Richard The Chird (34 page)

He is a man of letters and he has writing materials; he seeks to order his throbbing mind at this terrible moment by the discipline of composition, to crowd upon paper some final reckoning with the world. It takes the form of a little ballad, genuinely pathetic

TREASON

2 53

in its accents, but in form a surprisingly typical medieval plaint upon the mutability of life:

Somewhat musing And more mourning, In remembering

Th'unsteadfastness; This world being Of such wheeling, Me contrarying,

What may I guess?

I fear, doubtless, Remediless Is now to seize

My woeful chance; For unkindness, Withoutenless, And no redress,

Me doth advance.

With displeasure, To my grievance, And no surance

Of remedy; Lo, in this trance, Now in substance, Such is my dance,

Willing to die.

Methinks truly Bounden am I, And that greatly,

To be content; Seeing plainly Fortune doth wry All contrary

From mine intent.

My life was lent Me to one intent. It is nigh spent.

Welcome Fortune! But I ne went [never thought] Thus to be shent [ruined], But she it meant:

Such is her won [custom]. 19 *

On Tuesday, June 24, Rivers was escorted to Pontefract. Grey had been brought from Middleham Castle; Vaughan was already there. Next day the three men went in silence to the block. The execution was officially supervised by the Earl of Northumberland, Warden of the East and Middle Marches; it was carried out by Sir Richard Ratcliffe; it was viewed by the men of York and the rest of the little army which was about to march southward to London. Rivers' will was never to be proved, but the priests of the chapel of Our Lady of Pewe, at Westminster, for whom Rivers had done much, would keep his obit on the twenty-fifth

of each June. The hair shirt which, it was discovered, the Earl wore to his death, was hung up in a church at Doncaster as a holy object. 20 *

Anthony Woodville's father was a rapacious adventurer; his mother, so formidable and devious a woman that she was held to be a witch. His brother Lionel was a type of their father in the gown of a bishop. His sister the Queen—beautiful, suffering, brought from nowhere to the highest place and cast down again to misery and friendless death—owned a destiny presenting the grand outlines of "tragedie" 21 * which disintegrates upon inspection because it was developed by a mean, stupid, and cruel character. So unlovely was his family that even Anthony, for all his accomplishments, could not be loved, save perhaps by his immediate followers and by Caxton. In Richard's mind, the renewed plotting of the Queen justified his execution. Yet, in a broader view, he perished because nobody spoke for him and because he was the ablest, not the most guilty, of a family which had long exacerbated the feelings, and now threatened the stability, of the realm. Richard had no such struggle to reconcile to his conscience the dispatching of Rivers as he had concerning Hastings; the claims of Rivers upon his heart were shadowed by the figure of George of Clarence. Besides, the breach had been opened.

The Road to the Throne*

Who knows the Lord Protector's mind?

WHEN he sat down on Saturday, June 21, to report events to his friend in the country, Simon Stallworthe, servant of the Lord Chancellor, could scarce hold the pen, he was so ill. And sick at heart. "Worshipful Sir, I commend me to you and for tidings," he begins abruptly, "I hold you happy that ye are out of the press for with us is much trouble and every man doubts other." After giving the news of the beheading of Hastings and the delivery of little York from sanctuary, he reports that Lord Lisle, the Queen's own brother-in-law, has sought the favor of the Lord Protector and attends upon him. It is thought that twenty thousand of the Protector's and Buckingham's men will arrive in London this week—for what purpose Stallworthe does not know, except to keep the peace. The Lord Chancellor is very busy—busier than he would wish to be, Stallworthe adds cautiously, "if any other ways would be taken." Morton, Bishop of Ely, and Rotherham, Archbishop of York, are still in the Tower, along with Oliver King (former secretary to King Edward and one of Hastings' party). "I suppose they shall corne out nevertheless," Stallworthe writes, then draws a line through the words. For safekeeping, he goes on, the Protector has stationed men in their London houses; and he supposes that the Protector will also send men to their manors in the country. Morton, Rotherham, and King are not likely to come out of prison yet. 1 * Mistress Shore is in prison; what shall happen to her, he does not know. Concluding with an apology for not writing more because he is so ill, Stallworthe adds a postscript that all of the Lord Chamberlain's men have entered the service of the Duke of Buckingham. 2 London was now in the grip of rumor, doubt, fear, speculation. Though the young King could be seen shooting at butts

255

with his brother on the Tower greens, whispers ran more strongly that he should not be King much longer. 3 The Lord Protector often rode through the city these days with a great train of lords and attendants. He now divided his time between Crosby's Place and his mother's home on the river, Baynard's Castle. It was noted that he entertained at dinner increasing numbers of guests. In view of the troubled times, the council had postponed the coronation and ceased to make preparations for the meeting of a Parliament. 4 * Buckingham, his retinue swelled by the men of the dead Lord Chamberlain—what better illuminates the decay of loyalty and the vanity of the Duke?—was more than ever acting like a kingmaker.

There were no disturbances in London or elsewhere. No demonstrations against the Lord Protector. None of the lords or gentry gathered their retainers about them and bolted for the safety of their castles. No plots were hatched. London and the lords waited. Whatever emotion they felt concerning the succession to the throne, their first concern was for the safety of the realm and for order. The two months' reign of Edward V had already forecast disaster and recalled the bad old days of Henry VI. The Protector was a man few knew well and a number, in consequence, feared, a man of the distant and rugged North; but he was also the mighty Edward's brother and the first general of the kingdom, and it was said that in his own country he ruled with justice and humanity.

Meanwhile, at York on June 21—the day Stallworthe wrote his letter—the magistrates decided that their force of three hundred men should wear the city's cognizance, or emblem, but take with them to Pontefract cognizances of the Duke of Gloucester and consult with the Earl of Northumberland about whether they should wear both on their march south. For though their troop had originally been ordered to reach Pontefract by June 1 8, they still had not left York on Saturday, the twenty-first, and did not, indeed, arrive at Pontefract until the following Monday or Tuesday, in time to witness the execution of Rivers on the twenty-fifth. The rumors Stallworthe had heard were mistaken: no troops would enter London this week, or even the

following week. Richard of Gloucester had sent word to delay the appearance of his northerners: he wanted no show of force in the capital during these critical days. 5 *

The most noteworthy piece of news, Stallworthe was unaware of or chary of mentioning directly: on the day he penned his letter, and during the days that had elapsed since the delivery of the little Duke of York, the Protector and his inner council had been discussing with a variety of lords, prelates, and influential commoners the revelation of Bishop Stillington.

The Bishop of Bath and Wells had declared to Richard that the children of Elizabeth Woodville and King Edward were illegitimate because the King had been affianced to another when he married Elizabeth. In the eyes of the Church, the essence of marriage was consent, a mutual interchange of personal vows; therefore, betrothal had the force of a legal tie and the sanction of a sacred obligation. It was not infrequently abused in these times. Men seeking release from marriage could secure a divorce from the papal court by raking up some evidence of a previous engagement to marry. Henry VIII obtained an annulment of his marriage to Anne Boleyn—as he was cutting off her head—on the grounds that she had once been betrothed to the Earl of Northumberland. In humbler circumstances, the sanctity of troth-plight had enabled one Richard Calle to marry Margery Paston, daughter of the family he served, despite the furious attempts of the Pastons to prevent the match. 6 Stillington's avowal, then, was of the utmost seriousness.

It is doubtful if he was able to produce proof ... a letter from the lady, a scrap of writing from the King. It had been a most secret undertaking, he explained to Richard, known but to himself. He alone had witnessed, or transmitted, the Bang's oath to the lady of his desire. Only then had she been willing to surrender to her sovereign, who, however, had sworn troth but to have his use of her. Richard well knew that his brother had seduced ladies of the court both before and after his marriage, 7 Commynes remarks that courtiers frequently use troth-plight only to deceive. 8

And who was the lady? Richard demanded. He doubtless expected Stillington to name one of the light-of-loves of Edward-s

RICHARD THE THIRD

early court, about which he himself knew little. The Bishop's answer was considerably more impressive. Edward's victim was no less than the Lady Eleanor Butler, widow of Sir Thomas Butler and daughter of the old Earl of Shrewsbury, the great Talbot himself. Though by this time she had been dead for fifteen years, she would be readily remembered. A meager outline of her life still survives in the public records.

The Lady Eleanor was apparently the daughter of Talbot's second marriage. In 1449 or 1450 she was married to Sir Thomas Butler, son and heir of Ralph Butler, Lord Sudeley. She had become a widow by the time Edward assumed the crown in March of 1461. Her death occurred in June of 1468. Though she was seemingly married at a time when Edward was only eight years old, it is quite likely that she herself was then no more than thirteen or fourteen, and Edward's passion for Elizabeth Wood-ville indicates that he was disposed to find older women attractive.

A passage in the Patent Rolls indicates that the Lady Eleanor was newly widowed when Edward became King and hints at the circumstances under which she may have come to the young monarch's attention. In the last disturbed months of Henry's reign, after the Yorkist victory at Northampton, Eleanor's father-in-law, Lord Sudeley, succeeded in getting into his hands one of the two manors which he had jointly settled on her and his son when they were married. Since he had not bothered, however, to secure a royal license for the transfer, the King seized both manors. It is possible that Edward first laid eyes on the still-youthful widow when she directly appealed to him to restore her lands. Thus, the tradition that Elizabeth Woodville met her sovereign in just these circumstances may preserve an actual happening, which, after Elizabeth's elevation to the throne, was transferred in the careless channels of rumor from the Lady Eleanor to the Queen. In any case, it is on record that the Lady Eleanor died possessed of the two manors which the King had taken into his keeping, 9 *

As an obvious precaution before further considering the matter, Richard must have made sufficient inquiries about the lady to discover that what was known of her life tallied with Stillinoton's

disclosure. A mysterious passage in the Bishop's own life tallied with it too—as Richard must have realized, whether or not Stil-lington avowed it.

As early as the winter of 1470-71, the Bishop had been closely concerned with the fortunes of the Duke of Clarence. His diocese, after all, lay in the very heart of Clarence's great manorial holdings. While Warwick ruled at Westminster and Richard and Edward were refugees in Burgundy, Stillington was secretly pleading with George of Clarence to return to his family allegiance. Perhaps it was due in part to Clarence's influence that after Edward reconquered his kingdom, the Bishop of Bath and Wells became Chancellor once again. Removed from this office in 1475, he soon resumed his intimate connections with Clarence. On February 18, 1478, the Duke was executed. Three weeks later, on March 6, Elizabeth Stonor wrote her husband, "Ye shall understand that the Bishop of Bath is brought into the Tower since you departed." After he had paid a heavy fine, Stillington, on June 20, received a royal pardon, in which his offense is named: he had uttered words prejudicial to the King and his state. 10

Richard had been in Yorkshire when Clarence was arrested in the early summer of 1477. Less than two weeks after his brother's execution he had left London for Middleham. Hence, though he must afterward have learned that Stillington had been imprisoned for being in some way implicated in Clarence's treason, it is likely that he remained unaware—until the Bishop approached him—of the precise role Stillington had played.

The Bishop of Bath and Wells had probably let slip to Clarence the secret of the precontract. It helped to engender Clarence's misty dream that when he had married Mary of Burgundy he could use her power to win for himself the English crown. In his last furious months of reckless plotting and spreading tales against the King, Clarence . . . even Clarence , . . doubtless realized that he dare not raise the issue of the precontract until he had achieved sufficient strength to defy Edward. But apparently he blabbed it to a few. An informer of the Woodvilles, or a trusted adherent of his own, reported the words. They were

Clarence's death warrant. Thus may be explained what many men of the time found inexplicable. No one doubted the Duke's guilt; the puzzle was, why, at this particular occasion, Edward proceeded against his brother w r hen, in so many other instances, what seemed like more overt treason had been forgiven.

The King knew at once where Clarence had got the story, but he had no wish to bring Stillington's revelation into the open. A fine and a few months' imprisonment, on a general charge of defaming the King, were sufficient to secure from the Bishop a private oath that he would henceforth be silent and an open declaration to the few who had learned the secret that it was arrant and malicious nonsense. Stillington did not regain Edward's favor, and ever after he was held in intense enmity by the Woodvilles.