard was also in command of the Tower itself, and the welfare of its royal prisoner. One chronicler wrote how it had been on the night of 21 May, at between eleven and twelve o’clock at night, that Richard himself had been present at the Tower when Henry, ‘being inward in prison … was put to death’.9

  Whatever the truth of the stories, no one could deny that the long-suffering Henry VI was now dead, and the Lancastrian dynasty and its royal line were effectively extinct. In contrast, while in sanctuary at Westminster, where she had fled after discovering that the king had been forced into exile, Edward’s queen, Elizabeth, had given birth to the couple’s first son, Edward. The Yorkist dynasty, triumphant in battle, had now been blessed with a male heir, securing its future.

  Just two months after Edward had gambled his reign in battle, on 3 July 1471, in the Parliament chamber at Westminster, the Yorkist court gathered to celebrate its new-found stability, in the form of the baby prince. Restating their loyalty to the dynasty, an oath of homage was taken by all members of the nobility, recognising Edward IV’s newborn son, Edward, as Prince of Wales. The prince’s uncle, Richard, had travelled south especially for the ceremony. He swore that the young baby, ‘first begotten son of our sovereign lord’, was ‘to be very and undoubted heir to our said lord as to the crowns and realms of England and France and lordship of Ireland’. He promised and swore that ‘in case hereafter it happen you by God’s disposition to overlive our sovereign lord; I shall then take and accept you for the very true and rightwise King of England’. Pledging his ‘faith and truth’, he further swore that ‘in all things truly and faithfully behave me towards you and your heirs as a true and faithful subject oweth to behave him to his sovereign lord’, ending, ‘So help me God and Holy Dom and this holy Evangelist.’10

  As other members of the nobility followed Richard, lining up to declare their loyalty to the new prince as their future king, it must have seemed to Edward IV that the instability of the past, the bloodshed of the civil wars that had plagued England since the 1450s, had now finally drawn to a close. His rivals had been destroyed, and that uncertain chapter in England’s history seemed to be at an end. The future, Edward must have considered, would now be one of stability and security, personified in the image of his loyal brother Richard, now a trusted stalwart of his regime, pledging his undying loyalty to his newborn son as his future sovereign lord. With a brother such as Richard by his son’s side, his fidelity proven in exile and in battle, there could be no doubt that the future of the Yorkist dynasty was complete.

  Richard’s had been a difficult birth. Much later, rumours spread that the baby had been born breech, or feet first; wilder tales included stories that the pregnancy had lasted two years, that the child had to be cut from the mother’s womb, that it had emerged ‘with teeth and hair down to his shoulders’.11 Even in birth, men sought means to blacken his name. For those who studied the skies and astrological charts, he had been born when ‘Scorpio was in the ascendant … And as Scorpio was smooth in countenance but deadly in his tail, so Richard showed himself.’12 The only facts one can truly discern about the birth of Richard, the youngest son of Richard, duke of York, are those later recorded by Richard himself, who wrote in his own hand in his Book of Hours the date of his birth. By the date 2 October, in Latin are the words: ‘On this day was born Richard the Third, King of England, at Fotheringhay in the year of our Lord 1452.’13

  Richard had been born into surroundings that reflected his family’s illustrious heritage. The castle and keep of Fotheringhay had belonged to the house of York since Edmund Langley, the first duke of York, had taken possession of t
he castle in the fourteenth century. Situated close to the Great North Road, eighty miles away from London, the castle overlooked the banks of the River Nene, surrounded by the large hunting forest of Rockingham. Edmund had rebuilt the castle, and the family’s heraldic symbol of the falcon and the fetterlock stood guard over the castle’s grey keep. It was surrounded by a double moat, its main entrance through an impressive gatehouse on its north-west side; a range of buildings including the original keep, a manor house and two chapels stood out among the range of workshops, kitchens, brewhouses, bakeries, stables and barns. Later, it would be described as ‘a castle fair, and meatly strong, with very good lodgings in it, defended by double ditches, with a very ancient and strong keep’.14

  Richard’s father, Richard, duke of York, was at the time of Richard’s birth considered, in the line of succession, a strong contender as heir to the throne. Though he was descended in the male line from John of Gaunt’s next brother and fourth surviving son of King Edward III, Edmund of Langley, York’s claim to the throne could be found not just on his father’s side, but also through his mother, Anne Mortimer. Through her, York was also able to claim descent from Edward III through his second son, Lionel, duke of Clarence, through Clarence’s daughter, Philippa, the grandmother of Anne Mortimer. Through a combination of circumstance and fortune, in particular the death of all three brothers of Henry V without issue, York could legitimately expect to be considered heir to the throne. There is little doubt that York was fully aware of his royal ancestry; as early as 1450, he began to adopt the surname ‘Plantagenet’ as if to emphasise the purity of his claim to the throne. But he was also, when Richard was born in 1452, financially in trouble and banished from the king’s court, his long-term power struggle with the duke of Somerset and Henry’s queen, Margaret of Anjou, having caused his humiliation and disgrace.

  His wife, Richard’s mother, Cecily, the duchess of York, was thirty-seven, and coming to the end of her childbearing years. She had already given birth to ten children, five of whom had survived. This time, she had struggled through pregnancy with ‘disease and infirmity’ she later wrote, forcing her to make a pilgrimage to the shrine of our Lady of Walsingham. As she recuperated from a difficult labour, in spite of all her physical pain, Cecily’s ‘immeasurable sorrow and heaviness’ were not for herself but for her husband’s own ‘infinite sorrow’ at his estrangement and exile from court.15 This exile coincided with a period of recovery in the fortunes of the beleaguered King Henry VI. By 1453 Queen Margaret was pregnant, potentially pushing Richard of York further down the line of succession.

  Then, in August, Henry VI suffered a complete nervous breakdown. As he lay unable to speak or move, for months the king’s condition was kept a secret in the hope that he would make a sudden recovery. On 13 October 1453, Margaret gave birth to a son, Prince Edward. The baby was presented to the king by the queen herself, taking the prince in her arms, ‘desiring that he should bless it’. Yet Henry remained motionless. Margaret departed ‘without any answer or countenance, saving only that he looked on the Prince and cast his eyes down again without any more’.16 Unaware of the world around him in his catatonic state, Henry VI finally had his heir to the Lancastrian dynasty; yet, for the rest of the king’s council, it was a sign that something would need to be done to overcome an impending national crisis caused by the king’s incapacity. The following month, in spite of repeated attempts by Queen Margaret to prevent it, York was appointed Protector and Defender of the Realm. Somerset was denounced and committed to the Tower, awaiting charges of treason.

  York’s sudden change of fortune instantly raised the status of his own children. As Protector, the duke was allowed the privilege not only of having his heir Edward titled as an earl, but his second son, Edmund, too, who was granted the earldom of Rutland by 1454. While the infant Richard would have simply been too young to have been placed in his own household with governors and tutors, and would most likely have been under the direct care of his mother at Fotheringhay, his elder brothers had been set up with their own household at Ludlow Castle in the heart of York’s estates in the Welsh Marches, in preparation for their future roles.

  York’s tenure as Protector was not to last the year. On Christmas Day 1454, Henry VI awoke: presented with his baby son, ‘he said he never knew him till that time, nor knew what was said to him, nor knew where he had been whilst he hath been sick till now’.17 Henry’s recovery transformed everything. York’s protectorate was suddenly over, and his great enemy, Somerset, was released from prison, baying for revenge. York, together with the earl of Salisbury and the earl of Warwick, departed from the capital without taking formal leave of the king. They were summoned to attend a great council at Leicester on 21 May, in order ‘to provide for the king’s safety’.18 The meeting was to be packed by Somerset’s allies at court. York knew that the assembly was nothing more than a trap, possibly to seek his own trial and execution. He had no choice but to act first, and no other option than to take military action. When news that a large Yorkist force was advancing rapidly southwards, Somerset and the king were taken by surprise.

  On 22 May the two armies met at St Albans. After negotiations had broken down, a short and violent fight broke out in the streets of the town. Cornered in a tavern, Somerset was killed. Henry, who had been injured in the ‘battle’, was seized and taken back to London. As soon as the fighting had ceased, York went to the king and knelt before him, begging his forgiveness. He had not meant for the king to be harmed; he only wished to defeat the king’s enemies at court. Henry had little choice but to forgive. Led back to London surrounded by an armed procession of York’s men, with the duke riding close by at his right hand, it was obvious to everyone watching that Henry was nothing more than a captive king.

  The new government, with York at its head, sought to bring about reconciliation and heal old wounds. Three days later, York placed the crown on Henry’s head at a staged ceremony at St Paul’s. Parliament was summoned, issuing a general pardon to those who had taken up arms on York’s side against the king.

  Then during the summer of 1455, Henry fell ill again. Once more, York stepped in to assume the mantle of Protector. Three months later, in February 1456, the duke resigned after the king made a partial recovery. In York’s place, Queen Margaret now exerted her influence over the king, effectively ruling in his name. In June 1459, Margaret summoned a royal council to meet at Coventry: York, Salisbury and Warwick were excluded, and in their absence indictments were laid against them.

  The Yorkist lords had separate plans. They intended to hold their own meeting at Ludlow, where York, who had arrived in the town with his entire family, including Duchess Cecily and their youngest children, George, Richard and Ursula, would be joined by an army of northerners brought by the earl of Salisbury from the Neville estates in Middleham, together with a contingent from the Calais garrison, led by Warwick. On 23 September, Salisbury and his forces were confronted by a royalist detachment led by Lord Audley at Blore Heath. The fighting lasted for four hours. Audley was killed and the Lancastrians defeated, though the engagement resolved nothing, for the main Lancastrian army, led by Queen Margaret and with Henry VI in attendance, was closing in. By the time Salisbury joined with York’s forces at Ludlow, the Yorkist leaders realised they were trapped. York chose to hold his ground; on 12 October, his forces ‘fortified their chosen ground, their carts with guns set before their battles, made their skirmishes, laid their ambushes’ on the opposite side of the River Teme, south of Ludlow, near Ludford Bridge.19 In comparison to the size and scale of the Lancastrian forces, a royal army led in person by the king himself, York had managed to muster just six peers, two of whom were his own sons. During that night, the duke faced another blow: the Calais garrison, unwilling to bear arms against the king in person, had defected. Now there could be no hope of victory. Around midnight, York, together with his military leaders, his sons Edward and Edmund, Salisbury and Warwick, left their army in the field, their standards and
banners still flying, claiming that they needed to ‘refresh’ themselves in the town.

  They did not return. Abandoning their men, York and Edmund fled to Ireland. Edward, earl of March, took a different route, to Calais. It was a shameful flight from the field, but for Cecily and her young children, as dawn broke the following morning, the nightmare had only just begun. As chaos erupted outside the castle walls, it would not be long until the Lancastrians would discover that York had left his own wife and children to their fates. One chronicler recorded that ‘King Harry rode into Ludlow, and spoiled the Town and Castle, where at he found the Duchess of York with her two young sons [then] children.’20 Another recalled that ‘The town of Ludlow belonging then to the duke of York, was robbed to the bare walls, and the noble duchess of York unmanly and cruelly was entreated and spoiled.’21 What exact treatment was meted out to the duchess remains vague: while ‘entreated’ might be interpreted as ‘dealt with’ or ‘persuaded’, spoiled could refer to any serious crime from robbery to rape. For Richard, having just turned seven, the terrifying experience must have taught him at this early age the catastrophic consequences that defeat could bring. Having witnessed at first hand the humiliation and horror of war, heard the sound of cannon fire and sensed the fear that accompanied his father’s defection and defeat, Ludlow marked for Richard the end of his childhood years. If Richard had been allowed to live his early years in a sheltered existence, his age of innocence had been suddenly shattered.