Richard The Chird (22 page)

called into being mainly to provide a central authority for the North while Richard and Northumberland were leading the warriors of the region against the Scots. In the Duchy of Lancaster, however, affairs were so bad that its council admitted on May 4 that the "great strifes, variances, controversies, debates" could be remedied "by no person but only by the King himself." 8

Despite these difficulties, Richard was able to push forward his preparations; the people of the North, whatever their discontents, would follow the banner of the Duke of Gloucester. When the fine weather of May approached and the King still showed no signs of moving northward, Richard determined to commence operations himself. His call for men met with a hearty response. The citizens of York decided that "for so much as the said Duke at all times have been benevolent, good and gracious lord to this city, it was thought . . . that it were spedeful and also thankful to his said grace to send unto him a certain people, well and defensibly arrayed. . . ." Though they were already committed to supplying 120 archers later at their own expense, they were able in a few days to send Richard eighty well-armed horsemen. 9

Richard quickly thrust his force across the border, took and burned Dumfries and many a lesser town, then coolly retired before an army could be raised against him. His purpose was doubtless to feel out the preparations of the Scots and to anger them into putting a large army in the field, which he hoped later to bring to a decisive battle.

By the beginning of June he was hastening southward to meet King Edward, who was promising action and who had found a new ally for him. The Duke of Albany, a Clarence in kilt, had three years before fled to France after plotting against his brother King James. In April of 1482 Edward, dangling a crown before his eyes, persuaded Albany to come to England; but he put off making any definite promises until he had conferred with his brother. By this time Edward had admitted to himself that he could not lead an army northward; he must depend upon Richard for the invasion of Scotland.

Richard met Albany and King Edward within the familiar

walls of Fotheringhay Castle. Though he probably had small confidence in Albany's chances of supplanting James III, he readily approved Edward's plan. On June n an agreement was concluded, in which Albany promised, when he was set upon the throne by Richard, to do homage to the King of England for his crown, to sign a treaty of peace, and to give up the fortress of Berwick and certain border lands in the West.

With anxious eyes Edward watched his loyal, vigorous brother set out northward with the Duke of Albany. His health was now too precarious for campaigning. 10 He had given Richard a pliant traitor, for what the gift was worth; he had provided him with some contingents raised by indenture. Harried by the discontents in the realm and by his realization that the failure to support Burgundy might soon cost him dear, he could only return wearily to London, hoping that his brother would somehow provide him with the victory he so badly needed to recover his prestige. He had renewed Richard's commission as Lieutenant General; he now sent him ^200 for the transport of his ordnance, £ 100 for draft horses, and 200 marks with which to pay for two thousand sheaves of arrows.

Meanwhile, the magistrates of York, undaunted by the early hour at which Richard planned to reach the city, made great preparations to show the brother of James HI the esteem in which they held the Duke of Gloucester. On June 17 they agreed that "all the aldermen, in scarlet, and the Twenty-four, in crimson, and every other man of craft in the city in their best array shall be [ready the following morning]—the aldermen and Twenty-four by four of the clock, and every other of the city by three of the clock—at Miklyth Barr, to attend of my lord's of Gloucester good grace, and of the Duke of Albany, upon the pain of every alderman that make default i2d and every commoner that make default 6d. And that my said lords shall be presented with demain bread, ten gallons of wine, two great pikes, two tenches, and six bremes." 1:L

Soon after this hearty reception, the municipal contingent of armed men was moving northward under Richard's banners. The Earl of Northumberland had tried a new tactic this time in his

attempt to bring the citizens within the orbit of his power. He had made a request that in addition to the force which they were supplying to the Duke of Gloucester at their own expense, they should send him as many men as they could, who would receive the King's wages. Since the city, because of the contribution it had made to Richard's raid in May, had secured permission from him to reduce its quota to a hundred archers, it is doubtful if there were any extra men available for the Earl. 12

Before the end of July, Richard stood at the gates of Berwick with an army that perhaps numbered twenty thousand men, including nine surgeons headed by the King's own physician, Master William Hobbes. The town was speedily forced to yield, but the citadel of the castle continued to hold out. Meanwhile, James the Third, stung by the burning of Dumfries, had gathered a large army and was advancing southward. As he reached Lauder, he was suddenly seized by his discontented magnates. After they had hanged his favorites from Lauder Bridge, they clapped him into Edinburgh Castle as their prisoner.

The moment he got word of the Scots' approach, Richard led the English host to meet them, leaving Lord Stanley with a force to continue the siege of Berwick Castle. The Scots lords had no stomach, however, to fight a pitched battle. As Richard swept northward, burning towns and villages in his attempt to provoke an engagement, the enemy retired to Haddington, eighteen miles east of their capital. By the last day of July, Richard had captured Edinburgh without the loss of a man, and so firm was his authority over the army that neither goods nor inhabitants were molested. 13 * The moment he had brought the city under full control, he set out to attack the enemy army at Haddington; but on August 2 the Scots lords sent a message confessing that so far as they were concerned the war was over and asking his terms for a truce and a renewal of the marriage treaty, in which Edward's daughter Cicely had been pledged to the heir of James the Third.

In the present anarchical state of Scottish affairs, however, a treaty could mean little; Edward had already half promised Cicely to the Duke of Albany; and whatever their differences, the men

of Scotland, Richard had become aware, would not accept Albany as their King. He therefore replied that before there was talk of a treaty the lords must return all the money which Edward had paid toward Cicely's dower and must pledge to leave Berwick Castle to its fate. At the same time, he permitted Albany to seal a bargain with the Chancellor of Scotland, whereby, in return for a full pardon and restitution of his estates, he agreed to swear allegiance to his brother James. Accurately forecasting that the fickle Duke would soon be stirring up more trouble, Richard contented himself with having Albany sign an oath to keep faith with the King of England! On August 4, the magistrates of Edinburgh made their conqueror an offer: if he would withdraw peaceably from the city, they promised that in case King Edward no longer wished Cicely to marry James' heir, they would themselves refund every penny of the dowry money in yearly installments. 14

By this time Richard's supplies must have been running low, his men becoming restless, his communications imperiled; the Scots would not fight a battle and were in no condition to sign a treaty. On the other hand, Scotland had now been taught a convincing lesson of English superiority in arms. Deciding to accept the city's offer as an acknowledgment of his triumph, Richard speedily led his army back to Berwick, where Lord Stanley was still pushing on the siege of the citadel. Before the assembly of his whole host "in Hutton Field beside Berwick," Richard on August 12 bestowed knighthood or the dignity of knight banneret on a number of officers who had especially distinguished themselves and distributed suitable rewards to the rank and file. 15 Then with an eye to King Edward's mounting expenses, he dismissed most of the men to their homes, keeping only a force sufficient to press the assault of the castle. A band of Scots made a show of descending upon him to raise the siege, but he coolly stood his ground and they retired with alacrity. On August 24 the castle fell. The great fortress which King Edward had so long yearned to repossess was at last won back.

The happiest man in the kingdom was the Bang. So starved was he for good news that, copying an innovation of Louis XTs, he

had established a system of express couriers along the 335-mile route from London to Berwick "to do us service in our messages between us and our brother. . , ." The moment he learned of the capture of Edinburgh, Edward jubilantly published the news of Richard's accomplishment. The Lieutenant of Calais ordered a procession, a firing of the guns, and "at night bonfires to be made at every man's door as was on midsummer night." When the crowning word came, the day after its fall, that Berwick was his, the King not only spread the tidings among his subjects but immediately wrote a long, exultant letter to the Pope, in which he thanked "God, the giver of all good gifts, for the support received from our most loving brother, whose success is so proven that he alone would suffice to chastise the whole kingdom of Scotland." 16

In the middle of November, Edward sent out writs for a Parliament to convene on the following January 20. Some time before Christmas, Richard arrived in London to receive the thanks of his brother and to lay plans for the future. 17 Well was it for Edward that Richard had provided a great victory; during the Christmas season the King received from across the Channel the evil tidings he had been dreading.

Though Richard must have been pleased by the acclaim which greeted him in London and moved by the almost pathetic gratitude of his brother, he was a man in an alien land. Edward's court he could not stomach; and Edward himself—the happy-valiant prince whom he had followed as his lodestar—had slipped away, had altered, had been sundered from him. It was more than age which had weakened Edward, and the coarsening of his once magnificent figure represented a subtler deterioration.

He had come to a throne enfeebled and discredited to rule over a realm racked by a generation of baronial irresponsibility and sunk in habitual disorder. Within fifteen years he had freed the Crown from the domination of the lords, and in invigorating the power of the monarch, he had infused new strength into the monarchy. He paved his way to this success by solving brilliantly four great problems of government Wales, that father of trou-

bles, he had brought under control by creating the Council of the Welsh Marches; the loyalty of the turbulent North he had won by making his brother Richard lord of the region; and the solution he had found for the dilemma of France aided him in solving that domestic dilemma of finances which had confounded his predecessors for more than two and a half centuries. His subjects expected him to govern strongly and yet were unwilling to give him the means to maintain his government. "Money," remarks Thomas More, "is the only thing that withdraweth the hearts of Englishmen from the Prince." 18 The fifty thousand crowns which arrived yearly from King Louis helped to make Edward independent of parliamentary grants. His shrewd managing of his resources did the rest. Customs regulations were stringently enforced. Fines were promptly collected. Having long dabbled in trade, Edward became a merchant on a great scale, exporting wool and woolen cloths at a handsome profit. Thus he built up the treasure which fortified his strength and assured his independence.

His diplomacy had been alert and usually shrewd; he sought to advance the interests of his merchants as well as the security of his state. He had signed treaties of amity with Denmark, the Hanse towns, Castile, and Portugal. For years he had maintained good terms with Scotland and kept Ireland quiet. By his support of the weak and wavering Duke of Brittany and by his alliance with the Duke of Burgundy, he had—until the late 1470'$—shown himself a match for the wily Louis himself, the wizard of the age. In the community of European nations he had restored England to a place in the first rank.

Now, though his slackening grip upon affairs and his increasing severity were causing his subjects to grumble, he did not lose his hold upon their hearts. He was familiar with them as no king had ever been before. He admired and made full use of the learned accomplishments of men of common rank; he shared his table and his society with his fellow merchants of London; he was easy of access and frank of speech; he had the politician's knack of remembering names and faces; and, at bottom, he was loved because he loved. When his great-granddaughter Queen Elizabeth boasted

that she was "mere English," she was talking in Edward's vein. 19 *

Like Antony, Edward reveled long o' nights, but he had often labored long o' days. His gigantic capacity to enjoy life had masked his industry. Thus it was that in his great years he had established, by his solutions to master problems and with the indefatigable support of his brother Richard, the foundations of the proud national state governed by a strong monarch which would come after. But the particular edifice which Edward had reared upon this base was no longer being kept in tight repair. There had begun to appear, after his reconquest of the realm, an alteration in his character and in the texture of his government, an alteration which was accelerated following his return from France in 1475. His will to rule greatly and his splendid energies were increasingly sapped by his pursuit of pleasure; and both this immersion in self-indulgence and a hardening grip upon his kingdom were signs of the disillusionment which had been born of his long struggle for mastery.

This was the change which afflicted Richard with the sense of loss and alienation. The generous, undaunted, sunnyhearted prince determined to give justice to all had turned into the monarch who wearily and grimly permitted himself to be satisfied with keeping order. The brother unmatched in war and triumphant in the arts of peace had become too shaky in health to lead a campaign and too weakened in will to break out of the net which Louis XI was weaving for him.