The Protector’s devious machinations were just beginning; one by one he began to eliminate the personal and political threats to his ascent.
On May 1, 1483, Elizabeth Woodville, the dowager queen, learned that her young son and his governor, Earl Rivers, had been waylaid the previous day by Richard and his cohort, the Duke of Buckingham, as they made their way from Ludlow to London for the youth’s coronation. Richard had knelt before the boy king and with mock sincerity told the naive child that his mother’s relatives had his worst interests at heart, adding that they were the same evil councilors and ministers who had surrounded his father in his last years and who had encouraged him to indulge in all manner of vice and excess. The Protector, an ironic name if ever there was one, impressed upon the boy that these malignant influences had to be removed for the good of the realm. In Richard’s view, he wasn’t kidnapping the king—he was rescuing him.
When Edward didn’t quite seem to buy it, Richard upped the ante. He told the little king that these wicked councilors not only sought to deprive his nice uncle Richard of his office as Protector (which was partially true), but that they were plotting to kill little Edward himself—and that Earl Rivers was one of the ringleaders. Edward was overwhelmed by the barrage of frightening information his uncle was feeding him, and especially by this casting of aspersions against the man who had been his governor since he was a baby. Intimidated by Richard, the child ultimately agreed that the kingdom would be better off if it were governed in accordance with his late father’s intentions, meaning that Richard should remain Protector.
Charging them with conspiring against him as Protector and for leading the late king into debauchery, on April 30 Richard arrested the dowager queen’s brother Anthony Woodville, the 2nd Earl Rivers; Sir Richard Grey, her younger son by her first marriage; and another Woodville adherent, Sir Thomas Vaughan, who had been the treasurer in the boy’s household. The men were brought to Pontefract Castle and imprisoned there.
Meanwhile, as little Edward was being escorted out of Wales, back in London the dowager queen’s servants and other retainers were hastily scrambling to hide what remained of Edward IV’s treasures so that Richard couldn’t get his usurping hands on them. Fearing the worst, the dowager queen sought sanctuary at Westminster with the rest of her children, including Edward V’s younger brother, the little Duke of York.
Richard began to amass adherents who would back the notion of crowning an adult, experienced administrator in preference to an untested, easily influenced child, reminding them how disastrous it had been for the realm during the minority of Henry VI—events that remained firmly entrenched in the minds of many men who had lived through them. But at some point (historians continue to debate over when Richard formed the idea), he decided that he didn’t want to be a bookmark for Edward V, keeping the throne warm until the boy king’s coronation. He wanted the crown for himself. However, to cloak his motives, Richard continued to maintain the pretense of planning for Edward’s big day.
On Sunday, May 4, 1483 (the day the Woodvilles had originally scheduled for the coronation of little Edward V), Richard and Buckingham entered London with their adolescent “captive.” Fearing reprisals from the Woodville faction (to whom the boy king was considerably closer than he was to Richard, a man the child barely knew), Richard had summoned military aid from his northern supporters, the better to checkmate the Woodvilles from raising arms against him. Edward V, clad in blue velvet, rode through the streets of London with great pageantry. Behind him rode Richard, garbed head to toe in obsequious black. But clattering along the cobblestones with the royal entourage were four cartloads of armor and weapons bearing the Woodville coat of arms—Richard’s offer of proof that the dowager queen’s party was indeed plotting against him.
That very day, acting as Protector, Richard summoned London’s highest officers, clerics, and nobles and before them swore fealty to his nephew. He then called his first council meeting—bringing into the political tent (if only as a matter of lip service) Woodville supporters as well as those men who had been loyal to Edward IV, but were never too crazy about his wife and her family. It was the latter group who would comprise Richard’s chief cadre of ministers. Thus, the transition from Edward IV’s reign to Richard’s (since Edward V never really reigned at all, except in name) was a fairly smooth one.
From the moment he became Protector, Richard’s ambition knew no bounds. He would use every weapon in his arsenal from reason to intimidation to murder to ensure that the next coronation would be his own.
Writing his history from a monastery, the Croyland Chronicler was a contemporary of Richard’s who may have been an eyewitness to many of the events of the day, and in any case was privy to certain information that has since been proven accurate. The Croyland Chronicler stated that “with the consent and good will of all the lords” Richard “was invested with power to order and forbid in every matter, just like another king . . .” and was given “tutele and oversight of the king’s most royal person.”
This is telling. “Tutele” is the root of our word “tutelage” and the person given “tutele” over a royal minor was his governor or teacher, responsible for the child’s education and upbringing, as Earl Rivers had been for little Edward. But the person who would have had oversight of the minor was most often someone else, acting in loco parentis. When it came to his nephew, the rightful king, Richard made sure to be formally awarded both roles, which meant that he could control all access to the boy.
It was generally agreed that Edward V’s temporary residence at the palace of the bishop of London was far too ascetic and unsuitable for a king. So Richard cheerfully accepted the Duke of Buckingham’s suggestion to move the boy to the Tower of London—which at the time was one of the capital’s four royal residences as well as a prison. Sometime between May 9 and May 19, Edward was ensconced in the apartments of state. For having Richard’s back, Buckingham was rewarded with numerous judicial and administrative offices throughout the entire kingdom.
As time was of the essence, Richard became the consummate multitasker, taking down his perceived enemies on all fronts. That spring he denounced Edward’s favorite mistress, Jane Shore, for sexual immorality; and in an event that unwittingly made her a folk heroine, he had the bishop of London command her to parade through the streets in the manner of a penitent—clad only in her white shift and kirtle, carrying a candle and reciting psalms with a conical “dunce” cap perched on her head. This Jane did with as much dignity as she could muster, much to Richard’s dismay. The king then imprisoned her at Ludgate on charges that she had employed sorcery and witchcraft to aid and abet her royal lover—allegations that of course could not be proved.
Richard would also accuse Jane of carrying on illicit and passionate affairs with two of Edward IV’s kinsmen and supporters—lords Dorset and Hastings. In a proclamation dated October 23, 1483, Richard denounced Dorset for harboring “the unshameful and mischievous woman called Shore’s wife in adultery.” However, Hastings, who some historians believe became Jane’s next protector, was not even in England during the time he was allegedly bedding her. And in any event, Richard had sent Hastings to the block on June 13, 1483. The charges of harlotry with Dorset and Hastings were likely a smear campaign, one that bears the fingerprints of Richard’s cabal of courtiers. The accusations are now considered baseless, but at the time, Jane’s countrymen and -women gave them credence and she was roundly denounced as a whore.
As Richard continued to insist that he was planning Edward’s coronation, setting a new date of June 22, England was on the brink of turmoil. There was no constitution at that time. With Edward V still a minor, the realm could easily descend into chaos in the absence of a strong governor. As for the day-to-day political machinations during Richard’s protectorate, everyone was winging it. In addition, various factions were already seeking to control and influence their barely adolescent new monarch.
Spreading the word that the Woodville faction intende
d to do him harm, on June 10, 1483, Richard appealed to his loyal northerners to rise up and come to his aid. He dispatched a letter that read: We . . . pray you . . . come unto us to London . . . with as many as ye can defensibly arrayed, there to aid and assist us against the Queen, her blood adherents, and her affinity, which have intended, and daily doth intend, to murder and utterly destroy us and our cousin the duke of Buckingham, and the old royal blood of this realm. . . .
He was lying. No Woodville plots to assassinate Richard have ever been uncovered. Although it was a dog-eatdog world, there is no historical proof that the Woodville faction ever intended to dispose of Richard. True, they wanted to relegate him to a minor role on a regency council, but they didn’t wish him dead.
Was this just a clever excuse to assemble an army? What was Richard’s real motive in amassing as many troops as possible? Was it to rattle enough spears to intimidate the Woodville faction into standing down, or was it to engage them in combat?
A proposal to extend indefinitely the duration of the protectorate was presented to Parliament. Some saw it as a pragmatic step. Others who were closest to the Protector himself were all too aware of Richard’s ulterior motives.
On June 13, 1483, in the middle of a privy council meeting, Richard accused William, Lord Hastings, Edward IV’s boon companion and still England’s Lord Chamberlain, of treason. Jealous over the preferment Richard showed to Buckingham, and fearing that the Protector never intended to see his nephew crowned but was instead plotting to usurp the throne, the 1st Baron Hastings had defected to the Woodville faction. Richard had sniffed out his treachery and was now prepared to snuff out his life.
Before the Lord Chamberlain could say a word in his own defense, he was seized and dragged to Tower Hill, where he was summarily beheaded. When the public became alarmed, Richard made certain that the event was conveniently spun: Hastings, they were told, had been caught plotting against the life of the young king, and had paid the ultimate, and appropriate, price for his treason. And yet, Richard’s conscience was disturbed enough by the execution of the talented and capable Hastings to ensure that the baron’s widow, Katherine, would inherit his property and that his son would assume his late father’s title, with the assurance that it would never be attainted.
Having secured official control over the young king, Richard wanted to keep tabs on Edward’s younger brother as well. So he insisted that the nine-year-old Duke of York be released to attend his brother’s coronation. Richard also maintained that Edward had been lonely in the Tower without his little brother to play with. But the wary Elizabeth Woodville refused to let her other son emerge from sanctuary into his uncle’s clutches. Ricardian historians such as Paul Murray Kendall tend to paint the dowager queen as the villainess while portraying Richard as a pragmatic, if ineloquent, politician, a stickler for law and order, and loyal to the memories of his two dead brothers. And in Richard’s view, Elizabeth was keeping her own son hostage.
A delegation of clergy and lay lords descended on Westminster and encouraged the dowager queen to relinquish her younger son, but she remained adamant about keeping him in sanctuary. After she was threatened with force and informed that guards would violate the sanctuary and snatch the boy from her if she persisted in withholding her consent, on June 16, 1483, Elizabeth finally agreed to release him. With tremendous reluctance and a heavy heart, she allowed the archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Bourchier, to escort the little Duke of York to the Tower to join his brother. Elizabeth Woodville knew, somehow, that she would never see either of her sons again.
The little princes were not the only relations whom the queen would never see again. She lost another son that month, as well as a sibling. At Pontefract Castle on June 25, Elizabeth’s brother Earl Rivers, her son Lord Richard Grey, and Sir Thomas Vaughan were beheaded. The act was completely unlawful because Richard had not yet formally been named Protector when he’d had the men arrested and therefore he lacked the authority to detain them, let alone to execute them. Is it any wonder that the dowager queen was so reluctant to trust her deceitful brother-in-law?
The two princes now lived in the Tower, where they were seen romping in the gardens and shooting at archery butts like any other twelve- and nine-year-old boys of the era. Meanwhile, Richard rode through London attired and arrayed as though he were already king, and the real king’s coronation date had once again been postponed.
A seedling that had been germinating in Richard’s mind was about to sprout. By now he was planning to usurp the throne. But in order to bolster his own legitimate claim to the crown (a very tough sell, regardless of his military and administrative résumé), Richard needed to destroy the viability of all other heirs and claimants to the throne. Only if he became the last person with a rightful claim could he secure the key support of Parliament, the privy council, and the clergy, in an age where archbishops were considered princes of the Church with widespread influence over their flocks.
Richard ruthlessly trotted out all the tricks that Clarence had once used to prop up his own claim. Willing to throw their mother under a proverbial bus, besmirching her honor and reputation if it would help him gain the throne, Richard declared that the late Edward IV was illegitimate, conceived while their father was away at war, and citing the lack of family resemblance to prove his point.
But when few gave credence to this assertion, Richard tried another angle. He sought to have Edward IV’s marriage to Elizabeth declared invalid on the grounds that before the late king met Elizabeth, he had entered into a precontract with the widowed Lady Eleanor Butler. A precontract was considered as binding as an actual marriage, rendering any subsequent union bigamous unless the precontract was sundered. Although Eleanor had died in 1468, Richard dredged up Bishop Stillington of Bath and Wells, the cleric who had allegedly witnessed Edward’s promise to wed her. Richard also renewed the charges of witchcraft against the dowager queen’s mother, Jacquetta Woodville, who had died in 1472, claiming that Jacquetta had used sorcery to enchant the late king into marrying her daughter.
The matter of the precontract with Lady Eleanor Butler was the only issue that was awarded any serious credibility. Yet, during Edward’s lifetime no one had ever questioned the validity of his marriage to Elizabeth or the legitimacy of their children, or doubted that their firstborn son was the true prince of Wales. But if Edward’s royal marriage could be judged invalid, then his children would be ineligible to inherit the throne. And after the royal children were retroactively made bastards, there would be only one Yorkist claimant to the throne still standing: Richard, Duke of Gloucester.
For bonus points, Richard insisted that the 17th Earl of Warwick—Clarence’s developmentally disabled son, who had been living in his household—was also ineligible to ever inherit the throne because his father had been attainted—meaning that the king had stripped him of his lands and title. That contention sounds good; however, it’s untrue.
But Richard had managed to bully and intimidate everyone from clergy to courtiers to councilors. He’d already demonstrated a willingness to execute anyone who got in his way. No one wanted to be next.
So, in the last days of June 1483 the privy council awarded formal credence to Richard’s claims, drafting a writ that would allow the usurper to place the crown on his own head. On June 25, in a formal document issued by Parliament known as the Titulus Regius, Elizabeth Woodville’s marriage to Edward IV was declared null and void—which meant that all of their children were illegitimate, and therefore barred from inheriting the throne. Elizabeth was deprived of the title of queen mother, to be known thereafter simply as Dame Elizabeth Grey.
After being presented with the writ at Baynard’s Castle in London, Richard gave an Oscar-worthy acceptance speech, dripping with faux modesty. He didn’t deserve such an honor, he insisted—but if the kingdom needed him, well, he couldn’t possibly decline, although the responsibility would be a weighty one.
Buckingham delivered a rousing oration, enumerating all the r
easons that Richard should be acclaimed as king of England. But the Great Chronicle recorded that only a minority of the crowd shouted, “yea, yea,” and that they did so “more for fear than love.”
On June 26, 1483, the Duke of Gloucester usurped the throne, proclaiming himself Richard III. Edward V and his younger brother, Richard, Duke of York, were “progressively removed from men’s sight,” according to contemporary chronicler Dominic Mancini; and by the autumn of 1483 the princes were never seen or heard from again.
And on July 6, Richard was crowned with great pomp and splendor before an illustrious assemblage of England’s peerage, including Henry Tudor’s battle-ax of a mother, Margaret Beaufort. Like his big brother, Richard had usurped the crown, but unlike Edward IV, Richard had won it with more craft and stealth than might.
But precisely because he had achieved his heart’s desire by underhanded means, Richard struggled to maintain the throne throughout his entire reign. Desperate to retain what he had so unrightfully seized and never content with his triumph, he grew much more vindictive and vengeful than he had been as Duke of Gloucester, cloaking his every misdeed behind the power of the crown. During the summer of 1483, just weeks after Richard’s self-aggrandizing coronation, his most stalwart supporter, the Duke of Buckingham (a descendant of Edward III’s youngest son), turned against him. The duke was among the leaders of a revolt that would be nicknamed “Buckingham’s rebellion,” although the uprising was fomented by several members of the southern nobility, encompassing a geographical swath that stretched from Kent to Cornwall and from the River Thames to the Severn on the Welsh border.
The Chronicles of London contains a contemporary account of the uprising. “In this year many knights and gentlemen, of Kent and other places, gathered them together to have gone toward the duke of Buckingham . . . which intended to have subdued King Richard; for anon as the said King Richard had put to death the lord chamberlain [Hastings] and other gentlemen, as before it is said, he also put to death the two children of King Edward, for which cause he lost the hearts of the people. And thereupon many gentlemen intended his destruction.”
Royal Pains: A Rogues' Gallery of Brats, Brutes, and Bad Seeds Page 8