Richard III (9 page)

Gloucester also adopted a badge, his famous device of a white boar with golden tusks and golden bristles. There is no record of the reason for his choice. If we knew, it might well explain how he saw himself. Admittedly members of the House of York had borne a boar before, but it had been blue and not white. Perhaps, in the symbolism so dear to the fifteenth century, the colour was intended to represent purity of heart and loyalty. As for the animal, it was pre-eminently an emblem of ferocity; Malory’s Sir Gawain was ‘as brim [fierce] as any boar’. The great seventeenth-century herald, Guillim, describes its significance in terms which might just possibly be thought to have been inspired by Richard’s reputation, but certainly reflect what late medieval Englishmen thought of the boar. He is ‘the most absolute champion among
beasts’ and ‘so cruel and stomachful in his fight, that he foameth all the while for rage’. Guillim continues, ‘The bearing of the boar in arms betokeneth a man of a bold spirit, skilful, politic in warlike feats, and one of that high resolution that he will rather die valorously in the field, than he will secure himself by ignominious flight.’ These qualities were undoubtedly cultivated by the Duke.
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The failure of Oxford had shown even Clarence that he had little to hope from Lancastrian intrigues. But by now his brother the King was setting on foot a ‘great enterprise’ which was so exciting that for a while even George seems to have forgotten his discontent. Edward IV intended to revive the traditions of Henry V and launch an invasion across the English Channel – after all, he styled himself King of France and had been born in Normandy. He was too practical to hope to reconquer the lost kingdom, but there was an excellent possibility that he might gain some territory and even win a little glory. At the very least he could stop Louis XI from supporting Lancastrian intrigues. Edward’s brother-in-law, Charles of Burgundy, was ready to revive the alliance with which Henry V had all but dispossessed the Valois, while the prospect of a lucrative raiding expedition into France had a deep appeal for most Englishmen – many of their forefathers, and even some still alive, had made their fortunes out of French plunder. When the King first discussed the matter with Parliament in 1472, he was immediately voted enough money to pay for 13,000 archers, though in the event it proved too difficult to levy these special taxes. However, Edward managed to obtain another grant from Parliament, besides obtaining certain ‘benevolences’, or more or less forced loans, which he solicited personally from his richer subjects – as Gairdner says, ‘Curious stories are told of his success with wealthy widows.’

By the summer of 1475 the English expeditionary force was ready. It consisted of nearly 12,000 picked troops, including almost the entire English nobility. Richard brought 120 lancers and 1,000 archers – perhaps 1,360 men in all, since a ‘lance’ was a unit comprising a man-at-arms and two armed valets. He would also have taken a personal retinue of gentlemen and servants to wait on him during the campaign. Commynes undoubtedly reflects the opinion of his terrified master, Louis XI, when he tells us that the force was ‘the largest, best disciplined,
best mounted and best equipped army with which any English King ever invaded France’. The Milanese ambassador reported that Louis was so appalled that he ‘has almost lost his wits’. On 4 July the English crossed to Calais. No doubt many of them looked forward to a second Agincourt.

Edward IV had every intention of fighting a full-scale war. But, as the shrewd and extremely knowledgeable Commynes afterwards suspected, the English King had by now grown too self-indulgent – too fond of ‘ease and pleasure’ – to relish the prospect of a long-drawn-out conflict. Moreover, it was already after mid-summer, dangerously late to start campaigning. Most serious of all, the Duke of Burgundy was busy in Germany, fighting to install his candidate for the Archbishopric of Cologne; when Duke Charles joined the English at Calais on 14 July, he brought only his personal bodyguard, since the bulk of his troops were occupied in plundering Lorraine and hopelessly out of control – not quite a month later he said goodbye to Edward in order to go campaigning in Lorraine himself. Meanwhile, Louis was advancing to meet the invaders with a large army.

Always at his wiliest when threatened, the French King had let Edward know that he was prepared to negotiate and would offer very attractive terms. Disheartened by the inadequacy of Burgundian assistance, the English King consulted his magnates as soon as Charles left and then decided to see what Louis XI had to offer. Among the few who are known to have opposed such a step was Richard Gloucester; the 23-year-old veteran of the campaign of 1471 plainly believed in war. But the French King was far too cunning not to be able to overcome all opposition when there was so much at stake. At Amiens a splendid entertainment was laid on for the entire English army – there were tables at the gates laden with wine and taverns where the troops could eat and drink free of charge. After three days most of them had got so drunk on free wine and gone on the rampage to such an extent that the infuriated Edward had to eject them from the town. This did nothing towards making him want to fight. On 29 August the two Kings met at Picquigny near Amiens, on a specially built bridge over the river. Commynes was present and says that Edward, who was accompanied by Clarence but not Gloucester, looked truly regal.
‘Indeed I do not remember ever having seen such a fine looking man, as he was when My Lord of Warwick made him flee from England,’ he observes, but adds ominously that by now ‘he was beginning to grow fat’. He also noted how the English King spoke ‘very good French’. An agreement was quickly reached. In return for 75,000 crowns paid down and further annual payments of 50,000, Edward would leave French soil peacefully, English merchants would no longer suffer from French trade restrictions, and the infant Dauphin was betrothed to his eldest daughter. The two monarchs pledged themselves to help one another against rebellious subjects, and the French were allowed to ransom Margaret of Anjou. By 18 September Edward had left Calais. Louis XI joked: ‘I chased the English out of France far more easily than my father did – he had to do so by force of arms, but I simply used meat pies and good wine.’

Interestingly Commynes tells us that at first Richard had been against the treaty. It is an exaggeration to guess, with Professor Myers, that he was ‘honest and patriotic, as in the negotiations at Picquigny, when most of those around were corrupt’. We simply do not know his motives or what he felt; we only know that to begin with he did not like the treaty. Young as he was, he was clearly a realist. After Picquigny he visited Louis at Amiens and accepted magnificent presents, which included some fine plate and several superb horses.
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He probably sailed from Calais with his brothers on 18 September. It was the end of his one visit to France.

Soon after, he was back at Middleham. Here he seems to have spent most of the next two years, though at the end of 1475 he was appointed a commissioner to inquire into treason and heresy in Dorset and Wiltshire. But his long-running quarrel with the Duke of Clarence was far from over, even if it now took the form of supporting the King against George’s dissatisfaction.

For Clarence, that ‘quicksand of deceit’, as Shakespeare calls him, was impossible. He has bequeathed the impression of a golden boy, with all the good looks, splendid physique and glamorous charm of his elder brother. Rous describes him as ‘right witty and well visaged’, More as ‘a goodly and well featured prince’. His appearance was so unmistakably regal that it alarmed the Queen. Moreover, he seems to
have been an unusually gifted speaker – Mancini heard he was ‘a master of popular eloquence’. He was brave and he was daring. But he was also chronically unstable, vacillating to a degree which indicates serious neurosis and perhaps paranoia. (His younger brother may well have shared the same affliction, though he never let it master his relations with Edward.) Professor Kendall suggests that Duke George’s difficult temperament owed something to being spoilt as a child at Fotheringay by his sister Margaret, but this is mere speculation, even if there is evidence that the two were fond of each other. A simpler, much more likely, explanation is that he suffered from a ‘second-son’ complex, a phenomenon not quite extinct even today among modern English families of great wealth and rank who still believe in primogeniture.

In the last years of Clarence’s stormy career Richard stayed mainly in the North. He now had a family, if a very small one, his son Edward of Middleham having been born in late 1473 or early 1474.
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According to tradition the birth took place in the round tower at the south-west corner of Middleham Castle wall now known as ‘The Prince’s Tower’. He was given a ‘mistress of the nursery’, one Anne Idley whom Richard (in a letter to Sir William Stonor) calls ‘our right well beloved servant’. Little Edward took on desperate importance in an age obsessed by dynastic pretensions. He had a wretchedly unhealthy inheritance. His aunt would die in childbirth, his mother would die in her twenties, and we know how sickly had been his father’s own childhood. Richard therefore had something to distract him from his feud with Clarence – though the birth of an heir made him still more ambitious.

Clarence may have been disappointed by the outcome of ‘the great enterprise of France’. An even worse disappointment awaited him. On 22 December 1476 the Duchess of Clarence died after a protracted illness in consequence of bearing a second son, and only ten days later Charles of Burgundy fell in battle against the Swiss. His widow urged Edward IV to let George marry her twenty-year-old stepdaughter Mary, the heiress to Burgundy. But, the Croyland writer informs us, ‘So high an exaltation of his ungrateful brother as that contemplated displeased the King. He made every possible objection and did everything he could to stop the marriage.’ Edward was successful and Mary later married the Archduke Maximilian.
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Understandably Clarence was furious and, Russell continues, the two began ‘to regard each other in a most unbrotherly way’. Courtiers were seen ‘running to and fro, from one to the other, repeating every remark uttered by the brothers, even if they had said them in the most private rooms’. Edward also refused to let Clarence marry a Scottish princess. The Queen made matters worse by trying to obtain Mary’s hand for her brother Lord Rivers – a proposal contemptuously dismissed by the Burgundian court, much to Elizabeth’s humiliation. It increased her dislike of her brother-in-law, already strong enough. More comments, ‘Women commonly, not of malice but of nature, hate them whom their husbands love.’

Duke George began to behave in a fashion which bordered on lunacy. He put about rumours that Edward was a bastard and had no right to the throne – rumours which would one day inspire Richard – and seems to have tried to foment armed disturbances in East Anglia. He refused ostentatiously to eat or drink during his rare visits to court, insinuating that he was frightened of being poisoned. He also claimed that his wife had been murdered. In April 1477 he sent nearly a hundred men to abduct a former waiting woman of the late Duchess, Ankarette Twynhoe, who was now in the Queen’s service. This clearly very respectable lady was accused of administering ‘a venomous drink, of ale mixed with poison’ to the Duchess of Clarence. She was beaten, robbed of her jewellery, and then dragged off without a warrant from her home in Somerset to Clarence’s castle at Warwick. Here she was hanged within twenty-four hours, after being condemned by a jury bullied into acquiescence by the Duke. In addition, with suicidal foolhardiness, he claimed that his wife had been bewitched by the Queen. (A charge of which Richard discreetly took note.)

Already angry, Edward struck back in similar fashion. He arrested an astronomer of evil repute – ‘also known to be a great necromancer’ – Dr John Stacey of Merton College, Oxford, and had him tortured till he admitted that he had cast horoscopes of the King and his son to learn when they would die. Stacey implicated a member of Clarence’s household, Thomas Burdett – ‘a merchant dwelling in Cheapside, at the sign of the Crown, which is now the sign of the Flower-de-luce, over against Soper Lane’, More remembered – on a plainly trumped-up
charge. Both were found guilty of having ‘imagined and compassed’ the deaths of King Edward and the Prince of Wales, Burdett being additionally and more plausibly found guilty of inciting rebellion. Both were hanged at Tyburn on 20 May 1477, protesting their innocence. Their execution was clearly meant as a last warning to George. Unabashed, the Duke burst in on a Royal Council at Westminster when Edward was absent and insisted on having read out Stacey’s and Burdett’s denials. He had gone too far. By the end of the following month he was in the Tower.

Clarence’s trial took place at Westminster in January 1478. Richard was among those present. The King told the Lords of George’s scheming to destroy him and his family, of a ‘much higher, much more malicious, more un-natural and loathly treason’ than ever before, declared him ‘incorrigible’ and demanded a sentence of high treason. Accordingly Clarence was condemned to death and his children forfeited their inheritance. His mother, Duchess Cicely, protested at a public execution, so on 18 February he was murdered in the Tower, almost certainly drowned in a butt of malmsey – Mancini heard that he had been ‘plunged into a jar of sweet Falernian’, Commynes says specifically that it was malmsey, and that Clarence’s daughter afterwards wore a little wine cask at a bracelet on her wrist in memory of him. By a grim irony he was buried at Tewkesbury Abbey. He was still only twenty-eight.
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It was a horrible way to die. One contemporary foreign source, the French chronicler Jean Molinet, says that the Duke himself suggested it to his brother – perhaps he had meant it as a joke. Beheading in private, strangling or smothering would surely have been preferable. (Or drowning at sea like their brother-in-law, the Duke of Exeter, whose murder has never been solved.) Not even the wildest legends of the Borgias contain so exotically cruel and inhuman a killing. Beyond question there was a dark and sinister side to Edward IV. The Croyland writer tells us that he believed the King ‘inwardly repented very often’ Clarence’s death, while More says, ‘Piteously he bewailed and repented it.’ Yet Polydore Vergil complains that, though he talked with many people who knew the court in those days, he could never obtain a convincing account of Edward’s true motives.
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We may guess that,
like Machiavelli, the King thought that ‘a Prince, so long as he keeps his subjects united and loyal, should not worry about being called cruel’.