Richard The Chird (35 page)

He comes down to us but the shadow of a man. Little more is known of his life, up to this time, than has been indicated; nothing is known of his character save what can be guessed by a precarious triangulation of scattered facts. In May of 1483 he was something more than sixty years of age. Ten years before, he had briefly relinquished the chancellorship, apparently because of ill health; why he was dismissed in 1475 remains unknown. The Croyland chronicler casually remarks of him during these years that he "did nothing except through his pupil, John Alcock, Bishop of Worcester. . . ." Alcock seems to have stood high in the favor of the Woodvilles; perhaps he dominated Stillington as the watchdog of the Queen. Stillington's accomplishments as Chancellor appear to have been undistinguished. A Doctor of Civil and Canon Law, he rose unobtrusively in the government service; the chancellorship was suddenly thrust upon him in 1467 when Edward took it away from Warwick's brother George. In the faint and untrustworthy light of surviving information, Stillington stands as a man of rather mediocre talents, not remarkable for strength of character. Pious King Henry, it is true, had once praised him for his "great cunning, virtues, and priestly demeaning." 13 -

Resentinent against Edward for the loss of his high office, a desire for revenge upon the Woodvilles, may have urged him to

make his declaration. No discernible reward did he receive from Richard, unless it be found in a minor enactment of the Parliament of 1484, the approval of a petition from the masters of the collegiate chapel which Stillington had established out of his own property at Nether Acaster near York to enclose forty acres of land the Bishop had given them. Men of weak or unworthy character can foster schools as well as more blameless folk. Still, it is perhaps something in the Bishop's favor that he used whatever credit he had with Richard to advance the cause of his foundation, which provided "three masters to teach grammar, music, and writing and such things as belong to the scrivener's art." «

No doubt, the pressure of events and Buckingham's voice in his ear and his own ambition sharpened Richard's will to accept Stillington's disclosure; but the openness with which he proclaimed its terms indicates that, brooding upon the available evidence, he came genuinely to believe in the truth of the precontract. Had there been grave doubt in his mind, he would not likely have reiterated, as late as in his Parliament of 1484, that Edward had stood troth-plight to the Lady Eleanor Butler. 13 A generalization would have sufficed, as such generalizations had so often sufficed in the Parliaments of the preceding century. The relentlessness with which, afterward, Henry VII sought to destroy all trace of the precontract and hounded the Bishop of Bath and Wells, the unanimity with which Tudor historians perverted or suppressed mention of it, support the surviving evidence that, in all probability, Richard had very good reason to conclude that Stillington's secret was true. 14 *

When Richard made the momentous disclosure to Buckingham and the inner council, they were quickly agreed that he must claim his rights. Buckingham had already been hinting at every opportunity that the realm needed a man and not a boy, that men dreaded a minority reign, that the Lord Protector was popular and powerful enough to achieve the highest destiny, and finally that his humble vassal, brilliant adviser^ entire well-wisher, and valiant cousin, Harry Buckingham, burned to serve him. 15 * In urging Richard to make use of the precontract, Lord Howard

and Catesby and Stillington and Langton, Bishop of St. David's, and others of the inner council were doubtless, like most men, motivated by self-interest as well as by considerations of principle and the public weal. Howard, for instance, could have claimed, through his mother, the dukedom of Norfolk, except that King Edward, by marrying his second son to the little heiress of the last Duke, had vested in him the dignity and the estates of the Mowbrays. But Lady Anne Mowbray was now dead. Howard had considerable interest in seconding Buckingham's eloquent pleas. Other forces, well-nigh as strong as hope of personal gain, also impelled him in the same direction. Richard was of a mettle his own temperament had taught him to admire and trust; his long experience of affairs counseled the need of strong government; in a quaking present which foreshadowed an ominous future Richard probably represented, to his forthright mind, the only assurance of order.

Now, what a number of men had been privately thinking on the subject of political expediency and the public good suddenly appeared in the guise of lawfulness and right. After listening to his advisers, Richard would only go so far, however, as to propose that the chief men of the realm be informed of the secret and their advice sought. He had chosen to regard the precontract as establishing a rightful opportunity rather than a solemn directive. 16 *

Hence the veiled, intensive activity during the days which followed the delivery of little York from sanctuary, the streams of visitors to Crosby's Place and Baynard's Castle, the splendor of the train with which Richard, having relinquished black, now rode in purple through the city. To an ever-widening circle of lords, prelates, and influential gentlemen the secret of the precontract was disclosed. Their responses convinced the Protector and his council that most men would support, or acquiesce in, Richard's assumption of power now that it could be justified. When Stallworthe wrote his agitated letter on Saturday, Richard had come to his fateful decision.

The very next day, Sunday, June 22, the tension which racked the capital was suddenly released. The Lord Protector, accom-

panied by Buckingham and a great train of magnates, rode to Paul's Cross—where in the past preachers Yorkist or Lancastrian had often made political exhortations—to hear Friar Ralph Shaa, brother of the Mayor and a man famous for his learning and eloquence.

The friar announced to the throng of citizens and nobles a provocative biblical text: "Bastard slips shall not take root." After lauding the Duke who had founded the fortunes of York and remarking that of his three sons Richard only had been born in England and was therefore the most truly English, the friar reminded his hearers of the Protector's character and career, which made him a man worthy of sitting upon the throne itself. In very fact, he went on, it had just been discovered that by God's law as well as by worth, Richard was entitled to the crown. When Edward the Fourth had married Elizabeth Woodville, he had been solemnly contracted to another. The children he had begotten upon her were illegitimate. Thus, the offspring of King Edward set aside, the son of the Duke of Clarence disabled in blood by Clarence's attainder, Richard of Gloucester was the true heir of York and therefore rightful King of England. . . .

The citizens quietly melted away to their homes. Few can have been entirely surprised that the Protector had laid formal claim to the throne. In other quarters of the city, meanwhile, lesser preachers were raising other issues. Buckingham had no reason to love the House of York; neither scruple nor his own interest put any brake upon the means he thought appropriate to use in Richard's behalf. Not content to expound only the decisive argument, he and his lieutenants primed a number of preachers to declare the illegitimacy of Edward himself. It was no invention of the moment. The scandalous tale had been whispered for years and widely diffused. Curiously enough, Mancini states categorically that when the Duchess of York learned that her son Edward was married to Elizabeth Woodville, she "fell into such a frenzy, that she offered to submit to a public inquiry and asserted that Edward was not the offspring of her husband the duke of York, but was conceived in adultery, and therefore in no wise worthy of the honour of kingship." After the Duke of

Burgundy and Edward had fallen out over Louis XFs peace offers in 1475, Duke Charles began scornfully calling him "Blayborgne," as a token that he was the son of an archer of that name; Louis himself also knew the story. In 1477 Clarence, of course, had made wide use of it. There is no reason to suppose that Richard countenanced the raking up of this scandal. It constituted an attack upon his house and it was unnecessary. Possibly one of the reasons why he shifted his residence to his mother's home was to dissociate himself from the lengths to which his lieutenants had gone in promoting his cause. 17 *

On the morning after Friar Ralph had delivered his sermon, the nobles and high prelates assembled in what was actually a preliminary session of the Lords. This time it was Buckingham who played the orator in urging Richard's right to the throne. Virtually all of his audience not only knew what he was going to say but had themselves helped to shape the decision. Next day, Tuesday, June 24, Buckingham addressed the chief citizens of the city in Guildhall to the same purpose and awed them by the splendor of his delivery. So fluent was he, Fabyan records, that he did not once pause to spit; and the Great Chronicle is driven to report that his words were "so well and eloquently uttered, and with so angelic a countenance . . . that such as heard him marvelled and said that never tofore that day had they heard any man learned or unlearned make such a rehearsal or oration as "that was," ls

On Wednesday, June 25—the day on which, weeks ago, Parliament had been summoned to meet—a gathering, which was in all but legal name a Parliament, assembled at Westminster. Directly after the execution of Hastings, the Chancery had begun sending out writs of postponement, mainly to the towns; but Richard soon decided, as the movement to make him King accelerated, that the Lords and Commons must be consulted, and the dispatching of the writs was discontinued. The Lords appeared virtually in full strength; gaps in the Commons were filled by a sizable delegation of London citizens. 19

A roll of parchment engrossing Richard's title to the throne was brought before a joint session of the Lords and Commons.

In customary style, it embroidered the Protector's precise claim with a variety of other reasons, some of which were not very relevant and others, not susceptible to proof. This was the legislative vernacular of the day; we have our own, scarcely less discursive, and denser. The evils which the Woodvilles had wrought upon the realm were rehearsed as showing, in its fruits, the fake-ness of Edward's marriage. The ceremony itself had been performed without the assent of the Lords, under the influence of Elizabeth's and her mother's sorcery, and in a profane place contrary to God's laws. Finally, "at the time of contract of the same pretensed marriage ... the said King Edward was and stood married and troth plight to one Dame Eleanor Butler, daughter of the old Earl of Shrewsbury. . . ." In consequence, the petition declared to the Protector, "ye be the undoubted son and heir of Richard late Duke of York . . . wherefore ... we humbly desire, pray, and require your said noble Grace, that, according to this election of us the three estates of this land, as by your true inheritance, ye will accept and take upon you the said crown and Royal Dignity. . . ." 2 °* After the reading of this petition, the Lords and Commons recorded their unanimous approval and determined on the morrow to present the roll of parchment to the Lord Protector.

Consequently, on Thursday, June 26, a great .concourse of nobles, prelates, gentry, and citizens thronged to Baynard's Castle. Once more Buckingham played the orator, reading the petition and calling upon the Protector to assume the scepter. Appearing on a battlement or stairhead before the great assemblage, Richard acceded, with a show of modesty, to the wishes of the Lords and Commons, and was forthwith hailed as King Richard the Third. He descended then to take horse and ride at the head of a princely train to Westminster Hall. He formally assumed the royal prerogative by seating himself in the marble chair of King's Bench, the traditional seat of the King as Justicer, and by taking the royal oath. At his right hand stood John Howard, heir of the Mowbrays; at his left, the Duke of Suffolk, husband of Richard's sister and father of the Earl of Lincoln. Before him were assembled the Justices of King's Bench and of Common

the Sergeants of the Law, and the massive hall beyond was crammed with spectators. 21 *

Richard insisted on treating the occasion as more than a ceremony. Earnestly he delivered a lecture to all his judges and legal officers, straitly charging them to dispense justice without fear or favor, and declaring that all men, of whatever degree, must be treated equally in the sight of the law. To drive home the sincerity of his words, he summoned from the sanctuary where he had taken refuge Sir John Fogge, a relative of the Woodvilles and a deadly enemy — the man, in fact, who had so ruthlessly helped the Queen's father to plunder Sir Thomas Cook in 1468. In the sight of all, Richard took Sir John by the hand and swore to be his friend. Not many hours later Fogge was appointed a Justice of the Peace for the county of Kent. After thus demonstrating his determination to rule without malice or partiality, Richard departed from Westminster Hall to make offering at the shrine of Edward the Confessor while the monks of the Abbey sang Te Deitm. 22

From this day he dated the beginning of his reign. At the cost of four men's lives, without employing military force, he had mounted the throne by a title of inheritance and the election of the Lords and Commons of the realm. A number of men were opposed to his elevation; many accepted it as right, or necessary, or inevitable; not a few regarded it as fortunate. In assuming the crown, Richard had been impelled as much, it appears, by the political and social forces of the moment as by his own will.

The Choice*

To bear the golden yoke of sovereignty

SO MARCHED events, as diversely and confusingly reported by the chroniclers, who could only sketch outward shapes and effects. The heart of the drama, the conflict within Richard's mind, is well-nigh shut from our sight; and what we can glimpse comes to us distorted by the lens of what-happened-after. The opacity of the future is the dominant dimension of any moment of choice. In order to view Richard in the arena of decision, we must attempt to enter by the entrance, not the exit.

Neither Richard's past, nor his government as Protector, nor his subsequent reign, indicates that he was inordinately ambitious. Before the emergence of the precontract he may have experienced twinges of desire for the throne, but there is no evidence that he aspired to it. The precontract made it possible for him to aspire to it, if he chose. A lineal right to the crown was indispensable, but it was not decisive. Henry IV usurped the throne as a leader of reform. York's title enabled Edward to claim the scepter, but it was bad Lancastrian government which impelled the nation to endorse his claim. When Warwick reseated Henry VI, he asserted the validity of Henry's title as a matter of course, but he knew that the only real means of keeping Henry on the throne was to make his rule popular.