Richard III (16 page)
Authors: Desmond Seward
14.
The supposed tomb of Edward, Prince of Wales, Richard’s only legitimate son. Sheriff Hutton, North Yorkshire
.
15.
Richard’s niece, Elizabeth of York. In 1485 he was forced to deny publicly that he intended to marry her. National Portrait Gallery, London
.
16.
Henry VII. A copy of a lost portrait painted about 1500. Society of Antiquaries, London
.
17.
Battleaxe – or ‘battle hammer’ – probably of the type used so effectively by Richard at Bosworth. The figure at the top was used as a belt hook. Glasgow Museum and Art Gallery
.
18.
The gigantic Wiltshireman Sir John Cheyney, knocked out of his saddle by Richard during the last charge at Bosworth. Tomb in Salisbury Cathedral
.
19.
The battle of Bosworth from an early-sixteenth-century relief carving. In the centre are the figures of Henry Tudor mounted and Richard overthrown and lying on the ground, clutching his crown. Stowe School
.
One reason for the success of the second
coup d’état
which Richard was about to launch was that very few people understood him, let alone realized his ultimate objective. His secrecy was his greatest asset. We do not know when he told the few men he trusted that he was going to make himself King, though it was almost certainly before he obtained possession of the Duke of York. The strictness of the guard on Westminster – ostensibly to catch Dorset, but above all to stop York getting out or Edward V getting in – may well mean that Gloucester had told both Buckingham and Howard before he reached London. The former had been committed to him from the very beginning, and Vergil states specifically that Richard revealed his plans to the Duke at Northampton. Lord Howard, noticeably active in prising York out of sanctuary, may also have been let into the secret; More says that he ‘was one of the priviest of the Lord Protector’s counsel and doing’. It was time for Richard to take all his friends into his confidence. He had cunningly divided the Council. Those members who supported him absented themselves from its ordinary meetings at Baynard’s Castle and instead met privately with the Protector at Crosby Place. The remainder, loyal to Edward V, went on arranging the Coronation and dealing with routine matters.
Nevertheless, there was some sort of opposition, though no details survive. Polydore Vergil states that a counter-
coup
was being planned but does not give names. Gairdner and more recent historians believe that Lord Hastings may have been intriguing with, of all people, the Woodvilles. The alleged motive is jealousy of Buckingham, who had taken the place he no doubt expected to occupy in Richard’s favour – Howard too was more in favour with the Protector. Hastings, it is
suggested, discussed the counter-
coup
with Rotherham, Morton and Lord Stanley during their meetings, their contact with the Woodvilles being his mistress Elizabeth (commonly called Jane) Shore, who was secretly visiting her former lover Dorset in the sanctuary at Westminster. Yet More, the Croyland chronicler and Mancini make no mention of such a plot, even if the latter reports that Hastings, Stanley and the two prelates sometimes met in each other’s houses and were known to be faithful to Edward IV’s offspring. In addition, More implies that as late as 11 or 12 June Richard still hoped that Hastings would join in helping him seize the throne.
If a counter-
coup
was plotted, it is likely that it was by the Woodvilles alone. Their party was far more broadly based than is generally realized. With its kinsmen by marriage, its clients and retainers, and its friends, it constituted a surprisingly widespread network, which had formidable teeth – to be displayed later that year. The Protector certainly received information during the second week in June which seriously alarmed him. About 12 June Sir Richard Ratcliff, one of Richard’s most trusted agents, left London. He was on his way to York with a letter written on 10 June for its Mayor and Corporation, requiring them to send as many armed men as possible to the capital ‘to aid and assist us against the Queen, her bloody adherents and affinity, which have intended and daily doth intend to murder and utterly destroy us and our cousin the Duke of Buckingham and the old royal blood of this realm’. In his letter Richard also claimed that the plotters were bent on destroying and disinheriting all men of property in the North. When Ratcliff reached York on 15 June he told the Corporation that this force should proceed to Pontefract and link up with the Earl of Northumberland (who may have been acting on instructions which Gloucester had given him before going south). Ratcliff had another letter for the Protector’s kinsman Lord Nevill; written on 11 June, it made a similar plea for troops. ‘And, my Lord, do me now good service, as ye have always before done, and I trust now so to remember you as shall be the making of you and yours.’ Richard’s motive in summoning more troops may indeed have been fear of a Woodville rising, though it could also have been a precaution in case his own projected
coup
went wrong.
5. Jane Shore (d. 1527?), whose original name was Elizabeth Lambert. In turn mistress of Edward IV, Lord Hastings and the Marquess of Dorset, she was imprisoned by Richard but then married his solicitor Thomas Lynom. Detail from her parents’ brass of 1487 at Hinxworth, Herts
.
In the event there was no counter-
coup
. The only man left who might stand in the Protector’s way was Lord Hastings, still just capable of rallying magnates to the cause of the young King. His friend Lord Stanley seems to have begun to suspect Richard and warned Hastings to be careful. More’s story of Stanley’s dream of a boar (Richard) slashing them with his tusks is of course to be discounted as medieval superstition, yet may none the less preserve some memory of Lord Stanley’s uneasiness. A practised intriguer himself, he plainly had a sensitive nose for a plot. He was particularly worried by the division of the Council and the separate meetings. But Hastings was unconcerned, since he thought he knew what was being discussed at Crosby Place; his retainer Catesby was attending the meetings there, and he told Stanley that this man would tell him of anything said against him, practically before it was out of the speaker’s mouth. In reality Catesby was a double agent.
5
The Protector had to discover whether or not Hastings was still unshakeably loyal to the memory of Edward IV, the friend who had asked that he should be buried near his tomb. Mancini tells us that Buckingham sounded him out, but More says that it was Catesby and goes into very convincing detail. William Catesby is one of the most sinister figures in the usurpation. A young lawyer, he was a protégé of Hastings, who had given him important administrative posts in Leicestershire and Northamptonshire. Hastings trusted him more than anyone, ‘reckoning himself to be beloved of no man more than he’. The trusty Catesby was ‘one of the special contrivers of all this horrible treason’, his original motive being to obtain some of Hastings’s offices in his own counties. Commissioned by Richard to find out discreetly if it was possible to win over his patron, Catesby reported that he spoke ‘so terrible words’ that his interrogator dared not press him, and also said that some people were beginning to mistrust the Protector. More thinks that Catesby may have exaggerated in order to make sure that Richard would get rid of Hastings.
