King Richard III of England.
Sixteen
July–November 1483
The coronation was on the sixth of July. The King goes barefoot to his coronation, walking in solemn state up the red carpet to the Abbey. We were all in crimson, blue or white; the King and Queen in purple, white and gold. Northumberland carried the blunted Sword of Mercy, Stanley the High Constable’s Mace, Kent and Lovell the sharp Swords of Justice, Lincoln the Sceptre, Surrey the Sword of State, Norfolk the Crown. (Richard had given Jock Howard the Dukedom of Norfolk a few days before the coronation, and made his son Thomas, Earl of Surrey. Lord Barkley was similarly made Earl of Nottingham.) And, train-bearer to the King, and High Steward for the day – a post which traditionally belonged to Norfolk, the Earl Marshal – was Buckingham. Then came all the nobles and the lords who carried the Queen’s regalia. Train-bearer to the Queen was none other than Lady Margaret Beaufort. This had caused a quarrel between Richard and Anne. Carrying the King or Queen’s train is a great honour, and Anne thought it should go to someone more worthy – more loyal – but Richard was hell-bent on starting his reign with a clean slate, old enmities forgiven; note that he had pardoned Stanley for his admittedly minimal part in the Woodville plot, and given him a position of honour at the coronation. Behind the Queen, Elizabeth Suffolk walked in solitary state as befitted the King’s sister; behind her came the Duchess of Norfolk leading the group of noblewomen, and all the knights and squires and gentlemen.
Playing my part, clad in my crimson, I wept when the Archbishop put the Crown on Richard’s head. Twenty-two years earlier I had wept, a rescued child, when his brother was crowned. I mastered myself for the sacred moment when the King and Queen were anointed with the Chrism, but the glorious music of the Te Deum undid me again. I saw Innogen crying too, beautiful in her blue gown among the Queen’s ladies, and most of the Mass passed in a haze of tears.
From the Abbey we went to Westminster Great Hall for the banquet. I, together with Rob and Francis and some of the highest lords in the land, served the King from gold and silver dishes; and once when Anne gave me a little secret smile I remembered that kiss-and-make-up feast here back in ’69 – that Christmas, when Warwick had plotted to make his daughter Queen. Fortune’s Wheel had certainly spun since then!
There is a traditional challenge at coronation banquets; the King’s Champion, Sir Robert Dymmock on this occasion, rides into the hall in white armour and challenges anyone who disputes the new King’s right to the Crown to do combat with him. Up went the cry from everyone present, ‘King Richard!’ and the Champion drank the traditional wine and rode out again. Then, with our formal obeisance to our new sovereigns, it was all over.
~~~
Two weeks later Richard began a formal progress around the southern parts of the country. From Windsor he travelled to Reading and Oxford, where he lodged at Magdalen College. I think I have made it plain that Richard was a learned and a scholarly man, but I wonder if Bishop Waynflete, founder of Magdalen, quite expected that the new King’s idea of entertainment was to hear two Latin debates in moral philosophy and theology?
I was not with him for that part of the progress. Officially I was with my wife in attendance on the Queen, who was resting at Windsor. London never suited Anne, and the last few weeks had exhausted her. Unofficially, or at least out of the public eye, I had quite other business.
At various times in Richard’s reign, malcontents put it about that he had murdered his brother’s two sons. Now, Richard could be naive, over-trusting, arrogant and so stubborn you wanted to kick him, but he was never a fool. Idiotic rumours didn’t bother him, but he knew that what could ruin him was not being able to produce those boys at need. Nor did he believe for a moment that the Woodvilles – and others – had given up plotting against him – or against other Yorkists. He wasn’t going to have those boys ‘rescued’ and used as focus for rebellion. Or murdered by other claimants. Therefore, he quietly removed them from the Tower and sent them north. Well, it does no harm to tell it now, and many people knew it at the time: he sent them to Sheriff Hutton.
So that is what I was doing when I was officially attending upon the Queen at Windsor: conveying the boys north.
I always liked the younger boy, little Richard. He had common sense, and the merry nature he’d inherited from the York side of his family. Bewildered and hurt by recent events, he still trusted his namesake uncle and was willing to make the best of things. But of course, he had not been Prince of Wales from birth, he had not grown up expecting to be King. The elder boy had retired into a carapace of sulky resentment, believing Richard had all the time been plotting to usurp his throne. Natural enough, and I pitied him, but by the time we reached Sheriff Hutton I would have paid to put my boot up his bum. I restrained myself, however, and with relief handed the boys over to the Earl of Lincoln, who had charge of the King’s household in the north. Lincoln had recently brought the Clarence children to Sheriff Hutton, and my two eldest children and some of the King’s wards were also to make their home there. If the two Lords Bastard, as they were now officially known, couldn’t settle down among their cousins and make friends, bad luck to them.
A good thing Richard sent those boys away when he did.
~~~
I caught up with the royal retinue at Minster Lovell, Francis’s home. That same night, the Chancellor’s letter reached Richard. There had been an attack on the Tower of London.
‘Doctor Russell says,’ Richard looked back and forth from us to the letter, ‘that fires were started in the city near the Tower. I suppose the idea was that in the confusion men would get inside and seize my nephews.’ In London, that conglomeration of wooden buildings jammed hugger-mugger along narrow streets, fire is as great a fear as plague. Each ward is compelled by law to keep fire-carts ready stocked with the fire-fighting equipment of buckets, and hooks to pull down burning buildings. But passing regulations is a different thing from being able to enforce them. And people will come out to watch a fire – getting in the way, panicking, blocking the way of the fire-carts. The Tower’s stone buildings have withstood every threat of the past five hundred years, but fire inside its walls is a terror.
‘Either,’ Richard read on, ‘the Tower gates were innocently unlocked for men to help fight the fires, or someone inside let men in – the fires were a signal, of course. Armed men were apprehended near my nephews’ rooms.’
‘Woodville’s behind it, of course,’ said Francis.
‘Oh, certainly. Will that woman never learn sense! What was she going to do, launch a rebellion against me to put her bastard son on the throne?’ He broke off, thinking, tapping the letter against his teeth. ‘Or if it wasn’t the Woodvilles... Beaufort; the Lancastrians. A good thing I sent Doctor Morton to Brecon, or this business might have been more serious; without him they’re not much at plotting. Wouldn’t it be convenient for them to brand me a child-murderer, King Herod de nos jours, and rise up against me?’
‘How embarrassing for them to find the boys gone,’ I said. ‘Much wailing and gnashing of teeth.’
‘Yes. I’ll write to Sheriff Hutton to strengthen the guard. And I must write to Russell. Send for my secretary, will you?’ The man came, sleepy and bothered, and I listened as Richard dictated his letter to the Chancellor. Whereas we understand that certain persons be attached and in ward, we desire and will you that you do make our letters of commission to such person as by you and our Council shall be advised to sit and proceed to the due execution of our laws... Etcetera and so on, obliquely put for the sake of discretion. We later learned that the four men arrested were all old servants of Edward IV: his Groom of the Stirrup, a London Serjeant, an Officer of the Wardrobe. Either they had been well chosen for their ability to keep their mouths shut, or they truly knew little of the real plot, but the Woodville connection was plain.
When the letters had been despatched and the secretary had gone yawning back to bed, I said, ‘Richard, has His Grace of Buckingham rep
orted to you on this matter?’ Buckingham was still in London, and since he was Constable and Lord High Everything these days, an armed attempt on the Lords Bastard should have sent him galloping to Richard – at least, sent his courier with a full report.
‘No,’ Richard said tonelessly. ‘I wonder why that is?’
~~~
It was twelve years since I had been to Gloucester. Once, we had expected to fight there, or to rescue the town from Queen Margaret’s siege. You can imagine how the people preened themselves that their own duke was now King. Everything was dancing, pageants, glory, and they nearly burst with pride when Richard gave the town its Charter of Incorporation, putting it on equal basis with York and Bristol, with the right to elect a Mayor and Sheriffs. In thanks for its brave stand against the Lancastrian army, Richard remitted forty pounds of the town’s annual fee-farm rent, and he refused the usual payment for granting the Incorporation. He also, most unusually in a King, knocked back the traditional gifts of money from the town, saying he would rather have their love than their money.
And it was at Gloucester that the Duke of Buckingham once more shed the light of his countenance upon us. He breezed in just before dinner, giving Richard a token bend of the knee and throwing himself into a chair. ‘Well, Dickon, you’re certainly Gloucester’s favourite son today! I could hardly force a way through the crowds out there, cheering and dancing in the streets. What have you done, made the place the capital?’
‘Hardly that.’ Richard looked him up and down thoughtfully.
‘Has it been like this all the way? A right royal progress? What’s the matter? Why are you looking at me like that? Aren’t you glad to see me?’
‘I am extremely glad to see you. I have been awaiting your report on the attack on the Tower – on my nephews.’
All of a sudden I realised he had not confided in Buckingham about moving the boys.
‘Oh, that business!’
‘Yes. That business. You were there and – ’
‘Meaning?’
‘My lord?’ said Richard, and Buckingham would have been wise to take warning from his tone.
‘Just what do you mean by saying I was there, and asking for my ‘report’? What’s it to do with me? I am not some common servant, Dickon. I don’t care for your tone.’
‘Do you not?’ Richard said so mildly that Francis, Rob and I nearly shat ourselves. But Buckingham didn’t know him as we did.
‘No, I do not. But... Oh, I see! You think I should speak more formally to you now you are King? But we’re friends! You never care what your other friends say to you.’ He looked over at us. ‘If I’ve offended, so have they every time they open their mouths!’ Petulantly he gazed at Richard, giving him the smile that had never failed before. But now Richard saw only the petulance, and the practised confidence of that smile.
Very quietly he said, ‘No, in private, from my old friends, I do not expect formality. But nor have I ever tolerated insolence. You have offended me, my lord duke; you have offended me by not accepting that you as much as any of my other officers must report properly to me on matters of importance. You were in London at the time and you are Constable of England; surely Brackenbury reported to you?’
‘Brackenbury’s an old woman.’
‘Really,’ murmured Richard, who had appointed Sir Robert as Constable of the Tower, among other posts, precisely because of his hard sense and long experience.
‘Yes. He came flapping along with some muddled story – Dickon, it was nothing! A fire; a lot of confusion; a few misguided fellows taking advantage.’
‘Indeed? And you have no idea – there is no indication – of who was behind it?’
Buckingham shrugged. I think Richard damn near hit him.
Lounging to his feet Buckingham said casually, ‘Well, since that’s dealt with, and I’ve had a long day on the road, have I permission to retire and prepare for dinner? By the way, where do you plan to stop next? And when do you leave?’
‘Tewkesbury, Worcester, Warwick, then north. Leaving tomorrow. Will you be joining me?’
‘If it’s your wish, of course I will. But I did rather want to get home.’
‘Of course. Your wife must miss you.’ Of her own choice, or at her husband’s command, Buckingham’s Woodville wife had not come to London even for the coronation.
‘Of course,’ Buckingham agreed, bowed and swept out.
None of us dared speak. ‘Has he,’ Richard asked, ‘always been like that?’
‘No,’ we said in the tone that means yes.
‘Now I know how Edward felt about Warwick. And I have to face the fact that I’ve put a great deal of power in the hands of a man unworthy of it.’
‘Not necessarily,’ Rob said. ‘He was insolent, yes, and too high-handed by half, but he’s always had a high opinion of himself.’
‘Too high.’
‘Well, yes.’
‘Thinks himself a king-maker? Like Warwick? And I’ve created an over-mighty subject?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Oh, damn it,’ Richard said with a sigh, ‘I liked him, that’s all! I miss my brothers, and suddenly there was Harry, royal like me, my cousin... And he arrived at Northampton with his men precisely when I needed him, openly loyal to me, competent, helpful.’ He rubbed his hands over his face. ‘It’s not quite the same as ordinary friendship. You three are my closest and dearest friends, and your loyalty is unwavering, but Harry Stafford is royal, one of my family, of my blood. That counts, you see. But I won’t have another Warwick. So I had better learn to manage him, hadn’t I.’
Edward had said that about Warwick.
~~~
This time we took the road to Tewkesbury at our leisure, in luxury. Same route, but only the sunny weather reminded us of that boiling May day we had slugged along in the desperate race against the Lancastrians. People say battlefields are haunted, but I sensed no ghosts on Bloody Meadow or in the Abbey. Not even the ghosts of Clarence and poor Isabel, buried there behind the altar.
From Tewkesbury we travelled to Warwick, and here Anne and her ladies joined us. Not only her ladies, for Anne had an admirer in tow. Graufidius de Sasiola had been sent by Queen Isabella of Spain as an ambassador; missing Richard at Windsor, he was obviously more than content with the Queen’s company.
‘Should I be jealous?’ Richard enquired. ‘Planning a happy life in sunny Spain? Remember I can’t afford to ransom you back if the Spanish ambassador steals you away.’
‘He is merely being courteous and deferential to the Queen,’ smirked Anne.
‘Oh yes, and how much courtesy and deference would we see if you were a fat old boot? If he makes sheep’s eyes at you once more there’ll be an international incident.’
‘He merely admires the English style of looks.’
‘We’ve noticed, thank you. Well, at least the old greaser – I mean the dear gentleman – has brought good news from Queen Isabella. Peace with Spain – ideal. Though I’m not getting England dragged into war with France.’
‘De Sasiola told me privately that Queen Isabella has never forgiven the late King for slighting her by marrying Elizabeth Woodville when he’d been offered her hand. And he hints that Isabella would like to secure peace between England and Spain by a marriage between her daughter and our son.’
‘What a good spy you make,’ Richard said approvingly. ‘Keep up the good work.’
‘Even if it means letting the ambassador kiss my hand?’
‘Hand, yes. Anything else and it’s war with Spain.’
~~~
A change of monarch always sets the cat among the international pigeons. Neighbouring countries were eager to be on terms with Richard; perhaps wary of his military reputation they hastened to send their good wishes. James of Scotland was keen for a truce, hinting at a full peace treaty. Probably they thought that if Richard could do so much damage as Lieutenant-General, what could he do as King? Even Louis of France wrote. If you ask me, Louis and Richard had secretly
taken something of a liking to each other back in 1475; they had corresponded several times and, oddly, with Richard Louis never stood on ceremony in his letters. Even now that Richard was King, Louis wrote in typical style:
My Lord and cousin, I have seen the letters you have written to me by your herald Blanc Sanglier, and thank you for the news of which you have apprised me. And if I can do you any service I will do it with very good will, for I desire to have your friendship.
And farewell, My Lord and cousin.
Written at Montilz les Tours,
The twenty-first day of July.
Louis.
This effusion was brought by one of his dog-handlers.
‘Which from Louis is probably a compliment,’ said Richard, ‘knowing how fond of animals he is.’ And he wrote back in the same off-hand style. He had no intention of breaking current truces, he wrote, but Louis had better take steps to stop his subjects pirating English shipping. He closed, ‘And farewell to you, my cousin.’ He sent it by hand of one of his stable grooms. After all, Louis liked horses.
Speaking of letters, it chanced that I saw a letter Bishop Langton was writing to the Prior of Christchurch. Well – ‘chanced’: I had been looking after Richard for twenty years, so if someone leaves a letter open while they duck to the privy...
He contents the people where he goes best that ever did prince; for many a poor man that hath suffered wrong many days have been relieved and helped by him and his commands in his progress. And by many great cities and towns were great sums of money given him which he hath refused. On my truth I never liked the conditions of any Prince so well as his; God hath sent him for the weal of us all.
I couldn’t have put it better myself. Richard was popular, and these people of the south were learning that he genuinely had their welfare at heart. His first concern was always for justice and the rule of law, and at every stage of this progress he had sat with his Lords and Justices to hear cases at law. Even the lowest, most ordinary person could come to him with complaint or query or some old grievance. And, used to a legal system manipulated by the rich and powerful, the common people soon learnt that nothing was too trivial for the new King’s attention. Better still – he got things done.
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