Biographies & Memoirs

Bad Blood

It is hard to pinpoint the precise moment that Richard decided to take the throne from his nephew. Had he arrived in London so wary of the influence of the Woodvilles on the new King that it already occurred to him? Was this the opportunity that he had awaited so patiently for over a decade? Did he seize Edward at Stoney Stratford with the intention of stealing his throne? Had Buckingham been whispering in his ear? It is hard to distinguish. Certainly Richard had an armed force despatched from York in case he required it. He took control of the boy, swept the Woodvilles aside and removed the loyal support of Lord Hastings. This can be viewed as paving the way for a usurpation, but it could also be simply decisive action to secure the safety of the realm as was his role as Protector. Nothing survives to conclusively answer this question.

As a Ricardian, I am bound to view Richard's previous exemplary behaviour and unswerving loyalty, his commitment to justice and duty and see a man reacting to the events that he found. It must also be accepted that it is every bit as possible that he intended to take the throne even before he left York, that the chance he had been waiting for had arrived. There is no evidence of this man before 1483, yet he certainly emerges during that summer.

The basis upon which Richard took the throne is well worth an examination since it will differentiate between a usurper seizing an opportunity and a reluctant man doing his duty. Probably in early June, Bishop Stillington approached the Protector with a matter of grave concern. The story that he imparted changed the course of English history. The Bishop claimed to have been party to a pre-contract of marriage between King Edward IV and Lady Eleanor Butler before the King had married Elizabeth Woodville.

A pre-contract to marry in mediaeval terms equated to an actual marriage as if there had been a wedding ceremony. It could be created as simply as saying 'I will marry you' but was binding in the eyes of Church, State and God. Lady Eleanor Butler had passed away by 1483 but crucially was still alive when Edward married Elizabeth Woodville. This meant that Edward was already effectively married and so his marriage to Elizabeth was bigamous. The effect of this was that any children of that marriage were illegitimate and unable to inherit the Crown.

In mediaeval legal terms this was an absolute. There was no way around it. If true, it meant that Edward V and his brother were illegitimate and unable to take the throne. George had been executed some years earlier when Edward IV had lost patience with his constant plotting. Therefore the only legitimate male heir of the House of York was Richard, Duke of Gloucester. Legally, he was King. He had two options. He could suppress the information and allow the Coronation Ceremony to correct any fault in young Edward's title or he could become king himself. The decision was made in the instant he made the pre-contract public. Again, the interpretation of this action is the chasing of an elusive truth. Did Richard relish the opportunity? Who would not wish to be King? Viewed in terms of his duty, Church law meant that he should be King. Temporal law made him the only rightful King. His duty was clearly to take the throne whether he wanted to or not.

The existence of the Butler pre-contract is disputed but in his book Eleanor The Secret Queen, John Ashdown-Hill makes a powerful case for its existence. Once more, though, it must be acknowledged that there is a possibility that it was fabricated to facilitate Richard's thrust for power.

It is also suggested by several sources that Richard considered questioning the legitimacy of his brother too, but later refrained from pursuing it, perhaps not seeing the need to dishonour his mother. King Louis XI of France had long joked, fairly openly, that Edward IV was the son of an English archer named Bleybourne. He called the English King Edward Bleybourne to much amusement in France. But was there more to this than the old enmity?

Edward had been born on 28th April 1442 in Rouen, Normandy. His father, the Duke of York, was fighting the English cause in France at the time and reports state that he left on campaign around eleven months before Edward's birth. These dates are preserved in the records of Rouen Cathedral and clearly the maths does not add up. In addition, Edward was christened in a quiet ceremony in a side chapel of the Cathedral on the Duke's return. This is unusually restrained for the first born son of the greatest noble in the land. Unless, of course, the Duke knew that Edward was not, in fact, his first born son. In contrast, Edmund's birth the following year was celebrated lavishly with a christening in the full Cathedral. Edmund was the son who the Duke kept close throughout the conflicts of the Wars of the Roses. Possibly he intended at some point to name Edmund his heir, but he never did. Both died together at Wakefield and Edward went on to take the throne. The christening evidence is somewhat circumstantial but the evidence of the dates of Edward's birth is not. Precluding some carnal rush back from the front, the Duke of York cannot have been Edward's father. However, the Duke never marked Edward as illegitimate, nor did he ever treat him as anything other than his rightful heir. A hasty christening may also be a red herring as the Duke and Duchess had already lost children in infancy and baptism was considered essential for passage into Heaven. This matter is therefore, as yet, unproven, but rumour of it did exist at the time.

This fact, added to Edward's pre-contract, made Edward V doubly illegitimate and perhaps made up Richard's mind for him. Bishop Stillington had been close to George, Duke of Clarence and it is possible that Richard began to wonder whether his brother'sunrelenting rebellions were due to the fact that he knew this information and believed himself the rightful king.

If Richard created both of these sets of evidence then he went to great lengths to discredit the brother he had served loyally for all of his adult life, against whom he had refused to rebel. He also dishonoured his mother and made his father a cuckold. This lack of family loyalty seems uncharacteristic, yet perhaps events at Ludlow all that time ago played upon the Duke's mind. His father had abandoned him to his fate there. So had his eldest brother. If it was revenge, he had waited coldly for over twenty years to exact it.Or perhaps it just made accepting the truth a little easier. If it was true, he may also have felt betrayed by his entire family.

The Church and Parliament asked Richard to take the throne as the only legal, rightful heir and he was crowned King Richard III on 6th July 1483 at the age of 30. As his scoliosis worsened and perhaps became more and more painful, the fact that he was God's anointed King of England must have offered some comfort to Richard. He may have felt himself justified, forgiven of whatever he feared had caused him to be afflicted.

Buckingham's Rebellion

Richard was crowned King Richard III with all of the pomp and ceremony required. All of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal that could be there were in attendance. There was an attempt at some reconciliation. A Woodville bishop was amongst the congregation and Lord Stanley was appointed to Richard's household. The King and his Queen set off on a grand progress around the country. Contemporary sources state frequently how well he was received at every stop. Subjects offered him coin only to be told by the King that he did not want their money, only their love. The country seemed to want him and to be looking forward to his rule.

On 8th September the King was in York and had his 9 year old son invested as Prince of Wales. It has been suggested that the investiture was a rushed affair and that it plays a part in the mystery of the fate of the sons of Edward IV, but it is equally possible that Richard planned to have the ceremony in the city that was so close to his heart, and to honour the city that loved him so now that he was not just their lord but their King. Shortly after this, though, trouble erupted from several unlikely sources.

The first sign of trouble was a march on London by men of Kent on 10th October. The Duke of Norfolk dealt swiftly with the uprising. He captured and interrogated the leaders and reported the disturbing news that he uncovered to Richard. In late September, the Duke of Buckingham, effectively Richard's right-hand-man, had written to some exile by the name of Henry Tudor encouraging him to invade. Buckingham was to lead a force out of Wales, Tudor was to land on the south coast and Kent was to rise and march on London. All of this was planned for 18th October. Kent acted eight days too early and alerted the authorities to the plot.

As the date of the uprising approached, England was ravaged by violent rain storms. Tudor left Brittany on 2nd October, backed by Duke Francis of Brittany to the tune of 10,000 crowns and 5,000 mercenaries. He also may have had a portion of Edward IV's treasury, stolen by Elizabeth Woodville's brother, suggesting a Woodville backing of the plot. Buckingham's force began to move out of Wales but found no way across the swollen torrent of the River Severn. In the foul weather, the Duke's army began to disband and head home. The Duke himself fled into hiding.

On 1st November, Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham was captured and delivered to King Richard at Salisbury. Buckingham had been hiding with a sympathiser in Shropshire whose sympathy evaporated when Richard put a substantial price on the Duke's head. It was said that before he was captured, Buckingham had his infant son smuggled away dressed as a girl. This son, Edward Stafford, was to be restored under the Tudors only to fall victim to Henry VIII's vicious suspicion in 1521. Richard refused Buckingham's pleas to see him. Edward Stafford would later claim that his father had intended to stab Richard with a hidden knife, but Richard refused to give him an audience and ordered his execution the following day.

That very day, the remnants of Tudor's fleet, battered by the same storms that had hindered Buckingham, reached the south coast. A small group of soldiers waved them ashore, hailing the success of the rebellion. Henry, narrowing his eyes no doubt with a shrewdness that was to become his trademark, did not believe the news and turned the bedraggled fleet back toward Brittany.

This glimpse of Richard is less telling than the fact of the rebellion itself. To call it Buckingham's Rebellion is something of a misnomer. The Duke appears to have been recruited to the plot rather than the instigator, possibly by Bishop Morton who was his prisoner at Brecknock following the incident at council that had seen Hastings executed. Doubtless the betrayal cut Richard deeply. He was a man of honour and found such dishonourable behaviour abhorrent. Richard wrote to his Chancellor, John Russell, Bishop of Lincoln before Buckingham's capture and added a postscript in his own hand, stating 'Here, loved be God, all is well and truly determined for to resist the malice of him that had best cause to be true, the duke of Buckingham, the most untrue creature living, whom, with God's grace, we shall not be long till that we will be in that parts and subdue his malice. We assure you there never was falser traitor purveyed for...'. The outraged disgust pours from the page.

Buckingham had pledged himself to Richard and had been amply rewarded, so why did he join this rebellion? The answer is not definitively known. It has been suggested by Virgil, a chronicler writing 30 years later, that the Duke had not been given part of an inheritance Edward IV had withheld and Richard had promised him. This award was in fact made and only awaiting Parliamentary approval. Another possibility is that Buckingham saw a chance to seize the throne for himself. He was a cousin to Richard and had royal blood. He was also vain and ambitious, much as Richard's brother George had been. As with George, Richard appears not to have equated these personality traits with a proclivity for rebellion. Perhaps Buckingham saw Tudor as no real threat, raised a large force of his own and aimed to grasp power himself in the confusion.

The stated aim of the rebellion began as securing the release of Edward V and returning him to the throne. This was swiftly redirected though to placing Henry Tudor on the throne. It has been suggested that Buckingham had the boys killed in the Tower to remove them, believing Tudor would secure no support in the country and his own road to power would be left wide open. An opposing hypothesis is that Buckingham learned of the boy's murder at Richard's hands and was so outraged that he joined the planned uprising, informing, them of the deed so that Tudor became the figurehead.

Whatever the true reasons, the rebellion may well have left Richard stronger rather than undermined. His enemies had exposed themselves as traitors for all to see. Buckingham was the only noble to revolt. The remainder who joined were former loyalists of Edward IV and the Woodvilles along with the exiled remnants of the Lancastrian party. Luck had certainly played a part, as Kent misfired its assault on London and storms prevented Richard's enemies from making good their plans. The King had also acted with his trademark decisiveness in crushing the rebels and disposing of the treacherous Buckingham, the ruthless streak that had cut short Lord Hastings' life surfacing one more. Yet what less should be expected of a mediaeval king?

The north and midlands remained staunchly loyal to the King, only the south offering opposition. His greatest ally had exposed himself as false and been dealt with. All that remained was to root out the dregs of Lancastrian resistance and Edwardian loyalty that had found a focus in Henry Tudor.

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