Richard The Chird (40 page)

Authors: Paul Murray Kendall

BOOK: Richard The Chird

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was terrible to King Louis the Eleventh because it would part him from the great passion of his life, France, because it would break the web of those darting thoughts and subtle schemes it had been his heart's delight to weave. Five days before Richard was crowned, Louis gave his last public audience, to delegates of the towns of France. In health he had cared nothing for dress; on this occasion he sought to beguile his mortal illness by wearing a long gown of crimson velvet lined with martens, and two scarlet caps. Afterward, he disappeared from view into his gloomy stronghold. Grown morbidly suspicious, he had preserved himself against earthly dangers by iron spikes and Scots guards, but against the advance of death his frantic efforts were less successful. He had tried to buy the intercession of saints: 200,000 francs he gave for a silver screen for St. Martin of Tours; St. John of the Lateran, at Rome, was placated by a golden chalice; St. Eutropius of Saintes and the Three Kings of Cologne, by precious reliquaries. Having sent far and wide in search of holy men, he had finally persuaded Francis of Paola, who ate roots and lived under a rock in Calabria, to make the long journey to the banks of the Loire. But Francis refused to taste the luscious fruits Louis had ordered for his delectation; he scorned the couch provided in the specially built hermitage, preferring to sleep on a mat of reeds woven by himself; and he bluntly told the King that he must trust in God. In desperation, Louis turned to one last expedient which seemed more accessible. Having secured the Pope's permission, he caused the Holy Ampulla, whose sacred chrism had never been removed from Rheims, to be brought to Plessis-les-Tours. He had promised to use but a single tiny drop of the oil and to return the Ampulla after he had worshiped it On a sideboard which he could see from his bed it stood between the Staff of Moses and the Cross of Victory, Even news of the death of Edward the Fourth had given him no pleasure; it was but a horrible reminder that kings perish like other men. Clawing at the slippery sides of life and faith, King Louis slid inexorably toward his end. What of that quartet of men who had been born at about the

same time that Richard had opened his eyes upon the gray stone of Fotheringhay Castle?

In the year of 1483 Leonardo da Vinci departed from Florence to take service under Ludovico Sforza, the ruler of Milan. His teeming brain—infinite riches in a little room—had not yet dazzled the world. He had left behind him, unfinished, the first of his great paintings, "The Adoration of the Magi." Savonarola, the monk with the tongue of fire, had recoiled into obscurity after failing to move the citizens of Ferrara and Florence. Preaching to gaping villagers, he was perfecting that thunderous voice of doom which would one day drive out the Medici and soon after deliver his own body to the stake. The weaver's son with the sea in his blood, Christopher Columbus, had taken service with the Portuguese. During Richard's first months upon the throne, he was sailing down the shore of West Africa to Mina, the fort which Portugal had built upon the Gold Coast. By night and day his gaze swept the vastness of water to the west. Already, the plan of reaching the Indies by sailing into the setting sun lav matured in his mind; in another year he would make his first effort to persuade the King of Portugal to give him ships and money. The rulers who would finally listen to him, Ferdinand the Aragonese and his consort Isabella of Castile, were beginning the last stage in forging a Spanish nation from the domains of Leon, Aragon, and Castile. Since 1478 the figure of the Grand Inquisitor had been expressing the grip of their power and the dynamics of their orthodoxy.

The rival hues of the long past and the quickening future which colored King Richard's mind shine clear in the lives of these four contemporaries: da Vinci and Savonarola charoing opposite poles of men's thinking; King Ferdinand calling into being the Inquisition and nurturing the vision of Columbus.

In England, Edward the Fourth had given a new meaning to the monarchy by bringing to an end the turbulent dominion of the nobles and by setting the kingdom on the road toward a more fruitful release of its energies than it had hitherto achieved. Richard recognized the essential greatness of his brother's ac-

cornplishment, but in his estrangement from court he had become more sensitive to Edward's weaknesses than to the political realities by which Edward had steered his course. Moved by his love of older and more parochial ways, Richard w r ould seek to transform the pattern of government Edward had bequeathed him into a shape which might yield justice as well as order and rest upon loyalty rather than fear. In a time between, he was a man between. He was more like his father than like his brother, but it was his brother's understanding touch upon the pulse of the age which he needed.

The King's Progress*

The presence of a king engenders love Amongst his subjects and his loyal friends . .

UNDER the rains, under the sunlight of July, the kingdom of England lay waiting and wondering. Only London and the lords had any understanding of the events which had brought King Richard to the throne. Only London and the lords had heard the new King's pledge to nourish peace and to govern justly. It was therefore politic for Richard to show himself to the rest of the realm; he was, in fact, eager to demonstrate in his kingly person the kind of rule he meant to give. There were more intimate considerations. He wanted to behold his frail little son, who was now the precious vessel of his dynasty. He wanted to be beheld by the men of Yorkshire, who, being his friends, would feel themselves elevated by his greatness.

Soon after the coronation he retired with his councilors to the quiet of Greenwich to settle his affairs. 1 To the rulers of Europe he sent word of his assumption of the crown. The three chief props of his throne—Buckingham, Norfolk, and Northumberland—he had determined to establish, virtually as his lieutenants, in Wales, East Anglia, and the North.

Buckingham came first. Confirmed in the great powers which had been granted him under the protectorship, he proceeded to reap a fresh harvest. Perhaps Richard had in mind the trouble which the Percies had caused Henry IV, the attempt of Warwick to unseat Edward; he who considers himself a kingmaker is triply sensitive to ingratitude in the monarch he has made. Besides, none had been so zealously loyal as Buckingham—and, in his volatility and eloquence, he was so like Clarence. On July 13 Richard gratified a wish the Duke had long cherished, Buckingham possessed half die great estate of Humphrey de Bohun,

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Earl of Hereford, which had descended to him from one of Humphrey's coheiresses. The rest of the estate had gone to King Henry IV, who had married Bohun's other daughter, and thus was merged in the Crown holdings. From the death of Henry VI and his son Edward, Buckingham had considered himself heir general to the whole estate. Apparently he had tried, without success, to press his claim on King Edward. Richard now restored to him the other half of the Bohun lands, some fifty manors worth more than seven hundred pounds a year. He made the grant provisional, however—"till the same shall be vested in him by the next Parliament"; but there was a sound reason for the delay. Henry VI having been attainted in 1461, his share of the Bohun estate, like all his other lands, had come to the Yorkist Crown by parliamentary confiscation. Therefore Buckingham could not become the heir of property which Henry VI had forfeited long before his death. Whatever a Parliament had done, only a Parliament could properly undo. It must pass a bill reversing so much of the attainder of Henry VI as applied to the Bohun lands so that Buckingham could be held to have inherited them upon Henry's death. Since the Duke seems to have insisted upon receiving the grant as his lawful due rather than a gift, he must have been satisfied with this provision. New powers came to him on the same day as these long desired lands. Richard gave him the highest military post in the kingdom, the constable-ship, and then made him Great Chamberlain of England. Even Warwick had scarcely held such concentrated might. 2

This excessive outpouring was obviously intended to reward Buckingham's services and satiate his ambitions; but it also, no doubt, expressed Richard's now intensified craving for loyalty and his need to share the responsibility for a decision which filled him with unease. Buckingham had urged him to the deed and Buckingham deserved to enjoy, but must also help to bear, its consequences.

To John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, Richard granted the authority of supervision and array of the King's subjects in a third of die counties of England, rewarded his exploits at sea by appointing him Admiral, and enlarged his purse to support

THE KINGS PROGRESS

his new powers by presenting him with the yearly income of twenty-three royal estates and the outright gift of almost half a hundred manors. The Earl of Northumberland received the wardenship of the entire Scots border: East March, Middle March, and Richard's palatine in the west — but the patent ran for a year only. Richard had not yet made up his mind how the North should be governed. 3

There were other appointments of interest. Robert Bracken-bury, an old Yorkshire adherent, was given the lucrative office _ which had belonged to Hastings — of Master and Worker of the King's Moneys and Keeper of the Exchange and was also made Constable of the Tower. Francis, Viscount Lovell, became Lord Chamberlain and Chief Butler of England. And on July 19, King Richard gave to his son Edward the lieutenancy of Ireland.*

The King now chose one group of his councilors, headed by the Chancellor, John Russell, Bishop of Lincoln, to carry on the government at Westminster. The others, among whom was Lord Stanley, would accompany him on his progress. Stanley he decided to keep with him not only for that baron's experienced advice but as a measure of prudence. 5 * He took no company of archers with him nor any armed escort. He had other hopes for safeguarding his position on the throne. In dismissing his chief lords to their estates after the coronation, he had given "strait commandments that they should see the countries where they dwelled well guided and that no extortions were done to his subjects." 6 Earnestly he adjured them to uphold the rights of "our holy mother the church," to protect people "of what estate, degree, or condition so ever they be" against robbery and oppression, to keep the highways free of crime, and to rule in such a way that each "may appear and be named a very Justicer." 7

About two weeks after his coronation King Richard set out from Windsor on his progress, accompanied by a great train of lords, bishops, justices, and officers of his Household. Halting at Reading on July 23, he went next day to Oxford. William Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester and Founder of Magdalen Col-lege* had arrived two days before in order to prepare a worthy

reception. The royal party were met by the Chancellor and the regents of the University and escorted to the gates of Magdalen, where the Founder and his scholars greeted them in solemn procession. That night the King and his chief lords were lodged in the college. On the morrow Richard, at his express desire, was treated to two scholastic disputations in the great hall, one in moral philosophy and the other in theology. The University, lethargic in spirit and declining in numbers, clung to the thinking of its long past; yet the disputant who opposed Dr. John Taylor, Professor of Sacred Theology, was Master William Grocin, now in his late thirties, who would soon go to Italy and return to inspire Colet, Erasmus, and More with his learning, particularly his knowledge of Greek. John Colet himself, son of Henry the London Alderman, had just this year entered the University. Pleased by what he had heard, the King rewarded each of the disputants with game and money, bestowing a buck and one hundred shillings upon Div Taylor and a buck and five marks upon Grocin; and refreshed the tables of the college with venison and wine. After dinner the King rode on to Woodstock, but he returned the next day to inspect the University and linger several more hours in the congenial atmosphere of Latin and learning. 8

The royal progress then wound through the Cotswolds and came to Gloucester. Here Richard encountered the Duke of Buckingham, who had apparently remained in London a few days after the King's departure and was now riding home to Brecon by the main road, which led through Gloucester and Hereford. This brief meeting was, in fact, the last time that they were destined to see each other.**

After delighting the citizens of Gloucester by granting them a charter of liberties, King Richard moved along the Severn to Tewkesbury t following the same road up which, a dozen years before, the harried host of Queen Margaret had fled. He passed through the great Norman door of the abbey church in order to stand m meditation by the tomb of George of Clarence and his wife, who were buried behind the altar. Somewhere beneath the stones of the choir ky the bodjr of Prince Edward, the former husband of Anne Neviie, On Augmt 4 Richard made the abbot

the munificent gift of £310 out of the rents of Clarence's estates. 10

From Tewkesbury, King Richard went to Worcester and then turned eastward to Warwick, which he had reached by August 8. After spending a week at the great castle that had once been the Kingmaker's, he proceeded northward by Coventry, Leicester, and Nottingham—passing two or three days in each place—and lingered several days at Pontefract before his entry into York. The reception he was everywhere accorded answered his most sanguine hopes, and the demonstrations he gave of the spirit in which he meant to rule won him golden opinions. Richard's secretary, John Kendall, wrote the magistrates of York that the King had been "worshipfully received with pageants, and other etc., and his lords and judges in every place sitting, determining the complaint of poor folks with due punishment of offenders [against] his laws." The writer is scarcely unbiased, but the Warwickshire antiquary John Rous, who in the reign of Henry VII would reveal to the world that Richard had monstrously lain two years in his mother's womb, gives even more glowing testimony. At Woodstock, he reports, Richard graciously eased the sore hearts of the inhabitants by disafforesting for their use some lands which King Edward had for his own pleasure annexed to Which-wood Forest. London, Gloucester, and Worcester had each offered the King a benevolence to help defray his expenses; but he had declined all the offers, saying he had rather have their hearts than their money. In early September, Dr. Thomas Lang-ton, Bishop of St. David's, who had been one of King Edward's most experienced diplomats, wrote to his friend the Prior of Christ Church that "I trust to God soon, by Michaelmas, the King shall be at London. He contents the people where he goes best that ever did prince; for many a poor man that hath suffered wrong many days have been relieved and helped by him and his commands in his progress. And in many great cities and towns were great sums of money given him which he hath refused. On my truth I liked never die conditions of any prince so well as his; God hath sent him to us for the weal of us all .. ." 1X

At Warwick, Richard had been joined by Queen Anne, who

came directly from Windsor, bringing with her a Spanish envoy. He must have expected to find an Edward V upon the throne, but he was content to negotiate with Richard III. In his first formal audience Graufidius de Sasiola declared that his royal mistress, Queen Isabella, desired peace with England and stood ready to give assistance against Louis* XI. He then made a curious disclosure. Isabella's heart, he said, had been turned against England because Edward IV had refused the offer of her hand to marry Elizabeth Woodville. Therefore she had made a league with the French King. But now that Edward IV was dead and Louis XI had failed to live up to the treaties he had signed with her, she wanted to ally herself with England against France. Richard had no wish at this moment to be drawn into an active war with France, but a treaty of peace with Spain he was eager to make, for the security and the prestige it would bring. Therefore, welcoming Sasiola warmly, he proposed a renewal of the amity and league which had existed between Edward IV and Henry of Castile. Sasiola promised that this would suit Isabella very well. Losing no time, Richard wrote his council in London next day to inform them of the proposal he had made and to request the Chancellor, if this policy met with the approval of the council, to draw up a Treaty of Amity as quickly as possible and seal it with the Great Seal.

A month before, he had appointed Bernard de la Forssa, who had performed many such missions for Edward IV, to go to Spain on this very business. Since Forssa had apparently not yet sailed, Richard dispatched him further instructions in which he outlined his reasons for desiring a renewal of the previous league but made clear that he was willing to agree to a new treaty if Queen Isabella so wished He wrote a very friendly letter to the Queen herself, announcing the arrival of the Spanish ambassador and telling her that Bernard de la Forssa was on his way to complete negotiations. 12

Other foreign affairs occupied him on this progress. There was not much he could do at the moment to strengthen the alliance with Burgundy, for Duke Maximilian and his Flemish subjects

National Portrait Gattery f London

Richard III. Artist unknown.

Edward IV. Artist unknown.

Xaiional Portrait Gallery, London

Elizabeth Woodville, wife of Edward IV.- Artist unknown.

Queens College, Cambridge; photo Edward Leigh

Middleham Castle from the South.

Photo A. F. Kersting

The Battle of Barnet from a contemporary miniature. Edward is shown overcoming Warwick, though actually Warwick was cut down by anonymous Yorkists while fleeing the field.