Richard III (12 page)

By the early 1480s it must have been obvious that Edward IV was going to pieces. At Picquigny Commynes had noticed that the King was putting on weight. Mancini, writing of his lastyears, tells us how Edward

His womanizing was equally out of control. Mancini also informs us that the King

The Duke of Gloucester’s devotion to the North Country can in part be explained by the fact that he saw it as a refuge. It is easy to believe that not only did he fear the Woodvilles, but he was worried how he might be treated during his nephew’s reign. It could be very dangerous to be the King’s uncle, as the two previous Dukes of
Gloucester had discovered, and, as has already been suggested, Richard may have shared Clarence’s paranoia. He must also have seen the North as a power base. More knew many contemporaries who suspected that Richard had made plans to seize the throne should his nephews still be children on the death of Edward IV – ‘whose life he looked that evil diet should shorten’.

This possibility did not occur to the King. In the final years of his reign he was devoting what remained of his energy to the situation in Scotland. Here the incompetence of James III offered considerable opportunities to the English. James had been seduced from the policy of friendship towards England by the ever-industrious Louis XI and was turning a blind eye on large-scale raids over the Border by his subjects, despite Edward’s complaints. By the spring of 1480 Scots raiding had become intolerable. On 12 May the Duke of Gloucester was appointed Lieutenant-General in the North with powers to raise troops. Nevertheless, the Earl of Angus – the redoubtable Archibald ‘Bell-the-Cat’ – overran and sacked Bamburgh on the Northumbrian coast. Gloucester retaliated in September with a counter-raid, presumably killing, burning and laying waste as the custom was. For the moment this quieted matters, but in November Edward decided that he would have to invade Scotland the following summer – ‘to make against the Scots rigorous and cruel war’.
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During the winter of 1480–81 the Duke strengthened the walls of Carlisle, reinforced every garrison on the Border and called out levies for the coming campaign. He also assembled ships. In March 1481 he went down to London to discuss invasion plans.

Naval operations, based on both Scarborough and Newcastle, were entrusted to Lord Howard – the King’s ‘Lieutenant and Captain at Sea’. The future Duke of Norfolk, who was already over sixty and a veteran of the last campaigns of the Hundred Years War, had been an unwavering Yorkist from the very beginning. Knighted by Edward at Towton, he had remained uncompromisingly faithful during Henry VI’s second reign, joining Edward as soon as he returned in 1471. He was one of the King’s most useful servants, though violent-tempered and overbearing. Gloucester’s association as Admiral with old ‘Jockey’ – or ‘Jacky’ – Howard plainly made for an enduring friendship which would have important consequences. Despite his age Howard was still ruthlessly ambitious, still an up-and-coming man. (He features, sometimes unpleasantly, in the
Paston Letters
.)
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A very experienced sailor who had already fought and won several naval battles, on this occasion he proved a devastatingly effective ‘Captain at Sea’. He had an excellent fleet crewed by 3,000 men, some of whom were equipped with brass hand-guns specially brought over from the Calais arsenal. In May 1482, in his flagship
Mary Howard
, he took his ships openly into the Firth of Forth, appearing off Pittenweem and then off Leith. As soon as he located it, he sailed straight at the enemy fleet which he routed completely, capturing eight of its largest vessels and sinking the rest. Before sailing for home, he destroyed the little Port of Blackness on the north coast of the Firth. However, he had much less success on a second voyage into the Firth later that summer – by now the Scots knew better than to engage Lord Howard at sea.

It is likely that Gloucester personally directed naval operations on the west coast, in his capacity as Admiral. Here his trusted servant Sir Richard Ratcliff commanded a flotilla, which kept guard against Scots warships and privateers.

By contrast, the campaign on land was disappointing, even though Richard had the assistance of Lords Northumberland and Stanley. Edward was unexpectedly detained in the South by alarming disturbances and riots, which were caused by the savage taxes he was levying to pay for the war. Fat, overweight, jaded and tired, the King postponed the invasion. Meanwhile, his brother besieged Berwick, which controlled the main road over the eastern Border, but although it had only a small garrison it was defended by Archibald ‘Bell-the-Cat’. Despite being invested by land and sea for the rest of the year and throughout the winter by Stanley, Archibald managed to hold the town – by the spring of 1482 merely the outer wall had fallen. At the same time James III had raised a large army in readiness for the English onslaught and during 1481 launched three separate attacks over the Border, burning some small towns and taking many English prisoners. They appear to have been intercepted and beaten back into Scotland by Gloucester and Northumberland, who followed them to burn and lay waste a wide area before retreating.

During the hard winter of 1481–2 the Duke was occupied in putting down riots all over the North in protest against the crushing war taxation. The Scots kept up their usual hit-and-run raids. However, in May 1482 Gloucester again swept over the Border, to storm and sack the not insignificant town of Dumfries.

If the main business was the continuing siege of Berwick, it was interrupted by countless little battles and skirmishes. While few details have survived, it seems that so much fighting gave the Duke a considerable military reputation. One long-forgotten battle, Hutton Field near Berwick, may have been a last Scots effort to relieve the town. Here old Sir Ralph Assheton – ‘The Black Knight of Ashton’ – did such excellent service that Richard created him a Banneret on the spot. The Black Knight would do him even better service the following year.
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However, the entire situation on the Border had been changed by the arrival in England of James III’s brother at the end of 1482. The King of Scots was despised by his nobility, on account of excessively artistic tastes and low-born favourites, and was therefore vulnerable. At the same time his brother Alexander, Duke of Albany, was consumed by ambition and suffered from a classic ‘second-son’ complex – Kendall’s amusing phrase ‘Clarence in a kilt’ is probably very near the mark. And Albany was a much tougher and more resourceful character than King James. When imprisoned in 1479 in a high tower, he persuaded a ‘chamber child’ (valet) to help him kill the guards and escape; the boy fell from the tower, breaking his leg, so the Duke reached a ship to France and safety carrying him in his arms. He came to England at the invitation of Edward IV, who promised to help him if he would annul his marriage to the girl he had just wed in France at Louis XI’s behest and marry Edward’s daughter Cecily. In June 1482, in a treaty at Fotheringay, Albany pledged himself to surrender Berwick and other Border lands, to recognize English overlordship of Scotland, to abandon the ‘auld alliance’ with France and to marry Princess Cecily. In return the English recognized him as ‘Alexander IV’ and promised to help him oust James. There began a brief but fascinating partnership between the two ruthless brothers of two reigning monarchs. Richard Gloucester’s
ambition could well have been fuelled by that of Alexander Albany.

On 12 June 1482 Richard was again appointed Lieutenant-General in the North. By July the new hammer of the Scots and ‘King Alexander’ were ready to invade Scotland with 20,000 men, including Northumberland and Stanley.
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They marched over the Border, devastating Berwickshire and Roxburghshire as they went. At Berwick the townsmen surrendered as soon as they saw the vast host, only the citadel holding out. By an extraordinary piece of luck, the invasion coincided with the Scots lords’ decision to arrest James III on 22 July and imprison him in Edinburgh Castle. In consequence Gloucester was able to occupy the city of Edinburgh, without striking a blow, at the end of the month.

Richard’s object was not so much to defeat the Scots – who in any case were already in total disarray – but to install ‘Alexander IV’ as a client King. However, the latter needed time in which to build up support for his usurpation; accordingly, just like Edward IV in 1471, Albany denied any designs on the Scots Crown and announced that he had merely come to reclaim his Duchy. He also asked Gloucester to leave Edinburgh. The Scots nobles then sued for peace with England. While emphasizing that he had no full authority, Richard insisted on the immediate surrender of Berwick and on repayment of the dowry of Princess Cecily, who had once been betrothed to James III’s son and heir as well as to Albany. The Scots quickly agreed to everything, even to the marriage of James’s sister to Lord Rivers, one concession which no doubt did not exactly delight the Duke of Gloucester. After barely a fortnight’s occupation at most, he retreated from Edinburgh and marched back to Berwick, whose citadel surrendered to him on 24 August. Even before the surrender he disbanded all save 1,700 men of his army in confident anticipation.

In the event, the Duke of Albany became briefly Lieutenant-General [Regent] of Scotland, but was ousted by King James before the year was out. Instead of the subservient Scots regime for which he hoped, Gloucester had merely obtained Berwick and a short truce. He had thrown away the chance of obtaining what could have been far more advantageous terms – and the occupation of Edinburgh had been made possible only because of a rare moment of Scots weakness. He had in
fact misjudged Albany’s ability and the whole political situation in Scotland.

The Croyland chronicler thought that Edward IV was privately furious at such an opportunity being lost. ‘What he [Richard] achieved by this expedition … he needlessly squandered.’ He adds that to keep and defend Berwick was a ruinously costly business. Beyond question Gloucester had shown remarkably poor political judgement – perhaps he was carried away by a megalomaniac chimera of subduing all Scotland. However, English joy at having occupied the enemy capital and at what appeared superficially to be a great victory no doubt mollified his brother to some extent. All over England there were salvoes from cannons and bonfires in celebration.

For the war with Scotland of 1480–83 was seen as much more than a mere Border skirmish, even if there had been no pitched battles. Englishmen regarded it as a full-scale conflict with a foreign power. They had been driven out of France by Charles VII and then tricked out of it at Picquigny by Louis XI, and Richard had won the first English victory over foreigners since the days of Old Talbot’s triumphs – if anything, they hated the Scots more than the French. In the autumn of 1482 most Englishmen considered the Duke of Gloucester a national hero.

A lot of ink has been wasted in trying to explain away Richard’s deformity, The irregularity of his shoulders has sometimes been ascribed to the effect of too much swordsmanship on a delicate physique, while even Charles Ross rejected their unevenness, blaming Sir Thomas More for stamping on Tudor imagination a mistaken belief that he was a crookback. Now, however, the skeleton has shown that More was only telling the truth and that, as Shakespeare says, the King was ‘not made to court an amorous looking-glass.’

At thirty Richard was a slightly built, very short and thin man with slender limbs. He bore a striking resemblance to his ‘most dread and dear father’ the Duke of York; if More is to be believed, Richard’s propagandist Dr Sha saw in him ‘the sure undoubted image, the plain express likeness of the noble Duke, whose remembrance can never die while he lives’. To judge from a comparison between the Society of Antiquaries’ portrait of him and a series of contemporary miniatures of Margaret of York, he also had some resemblance to his sister – a small woman with sharp, peaked features. Almost all contemporary descriptions save Nicholas von Poppelau’s (see
p. 205
) testify that Gloucester was unusually small, and that physically it was his most noticeable characteristic. Rous speaks of ‘his little body and feeble strength” while Vergil says he was ‘little of stature’. We know from his skeleton that although he was five feet eight inches tall the scoliosis that crooked his back made him much shorter - it may also have given him a small hump. However, these deformities were no doubt largely disguised by a good tailor. He had undeniably good features even if, judging from copies of portraits done in his lifetime, they wore an oddly restless look.
More, who had spoken to many people who remembered the Duke, tells us he was ‘hard favoured of visage and such as in princes is called warlike, in other men otherwise’. Vergil is more specific – he had a ‘short and sour countenance’. (A figure in a Flemish miniature of about 1470, tentatively identified as Gloucester, shows a strangely sharp and acid face.) The Croyland writer, describing his appearance at Bosworth, speaks of ‘a countenance which, always attenuated, was on this occasion more livid and ghastly than usual’. Making allowances for partisan exaggeration, it is reasonable to deduce from this eyewitness testimony that Richard’s face was oddly thin and pale with almost feverishly bright eyes perhaps due to the pain he suffered from his deformed spine. Vergil adds that when the Duke was thinking he would constantly bite his lip and toy with the dagger at his belt – drawing it half out of the sheath and then thrusting it back again.