Richard III

by Chris Skidmore

  Two days after Clarence’s death, Edward assigned ‘certain lords’ to travel with Clarence’s body to Tewkesbury Abbey, to prepare for the duke’s burial there. ‘The King intends to do right worshipfully for his soul’, the royal councillor, Thomas Langton, wrote on 20 February.34 Edward took over responsibility for paying Clarence’s debts to the abbey of 560 marks, to be paid in instalments, while he paid outstanding debts to Clarence’s household totalling over £325. Edward soon regretted his brother’s death. Thomas More later described how, although Edward had ‘commanded’ Clarence’s death, ‘when he wist it was done, he piteously bewailed and sorrowfully repented’.35 Polydore Vergil believed that ‘it is very likely that king Edward right soon repented that deed; for (as men say) when so ever any sued for saving a man’s life, he was wont to cry out in a rage, “O unfortunate brother, for whose life no man in this world would once make request”‘.36 Whether Edward’s sorrow was genuine, given that he had been the prime mover in his brother’s execution, it may be that the king found cause to doubt his judgement, believing that he had been influenced to take such drastic measures. Polydore Vergil mused on Edward’s regret, remarking how the king was ‘affirming in that manifestly’ that Clarence had been ‘cast away by the envy of the nobility’.37 Clarence’s destruction had been ordered by the king, but it had very much been authored by the Woodvilles. Relatives and servants of the family had combined to remove their common enemy. Four bridegrooms of Woodville marriages arranged in the 1460s, including the duke of Buckingham, who pronounced sentence upon Clarence, were members of the jury on the trial, while just days before the trial began the royal family, including Richard, gathered to celebrate the marriage of Edward’s youngest son, Richard, duke of York, to Anne Mowbray, the duchess of Norfolk. The scenes of a united royal family, surrounded by extended Woodville kin, sent out the clear message that Clarence was now permanently excluded from the fold.38 For Thomas More, it was clear that Clarence’s death had been brought about ‘by the Queen and the Lords of her blood which highly maligned the king’s kindred’.39 Dominic Mancini had heard told a story that ‘The queen then remembered the insults to her family and the calumnies with which she was reproached, namely that according to established usage she was not the legitimate wife of the king. Thus she concluded that her offspring by the king would never come to the throne, unless the duke of Clarence were removed; and of this she easily persuaded the king.’40

  Clarence’s death was viewed nationally as nothing less than a tragedy. ‘These three brothers’, the Crowland chronicler mused, ‘possessed such outstanding talent that if they had been able to avoid dissension that triple cord could have been broken only with the utmost difficulty.’41 Edward now ruled, according to the chronicler, ‘so haughtily thereafter that he seemed to be feared by all his subjects while he himself feared no man’. ‘After this deed many people deserted King Edward’, he noted, ‘who was persuaded that he could rule as he pleased throughout the whole kingdom now that all those idols had been destroyed to whom the eyes of the common folk, ever eager for change, used to turn in times gone by. They regarded the earl of Warwick, the duke of Clarence and any other great man in the land who withdrew from royal circles as idols of this kind.’42 If this was the case, then one man seemed to fill the vacancy left behind by their deaths. Writing several years later, Dominic Mancini implied that Richard, after his brother’s death, ‘came very rarely to court’, claiming that Richard himself ‘was so overcome with grief for his brother that he could not dissimulate so well, but that he was overheard to say that he would one day avenge his brother’s death’:

  He kept himself within his own lands and set out to acquire the loyalty of his people through favours and justice. The good reputation of his private life and public activities powerfully attracted the esteem of strangers. Such was his renown in warfare that, whenever a difficult and dangerous policy had to be undertaken, it would be entrusted to his discretion and his generalship. By these skills Richard acquired the favour of the people and avoided the jealousy of the queen, from whom he lived far separated.43

  Whether this was entirely the case, or whether Mancini was simply portraying an image of Richard as somehow separate from the king and his court, no one could deny that, with the death of Clarence, Richard was now the pre-eminent member of the nobility. As Constable, he remained at the centre of court life, with responsibility for updating the rules for royal tournaments. He attended the sessions of Parliament between 1472 and 1475, along with the Parliaments of 1478 and 1483, appearing frequently at royal councils and at chapters of the Order of the Garter. In contrast to what Mancini had been told, royal charters attest to the fact that Richard was a regular presence at court, hardly the recluse that he had been made out to be. He remained close to his brother and the Yorkist dynasty’s ambitions, both temporal and spiritual. Not only did Richard share in his brother’s patronage of St George’s Chapel, Windsor, selling off land to help fund the foundation, but he helped finance the founding of Queen’s College, Cambridge, alongside Queen Elizabeth.

  If Richard had really opposed his brother’s execution, he was quick to reap the rewards of Clarence’s sudden fall. Any regret or remorse that Richard felt about his brother’s trial and execution did not prevent him taking full advantage of Clarence’s demise, even while the latter was still imprisoned in the Tower awaiting sentence. On 27 November 1477, Edward granted Richard the lordship of Ogmore; the grant was a significant one since it anticipated the break-up of the Warwick inheritance and Clarence’s death, upon which the alienation of the lands would have depended.44 From the very start of proceedings, Richard had taken a part in planning his brother’s trial. He had attended the council meetings of the previous winter, where Clarence’s fate was discussed. He was also a constant presence at court during this time. On 9 November, Richard was present at a banquet where he did homage to Prince Richard, holding the prince’s hand. As Constable, he had joined with the queen’s brother Anthony, Earl Rivers, in proclaiming the articles for the jousts that took place on 12 November. Richard also took advantage of his brother’s incarceration to strengthen his own position. With Clarence’s execution pending, formal recognition was now given of the enhanced status placed upon Richard and his family. On 18 February, the date of Clarence’s death, Richard himself was appointed Great Chamberlain of England, restoring to the duke a title he had been forced to surrender as part of the original negotiations concerning the Warwick inheritance so bitterly fought over between the brothers. The next day, on 19 February, following on from the Act that had allowed Richard to alienate several manors from the Warwick inheritance for the purpose of establishing a religious foundation, the duke was licensed to found two colleges, at Barnard Castle and Middleham.45 Richard was now the wealthiest landowner in England after the king himself. If fortune’s wheel had turned for Clarence, casting him downwards, it had in turn raised Richard up to even greater heights.

  4

  A NORTHERN AFFINITY

  Since inheriting the earl of Warwick’s Neville lands in north Yorkshire and Wensleydale, Richard had begun to spend an increasing amount of time in the north, establishing his own northern power base centred on Warwick’s lands. Richard took the remaining ties of service that belonged to the Neville retinue, fashioning it into his own image. After making his base at Middleham, he fostered the impression of a good lord by retaining Warwick’s existing local office holders, such as Sir John Conyers, even going so far as to reward them with a pay rise.

  The transition to becoming lord of the north, fitting seamlessly into Warwick’s role, was further acknowledged with the birth of his son Edward, who was born at Middleham and took Warwick’s title of earl of Salisbury in 1478. By marrying Warwick’s daughter, Richard had converted his status from outsider to the natural lord of inheritance, consciously fostering Neville tradition. Richard established religious colleges both at Middleham and at Barnard Castle, possibly to act as a mausoleum for his family, and to reinforce
the spiritual identity that now linked him with the Neville tradition.

  Richard was more ambitious still. Soon he was looking beyond the confines of his Neville lands, with the aim of extending his lands and fashioning a northern power base the like of which had not been seen before. To Warwick’s lordships of Middleham in Wensleydale, Sheriff Hutton in north Yorkshire and Penrith in Cumberland, he added the lordships of Barnard Castle in Durham and Scarborough in 1474, Skipton-in-Craven in 1475, and Clarence’s lordships of Richmond and Helmsley in 1478. Many of his later acquisitions he obtained through exchange with other noblemen: Skipton was traded with Thomas, Lord Stanley, for Chirk in Wales, while Scarborough was exchanged with the king, who wanted possession of Richard’s property in Chesterfield and Ware.

  While Richard was prepared to sell or trade much of the land he had been given by the king elsewhere in England, he always held on closely to the land that formed the basis of his northern hegemony. His power in the north was enhanced by his closeness to the king. No other nobleman could compete with the king’s own brother, and soon Richard became the direct source to royal favour and grace. The city of York sought out his influence on a range of issues, to which Richard dutifully responded. In 1476, Richard was given presents, including six swans and six pikes, by a grateful corporation ‘for his great labour’ made to the king, ‘for the conservation of the liberties of this city’.1 The city appealed to Richard the following year, in October 1477: ‘having a singular confidence in your high and noble lordship afore any other … we humbly beseecheth your high and good grace to be a mean to the king our said sovereign lord … in these premises, and we, your said humble servants, shall evermore pray to the single “almyfluent” god for your prosperous estate’.2 Anything, Richard replied, ‘that we may do to the weal of your said city we shall put us in our uttermost devour and good will by God’s grace, who keep you’.3

  Richard swiftly became acquainted with religious life in York, and in 1477 both the duke and his wife, Anne, formally joined the elite Guild of Corpus Christi, twenty-one years after his mother, Cecily, had been inducted into the order.4 The festival of Corpus Christi, falling on the first Thursday after Trinity Sunday, was taken particularly seriously in York, with the guilds staging a huge cycle of mystery plays, with over fifty scenes acted out by over 500 performers. Starting at dawn, a procession of wagons wound through the streets of the city, each pausing to exhibit the individual drama acted out on the back of the cart: the shipwrights, fishmongers and mariners acted out the scenes from Genesis, while the goldsmiths decorated the crowns of the Three Kings. The following day, the procession of the Corpus Christi Guild would take place, moving from the Priory of the Holy Trinity to York Minster amid a dazzle of torches and lit tapers, crosses and banners. Regardless of status, every member of the guild was required to join the procession through the streets.

  Apart from brief glimpses of her life in Richard’s accounts, evidence of his wife Anne’s existence during this period is hard to trace. As duchess, she should have accompanied Richard to important occasions of state, though she passes unmentioned in the heraldic accounts of the receptions. It seems that during this period, while Richard was not only campaigning in France in 1475, but fulfilling his role as warden of the West March, Anne was left to run her own household and at times take responsibility for ducal affairs. In 1475–6, the duke’s councillors conveyed a message to the city of York from Anne herself, suggesting that she deputise for Richard in his absence, while in 1476 it was Anne alone who was admitted to the sisterhood of Durham Cathedral priory, which was dedicated to St Cuthbert and was the mother church for the Warwick lordship of Barnard Castle.5

  There is also a surviving copy of a manuscript that we may be reasonably certain was shared between Richard and his wife: The Booke of Gostlye Grace by Mechtild of Hackeborn, written in the thirteenth century in Saxony by the sister of Gertrude, the abbess of a Cistercian community in Mansfield. The flyleaf of the book is inscribed with both the names ‘Anne Warrewyk’ and ‘R Gloucestr’, suggesting that the book was owned, and shared, jointly between husband and wife. Mechtild of Hackeborn’s work was designed to demonstrate how one might preserve the health of the soul through prayer and self-discipline. Mechtild’s work was very popular with the pious laity. The text focused on how members of the laity could make every day acts of remembrance to Christ, using simple means of expression; in particular, the work set out how touching one’s fingers on the right hand could help join one’s fingers to the Lord’s, setting out specific examples of how, when ‘stirred or tempted with pride’, one should touch one’s little finger and reflect ‘on the meekness and on the subjection of thine God, and pray him that by his meekness thou may overcome all pride’, while the thumb ‘betokens the mightfulness of God, which is almighty’, and divine protection against ‘all adversities that comes to a faithful and true soul’; touching one’s thumb with a finger represented the need to be ‘strong in exercise of virtues and that thou withstand all vices manly and mightly’. The use of such private means of worship can possibly be witnessed in a copy of a later portrait of Richard, who wears rings on his right thumb, ring finger and little finger, while his left thumb and forefinger are poised to lift a ring from his little finger, suggesting that Richard continued to use such acts of remembrance throughout his life.

  There was good reason why Anne’s presence remains shadowy during these years. It was around this time that Anne gave birth to their son, Edward. The first mention that a son had been born to the couple is in a deed dated 1 April 1477, in which Richard granted the lordship of Fulmer in Cambridgeshire, a manor that had formerly been the property of Elizabeth, countess of Oxford, to the president and fellows of Queen’s College in Cambridge.6 In return for the gift, it was agreed that the college would pray for the ‘prosperous estates of Richard the said duke of Gloucester and dame Anne his wife, and of Edward their first begotten son earl of Salisbury with all such issue as God shall send betwixt them’. The bequest raises intriguing questions about Richard’s own family life. It is clear that Richard and Anne intended on having more children if Edward was to be their ‘first begotten’: the queen herself had only just turned twenty, while Richard was twenty-four, so this is unsurprising, but indicates that the couple remained close, in spite of John Rous’s later comment that they were ‘unhappily married’. It has commonly been assumed that their only son, Edward of Middleham, was born in 1473; however, a separate chronicle collated by the monks at Tewkesbury Abbey, written around 1478, records how Anne was ‘bore a son named … at the castle of Middleham, in the year of our lord 1476’. The name of the son has been left blank, but in the original manuscript the name ‘George’ has been inserted into the gap. This might suggest that Richard and Anne had a second son, who may not have survived long after childbirth, which would explain the specific reference to Edward as their ‘first begotten’ son in the Queen’s College indenture. Alternatively, it could be that the blank space refers in fact to Edward himself, in which case he was three years younger than has commonly been assumed.7

  Of course, there were other children Richard is known to have fathered, just not legitimate heirs with his wife. Little is known about the origins of John of Pontefract or Katherine, Richard’s illegitimate daughter, though it seems from tracing back their ages that Richard must have sired the children perhaps in his teenage years, before his marriage to Anne. John of Pontefract was nearly old enough to obtain his majority in 1485, suggesting that he may have been born around 1471, though possibly later. Katherine, whom Richard married off in 1484, must have therefore been around fourteen at the time, suggesting she too was born around 1470. Though Richard would later publicly acknowledge his illegitimate children, indeed the records refer to John as the ‘Lord Bastard’, no evidence survives during Richard’s early career to speculate any further.8

  Richard’s rise to power had been rapid, and at times ruthless. He had fought his brother Clarence for his wife’s share of the Warwi
ck lands, and won; even then, Richard had not been satisfied, going after his mother-in-law’s Despenser inheritance too, before eventually succeeding, placing her under house arrest in one of his castles in the north while her lands were distributed as if she were dead. Richard was not prepared to allow anyone to stand in his way, particularly when it came to enlarging his landed estates. Similar treatment was meted out to the elderly and feeble countess of Oxford when he was granted the lands of her rebel sons, which did not include her own separate inheritance. The countess was taken into Richard’s custody, where she was pressurised into surrendering her lands to which the duke had no legitimate claim. The countess had little other option. If she declined, Richard is supposed to have threatened that ‘he would send her to Middleham there to be kept’. ‘Wherefore the said lady, considering her great age, the great journey, and the great cold which then was of frost and snow, thought that she could not endure to be conveyed there without great jeopardy to her life.’

  The king stood by, tacitly complicit in his brother’s aggrandisement. In 1479, Sir John Risley visited the king while out hunting in Waltham forest. As their horses rode through the woods, while alone with the king Risley took the opportunity to ask for Edward’s advice. Informing him that he intended to purchase from Richard the London property beside London Wall ‘called the earl of Oxford’s place’, Risley requested ‘his grace to give him his good council whether he might so surely do ye or nay’. Edward asked how the house had managed to come into Gloucester’s hands. When Risley informed the king that the duke had ‘come unto it by a release made’ by the countess of Oxford, Edward replied, ‘meddle not ye with the buying of the said place for though the title of the place be good in my brother of Gloucester’s hands or in another man’s hands of like might, it will be dangerous to thee to buy it and also to keep it and defend it’. The king explained further, describing how the countess ‘was compelled and constrained’ by Gloucester ‘to release and forsake her right in the said place’.9 Risley took heed of the king’s advice and quickly lost interest in the property.