Richard III and the Murder in the Tower

by Peter A. Hancock

  The parchment is not the only document that appears around this time, for shortly after the week of the 13th, the Croyland continuator commented on another parchment roll (see Figure 29). Again it is important to quote the original source41 directly; thus Croyland noted that:

  From that day [16 June] both these dukes showed their intentions, not in private but openly. Armed men in frightening and unheard-of numbers were summoned from the North, and Wales and from whatever other districts lay within their command and power and on the 26th day of the same month of June, Richard, the protector, claimed for himself the government of the kingdom with the name and title of king; and on the same day in the great hall of Westminster he thrust himself into the marble chair. The pretext of this intrusion and for taking possession in this way was as follows. It was put forward, by means of a supplication contained in a certain parchment roll, that King Edward’s sons were bastards, by submitting that he had been pre-contracted to a certain Lady Eleanor Boteler before he married Queen Elizabeth and, further, that the blood of his other brother, George, duke of Clarence, had been attainted so that, at the time, no certain and uncorrupt blood of the lineage of Richard, duke of York, was to be found except in the person of the said Richard, duke of Gloucester. At the end of this roll, therefore, on behalf of the lords and commonalty of the kingdom, he was besought to assume his lawful rights. It was put about then that this roll originated in the North whence so many people came to London although there was no-one who did not know the identity of the author (who was in London all the time) of such sedition and infamy.

  As I have noted elsewhere, the author of this parchment roll is usually considered to have been Stillington, but it is my hypothesis that the author of this essentially ‘legal’ document was Catesby. If we dissect what Croyland says here, we can see that it nowhere contradicts the theory I have offered. In several places it actually confirms it. While it is clear that the Croyland author does not approve of this process, he makes it clear that there were specific attempts to show how Richard was exercising a legal right to the throne. It has been argued, largely on the basis of speculation, that the statements in this parchment roll did not match what was eventually included in the act which ratified Richard’s right to the throne. Unfortunately, since we do not possess this parchment roll, much as we should like to, such debates continue to be speculation until further evidence is discovered.

  Why did Stillington Reveal the Pre-contract?

  One of the issues that is rarely considered to any great degree is: if he did actually do so, why did the bishop reveal the pre-contract? Also, again on the supposition that it was Stillington, why wait until some time presumably around 9 June? The traditional version has it that his motivation for this was ‘revenge.’ But revenge on whom? If it was Edward IV, he was already dead and the revenge could only have been on his progeny. If it was then indirect revenge on Edward IV through his son, we must remember that Stillington was a member of Edward V’s Council and, as an old man, why would he do this to a youngster that he presumably knew to some degree and had a hand, albeit a small one, in raising? Further, Edward V had grown up largely separated from his father, and was the revenge motive enough for such a tired, sick old man?

  We know Stillington was a staunch Yorkist supporter and had been all his life. If he were the source of the revelation he was acting against at least part of the family he had followed all his life. Some have said that Stillington didn’t want to see a minority rule, but Edward V was rising thirteen and would be a fully mature monarch in his own right in only a couple of years; surely this was not a viable motive? And, as Mowat has noted, why did he wait until June, with all the preparations for the coronation going ahead? It makes no sense: if he was going to tell Richard he could have told him on 5 May, the day after the entry into London, when the Duke of Gloucester could have then immediately sent for troops, rather than waiting until 10 June. The problem here is that if we view Stillington as the source, we are presented with significant problems in establishing a motive. However, such interpretational difficulties are totally obviated if Stillington changes from the source of the knowledge of the pre-contract to simply confirming that what was put to him by Richard was true. It is quite natural that Stillington’s name has become associated with this revelation, as he was the only one of the three people present at the ceremony left alive and the inference is a natural one. Further, as a prior Chancellor of England and a leading member of the clergy, it is natural to associate his authority with so weighty a matter. However, the inside ‘fixer’ of events here seems to be the Speaker, William Catesby. I suspect that it was his influence that directed matters and I suspect that this was generally quite well known, as is evidenced by Henry Tudor’s reaction immediately following Bosworth. One of the clinching factors in securing this argument is a brief assessment of who benefited following Richard’s ascension to the throne. If it was Stillington who helped Richard to the position of ultimate authority in the realm, he received precious little, if any, reward. However, if, as I have proposed, it was Catesby, the reward was, as we have seen, indeed commensurate with the service (and see Appendix VI: The Offices and Lands of William Catesby).

  Betrayal as a Common Denominator

  The key to understanding Richard and his actions immediately following Edward’s death is his abhorrence of betrayal. If we look at the men taken that June day in the Tower, the common denominator was their individual act of betrayal, the antithesis of loyalty.42 Thomas Rotherham had already shown his hand earlier in relation to the queen and Richard had no trust there. With respect to Stanley, as Kendall notes, ‘When he [Richard] was but seventeen years old – in the spring of 1470 – he had experienced Stanley’s capacity for disloyalty, when that shift lord had been the husband of Warwick’s sister.’ The case of John Morton is also not hard to understand. Lancastrian at heart, his betrayals were multiple, changing sides whenever convenient, but a traitor to the house of York in the end. With him, Richard would have had few qualms about detainment. However, it was the betrayal of his friend and comrade Hastings that was deepest of all. I see no evident conspiracy here. Having dispatched Hastings it was a prudent move to detain those guilty of disloyalty also. Mere spatial and temporal proximity do not necessarily connote any causal connection. I think much of this putative conspiracy is created in the monograph of Sir Thomas More from whole cloth.

  With respect to Rivers, Grey and Vaughan, they had plotted against Richard, as per the Stony Stratford episode: they were thus guilty of treason against the king, since Richard had been king in fact since the day Edward IV died (if the pre-contract were true). He did try to have them executed, but the Council refused and he abided by this decision – but when he knew it was treason against a king and not just betrayal of the Protector, on 13 June, he took immediate steps to have the execution warrants sent north, most probably early the following week.43

  On Murdering the Relatives of Edward IV

  I want to start these final considerations by bringing up a point that, in my view, is rarely given enough emphasis. Richard III did not have two nephews in the Tower at one time, he had three. Also, we know as certainly as we know anything of these times that Richard did not kill at least one of these nephews. Our certain knowledge extends to the fact that Henry VII did, in fact, execute one of these three boys. That it was Edward, Earl of Warwick, son of George, Duke of Clarence means that his demise has received much less publicity than the sons of Edward IV. However, the fact remains that one of the nephews of Richard III was certainly murdered by Henry VII who has, of course, been implicated in the murder of the other two boys also.44 Parenthetically, we should also note that Henry VII’s son, Henry VIII, executed Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury who was the daughter of George, Duke of Clarence and sister of Edward, Earl of Warwick. Thus, like his father before him, Henry VIII was also certainly involved in the extinction of Clarence’s children.

  In the end, almost everyone will want to know how the pre
sent information provides the ‘solution’ to the mystery of the ‘Princes in the Tower’ I am sorry to disappoint, but it does not really address this issue.45 Until history uses much more sophisticated techniques such as concept maps and advanced simulation models, we shall only take diminishingly small steps toward the goal of solving such a mystery. Even if we are able to use such powerful tools, we need to be able to distill methods which will tell us whether the problem is, or is not, soluble. And we shall want to be able to specify what additional information it is that will allow an eventual solution and whether it will be feasible that such ‘new’ information can or will ever be distilled. All this is in the future, but for the present, we must try to provide a synopsis for what the present observations say about the persistent mystery of the two boys and their disappearance from the Tower of London.

  The first point is that the sequence I have described tends to support the contention that the boys were illegitimate and thus barred from ascending the throne of England. This being so, Richard, Duke of Gloucester had no immediate need to have them murdered. Indeed, one can argue that under the circumstances they stood in almost exactly the situation as Edward, Earl of Warwick, the son of Richard’s brother, George, Duke of Clarence, who was also before Richard in line for the throne but barred because of a different impediment, that of Clarence’s attainder. It would seem that those who accuse Richard of ‘nephewcide’ must also therefore, accuse him of evident inconsistency. After all, why murder two inconvenient nephews and leave the third alive. Let me be very explicit on this point: I do not think that the proposition I have advanced in this work rules out Richard as being behind any purported murder. After all, his dispatch of William, Lord Hastings, Earl Rivers and others certainly demonstrates that Richard was a man of his times, and these were dangerous times. I do not think that we can, with any certainty, rule out the possibility of his involvement. It is just when we come down to a full and complete analysis of the existing information, there is no evidence of murder, and with the frustrating and possible exception of the ‘bones’ in Westminster Abbey, precious little evidence of any untimely death at all.

  Richard and his Motivations

  After all this discussion, there is one individual, quite obviously the key person in all of these events, whom we have encountered here really only in outline. The central question is: what of Richard in all these events? I think it best to judge him by his actions, certainly not by the opinion of biased commentators. When we do this we see that Richard was no paragon of untrammeled virtue, but then neither was he the cartoon tyrant that popular history has rendered him. As I have observed, he was a man of his times. With respect to the executions he approved, the four primary examples we have encountered in this text have, as I have emphasised, a common motivational factor: betrayal. Colyngbourne, as an additional example, is also a straight case of treason46 and Buckingham was executed because of his betrayal in his mysterious act of rebellion. It is doubtful if Colyngbourne sought to see the king, but we know Buckingham did apply for this privilege, which was summarily denied. If we apply these same motivational sources to the case of Hastings I think we see the consistent pattern I have observed. Hastings’ ‘betrayal’ was all the more painful because Richard saw him as an ally. Thus the celerity of his punishment was in proportion to the perceived degree of betrayal. Colyngbourne’s case took several months to mature. Buckingham’s case took several days following his capture. However, Hastings’ rate of dispatch was more in the order of mere minutes. To an extent, Hastings’ betrayal extended to Jane Shore, but as a woman and only an indirect participant Richard dealt severely but not terminally with what he must have seen as being a betrayal of his brother and, indirectly, of himself. The rapidity of the execution of Hastings argues strongly for an act committed in the heat of anger. I am persuaded that Richard regretted his action, and especially two years later on the road to Bosworth where the old warrior Hastings may have helped tip the balance of the battle.

  It is a demonstrable fact that Richard could strike for the purpose of political expediency. The events of Stony Stratford show this clearly. Arguably an act of self-defence in the grander scheme of things, Richard was quick to dispatch those who sought his destruction. With respect to the princes, I think it is a question of whether Richard saw them more as his brother’s sons or as the queen’s Woodville heirs. I tend to think the former. Betrayal was so wounding to Richard because he himself was so loyal. To him, his motto was not simply words but rather a principle by which to live. He had been fiercely loyal to his eldest brother, following him into exile and even siding with him against his other brother George, Duke of Clarence in a direct family dispute. This, despite being closer to George during his formative years. His loyalty to Edward never swerved in life and I think, as a man of this principle, he would have distained to harm his brother’s sons in death. I think he would have thought it simply below him. However, as rightful king, of political experience he would have been worried about factiousness and my best present estimate is that he would have quietly sent them out of harm’s way. I think Richard was rather straight-laced, compared at least to his partying brother. The somewhat dour northerner may well have been relatively unpopular in the more sophisticated south, a propensity that continues to the present day.47 Despite all that occurred, I think Richard still viewed his nephews as a family responsibility and would have, as far as possible, protected them. I think the reason that the subsequent Tudor regime lived in a state of fear, and the reason Elizabeth Woodville eventually reconciled herself to Richard, was that they both knew this fact.

  8

  Summary and Narrative

  A Narrative of Eighty-eight Days

  In the early days of April 1483, while still at his northern estates, Richard heard the distressing news that Edward the king had died. Although not completely unexpected, this news was naturally upsetting, especially to one who had been such a loyal supporter throughout his whole life of his idolised elder brother. Arranging for services of remembrance for the dead king, Richard pledged his allegiance to Edward’s son, and had his retainers do likewise. He sent comforting words to Elizabeth Woodville, the grieving widow. She was clearly not absolutely prostrate with grief since before he left the north Richard heard from William, Lord Hastings of various Woodville machinations. Perhaps aware that his brother had made him Protector, he would have certainly been apprised of that fact fairly quickly and the Woodville actions were thus not merely against him personally, but they also showed disrespect for the last wishes of his recently deceased brother and monarch. Such actions showed scant regard for Edward’s memory and it must have been a wary Duke of Gloucester who at last set out from Yorkshire for London.

  Efforts had apparently been made to co-ordinate the respective journeys of Richard and his nephew. Not only known by written evidence but the simple geography of the respective routes, Edward’s retinue made an obvious and expressed effort to meet with Richard at a mutually agreeable site, which was evidently Northampton. Possibly Richard saw these arrangements as a litmus test of the intentions of the wider Woodville diaspora? Would Rivers and his companions follow the agreed arrangements to the letter? Would they do as they had promised? Whatever the reason, it appears that Rivers and members of the new king’s party deviated from the agreement. Spurred on by Hastings’ warnings1 and the now express antipathy of the recently met Duke of Buckingham, Richard interpreted the missed meeting at Northampton as evidence of Woodville double-dealing and he moved quickly to secure his situation. He assumed control of the person of the king and had Rivers, Grey and Vaughan sent to various strongholds in the north which he himself controlled. While I suspect that it might have been the desire of the king and those of the Woodville family to stay at the family home in Grafton Regis for the night that created this situation, it is evident that in failing to satisfy Richard about this Rivers had made a tactical mistake. It was one for which he and his colleagues would pay dearly.

  With the
young king safely in his charge, Richard now proceeded to London. Here, he assumed his rightful position as Protector and de facto leader, his actions negating the idea of a council of equals, which was never his brother’s intent. In this role he put in motion the preparations for his nephew’s coronation. The absurd date of 4 May, which the Woodvilles had argued for, was revised in light of the scale of the actual preparations needed. Despite his move to cement his position at Northampton, Richard was still aware of the efforts of other members of the Woodville clan to undermine his protectorate and overthrow him personally. In light of these dangers, he sent to those of his affiliation in the north for reinforcements. After all, he did not know his nephew very well and instability may well have followed the coronation when the new king would begin to have a much greater say in matters. The coronation, now scheduled for late June, was to have some form of parliament to follow. It was against these contingencies that Richard called for reinforcements. For surely, if Richard could have retained the reins of government for the few short years it would take his nephew to come to maturity, he could stabilise the country against internal conflicts while educating his young nephew in the role of royal leadership. This would give Richard time to emphasise his own role as bulwark of the northern marches and to see Edward V move beyond the status of Woodville puppet into a king in his own right. This strategy was put into place and, up to 13 June, proceeded accordingly.