Richard III (18 page)

The
Great Chronicle of London
bears out More’s report of the speech. It tells us that it lasted a good half hour and was ‘so well and eloquently uttered and with so angelic a countenance … that such as heard him marvelled’. But it agrees with More that the speech hardly received an enthusiastic reception.

For ‘all was hushed and mute’. The citizens remained dumb. Plainly shaken, Buckingham consulted the Mayor who, much embarrassed, suggested they might not have understood. Then the Recorder of London tried, very unwillingly. The assembly remained obstinately silent, ‘as if they had been men amazed’. Buckingham made a third attempt, saying that he was offering them a chance to share in the honour of deciding, if ‘you be minded, as all the nobles of this realm be, to have this noble Prince, now Protector, to be your King or not?’ All that happened was a buzz of whispering – ‘as it were the sound of a swarm of bees’.

Finally John Nesfield from Yorkshire – one of Richard’s future Esquires of the Body, and a noted thug, according to the Croyland
chronicler – together with some of the two Dukes’ servants and a few apprentices who suddenly appeared at the back of the hall, threw their caps into the air and began to shout ‘King Richard! King Richard!’ This was enough for Buckingham, who hastily announced that it was quite plain they wanted ‘this noble man’ for their King. More describes how everybody then left the Guildhall sadly, how even some of the Duke’s escort turned their faces away to hide their tears. But they had not dared to protest.

The day after, Buckingham and various peers and gentlemen, together with the Mayor and Corporation, called on the Protector at Baynard’s Castle. All were prominent, men of large property, not only anxious to curry favour with an irresistibly rising star but aware that their necks and goods were at stake. All knew that a northern army was expected at any moment. Richard came out on to a balcony, declaring coolly that he did not know why they were there. Buckingham then made an elaborate speech on behalf of the deputation, begging the Protector to take the Crown. After a fine show of reluctance – in which he mentioned the ‘entire love he bore unto King Edward and his children’ – Richard graciously accepted. ‘We be content and agree favourably to incline to your petition and request.’ More comments that everyone present was astonished by such a theatrical performance – he says they compared it to ‘stage plays’ – and realized very well that it had all been arranged beforehand.

Later that day the Lords, Knights and Burgesses who had come to London for the Parliament which could not now meet, drew up a petition, to be recorded by the next Parliament. The Croyland chronicler says it was rumoured that it ‘had been conceived in the North, whence such a large force was expected in London. But nobody was ignorant of the sole originator of the great sedition and infamy going on in London.’

The petition echoes Buckingham’s speech at the Guildhall. It too dwells on Edward IV’s bad government and morals, when ‘such as had the rule and governance of this land, delighting in adulation and flattery, and led by sensuality and concupiscence, followed by the counsel of persons insolent, vicious and of inordinate avarice’ (i.e. the Woodvilles). In consequence, ‘the prosperity of this land daily decreased, so that felicity was turned into misery, and … ruled by self-will and pleasure, fear and dread’. There had been ‘murders, extortions and oppressions, namely of poor and impotent people, so that no man was sure of his life, land nor livelihood, ne of his wife, daughter ne servant, every good maiden and woman standing in dread to be ravished and defouled’.

This is not an extract from some much decried ‘Tudor propagandist’, but a document which was later approved by Richard himself. As Gairdner comments, he ‘had resolved to make use of every available prejudice, calumny and scandal, to advance his own pretensions’.

The petition states that the late sovereign’s marriage had not only been made out of ‘great presumption’ but also through witchcraft and sorcery by Elizabeth Woodville and her mother. It was invalid because of Edward’s previous troth-plight to Eleanor Butler, so that

The invalidity of the marriage is ‘the common opinion of the people’ and can be proved ‘if and as the case shall require … in time and place convenient’.

The petition asserts Richard’s claim to the throne in terms which are fulsome even by medieval standards. After stating that it was his by right of inheritance,

On the same day the petition was drawn up, Wednesday 25 June, Earl Rivers, Lord Richard Grey, Sir Thomas Vaughan and Sir Richard Haute were beheaded at Pontefract, after which their naked corpses were thrown into a common grave. They had been brought there from the various castles in which they had been imprisoned – Rivers from Sheriff Hutton, Grey from Middleham. The Earl of Northumberland and some northern peers apparently set themselves up as a sort of court, but the ‘trial’ had no legality whatsoever. The man in charge of the executions was the brutal Ratcliff. On being taken out to his death, Vaughan spoke of a prophecy current a few years before, how ‘G’ – popularly believed to be Clarence – would destroy Edward IV’s children. Plainly ‘G’ signified Gloucester, whom ‘now I see … will accomplish the prophecy and destroy King Edward’s children,’ said the old Welshman, who then declared his innocence, appealing to ‘the high tribunal of God’. ‘You have appealed well, lay down your head,’ replied Ratcliff brusquely. ‘I die in right,’ answered Sir Thomas. ‘Beware you die not in wrong.’

It is clear that before leaving London on 12 June Ratcliff had received orders from the Protector to see to the killing of all four prisoners. It was not even judicial murder, but just murder plain and simple. Moreover, we know that the Council in London had refused to agree to their execution. One remembers Richard’s amiable message to Rivers, after taking him prisoner at Northampton, ‘to be of good cheer and all should be well’.

On Thursday 26 June the Protector went to Westminster Hall with a great retinue and ‘obtruded himself’ – the phrase is the Croyland writer’s – into the monarch’s marble throne in the Court of King’s Bench.
⁹
The petition was presented. As a lawyer himself, More, from whom this account is partly taken, must surely have met elderly barristers who had been present. He tells us that Richard announced to the audience that this was the place for him to assume the Crown because he believed that a King’s chief duty was to administer the laws, and that he then made an ingratiating speech which was principally addressed to lawyers. In conclusion he dramatically pardoned a kinsman of the Woodvilles, Sir John Fogge – whom he was known to dislike – having him brought out specially from the sanctuary at Westminster and shaking his hand.
¹⁰
(Fogge was no ‘low intriguer’, as Markham calls him, but a very considerable Kentish landowner, a former Member of Parliament for his county, and a former Treasurer of the Royal Household; he was connected with the Woodvilles through having married a relative of that Sir Richard Haute who had just been beheaded at Pontefract.) The more intelligent spectators watched the pardoning of Fogge with some cynicism – ‘wise men took it for a vanity’. As he rode home, the new King bowed effusively to everyone whom he met on the way.

Once again More is partly confirmed by an official document. Shortly after 26 June Lord Dynham, Captain of Calais, received instructions dated two days later from royal messengers, which informed him of Richard’s accession. They refer to the petition being presented on 26 June and describe how

The document also claims that when he rode to St Paul’s Cathedral to give thanks, he was loudly cheered and greeted ‘with great congratulation and acclamation of all the people in every place’.

The reign of Richard III had indeed begun after ‘this mock election’ on 26 June. A date was fixed for his Coronation. As More observes, ‘Now fell there mischiefs thick.’

Chapter Nine

‘KING RICHARD THE THIRD’

The reign which now opened was to be the unhappiest in English history. The black legend had begun before the King even ascended the throne. For the rest of his short life he was to be a byword, inspiring more dread and terror than any monarch before or since, not excepting Henry VIII. More is not exaggerating when he says that Richard III ruled in an atmosphere of nightmarish insecurity.

Sir Thomas tells us he heard this ‘by credible report of such as were secret with his chambermen’.

Even before Richard’s subjects had reason to suspect that the Princes had been killed, it is likely that the majority disliked and mistrusted
their new King. He was a scandal, by the lights of his own violent age. Dr Hanham emphasizes that his nephews were dispossessed ‘on grounds which were evidently not thought adequate by the country at large’; in More’s words, ‘upon how slippery a ground the Protector builded his pretext, by which he pretended King Edward’s children to be bastards’. There had not been the slightest pretence at legality in taking away the younger Prince’s peerages – the Petition contains no mention of depriving him of these. Above all, neither could be bastardized, even by Act of Parliament, unless a full canonical investigation by the Church had proved beyond doubt that their parents’ marriage had been invalid.
¹
Few crimes were considered more heinous than swindling heirs out of their birthright; as that venerable lawyer, Bracton, had written 200 years before, ‘God alone can make an heir.’

Moreover, as Mancini attests, many Londoners believed that usurpation would be followed by murder. And, although they lived in a brutal age, fifteenth-century Englishmen could be sentimental enough about children. The feast of the Holy Innocents – commemorating King Herod’s massacre of all the children in Bethlehem – was an enormously popular devotion in the late Middle Ages. Richard would be commemorated as the Wicked Uncle in the ballad of the Babes in the Wood, which may have an origin earlier than the sixteenth century – it was undoubtedly inspired by the fate of the little King and his brother. The capital was stunned by shock and horror.

It may be asked why was there no resistance. The answer is that, as with all successful
coups d’état
, Richard had taken everyone completely by surprise and with overwhelming military superiority. It was common knowledge that thousands of his much feared Northerners were on the way south. No great magnate was available to drum up opposition to the
coup
, and lesser folk were not ready to risk their necks. But, as will be seen, this did not stop bitter and mounting resentment.

The Princes seem to have been attractive boys. The Croyland writer says that they were ‘sweet and beauteous children’, and he must have seen them with his own eyes. Mancini heard glowing reports of Edward V. ‘He had such dignity in his whole person, and in his face such
charm, that however much they might gaze, he never wearied the eyes of beholders.’ Obviously he had inherited the good looks of his magnificent father. ‘I have seen many men burst forth into tears and lamentations when mention was made of him after his removal from men’s sight.’ The Italian scholar adds that Edward showed signs of intellectual ability unusual in one of his age. We know hardly anything about his younger brother, Shakespeare’s ‘little prating York’. The chronicler Jean Molinet – not the most reliable of sources – informs us that he was ‘joyous and witty, nimble and ever ready for dances and games’.
²

For all Richard III’s Plantagenet blood, military prowess and proven ability, many Englishmen simply could not think of him as the true King of England.
³
They still acknowledged young Edward. But Richard was cursed with a weakness for self-delusion, which weakened his political judgement. Being ‘blind with covetousness of reigning’, he could not believe that he was unacceptable. A Latin poem in the
Croyland Chronicle
, which plainly refers to him, warns that those who usurp power ‘confound themselves and their cause by confusing private desires with public good’. No doubt the new King deluded himself for some time into believing that he was popular; after all, he really was the man best fitted to govern the country. He retained a certain amount of good will in the North, though in the end many Northerners abandoned him – the two key magnates who were to betray him at Bosworth both came from the North. He was unable to identify a whole host of secret enemies until they declared themselves and it was therefore impossible for him to remove all opposition at one blow. In consequence he failed to implement what was to be one of Machiavelli’s cardinal tenets for a successful usurpation.

The mental climate of his age may well have conspired to prevent Richard from seeing himself as a hypocrite. There was an all too seldom resolved conflict between emotion and action in fifteenth-century minds. The King’s slightly older contemporary, Sir Thomas Malory, the author of the exquisitely noble
Morte d’Arthur
, was little better than a gangster and gaolbird who stood accused of armed robbery, sacrilege and rape on not just one but several occasions.

The reign began with a forced gaiety. On Friday 4 July Richard
and his wife travelled by state barge along the Thames to the Tower of London, the royal residence from which by tradition Kings and Queens of England rode to their Coronation. Anne had come down from the North early in June, apparently bringing with her the Earl of Warwick, Clarence’s nine-year-old son. (Probably Richard regarded the boy as a potential rival, even though he was excluded from the succession by his father’s attainder.)

‘Edward Bastard, late called King Edward V’ – as he was now described officially – was still at the Tower, together with his brother. The
Great Chronicle of London
refers to the two children being ‘seen shooting and playing in the garden of the Tower by sundry times’, but gives no precise date. Probably they had been moved out of the palatial apartments by the river long before the arrival of their uncle and aunt and taken into the fortress itself – Mancini says this happened as soon as Hastings was liquidated. It has been plausibly suggested that they were moved twice, first to the Garden Tower (now the Bloody Tower) from where they had access to the garden, and then into the White Tower in which State prisoners were held and where they could be kept out of sight – they had disappeared for good from the public gaze by the time of their uncle’s Coronation. It is unlikely that he visited them, though they cannot have been entirely absent from his thoughts.

Yet perhaps Richard was too busy exulting over the kingdom he had seized. His capital was world famous for its riches and size, dwarfing even his cherished York. Thanks to Mancini, who left it the same week and recorded his impressions only a few months later, we know what it looked like at this very moment. He notes how the Thames is navigable by large vessels up to London itself, how, had the South Bank been walled, it could be described as a city in its own right. He mentions the ‘very famous bridge, built partly of wood, partly of stone. On it there are houses and several gates with portcullises; the houses are built over workshops belonging to various types of tradesman.’ He is impressed by the ‘very strong citadel next to the river, which they call the Tower of London’, and by ‘enormous warehouses for imported goods’ on the banks of the Thames, and – a curiously modern note – by ‘many cranes of extraordinary size to unload merchandise
off the ships’. He describes the three main streets. The one nearest the river (Thames Street) is full of ‘all types of metal, wine, honey, pitch, wax, flax, rope, thread, grain and fish, and other rough goods’. In the central street (comprising Tower Street, East Cheap and Candlewick Street) ‘you find nothing for sale but cloth’. The third street, running through the town centre (from Aldgate on the east side to Newgate on the west, and including Cornhill and West Cheap) deals in ‘more precious goods, such as gold and silver plate, cloths of rich hue and all sorts of silks, carpets, tapestry and other rich wares from abroad’. He says he simply does not have room to describe ‘the citizens’ refined ways, the magnificence of their banquets, the lavish decoration and opulence of the churches’. Other foreigners were equally dazzled. Twelve years later a Venetian wrote that he had seen fifty-two goldsmiths’ shops in Cheapside alone, that in Milan, Rome, Venice and Florence together he had never seen so much silver plate as in London. This was indeed the ‘Flower of Cities all’ (even if as many as a third of the population may have been destitute or near destitute). Its proud inhabitants had enough confidence in their private judgement to be deeply disturbed by the usurpation. But it made no difference.

On 5 July the new King and Queen rode from the Tower of London to their Palace of Westminster. He was dressed with breathtaking splendour, in a doublet of blue cloth of gold over which he wore a purple velvet gown trimmed with ermine. He far outshone his wife, who followed him in a litter escorted by five mounted ladies-in-waiting. The royal pair were accompanied by the vast and gorgeously clad procession of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, which included almost the entire English peerage – three dukes, nine earls and twenty-three barons. The Duke of Buckingham outshone even Richard, in a robe of blue velvet embroidered with blazing golden cartwheels. (According to Rous, the Duke was already boasting that he now had as many men wearing his livery as Warwick the King-maker.) In addition there were nearly eighty knights and countless gentlemen – a surprising number of whom would rise in rebellion within a very few weeks. As he rode through the London streets, the bare-headed King bowed to right and to left.

Richard III and Anne Nevill were crowned in Westminster Abbey by Cardinal Bourchier (despite the old man’s unwillingness – he stayed away from the Coronation banquet)
⁴
on Sunday 6 July 1483. Contemporaries claimed it was the most magnificent Coronation that had ever been seen. The boar badge was much in evidence – 13,000 white boars on fustian hangings decorated Westminster – and a new officer-of-arms had been specially created for the occasion, Blanc Sanglier. The King and Queen walked barefoot to the Abbey. Here they submitted to the ancient (but nowadays long since discontinued) anointing with the holy oils on the breast, standing naked from the waist up. After being crowned they heard High Mass and took Communion, the King drinking from the Chalice – a privilege then enjoyed by no other English layman. (No doubt he had made a confession of his sins, in preparation.) The
Te Deum
after the crowning and the anthems during the Mass must have been heard only too easily by the miserable Elizabeth Woodville and her daughters in sanctuary at the Abbot’s Lodging. Wearing their crowns, the anointed King and Queen retired briefly. In their absence the Duke of Norfolk and Earl Marshal, mounted on a charger whose cloth-of-gold trappings swept down to the ground, rode up and down to drive out the crowds. At four o’clock the monarchs entered Westminster Hall, still wearing their crowns, to preside over the Coronation banquet attended by several thousand people. On bended knee the Mayor of London served them with hypocras (hot spiced wine), wafers and wine. During the banquet the King’s Champion, Sir Robert Dymmock, wearing a white armour and mounted on a charger caparisoned in white and scarlet, rode into the hall and flung down his white steel gauntlet – as a challenge to anyone who disputed Richard III’s right to the throne. There were cries of ‘King Richard! God save King Richard!’ and he rode off with his silver-gilt bowl of wine, after drinking the monarch’s health. The banquet continued until nine, when it was growing dark and great wax torches were brought in. As soon as these were lit, the lords and ladies went up to the royal dais to renew their homage and say goodnight, and then at last the King and Queen left the hall too.

Coins were at once struck to proclaim that Richard was now a consecrated King. As was customary, the silver groats and half-groats
showed him crowned with a bare, anointed breast; they had the boar’s head for their mint mark. Perhaps symbolically, the sole gold denominations issued were the beautiful angel and angelet – these were touch pieces for the ‘King’s Evil’ (scrofula) which only the hand of a consecrated monarch could heal. No act of ostentatious piety was left undone. On 12 July Richard and Anne processed barefoot around Edward the Confessor’s shrine at Westminster.

Foreign rulers were informed with due ceremony of Richard III’s accession. The Pursuivant Blanc Sanglier was sent to Plessis-les-Tours to announce it to Louis XI and to ask for his friendship. If Commynes is to be believed, Louis had no wish to answer the usurper. However, he sent a curt note of acknowledgement. Even Kendall admits (in his study
Louis XI, the Universal Spider
) that ‘so shaky a government could never trouble France’. Richard appears to have been piqued by the Valois’s coldness.

While Dymmock’s white gauntlet had been left lying on the floor of Westminster Hall, there had nevertheless been a hint of discord during the Coronation. At the moment of crowning it was noticed by some that the Duke of Buckingham – who was enjoying the privilege of carrying his new sovereign’s train – ‘could not abide the sight thereof’, but turned the other way to avoid seeing the crown being placed on Richard’s head.