Richard III and the Murder in the Tower (12 page)

The two most interesting things about this plate are: first, the incorrect dating of William’s death, and second, the shoddy nature of this plate compared with the rest of the memorial. Concerning the first issue, it has been suggested that the incorrect date is representative of the efforts of some later descendants of William and Margaret to hide the disgrace that came to their forebear following the Battle of Bosworth. This sort of effort was apparently not unprecedented.
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The mutilation of Catesby’s head was perhaps an intentional political statement, with the action itself taken some time during the Tudor period, perhaps during the process of the dissolution of the monasteries. That this may have been no random act of vandalism is founded on the fact that there are precedents for this posthumous disgrace of the individual in a process referred to as
damanatio memoriae
.
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It is thus possible that this process of defacing the tombs of so-called traitors may have also included removal of the original name plate. If this were the case, the remaining family might have sought to replace the offending plate with something less provocative and more mundane in nature (
see
Figure 20). Perhaps this was undertaken by Sir Richard Catesby, William’s grandson, or perhaps even a later generation of the family. It is likely that the plate was produced relatively locally since the fabrication is clearly inferior to the rest of the original (
see
Figure 19). Badham and Saul noted that:

It seems likely that the Tudor dynasty continued to treat William Catesby as shabbily after his execution, as the founder of that house, Henry Tudor, had in the first place. It is evident from his treatment of the body of Richard III that Henry Tudor had few qualms in this direction. It remains at present unknown whether Catesby ever did possess direct evidence of the pre-contract and whether the subsequent mutilation of his and his wife’s memorial had anything to do with that possibility or whether the defacement was part of a more general expression of disapprobation. Regardless, the brass can be found today alongside the high altar in the church of Ashby St Ledgers, a mute witness to the earthly presence of William ‘the Cat’ Catesby.

William Catesby’s rise to power was nothing short of meteoric. From a solid foundation in the established gentry of middle England, he followed in the family tradition of law and, despite his father’s Lancastrian affiliation and affection, the son had done reasonably well within his own sphere, but primarily advanced though an advantageous marriage. All this changed radically in early June 1483. In the immediate aftermath of the execution of William, Lord Hastings he rose to be among the highest in the land and, arguably, the first counsellor of Richard III. This was a staggering ascendancy to the very pinnacle of power, when such power was most jealously guarded by the nobility who possessed it. Indeed, Catesby remained high in Richard’s favour throughout his reign. Why? What did Richard have to be grateful for? While it is true that someone of Catesby’s capacities might have done well under Richard, he was not one of Richard’s friends, nor one of Richard’s northern followers or of their favoured affiliation. No, what Catesby did for Richard must have been unprecedented. My postulation is that his unprecedented act was to reveal the pre-contract and thus provide Richard with the legitimate path to the throne.
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In the process, I think he manoeuvered to have Hastings eliminated because of Hastings’ sin of omission. Thus Hastings knew of the impediment to the boys but did not reveal it. So Catesby was able to deflect criticism of himself while simultaneously removing the primary barrier to the increase of his conjoined land holdings in the Midlands of England. His plan seems to have worked brilliantly and his star rose accordingly. Indeed, on the day of his execution, Catesby was one of the largest landholders in the Midlands and arguably the whole country.

Catesby’s unprecedented rise was matched by his equally dramatic fall. When the last King of England personally to fight in battle died that day in August 1485, Catesby did not have long to live. He played the meagre cards that remained to him, but neither affection nor affiliation was strong enough to save him. And no-one who put their trust in the Stanleys for too long ever prospered. But for him there was to be no disgrace and imprisonment with the hope for subsequent redemption. No, for Catesby it was the axe. And I think it had to be because he had knowledge and, indeed, perhaps even written documentation, that was just too dangerous to the new administration to be allowed to live. I think he could prove that Richard was legitimate and thus Elizabeth of York and her brothers were illegitimate. I think he had the pre-contract itself, or something representative of it. Henry Tudor was always sensitive to the issue and repressed the
Titulus Regius
after executing Catesby, its author. I think Henry Tudor feared what documents might appear and it took over a decade for Catesby’s son George to convince the authorities that they now had nothing to fear from the remaining family members. George’s mother, Margaret Zouch, died on 8 October 1494 and was laid alongside her husband near the high altar in Ashby St Ledgers. The reversal of the attainder was achieved in the next Parliament one year later, in October 1495.

I think this sequence is significant. Catesby himself was silenced in 1485, but there was still the fear of documentation (since lawyers through the ages have loved documents). The greatest fear was from the individual closest to Catesby, which was his wife, described by him as ‘my dear and well beloved wife to whom I have ever been true ...’ If anyone had access to such knowledge or such papers, surely it would be her. Yet after a decade, death silenced Margaret Catesby and the tension eased to the extent that her son could begin the formal process of rehabilitation, which occurred at the next feasible opportunity of the next Parliament. This is an hypothesis. I cannot prove it. However, it is a reasonable account that emerges from the facts as we presently know them. Catesby was indeed a lynchpin in the fall of William, Lord Hastings and may have sought to repeat the strategy in relation to Buckingham. However, he was a much more involved character than just the ‘cat’ of Colyngbourne’s rhyme or the background, bit-part player of Shakespeare’s fictional frippery.

killed not by those enemies he had always feared,

but by a friend whom he had never doubted.

In any situation in which we have someone subjected to a violent death, we can learn something of the reasons for their demise from the character of the individual themselves. In what follows, I do not try to provide an exhaustive account of the life of William, Lord Hastings, much as a full biography is still greatly needed. Rather, I shall try to provide information that is most relevant to his death, since that is the issue that concerns us most here.
¹
However, we must frame Hastings within his times, and so a brief account of his life is important to serve as a backdrop to the discussion of the execution itself.

In many ways, the life story of William, Lord Hastings is not dissimilar to that of William Catesby. Born around 1430, he was also the son of a Midlands landowner, Sir Leonard Hastings, whose own forebear had been one-time steward of Henry II.
²
William’s father was of the affinity of Richard, Duke of York,
³
and it would be this same family that William would serve all his life. Indeed, William swore that he would serve the duke ‘before all others, and at all times, his allegiance to the King excepted.’
⁴
On his mother’s side, William, Lord Hastings was the great-grandson of Edmund Mortimer, who was himself one of the sons of Edward III, whose longevity was identified earlier as one of the precursory factors to these later events. Thus Hastings was actually a second cousin to the sons of the Duke of York, the eldest of whom, Edward, he would serve as both friend and advisor during the latter’s rise to power as Edward IV. Hastings himself had been attainted after his efforts on behalf of the losing Yorkist cause at the Battle of Ludford Bridge in 1459. However, he was with the son, Edward, and not the father, Richard, Duke of York, on the fateful December day in 1460 when both the duke and one of his younger sons (Edmund) lost their lives at the Battle of Wakefield. Hastings was subsequently very much part of Edward’s drive for retribution for the killing of his father and brother, and served his younger companion loyally as the tides of fortune swayed between the two primary parties of the day.

When Edward came to the throne, it was for his loyalty and friendship that Hastings was rewarded with the post of Chamberlain of the Royal Household, a position he would hold throughout his lifetime. Also, in 1461 he was created Baron Hastings, and greatly benefitted from the lands forfeited by the losing Lancastrians.
⁵
Sometime before 6 February 1462
⁶
he had made a very advantageous marriage when he became the second husband of Katherine Neville, the sister of Richard Neville, more famous as ‘Warwick the Kingmaker.’ It was, if nothing else, a productive marriage, as they had four children and it appears that in the course of his life Hastings had something like eleven children in total.
⁷
Hastings was present when Edward IV was crowned on 4 March 1461
⁸
and again stood alongside his king at the influential Battle of Towton later in that same month, on Palm Sunday, the 29th. Such was Edward’s recognition of his service in helping win this pivotal conflict and in other ways, that he knighted him on the field of battle. Over the years Hastings would become Edward’s closest associate. The honours that followed in trail of the monarch began readily to accrue to Hastings. On 21 March 1462 he was made a Knight of the Garter and his stall plate can still be seen in St George’s Chapel today (
see
Figure 21).

In the years between 1461 and 1469, Hastings acted on Edward’s behalf in any number of official capacities and his role in negotiating both marriages and truces is well documented.
⁹
Indeed, it was over the question of marriage and marriage negotiations that the seeds of the later 1469 rebellion were sewn. One of Edward’s great attributes, in addition to his prowess in battle and undoubted physical capabilities and charms, was his status as one of Europe’s most eligible bachelors. This card was a very potent political one and could be played to great advantage if managed appropriately. The man in the centre of this management process was Warwick the Kingmaker. He had been engaged in these respective manoeuvres and was in the process of preparing a suitable alliance when Edward casually announced at a 28 September Council meeting at Reading that he had secretly married Elizabeth Woodville some time earlier, actually on 1 May 1464.
¹⁰
Clearly this news dumbfounded many of his listeners and must have angered Warwick greatly. Not only was the secret nature of the marriage galling, but the lady herself clearly did not even come from the first rank of nobility in England. It must have been pivotal moment indeed when Warwick first heard this news, although he reconciled himself to it well enough to escort the new queen into the chapel of Reading Abbey for her first formal appearance at court. What perhaps angered Warwick even more, however, was that Elizabeth Woodville almost immediately set out to promote her own family. She looked to establish links with the upper nobility of the realm by marriage of her closest relations to the most eligible and advantageous matches. On occasion, these efforts produced highly mismatched individuals, which in the case of the heir to the Duke of Buckingham resulted in an enmity that festered over the coming years. Warwick began to harness this resentment and particularly the disaffectation of the king’s own brother, George, Duke of Clarence, and eventually achieved the overthrow of the king by force of arms at the Battle of Edgecote Moor on 26 July 1469. Edward himself was not at the battle, but following the cessation of hostilities he was captured at Olney in Northamptonshire, parenthetically just six miles from Grafton Regis, the site of his wife’s family home. He became a prisoner in his own kingdom. Eventually, after failing to rule in Edward’s name, Warwick was forced to release the king, but the situation failed to improve and, eventually, warned by Hastings, Edward was obliged to flee to the Continent.
¹¹

Throughout all of this, Hastings remained ardently and unswervingly loyal to his friend and king. He had hitched his wagon to Edward’s star and there was never any disloyalty. It was apparently Hastings who largely created the platform for Edward’s return from exile and Hastings who worked to achieve a reconciliation between Edward and his brother, George.
¹²
Now began a sequence of sharp and decisive engagements in which Hastings played his part, although not always with distinction. On 14 April 1471 he commanded one wing of the king’s army at the Battle of Barnet. It was here that Hastings’ own brother-in-law, Warwick the Kingmaker, was killed, most probably in error during the melée following the rout of the Lancastrian forces. Shortly after this, Hastings received from Edward licenses to crenellate a number of his houses, among which were Ashby
¹³
and Kirby Muxloe. This was evidently a mark of trust on behalf of his monarch, but also perhaps a reward for his efforts in the field at Barnet.
¹⁴
Hastings again stood alongside his king and his younger brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester at the decisive Battle of Tewkesbury, fought on 4 May 1471. It was the last full-scale battle in which Hastings would be involved.