Richard III

by Chris Skidmore

  Cecily and her three youngest children were taken to Coventry, where, during the ‘Parliament of Devils’, York and other leading Yorkists were ‘for their traitorous rearing of war … at Ludford afore specified, in the fields of the same … reputed, taken, declared, adjudged, deemed and attainted of High Treason, as false traitors and enemies’ to the king.22 By now there could be no turning back. All of York’s estates in England and Ireland were to be confiscated. Stripped of his title, his lands, his inheritance, York now became a man with nothing to lose. Still, Cecily was determined to protect her children from the impact that their father’s attainder might have upon their family’s fortunes. Once again, the duchess employed her familiar tone of reconciliation, this time appearing in front of King Henry in person, begging that her husband be allowed to ‘come to his answer and to be received unto his grace’. This Henry ‘humbly granted … and to all hers that would come with her’. Cecily was granted a royal pardon together with an allowance of 1,000 marks out of York’s former estates to support herself and her children. The duchess, her two sons and her daughter were to be transferred to the custody of Cecily’s sister, Anne, duchess of Buckingham, where they were to be placed effectively under house arrest at Tonbridge Castle, Kent. ‘She was kept full straight and many a great rebuke’, one chronicler noted.

  The outbreak of fighting at Blore Heath and Ludford Bridge marked the end of York’s ambitions for a renewed protectorate and the acknowledgement and acceptance of his heirs as future kings of England. There could be no more reconciliation. The only way forward was to claim the throne for himself, and to do so by force. The duke understood that disillusion with the Lancastrian regime still prevailed: with a king incapable of ruling, surrounded by a self-serving clique of advisers, change was needed. From Ireland and Calais, York and his followers began a ruthless propaganda assault, sending letters and broadsheets into the realm, presenting themselves as champions of good government and reform.

  In March 1460, York and Warwick met in Ireland to plan an invasion. This time they aimed to place the duke on the throne. Three months later, Warwick, together with Salisbury and Edward, earl of March, and a force of 2,000 men, landed in Kent. Men flocked to their standards ‘like bees to a hive’; compared to the disaster at Ludlow, the Yorkists now found seventeen peers prepared to lend support to their cause. Entering London several days later, the Yorkist army’s sudden advance threw Henry VI and the Lancastrians into panic.23 By the time the Lancastrian forces had gathered at Northampton, the Yorkists had already marched out of the capital in pursuit. Brief the battle of Northampton may have been, but its outcome could hardly have been more dramatic or successful: the leading Lancastrian noblemen, the duke of Buckingham, the earl of Shrewsbury, Viscount Beaumont and Lord Egremont, were all killed defending the royal tent. With the battle over, Henry VI was seized and led back to London, a prisoner in all but name. In an incredible turnaround in their fortunes since their flight from Ludlow, the Yorkist lords controlled both the king and the capital, while Queen Margaret was forced to flee to Scotland.

  York himself, though their figurehead, was yet to return from Ireland. When he finally landed at Chester on 9 September 1460, his first thoughts were to be reunited with his duchess. Meanwhile he delayed his entry into London, touring his estates, where he recruited men for his march upon the capital. As he made slow progress southwards, the duke’s intentions could not have been clearer: with his banners emblazoned with the royal arms, a drawn sword was carried before him, its point facing upwards, a sign of majesty and a privilege only granted to kings. Warwick prepared the way for the duke’s arrival, condemning Henry VI publicly as ‘a dolt and a fool’, stating that York ‘would now be on the throne if there were any regard to justice’.24 Three days after Parliament had assembled, York entered the capital and made his procession to Westminster. Arriving at the palace through an entrance reserved for the monarch, in the Parliament chamber in front of an assembled audience of lords, he strode up to the marble chair of the king’s bench and laid his hand upon it, ‘to take possession of his right’. York had miscalculated badly. There were no cheers, no acclamation in support of his attempt to claim the throne that the duke had expected. His peers stood in embarrassed silence. Several days later, York chose to address the lords once more. Convinced of his right to rule, the duke would not take no for an answer. This time, he did not hesitate to sit on the throne itself, declaring to the assembled lords that the crown was his by right of inheritance. Once again, he was met with stony silence.

  York would not be deterred. Instead he would continue to press his case, to be recognised officially and in law as heir to the throne. With the standoff continuing, a compromise was offered: an ‘Accord’ was formulated and eventually accepted, whereby Henry VI would remain king for life, but he would be succeeded by York and his heirs. Finally, York had achieved his dream of recognition: from this moment he formally titled himself Richard Plantagenet, openly signalling his belief that his was the true line of succession from Edward III. On All Saints’ Day, 1 November, another solemn ceremony was staged at St Paul’s: Henry wore his crown, but this time York walked in procession, while Warwick bore the sword before the king and Edward, earl of March, carried the king’s train.

  While Henry may have been content to accept the compromise offered by the Accord, his queen, Margaret, was hardly prepared to allow her son, Edward, to be disinherited without a fight. She was soon planning for an invasion and a rising of the Lancastrian nobility. The threat could not be ignored, and on 9 December, York marched out of London with Salisbury and Edmund, earl of Rutland, to confront Margaret and the growing Lancastrian forces. By 21 December, the duke had reached his castle at Sandal, where his men spent Christmas. It soon became clear that the castle was vastly understocked with supplies, and the duke and his men were forced to undertake foraging missions into the surrounding countryside. Within days, York and his men were encircled by Lancastrian forces. On 30 December, the duke chose to confront his enemies, with disastrous consequences. Treachery in his own ranks left York outnumbered and outflanked. The duke was dragged from his horse and killed, while his son, Edmund, was killed trying to escape. Salisbury, at first imprisoned, was later executed by ‘the common people’, who dragged him out of the castle and ‘smote off his head’. Rumours swirled of the humiliations inflicted upon York’s dead body, that it had been made to wear ‘a vile garland’ fashioned from reeds and propped up while the Lancastrian leaders taunted and abused it, before decapitating it, and, having adorned the duke’s head with a paper crown, placed it upon a spike on the city gates at York.25

  Edward, earl of March, had been sent to Ludlow to raise men from the duke’s estates when he discovered news of his father’s and brother’s deaths. There was little time to mourn their loss. Edward not only now inherited his father’s dukedom of York, but his claim to the crown also. He could be in little doubt that Queen Margaret would seek his blood too; already the Lancastrian army was travelling southwards towards the capital, described by various commentators as a ‘whirlwind of the north’ and ‘a plague of locusts’ that intended to wreak destruction upon the south. But first Edward had to contend with a Lancastrian army led by Henry VI’s half-brother, Jasper Tudor, earl of Pembroke, that had landed in south-west Wales and was marching on Hereford. On 2 February, the two armies met in the freezing cold at Mortimer’s Cross, not far from Edward’s castle at Wigmore. Just before the battle, three suns had appeared in the sky, leaving Edward’s followers distraught at the portent. To Edward, however, it was auspicious: ‘Be of good comfort, and fear not’, he told his men, ‘this is a good sign, for these three suns stand in token of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, and therefore let us have a good heart.’26 The reality behind the strange, miraculous vision was somewhat more prosaic: the phenomenon was caused by an optical illusion known as a parhelion, in which light refracted through ice crystals in the atmosphere causes the appearance of multiple suns to form in the f
rosted air.

  The following day, Edward’s forces routed the Lancastrians. The new duke was determined to have vengeance: 4,000 Lancastrians were killed, more soldiers than in all previous battles of the civil war combined.

  In honour of his devastating victory, Edward adopted the ‘sun in splendour’ as one of his own devices. Yet his celebrations were premature. Faced with the advance of the queen’s Lancastrian forces towards London, Warwick had hastily dissolved Parliament and marched his troops out of the city. On 17 February, engaging with the Lancastrian army at St Albans, the earl suffered a bloody defeat: he fled the battle, though many Yorkist leaders were taken prisoner. Worse still, Henry VI had been recaptured by the Lancastrians and was now back under his wife’s control. The road to London was open for the Lancastrians to seize the capital. The advance of the ‘northern men’ seemed a terrifying prospect: ‘the people in the north rob and steal and are planning to pillage all this country, and give away men’s goods and livelihoods in all the south country’, Clement Paston warned his brother John.27 Fear of northern violence and ‘countless acts of cruelty’ stirred talk in London of armed resistance. Everything pointed towards the horrifying prospect of civil war being fought in open combat among the streets of the capital.

  Since her return to London, Duchess Cecily and her younger children, Margaret, George and Richard, had been lodged in the duke’s residence at Baynard’s Castle. Located on the banks of the River Thames, the large house featured several courtyards and undercrofts, with an imposing great hall that gave it the appearance of a royal palace. It was also a convenient strong house, whose thick walls could be compared to the Tower downstream, while the building was capable of accommodating over 400 armed men in York’s retinue when necessary. But Cecily realised that, with her husband now in exile, it would also be a beacon for Lancastrian attacks. As she awaited her husband’s return from Ireland, Cecily decided to move her children into Fastolf Place on the banks of the Thames in Southwark, belonging to an old acquaintance of the family, Sir John Fastolf. The house was guarded by a retired German soldier, Christopher Hausson, who took charge of his new guests. The family arrived on 15 September; two days later, however, Cecily heard news of York’s landing at Chester. On 23 September, after receiving a request from her husband that she should join him in Hereford, Cecily left the three children in Hausson’s care, though their elder brother, Edward, earl of March, ‘cometh every day to see them’.28 The violent deaths of her husband and her son Edmund at Wakefield brought home to Duchess Cecily the necessity to protect her younger children, especially her other sons, who provided a succession down York’s male line. ‘Fearing the fortune of that world’, she placed the two boys, George and Richard, in the care of one Alice Martyn, a widow who was charged with keeping them ‘from danger and peril in their troubles’.29 From there they were sent into exile abroad, ‘over the sea … unto a town in Flanders named Utrecht, where they rested a while’.30

  Cecily entrusted the care of George and Richard to Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy, the head of a family with whom York had already sought out marriage alliances. Philip’s magnificent court reflected the wealth of his independent duchy that stretched across most of modern-day Belgium, Luxembourg, most of the Netherlands and areas of northern France. The arrival of the two young boys from a noble family that had been engaged in violent civil war with the ruling house of Lancaster – the dynasty of Henry V, whom Philip had held in high regard as an ally – was an embarrassment. News of the disaster at Wakefield and the death of York had reached Burgundy, and while the exiled French dauphin, Louis, who was living in Burgundy at the time, was keen to support the Yorkist cause, Philip, with his own court centred on Flanders and Brabant, preferred to retain a neutral stance, especially while Charles VII of France, who was hostile to his son Louis’s influence on Burgundian policy, remained supportive of the Lancastrian cause. The arrival of York’s own sons George and Richard presented Philip with a dilemma. In the end, the duke chose what he considered the best course of action for now: to do nothing and keep the two boys at a distance from his own court. Instead, George and Richard were to remain in Utrecht.

  Meanwhile the threat of the Lancastrian entry into London did not materialise. After a delegation led by Anne, duchess of Buckingham, and Jacquetta, Lady Rivers, pleaded with the queen not to allow her northern army entrance into the city, on 19 February Margaret decided to return to Dunstable. It was to prove a catastrophic mistake. The same day, Edward, earl of March, moved swiftly east with his army after hearing news of Warwick’s defeat at St Albans. Three days later, Edward was reunited with his cousin in the Cotswolds, allowing their united force to march on London, which they entered on 26 February to popular acclaim. The nineteen-year-old earl of March was recognised as the city’s saviour, who had rescued London from the ravages of the ‘northern’ men.31 Unlike Warwick, whose defeat had placed the city under threat in the first place, damaging his reputation, Edward’s unbroken record of victory marked him out as the true inheritor of the Yorkist claim to the throne.

  Edward had learnt from his father’s mistakes the previous autumn. While the celebrations marking his arrival continued, he kept himself out of sight, hidden away in Baynard’s Castle. Rather than rush to claim the crown, he would wait for the crown to come to him, or at least create the pretence of having done so. Conveniently, with Parliament not sitting and many lords having fled the capital, Edward was free to plan his own accession, stage by stage, in carefully co-ordinated and stage-managed ceremonies.

  On Sunday, 1 March, Edward’s cousin, George Neville, the bishop of Exeter, preached a sermon in front of a specially chosen assembly of soldiers and citizens in St John’s Field. Here he set out Edward’s title to the throne, while reading a list of articles that showed how Henry VI had broken the Accord reached the previous October. Asking his audience whether they believed Henry was fit to continue as king, Neville stirred the crowd to make their own acclamation that they would accept Edward as king in Henry’s place. Messengers were then sent to Edward to inform him of ‘the people’s’ decision: for this, Edward ‘thanked God and them’. Two days later, proclamations were sent out summoning people to assemble at St Paul’s the following morning, Wednesday, 4 March. There, at the cross, Neville once again asked the people whether they would accept Edward as their king. While the same loud and enthusiastic cheers were made, Edward, who had arrived in a solemn procession accompanied by Yorkist lords, heard mass in the cathedral before riding to Westminster. There he took his seat on the marble chair of the king’s bench, wearing royal robes and holding the sceptre in his hand, while a formal document setting out Edward’s claim to the throne, the Titulus Regius, was read out. When this had been done, for a third time the assembled crowds were asked if they wished Edward to become their king, which was met with loud shouts of ‘Ye, Ye,’ proclaiming the duke as their new king, Edward IV.

  News of Edward’s accession travelled quickly, with reports making their way across the Channel within days. In Utrecht, news that the two young boys in the bishop’s charge were now brothers of a king, and royal princes of England themselves, was marked by festivities. The town’s accounts reveal that payment was made on 9 March, by order of the oversten, the eight aldermen who ran the town, for three aem (a jug of 170 litres), minus five taec (4.25 litres), meaning around 489 litres of wine, at a cost of £46 15s, were drunk in celebration of ‘the two sons of the duke of York’.32 Still Duke Philip remained cautious of welcoming Richard and George to his court. When further news reached Burgundy that Edward had led his forces into the north, where he had won a remarkable victory over the Lancastrians at Towton on 29 March – an assault of such magnitude that over 20,000 lost their lives, with Queen Margaret and Henry VI forced to flee into exile in Scotland – Philip suddenly reconsidered his opinion of the two boys, whose status as royal princes now seemed beyond doubt.

  George and Richard were summoned to the Burgundian court at Bruges. They were welcomed perso
nally by Duke Philip, and ‘received, cherished and honoured’ at court. The Milanese ambassador at the French court wrote from Bruges on 18 April how ‘the two brothers of King Edward have arrived, one eleven and the other twelve years of age. The duke, who is most kind in everything, has been to visit them at their lodging, and showed them great reverence.’33 The town accounts of Bruges reveal the entertainment that was organised for the boys’ arrival, recording payment ‘for a banquet given to our dread lord and the children of York in the aldermen’s hall’ to which were invited ‘the ladies of the city … and where also many other noble lords of our aforesaid dread lord’s blood and council were present’34 By 28 April, George and Richard had arrived at Calais, where they were shortly to sail to England.

  Meanwhile Edward remained in the north, hunting down Lancastrian lords and enforcing his authority on the region, including removing the impaled heads of his father and brother from their spikes on the city gates of York, interring their remains at Pontefract. The new king’s coronation was planned for June. In preparation of their own role in the coronation, Richard and George began their final journey to the capital. Arriving in Canterbury on Saturday, 30 May 1461, the two brothers were presented with three capons, two oxen, twenty sheep and three gallons of wine. Since the day was also the Vigil of the Holy Trinity, Richard and George journeyed to the cathedral, where they were greeted by the prior of Christ Church and the rest of the convent, wearing green copes. They attended vespers, and the following day walked in the procession to high mass.35

  Preparations were made by the city to receive the new royal princes with suitable honour. On 1 June 1461, it was agreed that the Common Council of the city of London, together with ‘the most worthy citizens of the guilds’, should assemble the following day at Billingsgate, the mayor and aldermen dressed in crimson, to meet ‘the Lords George and Richard, brothers of the Lord King’.36 Both brothers were then most likely taken to their mother at Baynard’s Castle, before travelling to Sheen to be reunited with their brother, Edward, upon his arrival on 14 June. With the king’s coronation planned for two weeks’ time, Edward appointed his brother and heir George as steward for the coronation banquet, although since ‘he was but young and tender of age’ he was to be assisted by Lord Wenlock, who was to take over the tiresome duties of assessing the various claims of those desperate to perform the honorary offices at the ceremony.