Richard III (23 page)

His ruthlessness only showed itself after he had won the throne, his excessive avarice and the mad Valois streak only towards the end of his life. Unquestionably he was almost as unscrupulous as Richard, but he was far more intelligent, much subtler. However, in the mid-1480s optimists no doubt discerned a romantic young royal fugitive who was the last representative of a tragically lost cause. Exiles and opponents of the King must have been delighted to find a leader who was more Beaufort and Valois prince than Welsh adventurer. Thanks to Buckingham and Dr Morton – and, above all, to his mother – he was soon to become an infinitely preferred alternative to Richard III.

As soon as the Duke had been won over by the Bishop, the latter sent a message to Margaret Beaufort’s chief steward, Reginald Bray,
asking him to visit Brecon discreetly in order to discuss a matter of some delicacy. Clearly Bray was impressed by Morton’s plan and the Duke’s support, returning to his mistress with a glowing report. But Margaret Beaufort had already concocted her own scheme, which was very similar to the plot being hatched at Brecon.

Although the real Lancastrian and Beaufort claimant to the throne, like Elizabeth of York Margaret was ruled out as a pretender simply because she was a woman. Still only forty, she had had three husbands: Henry’s father, Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond; Lord Humphrey Stafford, Buckingham’s uncle; and, since 1473, Lord Stanley. A remarkable survivor, she had seen the court of Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou and would live to be aware of that of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. Too little is known about her, yet though convention forced her to keep the most discreet of profiles, she was the first great Tudor and the first successful female politician in English history. The bronze tomb effigy by Pietro Torrigiano in Westminster Abbey – that greatest of monuments to Richard’s overthrow – shows a strikingly handsome face of austere refinement with strong, if superbly delicate, features; when young she must have been a considerable beauty. Devout, perhaps saintly, she heard six Masses every day and was an ascetic with a taste for mysticism; she personally translated
The Mirror of the Souls
from the French, besides initiating the translation and printing of many other devotional works, including the
Imitation of Christ
. Her future confessor was Bishop John Fisher, a canonized Catholic saint. Nevertheless, Margaret was masterful and plainly attracted by power – during her son’s reign she would be described by an informed observer as one of the half dozen most influential people in England, and was allowed to sign herself ‘Margaret R.’ King Richard had no more dangerous opponent than this quiet, pious lady.

To judge from her behaviour in 1483, and from what we may guess about it in 1485, Margaret was an unregenerate Lancastrian and a natural politician, as shrewd as she was courageous and determined. (Sir George Buck describes her, quaintly but accurately, as ‘a lady of a politic and contriving bosom’.) Her ambition, both for herself and her son, was surely fuelled by a sense of moral outrage. No doubt she venerated the memory of poor Henry VI and abhorred Richard for
having butchered him, let alone for being a usurper. It is clear that by early September at latest, probably very much sooner, she was aware that the Princes in the Tower had been murdered. Someone with no less keen a political instinct than the Bishop of Ely, she must have realized at once how powerful a candidate for the throne her only child – whom she had not seen for a quarter of a century, when he was still a baby – would become if he married Edward IV’s eldest daughter.

By coincidence Margaret shared the same physician as Elizabeth Woodville, a Welshman from Caerleon called Dr Lewis. She was therefore able to contact the former Queen, who was still immured at Westminster, and propose that the Woodvilles should support Henry’s claims; in return he would marry Elizabeth of York. ‘Dame Elizabeth Grey’ accepted the terms with alacrity. (She too must have known that by now her royal sons were dead.) Margaret then told Reginald Bray to enlist supporters among the gentry. When he brought news, probably totally unexpected, from Dr Morton that – of all people – her nephew Buckingham had decided to come out for Henry, she saw a real chance of a successful rising. Immediately she dispatched a messenger to her son in Brittany to explain the situation and to tell him to join Buckingham in Wales. It was probably Henry Tudor’s first intimation that one day he might be King of England. The messenger also delivered ‘a good, great sum of money’.

Elizabeth of York was almost certainly told of the plan and the projected marriage. ‘The Most Pleasant Song of the Lady Bessy’ is a late version of the contemporary ballad in her honour, ‘Ladye Bessiye’, composed in her lifetime, though written down only afterwards. (The author seems to have been a household man of Lord Stanley, Humphrey Brereton.) It is often pure fantasy and is full of anachronisms. However, it may be correct in saying that Elizabeth sent a ring and a letter to Henry – by the hand of the poet himself – together with a large consignment of gold, presumably from the treasure her mother had brought into Westminster.

The conspiracy gathered momentum. Everywhere there were people who welcomed the hitherto almost undreamt of idea of the Earl of Richmond as Pretender. (Which surely indicates that, like Buckingham, Morton, Margaret and Elizabeth Woodville and her
daughters, they were already fairly certain that Edward V and his brother had by now been murdered.) From Kent Sir Richard Guildford sent a messenger, Thomas Romney, to Henry, pledging his support. By late September the Duke of Buckingham himself was in direct communication with the Earl.

It shows a quite extraordinary lack of political acumen on Richard’s part that when the news of a revolt arrived he had not yet recognized that Henry Tudor was the most dangerous of his enemies. Apart from a sense of outrage at the Duke’s betrayal, the King’s chief reaction was probably alarm at the strategic implications. Not only was Buckingham the Constable of England – Commander-in-Chief – but he had been made supreme in Wales, on the Welsh Border and in the West Country, and given control of all fortresses and arsenals throughout these areas largely because they were hotbeds of die-hard Lancastrianism. If in 1471 Margaret of Anjou’s Westcountrymen had succeeded in outmarching Edward IV and linked up with their Welsh comrades, Henry VI might still have been on the throne in 1483. The Severn had foiled them. Now the Duke of Buckingham controlled both banks of that vital river. Moreover, he also possessed a base in the Home Counties, in Kent; from his father he had inherited Penshurst Place – a tower there is still called ‘Buckingham’s Tower’ – near Tonbridge.
⁵
The local Kentish landowners would have known his household men and had very likely met the Duke himself.

Probably Richard’s government at first found some difficulty in identifying just who was involved with Buckingham. There had been rumours of angry discontent since the usurpation. It seems that as soon as the new King’s progress reached the Midlands, ‘meetings and confederacies’ began among the gentry all over the South and West Country, ‘who had begun to murmur greatly’, to discuss how to rescue Edward V and York; none of them realized that they were dead. The
Croyland Chronicle
– if it really was Richard’s Lord Chancellor who supplied the basic text – gives us an invaluable summary of the situation as it must have appeared to the King and his Council in the last half of October.

(Dr Hanham thinks that the writer means that Richard actually encouraged the rumour, in order to scotch the rebellion.) Accordingly the men who had started the revolt, realizing that without a Pretender they were doomed, suddenly thought of Henry, Earl of Richmond. The chronicler continues, ‘The Duke of Buckingham, acting on the advice of the Lord Bishop of Ely, who was his prisoner at Brecon, sent a message to him which asked him to come to England to marry Elizabeth, the late King’s daughter, and take possession of the throne.’ As the days went by, Richard was to be made aware that a very large number of his subjects indeed regarded him as ‘the wretched, bloody and usurping boar’.

The regions ready to rise against the King are interesting. As has been seen, the West Country was still fiercely anti-Yorkist, while much of Wales was involved – though not very willingly – under Buckingham. Both were traditionally Lancastrian areas, as was Kent. But the districts round London and the central southern counties had hitherto been Yorkist.

To a certain degree the rising in the southern counties was the long expected Woodville counter-
coup
. Lord Dorset and his uncle, Bishop Lionel, suddenly appeared in the latter’s see of Salisbury, where they busily recruited supporters. In Berkshire Sir Richard Woodville found an ally in Sir William Stonor, an old friend of Dorset. In Devon there was Sir Thomas St Leger, who wanted Dorset’s son as a husband for his daughter. Sir George Browne, of Betchworth Castle near Reigate in Surrey, was the stepson of old Sir Thomas Vaughan, who had been beheaded at Pontefract. In Kent Sir John Fogge was married to a Haute, a cousin of the man who had perished with Vaughan.

But it is quite wrong to see the Southerners as being restricted to Woodvilles and their kindred. As has been seen, Buckingham possessed a base in Kent which was only a few hours’ ride from the houses of Browne and Fogge. Moreover, there were plenty of Lancastrians, especially in the West. In Devonshire there was Sir Edward Courtenay of Boconnoc (rightful Earl of Devon) with his kinsman Peter Courtenay, Bishop of Exeter, and in Cornwall the Arundells. And some of the plotters even belonged to Richard’s household, while he had made Sir Thomas Lewkenor a Knight of the Bath at his Coronation. Primarily, however, the rebels of 1483 were men who remained loyal to the memory of Edward IV. A considerable number had been members of the late King’s household. They rose out of furious resentment at Richard’s treachery towards the children, his stealing of their inheritance.

What is also striking is that so many of the conspirators – over a dozen at least – had been Members of Parliament, where they may have first become acquainted. Stonor had represented Oxfordshire, Browne Surrey and Canterbury, and Fogge Kent – Stonor’s rising in Berkshire was joined by another former MP, John Norris; Browne in Surrey by yet another, Sir Thomas Bourchier of Horsley, who had fought at Barnet. (He was a kinsman of the Cardinal Archbishop and thus of the King himself.) In Sussex Sir Thomas Lewkenor of Bodiam Castle had likewise represented his county. In East Anglia there was Sir William Knyvet, once MP for Norfolk. In Wiltshire both Sir John Cheyney and Sir Walter Hungerford of Farley Hungerford had been members for their county, as in Somerset had Sir Giles Daubeny (one of Reginald Bray’s recruits). In Devonshire St Leger too had been an MP – for Surrey – and Sir Richard Edgecombe had represented Tavistock. These were persons of standing, with wide lands and valuable offices, rich, middle-aged men, leaders of local society and not hot-headed, penniless adventurers with nothing to lose. They were able to rally many lesser gentry and substantial yeomen to their cause.

Their eventual plan of campaign was not ill-conceived. Separate but concerted risings were timed for 18 October, St Luke’s Day. The Kentishmen and the men of Surrey, Sussex and Essex would make a feigned attack on London to divert Richard from the real onslaught from Wales and the West Country. The south-eastern musters were to be at Maidstone, Guildford and Gravesend under Fogge, Browne and Knyvet with the valuable assistance of Sir Richard Guildford and his son (from Rolvenden on the edge of Romney Marsh). More serious would be gatherings in Berkshire and Wiltshire under Stonor and Cheyney, since they hoped to be speedily reinforced from the West Country; Sir Richard Woodville was with Stonor at Newbury, Bishop Lionel with Cheyney at Salisbury. The South West would be led by Dorset, St Leger and the Courtenays. But the most important blow was to be struck by Buckingham, who intended to cross the Severn with his Welsh levies and link up with the Westcountrymen. (It was Somerset’s campaign of 1471 in reverse.) Finally Henry Tudor, with 5,000 Breton mercenaries – hired with money lent by Duke Francis – would land on the south-western coast.