Richard III and the Murder in the Tower (14 page)

There are multiple entrances to this larger chamber, which itself has recessed windows on its eastern side. There is also a garderobe within the east wall of the chamber, but the account we have is of the entry of many men into the chamber and this location is neither sufficient nor convenient for this purpose. In the north-east corner of the chamber is access to the main spiral staircase of the White Tower, and this is a possible location for the invading group, but it is rather an unlikely one if Richard had time to prepare, as the missing half-hour in the Council meeting suggests that he had. A more likely candidate is the chapel of St John itself (
see
door at far end of Figure 22). As can be see from Figure 22, there is a doorway between the chapel and the council chamber and the chapel is certainly capable of holding many individuals. However, entry from this end might have permitted some degree of escape down the staircase at the other end of the chamber and the single narrow door inhibits the passage of several armed men at one time. What I take to be the most likely course of events would use the doorways from the adjacent large chamber (
see
Figure 24).
²⁷
These latter two chambers are connected by two doors, one to the north and one to the south (although only the south entrance is shown on Figure 24). In my view, it was through one or both of these doors that the armed men entered upon the given signal, with the cry of ‘Treason.’ The signal, as indicated in More, was probably some fist crashing on the table and even the usher, as the
Great Chronicle
tells us, appears to have been ready to facilitate entry.

The hastily made plan worked. The people inside the chamber were taken by relative surprise, and those coming in had very little doubt as to who were the intended targets. It seems possible that the armed party entering the chamber were of Buckingham’s affiliation. Although Mancini suggests that Buckingham himself was leading them, this seems unlikely. The consensus is that Lord Stanley (the Earl of Derby) suffered some injury to the face and that a number of blows were aimed at him. One account has it that he dived under the table to avoid attack.
²⁸
The two churchmen, Rotherham and Morton, were also taken, but the blow itself fell on Hastings. The origin of the idea of a conspiracy against Edward V’s putative supporters may have come from the constitution of the group of individuals who were taken that day. Indeed, it is a reasonable inference. But if this is so, why was Hastings alone executed, while the others were imprisoned and shortly after largely excused for their actions?
²⁹
One can argue that Hastings was the ringleader, but such a conspiracy between so powerful a group of individuals (and the traditional account also implicates the queen dowager), should surely have argued for much more even-handed and stiffer punishment, certainly for the likes of Stanley, who had neither the cloth nor his sex to protect him? In contrast to Hastings’s quick execution, we find Stanley positively rising in Richard’s young administration. Two weeks after the 13th he appeared as a ‘trusted counselor’ and with Buckingham witnessed Richard’s delivery of the Great Seal to now-Chancellor John Russell, Bishop of Lincoln. At Richard’s coronation on 6 July he carried the mace before the king and queen and was soon after appointed Constable of England for life. Does this sound like the treatment of a traitor involved in a conspiracy with the now-dispatched Hastings? Surely not. Indeed, it may have been sparing Stanley on 13 June that resulted in Richard’s eventual demise. He had to have known that Stanley was the father-in-law of his only rival claimant after the princes had been barred by the pre-contract? In this sparing of Stanley, I see the hand of Catesby also. But I rather suspect that the so-called conspiracy is more in the minds of the subsequent commentators than in the minds of those present that day.

Given the Protector’s state of mind, it would appear that Hastings was given little if any time for reconciliation or contemplation. Perhaps Hastings was taken to the chapel of St John? However, I think it is more likely he was escorted down the main stairs and out on to the green alongside St Peter ad Vincula. He may well have emerged from the north door of the White Tower adjacent to this area, which today contains a monument to Hastings and several others who lost their heads on Tower Green. The accounts virtually all agree as to immediacy and the extemporaneous nature of his actual beheading, each mentioning the use of convenient materials, especially the piece of timber designed for the repairs of the Tower. None of these observations foreshadow either long or extensive planning. Further, the treatment not only of Hastings’s bodily remains but also that of his immediate family further provide insight into Richard’s mind and his decision that day. It was the nicely written condemnation of Hastings that gave many their suspicion of prolonged planning, but I suggest that Catesby had a hand in this also.

We may be able to gauge Richard’s subsequent response to his own precipitate action if we examine how he treated Hastings in death. Unlike the later, very shoddy treatment of his own body and his own estate by Henry Tudor, Richard treated Hastings and his family in a most generous manner. But why? Why, if the cry of ‘treason’ had been so vehement, was Hastings, now an evidently dispatched traitor, treated so well? We can see the remains of this generosity today in St George’s chapel, Windsor Castle, where the Hastings Chantry stands next to the tomb of William’s old friend and monarch, Edward IV.

Hastings’ chantry chapel appears to have been in the process of construction during his lifetime and perhaps had been planned to be located in close proximity to where Edward expected to lie. Some building accounts appear to indicate that the final completion of some of its very fine decoration, were still being made in the 1490s. These decorations show a series of fifteenth-century panels depicting the scenes of the first Christian martyr, St Stephen. As is evident from its wonderful ceiling, the chapel is designed as ‘an ornate cage of stone.’

In the final analysis, as we look to understand Lord Hastings, we must here examine his relationship with the man who ordered his execution: Richard, Duke of Gloucester. The first thing to emphasise is that Hastings had served Richard’s family virtually all his life and was evidently devoted to Edward IV. This was a loyalty Richard and William both shared and neither broke faith with Edward at any time during his lifetime. They each shared exile with their monarch and similarly they shared his field of battle, and indeed Hastings and Richard fought alongside each other on multiple occasions and at particularly pivotal encounters. The two men must have known each other well and shared many hardships. Although they were colleagues in this sense, they were not of an age. At this time, Richard was thirty-one, while it is estimated that Hastings, at approximately fifty-three years old, was some twenty-two years his senior.

On Edward’s death, we have some evidence that Hastings was actively seeking to help Richard. He acted to limit the size of Edward’s retinue and apparently kept Richard apprised of developments as he prepared to come south. These do not sound like the actions of an antagonist. Indeed, these cordial conditions continued when Richard reached London. Largely, the talk of Hastings being part of a conspiracy of any sort is directly derived from
post hoc
interpretations of the events of the morning of Friday 13 June. Thus we need to expose these interpretations and their origins. As we have seen, virtually all the inside, contemporary chroniclers elaborated upon what happened and each appear to provide a fairly reasonable degree of concordance as to actual events. It is Mancini and later More who tried to address why this event happened. However, the prior chronicles each seem to agree that the consensus was that Hastings fell because of his loyalty to Edward IV and thereafter his son Edward V. But surely in this, his loyalty to Edward IV would have been applauded by Richard, who shared such loyalty, not represent a source of dispute?

What, then, we must ask, can be the possible circumstances in which Richard would fail to honour this loyalty? Perhaps the only situation we can envisage is that such loyalty coincided with a betrayal of Richard himself. The pre-contract bastardisation of Edward V and his brother and other siblings fulfills these conditions exactly. The traditional
post hoc
interpretation of why Hastings was executed then become complex. Mancini renders some general account but he provides no direct accusation of conspiracy. What he does confirm is that Richard and Hastings were actually friends. The specification of conspiracy comes from More, and More, as we understand, was heavily influenced by Morton, who had a strong vested interest in smearing Richard’s reputation. I strongly suspect that the purported plot in association with the queen was an indirect result of the way More reported Morton’s verbatim account of the conversation within the council chamber. The implication of the presence of a plot was then derived from an interpretation in respect of who was arrested and detained that day. The particular issue of Jane Shore will be examined in the following chapter.

The various strands can thus be disentangled to a degree. On the one hand, there is the issue of Hastings’ loyalty to the Edwards, father and son. On the other hand, there are the supposed conspirators who range from the Queen Dowager to the former king’s favourite mistress, to the accused clerics and the opportunistic Lord Stanley, later Earl of Derby. Why the latter (Lord Stanley) should be so loyal to Edward V when his loyalty throughout life seems to centre almost completely on himself, and on at least one recorded occasion excluded his own son, is rather difficult to comprehend. If we take Morton as his own man, and subsequent events seem very much to show this, then the supposed alliance being ‘loyal’ to Edward V begins to disintegrate. It is very possible there never was such a conspiratorial alliance in the first place but rather a group who erred on the side of conservatism as the dynamic events played out. Regardless, in the end we find in the words of More that even after the execution ‘the Protector loved him (Hastings) well and was loath to lose him.’
³¹
Loath indeed, for Hastings’ presence may well have tilted the balance at the Battle of Bosworth some two years later. My conclusion must be that the supposed conspiracy is actually an ‘after the fact’ proposition, created to account for the beheading and the detentions that followed this very dramatic meeting. That various strands of the Woodville effort to snatch power mixed with the sudden demise of Hastings is eminently understandable as both insiders and outsiders struggled to make sense of the day’s events. However, I believe these accounts are largely wrong and lead us away from the main issue of why Richard of all people should put Hastings to death at that critical juncture.

For many he had, but her he loved.

Of all the individuals who played a part, either directly or indirectly, on that fateful day of 13 June 1483, perhaps none is harder to evaluate than Jane Shore.
¹
Although she is known to the world through Shakespeare’s plays and Thomas More’s words, we know frustratingly little about her.
²
This confusion encompasses her name, and the historical personage we have come to know as Jane almost certainly began her life as Elizabeth Lambert, the daughter of a relatively wealthy London merchant.
³
The forename ‘Jane’ appears to have been given to her by a later playwright, Thomas Heywood, who, like Shakespeare, never let facts get in the way of a good story. Contemporary records refer to her only as Mistress Shore or Shore’s wife.
⁴
Perhaps one major reason for this lack of information and confusion is precisely because she was a woman, and in More’s words was, at that time, considered ‘to[o] sleight a thing, to be written of and set among the remembraunces of great matters.’ Although times have indeed changed, some commentators
⁵
have argued that Jane is one of the quintessential expressions of how women are represented as symbols rather than true characters in the melée of sex and politics in any age. As we shall see, Jane’s continuing fame is founded largely upon this symbolism, and it is very hard to disengage Jane the historic individual from the Jane of poetry and tragic theatre, as well as more recently of feminist scholarship. Although the latter perspectives are certainly worthy studies, the purpose here is to find the Jane of history,
⁶
and to seek to understand her actions, motivations and effects in the month of June in the year of three kings.
⁷

Any attempt to try to understand the historical figure of Jane Shore must centre on Thomas More’s history of King Richard III. For it was here that Jane featured quite prominently in a story that Helgerson
⁸
opined was, ‘a polemical history, a book intended to blacken the reputation of its principal subject.’ As with the account of the Council meeting in the Tower, we must again look through the lens of More’s text, always remembering that the shadow of Cardinal Morton ever hovers in the background. However, More’s commentary on Jane may be a little more veridical because it seems that she was alive at the time More was writing. He may have even known her.
⁹
More painted a most interesting portrait and I have here quoted from him extensively, since he provides the major source of our knowledge: