In a letter to Sir William Stonor, sent on 20 June, Simon Stallworth noted how Thomas Rotherham, John Morton and Oliver King ‘are yet in the Tower’, though he supposed that ‘they shall come out nevertheless’. Men had been sent to search their London residences ‘for sure keeping’; he suspected that ‘there shall be sent men of my lord Protector’s to these lord’s places in the country. They are not like to come out of ward yet.’ Immediately after referring to those arrested on 13 June, Stallworth continued: ‘As for Foster [John Forster] he is in hold and men fear for his life. Mistress Shore is in prison; what shall happen her I know not.’29 It seems that More was indeed correct in inferring that Elizabeth Shore had been involved with Hastings, just as it seems there must have been a link between John Forster and Hastings. The additional evidence of the timing of the marquess of Dorset’s flight, together with the confiscation of his goods, suggests that Richard had discovered evidence that linked Hastings and Dorset, together with Elizabeth Shore and John Forster, in some form of association. Whether this was enough to convict Hastings in any court of law seems highly doubtful, but whatever secret messages had been passed from Hastings, via Forster or Shore, to Dorset, or indeed Queen Elizabeth, provided Richard with the pretext for launching his sudden attack.
Tellingly, however, Stallworth added in a final postscript to his letter how since Hastings’s execution ‘all the lord Chamberlain’s men become my lord of Buckingham’s men’.30 If Buckingham had hoped to benefit from his rival’s fall, his plan had worked. Both men were now free to act as they chose. ‘In this way, without justice or judgement’, the Crowland chronicler wrote, ‘the three strongest supporters of the new king were removed and, with all the rest of his faithful men expecting something similar, these two dukes did thereafter what they wanted’.31
The change in the capital was immediately noticeable. ‘Then great confusion and great fear attacked all men’, Polydore Vergil later mused.32 There certainly seems to have been a raised threat, for on 20 June ‘it was showed the mind of the Mayor and Aldermen’ that a watch was to be held at the Cheap, with seven fellowships taking their turn to stand guard. The state of alarm and confusion in the capital is well illustrated by a note written by the London merchant George Cely:
There is great rumour in the realm. The Scots have done great in England. The Chamberlain is deceased, in trouble the Chancellor is disproved and not content. The bishop of Ely is dead. If the king, God save his life, were deceased. The duke of Gloucester were in any peril. If my lord Prince, God defend, were troubled. If my lord Northumberland were dead or greatly troubled. If my lord Howard were slain. De monsieur Saint John’s.33
The final reference is to Sir John Weston, the prior of the Order of St John of Jerusalem, who was Cely’s main source of information. It is clear that a great many rumours, mostly untrue, were flying around, though, interestingly, Cely and Weston both had bought into the rumour that Richard himself might be in ‘peril’.
Still, men were prepared to believe that Richard was acting in the best interests of the king. ‘Thus far, though all the evidence looked as if he coveted the crown’, Mancini observed, ‘yet there remained some hope, because he was not yet claiming the throne, inasmuch as he still professed to do all these things as an avenger of treason and old wrongs, and because all private deeds and official documents bore the titles and name of King Edward V. But after Hastings was removed, all the attendants who had waited upon the king were debarred access to him.’34
With the planned coronation of Edward V just a week away, events now moved fast. Richard’s immediate priority was to secure the possession of the king’s brother, Richard, duke of York, still in sanctuary with his mother, Queen Elizabeth, at Westminster. Already, Dominic Mancini wrote, Richard had ‘with the consent of the council … surrounded the sanctuary with troops’.35 With Hastings dead, now the duke decided to act. The Crowland chronicler recorded how ‘the following Monday they came by boat to Westminster with a great crowd, with swords and clubs and compelled the Lord Cardinal of Canterbury to enter the sanctuary, with many others, to allow her son Richard to leave and come to the Tower for the comfort of his brother’, while Simon Stallworth noted how ‘on Monday last was at Westminster great plenty of harnessed men there was the deliverance of the Duke of York to my lord Cardinal’. Under the date of 16 June in the household accounts of John, Lord Howard, is the ominous entry for ‘8 boats up and down from Westminster’.36
Archbishop Bourchier of Canterbury, together with John, Lord Howard, and the duke of Buckingham, argued that Queen Elizabeth and her children should ‘return to the realm’ and give up sanctuary, for which ‘they gave both private and public faith’. When Elizabeth continued to refuse, instead they asked ‘at least for her son Richard’. The choice of the aged Thomas Bourchier seems to have persuaded Elizabeth to finally relinquish her son, ‘trusting in the word of the cardinal of Canterbury’, Mancini wrote, who himself seems to have believed that there was ‘no guile’ behind Richard’s motivations, and ‘persuaded the queen to do this, seeking as much to prevent a violation of the sanctuary as to mitigate by his good services the fierce resolve of the duke’.37 There was little else that Queen Elizabeth could do. She could see that Richard had ‘herself besieged’ in ‘preparation for violence’. According to the Crowland chronicler, Elizabeth ‘in words, assenting with many thanks to this proposal, she accordingly sent the boy’ out of sanctuary. Elizabeth delivered her son to the archbishop, wrote one chronicler, ‘by fair means, and for trust that the Queen had in the archbishop, which Bishop thought nor intended none harm’.38
The young prince was taken first to Westminster Hall, where he was met by the Chancellor, John Russell, ‘and many lords temporal’ along with the duke of Buckingham, who met him in the middle of the hall. He was then escorted to the door of the Star Chamber, where he was received by his uncle, Richard, ‘with many loving words’, Simon Stallworth wrote, ‘and so departed with my lord Cardinal to the Tower where he is, blessed be Jesu Mercy’.
Richard’s lodging in the Tower with his elder brother, Edward, ‘did not arouse suspicion at that time’ since kings and their close relatives were expected to make a formal procession from the Tower to Westminster the day before the coronation.39 Nevertheless, ‘after this’, one London chronicler wrote, ‘were the prince and the duke of York holden more strength and then was privy talking in London that the lord protector should be king’.40 At the same time Richard ordered that his brother Clarence’s son, the ten-year-old Richard, earl of Warwick, be brought to the city, where he was placed in the custody of his wife, Anne. For Mancini, it was an early sign as to Richard’s intentions to seize the throne for himself: ‘for he feared that if the entire progeny of King Edward became extinct, yet this child, who was also of royal blood, would still embarrass him’.41
The Crowland chronicler noted how, from the moment that Richard, duke of York, had been placed in the Protector’s care, ‘both these dukes showed their intentions, not in private but openly’.42 Richard ‘took off the mourning clothes that he had always worn since his brother’s death’, Mancini observed, ‘and putting on purple raiment he often rode through the capital surrounded by a thousand attendants’. The public display, the Italian concluded, was intended to ‘receive the attention and applause of the people as yet under the name of protector’, but already it had been noted that ‘each day he entertained to dinner at his private dwellings an increasingly large number of men’.43 Thomas More later described how ‘for little and little all folk withdrew from the Tower and drew to Crosby’s place in Bishopsgate Street where the protector kept his household. The protector had the resort, the king, in manner desolate.’44
If Richard hoped that such displays of largesse would help to win around the hearts and minds of the public, the reaction of Londoners watching the spectacle was disquieting. ‘When he exhibited himself through the streets of the city he was scarcely watched by anybody’, Dominic Mancini wrote, observing the events
unfold by the day, ‘rather did they curse him with a fate worthy of his crimes, since no one now doubted at what he was aiming.’45 Mancini wrote his account of these summer months when he had returned to France, finishing his text in December the same year, by which time he had an opportunity to reflect upon what had taken place. In retrospect, it was easy to see where Richard’s actions were leading. Yet in the confusion of the present, uncertainty remained as to what exactly had happened to Hastings in the Tower; still Richard presented himself as the loyal uncle and Protector, determined to defend the king’s interests. His letters condemning the Woodvilles had been written on behalf of the king; in an age when disinformation was more likely to be spread than accurate information, who could really have known what Richard intended, or what the consequences of his actions would be?
With both the king and his brother now safely in Richard’s hands, the following day, 17 June, the decision was taken to cancel the summoning of Parliament, with writs of supersedeas being issued. No explanation was given for the cancellation. Parliament and the coronation were now officially postponed until 9 November, with the mayor and aldermen announcing to the city of London that the money collected for Edward V’s coronation gift would be returned to the city’s wards due to the postponement.46 At New Romney, the corporation records show how there was ‘paid for a message from Dover Castle, postponing Parliament and the Coronation’. The message arrived too late for the corporation, which had already sent John Cheyne ‘riding to aid at the Coronation of King Edward V’; he must have just departed before the message had arrived, since the journey time between New Romney and the capital was at least two days.47 Instead, the nobility were summoned from their estates across the country. Believing that they were being recalled to ‘hear the reason for Hastings’s execution’ and to set a new date for the coronation, each arrived with his own sizeable retinues; instead they were ordered to ‘retain a few attendants’ and send home their servants and armed men to prevent the threat of looting.48 Simon Stallworth wrote on 21 June how Edward, Lord Lisle, ‘is come to my Lord Protector and awaits upon him’, while the capital nervously awaited the arrival of troops from the north, adding how ‘It is thought there shall be 20 thousand of my Lord Protector and my Lord of Buckingham’s men in London this week, to what intent I know not but to keep the peace.’49
Nearly a fortnight had passed since Richard had composed his letters to the city of York and Ralph, Lord Neville, requesting their support against a Woodville conspiracy. Richard must have known on 10 June that his actions would set in train a series of events from which there would be no return. Yet it is unclear whether even the duke could have anticipated that within the next fourteen days William, Lord Hastings, would have been executed. Instead, it seems highly probable that Richard had been bounced into taking action sooner than he might have wished. The duke would have known that the northern army he had summoned would not arrive at the capital until 25 June at the earliest. As it happened, the earl of Northumberland and Richard Ratcliffe had not departed from Pontefract even by this date. Had Richard intended to wait until their arrival before springing his trap? As it happened, and events unfolded differently, the duke’s hand was forced to take action much earlier than he must have hoped was necessary.
If the content of the Chancellor John Russell’s draft sermon for the opening of Parliament is taken at face value, it seems that Richard’s initial ambitions had been for the continuation of the protectorate. If so, Richard anticipated that he would face resistance from the queen and the Woodvilles that would need to be countered, hence his need to arrange a final attack on the queen and ‘her adherents’. He had not bargained on William, Lord Hastings, choosing to take sides with the queen. When Hastings’s links with Elizabeth Shore and the marquess of Dorset were uncovered, together with other links involving John Forster, Thomas Rotherham and John Morton, which suggested that Hastings had drawn increasingly close to the ‘queen’s party’, Richard knew that he had to strike first, sooner than he had expected.
If the decision to execute Hastings was a knee-jerk response to what must have seemed remarkable news, it was also the catalyst for the sudden need to remove Richard, duke of York, from sanctuary, stripping the Woodvilles of any remaining power that they might have. Even then, Queen Elizabeth did not envisage her younger son Richard’s fate when she allowed him to leave sanctuary in preparation for his elder brother’s coronation; neither did the council, which allowed Richard to surround the sanctuary at Westminster with troops. Even the archbishop of Canterbury felt prepared to persuade the queen to hand over her son, doing so in good faith that they could still ensure that stability and order prevailed. Even after the coronation and Parliament were postponed, many in the council were still convinced that Richard’s ambitions could not extend beyond the preservation of the Yorkist polity and the safe accession of Edward V. As late as 18 June, the young king was still signing warrants, while orders were issued for the appointment of men to gather food for the royal household for the next six months on 17 June.50 Yet the business of government began to slowly wind down. In the signet office, the last document to survive is dated 11 June, while the last grants to pass the Great Seal took place on 14 and 15 June. The final date for any government business to be transacted under the name of Edward V was on the same date as Stallworth’s letter, 21 June.51
9
‘UNDOUBTED SON AND HEIR’
On Sunday, 22 June, crowds gathered outside St Paul’s to listen to a sermon to be preached by Ralph Shaa, the brother of the mayor of London, Edmund Shaa. Both Richard and Buckingham had arrived to attend the spectacle, ‘with a huge audience of lords spiritual and temporal’. Mancini wrote how Shaa in his sermon ‘did not blush to say, in the face of decency and all religion, that the progeny of King Edward should be instantly eradicated, for neither had he been a legitimate king, nor could his issue be so. Edward, said they, was conceived in adultery and in every way was unlike the late duke of York, whose son he was falsely said to be, but Richard, duke of Gloucester, who altogether resembled his father, was come to the throne as the legitimate successor.’ 1 Listening to the sermon preached by Shaa, who expounded the claim that ‘Edward was not born of Richard duke of York, but from a certain other, who secretly knew his mother’, few could believe what they were hearing. When Shaa continued his argument that ‘no one could doubt … Richard is the true son of the duke, who by right should inherit his father’s realm due to him, and since they were presently without a king, they wanted Richard the true royal child to become king’, the crowd, ‘at once astonished’, began to turn against Shaa, ‘and detested the great temerity of the orator, as others stood stunned at the strangeness and wonder of the thing, at the manner of madness; others feared for themselves, frightened by the terrible cruelty, as they were friends of the royal children, others judged the act to certainly mean the end for Edward’s sons’.
Shaa’s sermon was badly received by those listening; ‘this sermon so discontented the greater part of the audience’, one chronicler noted, ‘that after this day [Shaa] was little reputed or regarded’.2 Thomas More later wrote how Richard and Buckingham had ostentatiously made their way ‘through the people and then stood to hearken to the sermon. But the people were so far from crying “King Richard!” that they stood as if they had been turned into stones, for wonder of this shameful sermon. After which, once ended, the preacher got him home and never after dared look out for shame, but kept him out of sight like an owl.’3
Richard’s intentions were now clear, with Mancini noting that the sermon had been ‘a special opportunity of publicly showing his hand’. Everyone now understood that he intended to claim the throne for himself. As one chronicler noted, ‘it was declared by Dr Ralph Shaa brother to this mayor and proved by such reasons as he made there and then, that the children of King Edward were not rightful inheritors of the Crown, and that King Edward was not the legitimate son of the Duke of York as the lord protector was’; another wrote that i
t ‘was declared at Paul’s cross, that king Edward’s children were not rightful inheritors unto the crown, but that the Duke of Gloucester’s title was better than theirs’.4
Yet the argument used by Shaa, that Edward IV had been illegitimate, would soon be disposed of. The magnitude of the accusation, with Richard accusing his own mother, Cecily, of adultery, seems to have been ill thought through; certainly no one seems to have discussed it with Cecily herself. When she discovered what had been said at St Paul’s, she was furious, forcing her son to reconsider his argument for succeeding to the throne. ‘The common report was that Edward’s sons had been called bastards, not Edward’, Vergil wrote, yet this ‘in every way is untrue, for Cecily … being falsely accused of adultery, complained (as it was said) in many places to many men, some of whom still live, of the great injury done to her by her son Richard’.5 Instead, a new charge explaining the two princes’ illegitimacy, and Richard’s right to the throne, would need to be found.
For the moment, no one dared to challenge Richard. The fear of the approaching army from the north instilled a sense of paralysis in the capital. ‘Armed men in frightening and unheard of numbers were summoned from the North, Wales and other districts within their command and power’, the Crowland chronicler wrote. Yet the northern army, assembled under the leadership of the earl of Northumberland, Richard Ratcliffe and Ralph, Lord Neville, had still to depart Pontefract. Before they did, there was one last piece of business that needed to be dealt with.
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