Richard III and the Murder in the Tower (2 page)

I think it is safe to say that Edward III reigned too long and had too many children.
⁵
His fifty years on the throne from 1327–1377 meant that, like Queen Victoria and the present queen, Elizabeth II, the immediately following generation did not get a real chance to rule. As should be immediately evident, this frustration breeds unhappiness and discontent, which itself has to find expression in later years. In 1328, Edward married Phillipa of Hainault and produced a total of twelve children.
⁶
Nine of them lived into adulthood, which was an exceptional survival rate even for royalty in those times. Of these nine survivors, five were male and essentially all that followed in the latterly named ‘Wars of the Roses’ was a glorified family argument between the descendants of these individuals, who each had some claim to the throne of England. Edward III’s first son, Edward the Black Prince, was never to become king, dying a year before his father and, it is said, thereby contributing to his father’s demise. However, the only surviving son of the Black Prince became Richard II, after Edward III’s death in 1377. Richard II was himself a ‘spare’ and only assumed primacy when his older brother died in infancy. Like many ‘spares,’ he did not make a good or strong king and was deposed by his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, the son of Edward III’s third surviving son, John of Gaunt. Bolingbroke became Henry IV and took the throne, having his cousin Richard II executed early in 1400.
⁷
It was this form of ‘might makes right’ policy that set the stage for the later events of 1483.

Upon the death of Henry IV in 1413, his son Henry V became king, and one of his major claims to fame was his extensive pursuit by means of arms of the French throne. This he accomplished, and eventually married Katherine of Valois, the French king’s daughter, thus uniting the thrones of France and England, if only for a little while. Unlike his greatgrandfather, who lived too long and had too many children, Henry V made the opposite mistake: he had too few children and died too soon. Henry V expired very close to his thirty-fifth birthday and left his infant son Henry VI on the throne of both countries. Since baby Henry was at that time only 268 days old, the country was ruled by a regent and a council. What is important to note here is that regents generally did not do as well as might be expected in these circumstances. The example of the accusation and subsequent assassination of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester for treason in 1447 was a salutary lesson that had to weigh significantly in the minds of those present in the Tower in 1483, some thirty-six years later. Being a medieval king was not for the faint-hearted, and by all accounts Henry VI would have been better suited to other more sedentary pursuits rather than being a monarch. Even after attaining his majority and having been crowned both King of England and of France, the relative power vacuum left by his own personality engendered dangerous times and conspiracy.

Due in part to Henry’s indisposition and his frequent illness, the House of York, represented primarily by Richard, Duke of York, first secured the regency and then wrested from the king the right of succession. Henry essentially disenfranchised his own son, Edward, Prince of Wales in favour of Richard, Duke of York and his descendants. As one might well imagine, this action failed signally to please Henry’s wife, Margaret of Anjou.
⁸
However, this was just the prelude to a much more elaborate degree of family strife. When Richard, Duke of York and his son Edmund, Earl of Rutland were killed at the Battle of Wakefield late in December 1460, the gloves came off. Particularly incensed by the treatment of his father’s corpse and especially by the way in which his brother’s pleas for mercy had been ignored, Edward, the eldest living son of Richard, Duke of York, conducted an active campaign against Henry VI and his Lancastrian following. Edward won several significant victories, including the battles of Mortimer’s Cross and Towton, and was declared King Edward IV in London in 1461 with the strong support of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, latterly known as ‘the Kingmaker.’

In the following eight years, the tumblers of fate turned again several times and Edward’s army was defeated by the same Earl of Warwick at the Battle of Edgecote Moor, by which time the Kingmaker had changed sides in the hope of exerting an ever-higher level of power. After a period when Edward IV was forced to leave the country and Henry VI was restored to his throne, Edward reappeared from the Continent and began again to fight his way back to the throne.
⁹
The Lancastrian forces were defeated first at the Battle of Barnet where Warwick the Kingmaker was killed and was followed by the decisive Battle of Tewkesbury on 4 May 1471, where Edward’s victory put an end to all significant fighting for the duration of his remaining twelve-year reign. Either in the pursuit that followed the rout of the Lancastrians at Tewkesbury, or more spectacularly following the cessation of fighting, Edward, Prince of Wales, the son of Henry VI, was killed and the potential line of succession directly from Henry was broken.
¹⁰
Edward IV marched to London shortly after the battle and Henry VI himself met his fate, departing this world in the Tower of London shortly after Edward returned to the capital.
¹¹
It is suggested that he died of melancholy, although the reality is most probably that it was a quite violent melancholy. In actuality, it is very likely that he was assassinated. For the time being, the House of York attained supremacy and, with no immediate claimant to champion, the House of Lancaster looked to be defeated. Of course, these were actually only family disagreements and the degree of consanguinity between the various combatants was always close. Edward IV resumed undisputed possession of the crown on Henry VI’s demise and held it for some eleven and three-quarter more years until 9 April 1483. It was on this day that the king died quite suddenly, just short of his forty-first birthday. And it is here that our story begins.

Edward IV died on Wednesday 9 April 1483,
¹
not yet forty-one years of age.
²
He was one of the youngest kings of England ever to die of natural causes.
³
While this might possibly suggest some form of foul play, there is existing evidence that Edward’s health had perhaps been deteriorating for some time.
⁴
Indeed, it has even been speculated that he was suffering from the advanced stages of a sexually transmitted disease.
⁵
Regardless of the precise cause, the king’s demise must have been a disconcerting event and the tension and uncertainty that it caused was felt around the realm. The primary issue to hand was, of course, the succession. Had Edward IV lasted only four or five more years, his eldest son, the youthful Prince Edward, would have been sixteen or seventeen years of age and in those times considered well able to rule in his own right. However, being aged twelve and a half, his father had appointed a protector for the young boy during his final years before maturity. The role of protector, and de facto ruler of the realm, fell naturally to Edward’s younger brother.
⁶
This was natural, because Richard, Duke of Gloucester had been Edward’s most staunch and loyal supporter throughout his brother’s lifetime.
⁷
From this decision, expressed in Edward’s last will and testament, we can assume that there was no one the dying king trusted more. Whether he was wise to do so has been a subject of contention almost ever since.
⁸

Any judgment that is made upon the character of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, later Richard III, depends directly upon when one dates his conscious decision to take the throne.
⁹
The earlier one believes him to have made this decision, the more likely one is to render an adverse judgment on Richard and vice versa.
¹⁰
Although some individuals believe that the Duke of Gloucester schemed for the throne from his earliest childhood, most reasonable commentators would agree that up until the death of his elder brother he exhibited no direct ambition to rule the kingdom in his own right. Indeed, ensconced in his favorite castle of Middleham in Yorkshire,
¹¹
(
see
Figure 1) Richard served one of the greatest possible supporting roles for his monarch in securing the northern counties and maintaining the strength of the border against the ever-troublesome Scots.
¹²

Up until early 1483, Richard may well have expected to continue to fulfill this function as bulwark of the north throughout his brother’s lifetime.
¹³
However, it would also be reasonable to suppose that even when his nephew did later ascend the throne, no matter how grasping the Woodville side of his family might be, it would still be a wise and prudent policy to keep Richard in this role he had assumed for ensuring the peace of the realm. Also, we have reason to believe that Richard himself was fairly content with his northern hegemony and, in the normal run of events, would most probably have proved as useful and loyal a servant to his nephew as he had previously for his brother.
¹⁴
Had this been the case, Richard would have proved to have been largely a footnote to history and not in the centre of the controversy that he currently occupies.
¹⁵

All changed on that day in early April 1483, as news of Edward’s death spread across the country. The initial reaction of almost everyone, but especially Richard, Duke of Gloucester made it plain that the young prince would soon be crowned the next King of England.
¹⁶
However, the political realities of the situation mandated that Richard, now Lord Protector, travel as quickly as was practicably feasible to the capital, London. That it took him more than a week to prepare for this journey does not suggest a tremendous sense of urgency, but certainly information was beginning to accumulate with respect to the changing tide of events in London. The need for his personal presence in the capital was exacerbated by news that members of the queen’s family were questioning the dead king’s wishes and were arguing that a protectorate was simply unnecessary. Under the circumstances, it was very clear that there were the beginnings of a struggle for control of the heir to the throne and with it control of the realm itself. We have no evidence that Richard initiated this conflict. However, we do have a number of indications that the Woodville clan, many of whom were already resident in London, were the source of this emerging dispute.
¹⁷

At the time of his father’s death, the young prince, now nominally Edward V, was at his residence at Ludlow Castle on the borders of Wales. Arrangements were made for him to go to London as soon as possible. As the young Edward headed east, Richard headed south and was most probably kept in touch with the tenor of events in London by those still loyal to the old king’s wishes. In this, his most reliable reported informant was William, Lord Hastings. As the contemporary commentator Mancini indicated:

At this stage of events, we can see that Richard had cause to be very grateful to Hastings, his old friend and comrade-in-arms, for keeping him apprised of developments. Indeed, he appeared not to be receiving information through more formal channels which, as Protector, he should have been. Thus, what was clearly coming, and what would have been evident to almost all, was nothing less than a struggle for the kingdom. Richard had to move quickly in order to neutralise the Woodville strategy of dominating events through the manipulation of the young king. In this, we have to be very sensitive to Richard’s motivations, since his actions at this juncture were almost certainly self-protective in nature. There is little doubt that if the Woodvilles had succeeded in their immediate aspirations, Richard himself, along with others such as Hastings, would most probably have lost not only their position but probably their lives as well. The written evidence of the letter Richard sent to York from London indicates that he was certainly aware of this threat by 10 June. However, it is more than reasonable to suppose that he must have known of this danger even as he began his journey from the north down to the capital. If Edward IV’s demise had been anticipated, it is likely that Richard cogitated upon such eventualities even before the death of his brother and, indeed, it is natural that he and those of his affiliation would have debated future possibilities anyway, even if Edward had not been in failing health.

The evidence which demonstrates Richard’s unequivocal understanding of the situation comes from his actions as his party from the north and that of Edward V from the west met around Northampton and Stony Stratford in Buckinghamshire on 29 and 30 April respectively.
¹⁹
Richard moved with appropriate dispatch to secure the leaders of the Woodville faction that had accompanied the young Edward V from Ludlow. He had Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers (the uncle of the new King), Sir Richard Grey (the new king’s half brother), Thomas Vaughan (Edward’s chamberlain) and Sir Richard Haute
²⁰
all arrested and sent under guard to his strongholds in the north. Rivers, for example, was sent to Sheriff Hutton Castle in Yorkshire (
see
Figure 2). In adopting this course, Richard was evidently supported by a new ally, Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham. Buckingham perhaps resented the Woodvilles because by the age of eleven in 1466, he had been forced to marry the queen’s sister, Catherine Woodville. Obviously, Buckingham had bided his time, and now saw the present situation as an opportunity to revenge himself upon his erstwhile oppressors. Together with the two dukes, Edward V now proceeded toward London and his expected coronation.