Richard III

by Chris Skidmore

  On 4 August, the provost of the city, together with the merchant community, swore an agreement with Richard, Albany and the earl of Northumberland, together with the earl of Argyll and the bishop of Dunkeld, that if the proposed marriage between Prince James and Edward IV’s daughter Cecily, first agreed in 1474, did not take place, the money that Edward had paid towards his daughter’s dowry would be refunded in annual instalments, at the city’s expense. Given that Cecily had also been contracted to marry Albany, it was hardly surprising that Richard expected the proposed match between her and Prince James to fail, but his determination to ensure that the dowry was returned reflects the duke’s desire to achieve the best possible outcome from what was becoming an increasingly dire situation. While Richard had taken care not to bind his brother’s hands when it came to future diplomatic or military manoeuvres, his pragmatism came from his own experience in leading border raids of what could realistically be achieved in Scotland. Sensing that retreat would allow for greater gains to be made elsewhere, shortly afterwards he ordered his army to depart from the city, and on 11 August dismissed the larger part of his army. Rewards worth £350 were given to the duke’s own retinue ‘for their expenses in going from the town of Berwick to their own homes’. A further £595 was spent on 1,700 ‘fighting men’ who were to be retained by the duke ‘to accompany him in the war against the Scotch’ for the next fourteen days.

  Richard’s withdrawal from Edinburgh was criticised by the Crowland chronicler, who wrote that the duke, ‘having got as far as Edinburgh with the whole army without meeting any resistance, he let that very wealthy town escape unharmed’.29 Richard was surely in a commanding position to dictate far better terms to the Scottish government; although he may have felt that he lacked instructions to do so following Albany’s defection, Richard made no attempt to await further direction from the king as to the terms on which he should settle. Instead, Richard journeyed southwards and returned to the siege of Berwick, which had been left under the sole command of Thomas, Lord Stanley, apparently causing tension between the two men, since Stanley felt he had been left ‘in great danger’.30 With the Scottish garrison reluctant to fight on behalf of an imprisoned James III, who would be in no position to pay them, the castle at Berwick surrendered after a final siege on 24 August, ‘though not without slaughter and bloodshed’.31

  For the first time since 1463, Berwick had been re-conquered from the Scots. Edward was delighted, publicly thanking ‘God, the giver of all good gifts, for the support received from our most loving brother, whose success is so proven that he alone would suffice to chastise the whole kingdom of Scotland’. Street parties were held and bonfires were lit in celebration as far afield as Calais, where every single gun on the city bulwarks ‘and about the walls were shot for joy’. Edward was evidently overjoyed with the recapture of Berwick, if only for the symbolic appeal of its repossession. He could not help but note that the castle, having been in the uninterrupted possession of our forefathers, whose just title having descended to us’ had been lost by the Lancastrians ‘before our coronation’. The king wrote as if Berwick’s recovery was all part of the Yorkist plan, since ‘we were bound to recover what was ours … A small chosen band therefore received the surrender of the town immediately on sitting down before it, though the same was entirely surrounded by impregnable walls. The citadel, however, because of its well chosen position and state of defence, was not taken until the rest of the army had returned; when, not without some slaughter and bloodshed, it was reduced.’32

  Some could not help but whisper that the celebrations over Berwick had become a face-saving exercise to cover for the disappointment at failing to place Albany on the throne. For all the expense of raising an army, Richard had returned with little to show for his expedition. The Crowland chronicler was less than impressed at Richard’s achievements. ‘What he achieved in this expedition and what large sums of money, repeatedly extorted under the name of benevolence, he foolishly used up were amply demonstrated by the outcome of this business.’ The chronicler considered Berwick’s recovery a ‘trifling gain’, or perhaps more accurately, a loss (for the maintenance of Berwick costs 10,000 marks a year) that diminished the substance of the king and the kingdom by more than £100,000 at the time. King Edward was grieved at the frivolous expenditure of so much money although the recapture of Berwick alleviated his grief for a time.’33 Others, too, were less than impressed with Richard’s conduct and achievements as leader of the Scottish campaign. Later that winter, it was alleged in York that John Lam had been overheard saying that ‘the soldiers of this city were ill worthy to have their wages, for they did nothing for it but made whips of their bow strings to drive carriage with’. Lam denied the charge, but admitted that ‘he heard some of their fellowship say that they did nothing else but waited upon the ordinance and carriage and over that he heard one of the soldiers say that he was so weary that he was fain to take off the string of his bow to drive his horse with’.34

  While the Crowland chronicler exaggerated the cost of recapturing Berwick, nonetheless his point concerning the doubtful success of the Scottish campaign was valid. The English advantage had been lost, and nothing had been settled. Mostly this was Edward IV’s fault: distant and indecisive, it was not until October 1482 that he decided to abandon his daughter Cecily’s marriage with the heir of James III and drop plans for a marriage with Anthony, Earl Rivers, and Margaret of Scotland, yet after the recapture of Berwick he made no attempt to seek a new treaty with James III, and the truce was not renewed. By mid-November, it seems that Edward was determined to renew the war with Scotland, with writs being issued on 15 November to summon Parliament, the main purpose of which was to vote money for ‘the hasty defence of the realm’. Yet Edward’s relentless focus upon Scotland meant that he had taken his eye off continental affairs, allowing Louis XI to take full advantage of the diplomatic situation.

  Events north of the border were soon overshadowed by the disastrous news on the continent. In March 1482, Mary of Burgundy died after falling from her horse. The new regent of Burgundy, Mary’s husband, Maximilian I, pleaded with Edward to abandon his French treaty with Louis XI and support a Burgundian alliance instead, but once again Edward hesitated. By December, Maximilian had no choice but to cave in to pressure from the French, signing the Treaty of Arras in December. Mary’s daughter, Margaret of Austria, was to be betrothed to the dauphin, Charles. For Edward, it meant the end not only of his long-cherished dream of marrying his eldest daughter, Elizabeth of York, to the dauphin, but also the end of his lucrative French pension. Louis XI had no need to buy off the English king any more, and the next instalment of the pension was never paid. Edward was furious, and, according to the Crowland chronicler, ‘thought of nothing else but taking vengeance’; by February 1483, he was already committing himself to further action on the continent, rashly promising Brittany 4,000 archers to serve at English expense for three months if it could be stirred into action against Louis XI. Edward knew, however, that he had been outplayed by the French king; ‘the spirited prince now realised that in the end he had been tricked by King Louis and was deeply troubled and grieved’.35 How different things might have been, some may have considered, if Edward himself had been prepared to defend his sister Margaret of York after the death of Charles the Bold in 1476; if Clarence had instead been married to Mary, by now the Burgundian territory would have been in the hands of the house of York. Those who had pressed for military intervention in support of Margaret, such as William, Lord Hastings, and Richard himself, must have felt silently vindicated.

  Still, Richard was feted as a national hero. Even his conduct at Edinburgh was praised by the king for mercifulness and restraint. The day after Berwick’s capture, Edward wrote proudly to Pope Sixtus IV, boasting that ‘the army which our brother lately led into Scotland, traversing the heart of that kingdom without hindrance, arrived at the royal city of Edinburgh’. There he had found ‘the king with the other chief lords of the kingdo
m shut up in a most strongly fortified castle, nowise thinking of arms, of war, of resistance, but giving up that right fair and opulent city into the power of the English’. Richard could have, the king wrote, ‘instantly doomed the same to plunder and flames’, had not his ‘compassion exceeded all human capacity … The noble band of victors, however, spared the supplicant and prostrate citizens, the churches, and not only the widows, orphans, and minors, but all persons found there unharmed.’36

  Several months later, in February 1483, Parliament lauded Richard, ‘the very powerful prince’ for his ‘noble deed and act’.37 Their unusual commendation heralded the passing of an Act, granting Richard his own personal palatinate, carved out of the West March and south-western Scotland, land which, the Act declared, the duke ‘late by his manifold and diligent labours and devoirs, hath subdued a great part of’. In return for a one-off payment of 10,000 marks, Richard would now be left to his own devices. Independent of the king for any further financial support, any land that he subsequently conquered in Scotland would be his to rule.

  The creation of the palatinate brought to fruition a long-cherished dream of Richard’s. The idea had been his own, a draft proposal of which he seems to have presented to the king before the commencement of the Scottish campaign. Richard’s maddening rush to Edinburgh did, it seems, have a purpose: to demonstrate what might be possible for the future, and to set out the scope of his ambitions. For Edward, compromised as he was over continuing a war against Scotland when he was shifting his attention to another war against France, giving his brother carte blanche in Scotland was the most convenient means by which to continue to fight, at relatively little cost: for 10,000 marks, from which Richard would have to pay future wardens’ salaries, Edward would be free to deal with France.

  The symbolism of the palatinate outweighed the actual value of the lands. It was the first since Lancaster had been made a county palatine in 1351. Yet Richard’s palatine status was restricted to Scottish territory only, where future conquest was by no means certain; clauses relating to the English northern lands in Cumberland were noticeably more restricted. Forfeitures for treason, which in a newly conquered territory were likely to be significant, were also reserved to the king, while wardships and marriages in Cumberland were also to be placed under royal control. It was clear that Edward IV was not prepared to surrender his position in the north-west entirely, but expected Richard to continue to act on behalf of the crown. For Edward, the creation of the palatinate and the gift of a lump sum of 10,000 marks may have seemed a high price to pay, but this had to be weighed against the savings that he would make in not having to pay the salary of the wardenship of the West March, now Richard’s responsibility, that had run at 1,200 marks in peacetime and £1,000 during war.

  In spite of the limitations on the palatinate, what mattered to Richard was that, above all, it provided him with an opportunity to create an inheritance, won on the battlefield, that for the first time would be truly his own. It did not seem to matter that the entire costs of the lands could potentially ruin him since he would no longer receive regular support from the crown, for he must have genuinely believed it was possible to carve a new livelihood out of conquest.

  In reality, on Richard’s part, it was nothing less than a desperate throw of the dice. His own finances had begun to falter. Already he was spending more than he was receiving in landed income. The establishment of Richard’s two colleges at Middleham and Barnard Castle had placed him above the noble families of the earls of Westmorland, the Nevilles, the Beauchamps and even his own father, who had only founded one college each. The limit of their ambition was a sensible one: even the richest magnates could not afford the vast sums needed to pay the costs of a foundation upfront; rather than bear the costs during their lifetime, they left their executors to pay off their debts through a trust. In contrast, the scale of Richard’s own foundations and their huge endowments of 200 marks for Middleham and 400 marks for Barnard Castle meant that the duke was spending a capital value of around £8,000 on the projects. In order to finance them, in 1478 Richard obtained permission through an Act of Parliament to alienate six of his wife’s Neville advowsons to the two colleges, while in 1480 he was forced to alienate six manors he had obtained from the countess of Oxford to Middleham College. Richard made other alienations, in effect donations, to other religious organisations: having purchased Seaham rectory for £150, in 1476 Richard gifted it to Coverham Abbey. Another three manors of the countess of Oxford were granted to St George’s Chapel in Windsor, while another manor, Fulmer, was given to Queen’s College, Cambridge.

  The use of land to provide for religious foundations on this level, rather than provide Richard with an income, is indicative of the duke’s general approach to his finances. Instead of his lands and lordships being used for revenue, Richard chose to use the money for religious and political purposes. Any revenue obtained from Middleham was spent on retaining men in the local area, with Richard having increased the fees he paid in order to retain loyalties. Already, by 1477, Richard was spending almost all of the income that he received from part of his de Vere estates in East Anglia, a total of nearly £400, on wages and his expenses, predominantly on expensive cloths and furs, with an outgoing of £374. It was a similar picture in Richard’s lordship of Glamorgan, whose profits had dwindled to £336 8s 5d, less than one third of what they had been during Edward II’s reign, of which Richard had committed himself to annual charges in payments of fees, wages and expenses amounting to £234 7s 11d, compared to £166 15s 10d when the lordship was held by the earl of Warwick.38 Certainly the office of the warden of the West March would have cost more to run and finance than the infrequent royal payments would have accommodated for, with Richard already £3,000 in debt from money owed to him by the crown. Other grants of land or agreements that Richard had entered into, including with Lady Hungerford, Lady Latimer and the countess of Oxford, saw Richard agree to take on considerable debts and expenses and to pay annuities on their behalf. In the absence of household accounts for the duke that would reveal his spending and revenue, it may be that Richard was drifting into a precarious financial position, spending more than his landed estate was raising.

  Already Richard had been faced with some difficult choices in selling off land to raise cash. In October 1478, he sold the manor of Hoton Pagnell, near Doncaster, covering some 500 acres in the West Riding, to the king for £500, despite the fact that it resided in his northern patrimony that the duke was attempting to create.39 Richard had only purchased the manor three years earlier for 500 marks.40 It seems that Richard needed the money more than he was perhaps prepared to admit: in subsequent years, Richard would sell further manors, including Wivenhoe in Essex to John, Lord Howard, for 1,100 marks, South Welles in Romsey and other lands in Hampshire for £200, and the Fitzlewis lands in Essex worth 1,100 marks a year. Richard would stop at nothing to realise some additional cash. In Romsey, he sought to make a profit on the back of a dubious legal transaction.41

  Richard, it seems, was beginning to struggle both financially and in performing his royal duties. On 28 February 1482, Edward wrote to his ‘right trusty and entirely beloved brother’ in his capacity as chief steward of the duchy of Lancaster north of the Trent. The king expressed his concerns that the honours and lordships belonging to the duchy had under Richard’s control ‘fallen in great decay’ with the forests, woods and chases having been ‘wasted as well by felling and carrying away of our timber and trees without our commandment or assent’. As a result, the forests were now ‘destroyed and gone’, along with the king’s profits, ‘to the hurt as well of us and of our tenants as decrease of our said game’. Richard, the king urged, was to ensure that the situation ‘might be hastily redressed and reformed by good oversight of you and your deputies’, which he accused his brother ‘here before of long time hath been slothed and not done as to your office it belongeth with many other defaults herein not yet remembered right hurtful unto us’.42

 
; The palatinate offered fresh hope and the potential for a new landed dynasty to be created. It was the culmination of more than a decade’s work. Richard had created for himself a northern dynasty more powerful than the Nevilles had ever managed to achieve. Yet the stakes remained high. Richard’s military power on the borders was dependent not on his salary as a warden, but on his retinue and his revenue as a northern overlord. The affinity that he had built up, a network of loyal supporters whose livelihoods were entirely dependent on the duke, was funded from the profits of his northern estates: Middleham and Sheriff Hutton in Yorkshire, Penrith in Cumberland and Barnard Castle on the Tees, along with the other lordships of Helmsley, Richmond, Skipton and Scarborough that he had also acquired. Everything rested on the security of his Neville patrimony.

  And yet the security of Richard’s Neville inheritance remained dangerously tenuous, dependent as it was on the teenage George Neville, the former duke of Bedford, whose survival was critical for Richard to enjoy his wife’s estates as part of his inheritance. Richard’s control of the lands remained perilous: if George were to die without an heir, Richard’s own interest in the Neville estates would revert to just a life interest, with Richard in effect holding the lands for the rest of his life before they passed over to Lord Latimer as the next Neville heir.