Richard The Chird (44 page)

Until then his plotting had gone unsuspected. It was he who headed the commissions of oyer and terminer. As late as September 16 the King had dispatched writs, in the name of Prince Edward, to the royal officers in North and South Wales, ordering them to pay their accounts to the Duke of Buckingham. 15 Not until Richard reached Lincoln on October n did he learn that Buckingham had betrayed him.

The Great Rebellion

We must be brief 'when traitors brave the field.

RICHARD had no armed forces with him. Many of the lords and councilors who had gone on his progress had departed to their homes. The defection of his Constable and chief ally and friend, Harry Buckingham, shook the foundations of his authority and must have lacerated his pride. In his thirty-one years, however, he had engrossed a large experience of betrayal, insurrection, and the making of war.

Within a few hours of receiving the news, Richard had issued his first commands to the council at Westminster and set the rendezvous for his army at Leicester on October 20 and 21. The clerks of John Kendall, his secretary, were inscribing the summonses to arms which a hastily assembled corps of messengers had begun bearing to the quarters of the kingdom. The lords and gentlemen of the King's Household sent urgent appeals to their followers; Viscount Lovell requested Sir William Stonor of Oxfordshire to come wearing the Lovell cognizance, unaware that Stonor was committed to the rebellion. 1

Next day, Sunday, October 12, Richard dictated another letter to his Chancellor, thanking him for the reception which the Bishop's servants had provided at Lincoln for the royal entourage and bidding him, since illness prevented his coming himself, to send the Great Seal at once. In a rush of feeling the King seized pen to add a poignant postscript:

We would most gladly ye came yourself if that ye may, and if ye may not, we pray you not to fail, but to accomplish in all diligence our said commandment, to send our Seal incontinent upon the sight hereof, as we trust you, with such as ye trust and the Officers pertaining to attend with it; praying you to ascertain os of your News. Here, loved be God, is all well and truly determined, and for to resist tibe

3*3

Malice of him that had best Cause to be true, the Duke of Buckingham, the most untrue Creature living; whom with God's Grace we shall not be long till that we will be in those parts, and subdue his Malice. We assure you there was never false traitor better purveyed for, as this bearer Gloucester shall show you. 2 *

On October 15 Richard issued his first public proclamation, declaring Buckingham to be a rebel, bidding all his subjects be ready to take arms, and straidy charging that no one was to hurt or despoil any of the Duke's followers who had held aloof from his treason. Three days later, Robert Blackwell, one of the clerks of the chancellery, delivered the Great Seal into the hands of the King at the Angel Inn in Grantham. Viscount Lovell had gone the day before to Banbury to meet his men, and of Richard's chief officers there remained with him at the moment only four bishops, the Earl of Northumberland, who had accompanied him from Yorkshire, and Thomas, Lord Stanley. There survives no clue to Stanley's motives for supporting the King, or seeming to support the King, when his wife, the Countess of Richmond, was playing a major role in preparing the invasion of her son, Henry Tudor. It seems likely that either the Countess found it impossible to communicate with her husband, whom Richard had kept with him, or that Stanley could find no means to detach himself from the King's side. It is also quite possible that the slippery Stanley had found it expedient to keep a foot in each camp. 3

On October 18, the day that widespread insurrections broke out in the southern counties and Buckingham unfurled his banners, the secretary of Stanley's son, Lord Strange, wrote from Aldclife in the county of Lancaster to a relative of his that "people in this country be so troubled, in such commandment as they have in the King's name and otherwise, marvellously, that they know not what to do. My Lord Strange goeth forth from Latham upon Monday next with 10,000 men, whither we cannot say. The Duke of Buck: has so many men, as it is said here, that he is able to go where he will; but I trust he shall be right well withstanded and all his malice: and else were great pity. Messengers corneth daily, both from the King's grace and

the Duke, into this country." The letter may be straightforward enough, but there are hints of ambiguity, particularly in the phrases "whither we cannot say 7 ' and "else were great pity." Stanley's son finally decided to come in on the side of the King, but he certainly did not bring ten thousand men. 4

Meanwhile, King Richard had been heartened by news from John Howard, Duke of Norfolk. After accompanying the King to Windsor early in July, the Duke had returned to London, where he busied himself, among other things, in overseeing certain alterations in the house and garden of Crosby's Place. He had left London on August 11 to go a progress of his own through East Anglia, in order to greet the tenants of his newly granted manors, and as the King's justicer in this region, to seek the good will of its inhabitants, most of whom he knew well. He returned to London at the beginning of September to investigate, as one of the commissioners of the oyer and terminer, the first rumblings of trouble; on Friday, September 12, he commenced a brief tour of Surrey and Sussex, halting at Reigate and at Horsham. After returning to London about a week later, he saw to it that he had a sizable body of retainers and tenants ready at hand. When he received word on October 10 of a rising in Kent, he swept into action. On the same day his messengers were riding hard with summonses to arms to the chief men of East Anglia, including one addressed to u my right well beloved friend, John Paston, be this delivered in haste":

Right well beloved friend, I commend me to you. It is so that the Kentishmen be up in the Weald, and say that they will come and rob the city, which I shall let [prevent] if I may.

Therefore I pray yon that with all diligence ye make you ready and come hither, and bring with you six tall fellows in harness, and ye shall not lose your labour, that knoweth God, who have you in His keeping.

Next day Norfolk was able to send out several reconnoitering parties, including a body of about one hundred men under Sir John a Medellon and Sir John Norbery which occupied Gravesend to hold the passage across the Thames. The Duke was also busy advising the council at Westminster and doubtless help-

ing the citizens prepare the defenses of London. By October 18, he had assembled such strength that he was able to send a force to Reigate, and the next day he was throwing out another screen of men to protect the city. As a result of these prompt and vigorous measures, the rebek of Kent and Surrey, their links with East Anglia almost entirely severed, were quickly reduced to impotence. Though they had moved from Maidstone down the Medway to Rochester, the Duke of Norfolk blocked their way at Gravesend. Forced to abandon their attempt upon the capital, Sir John and Richard Guildford, Sir John Fogge, Sir George Brown, Sir Richard Haute, Sir Thomas Lewkenor, and a few other gentry retired with their men to Guildford to await news from the West. 5

By the time King Richard was making his way to Leicester, on October 21, he had decided that as a result of John Howard's resolute activity, he need not detach any large body of troops for the defense of London. At Leicester he found a goodly army assembling, including a contingent of three hundred men from the city of York under the captaincy of his friend Thomas Wrangwysh. On October 23 he judged that the muster of his host was as complete as time permitted. He drew up a second proclamation, but having perceived that the rebellion was localized in the southern counties, the West Country, and the southern Midlands, he had it dispatched only to those regions. After reminding his subjects that in accordance with his coronation oath to rule by mercy and justice, he had first begun "at Mercy in giving unto all manner persons his Full and General Pardon," trusting thereby to secure their allegiance, and that he had "dressed himself to divers Parties of this his Realm for the indifferent Administration of Justice to every Person," the King announced the treachery of the Marquess Dorset, Sir William Norris, Sir George Brown, Sir John Cheyney, and several others who had risen in the cause of that "great Rebel and Traitor the late Duke of Buckingham, and Bishops of Ely and Salisbury." Denouncing them for their "damnable maintenance of vices"— doubtless with the Marquess Dorset principally in mind—as well as for their treason, the King promised not to proceed against

any yeoman or commoner "thus abused by these Traitors, Adulterers, and Bawds," who withdrew at once from their cause. A price was put on the heads of the chief rebels: ^1,000 or lands worth ;£ioo a year, for the capture of Buckingham; 1,000 marks or lands worth 100 marks a year, for the Marquess and the two Bishops; and for the knights, 500 marks or lands worth ^40 a year. Finally, all men were urged to spring to arms in order to subdue the rebellion. Although it appears that by this time Thomas Hutton had hurried back from Brittany to warn the King—if Richard had not already received this intelligence from the council in London—that Henry Tudor was preparing with active assistance from Duke Francis to invade the kingdom of England, the royal proclamation made no mention of this threat. 6 *

Next morning, October 24, King Richard opened his campaign by leading his army to Coventry. Since the Constable of England was also the chief rebel, Richard here appointed Sir Ralph Asshe-ton as Vice-Constable "for this time." Then he launched his army southward. He had determined first to drive a wedge between the Duke of Buckingham and the rebels in the West Country and the southern counties, and then to turn his whole force against Buckingham, the most formidable head of the rebellion. 7

Or so he had seemed. King Richard had not been many hours on the march before he learned that the menacing pyrotechnics of the Duke of Buckingham had ignominiously fizzled out in the foulness of the weather, the disgruntlement of men who had been forced to join his army against their will, the brilliant guerilk tactics of bands loyal to the King, and the general incapacity of the shallow-minded Duke himself.

-Even as Buckingham duly spread his banners on October 18 and began to move eastward from Brecon, he Iiad been harassed by a force under the command of a family of Vaughans, chieftains in the region^ who cut off his communications with Wales, hung upon his flanks, and boldly raided the lands of Brecknock Castle. Ahead of the Duke's host, Humphrey Stafford was systematically wrecking bridges and blocking passes and posting bodies of men in narrow defiles from which even an army could not dislodge

them. It was a miserable and frightening march that the mighty Duke made from Brecon into Herefordshire. In perturbation he halted momentarily at Weobley, appropriating the manor of Lord Ferrers. 8

Great numbers of men had not flocked to his cause. He had been able to bring to the field only his own tenants and retainers and such Welshmen as his officers could assemble by force or threats. The attacks of the Vaughans and Humphrey Stafford shook what little morale the troops possessed. And it appears that the elements themselves were fighting on the side of the guerillas. Great storms of rain had washed out roads and flooded river crossings. By the time Buckingham halted at Weobley his army was disintegrating. He was accompanied by a curious quartet of advisers: John Morton, Bishop of Ely; John Rush, a London merchant; Sir William Knyvet of Norfolk; and Thomas Nandik, of Cambridge University, an astrologer. While the Duke helplessly watched his host melting away, John Morton, perceiving that Buckingham's cause was hopelessly lost, found means to abandon the captor who had become his tool. He first fled to the fen country around Ely and then escaped to Flanders. The terrible realization struck Buckingham that he had been duped by the Bishop and ruined by his own illusions. In a panic he donned rough clothing and galloped wildly northward into Shropshire to seek a hiding place.*

King Richard learned of the collapse of Buckingham's revolt not long after he had left Coventry, and therefore headed his army due southward for Wiltshire. When Sir William Stonor, Sir William Berkeley, and Sir Richard Woodville at Newbury, and Sir John Cheyney, Sir Giles Dawbeney, Walter Hunger-ford, and Bishop Lionel at Salisbury, got word that Buckingham was a fugitive and the King was rapidly approaching, they instantly abandoned all thought of resistance. Some sought sanctuary or hiding places with friends; others fled south to the seaside and escaped to Brittany. About October 28, King Richard entered Salisbury without having fought so much as a skirmish. 10 *

A day or two later the Duke of Buckingham was brought a captive to that city. He had sought shelter with a servant of his, one

Ralph Bannaster, who dwelt near Wem. Prompted by fear or the attractive reward, Bannaster had turned him in to the Sheriff of Shropshire, who conveyed him promptly to Salisbury. As a rebel taken in arms, he was summarily tried by a commission under Sir Ralph Assheton, the Vice-Constable. Volubly the Duke of Buckingham confessed, poured out the whole story of the conspiracy, in the desperate hope of securing one favor—permission to speak with King Richard. Like the coquette who cannot believe that her fascination will ever fail, Buckingham conceived that, in spite of all, he might yet exercise his charm upon the man he had sought to destroy. It is possible that he was counting upon some secret revelation to save him, perhaps a disclosure concerning the sons of Edward IV. His prayer, however, was denied. He was sentenced to be executed. Losing all dignity, he begged and pleaded, feverish, abject, terror-stricken. But Richard would not see him. The wound had gone too deep. And the likeness to Clarence, turned bitter now, was borne out in their common fate. On Sunday, November 2, upon a newly erected scaffold in the market place of Salisbury—the noble spire of the cathedral pointing the way to heaven—Henry Stafford, second Duke of Buckingham, was beheaded as a traitor. 11 *

The next morning King Richard set out for the West Country. He had just been informed by one of the detachments of troops which he had dispatched to guard the southern coasts that Henry Tudor, appearing off the Dorset harbor of Poole with only two ships, had quickly sensed the danger in which he stood and sailed away westward. By November 5, the King was at Bridport and by the eighth he was established at Exeter. Without attempting to strike a blow, the Marquess of Dorset, the Courtenays, and most of their chief followers, had taken ship and escaped to Brittany. Sir Thomas Saint Leger and two of his confederates, however, were captured; though large sums of money were offered to ransom Saint Leger's life, Richard saw no reason to spare his eldest sister's second husband, who had chosen to become an agent of the Woodvilles, and all three men were executed, Now came word that the Tudor's two ships had hovered off