Richard The Chird (52 page)

There is a trace of this dichotomy even in Richard's faith. His religious feeling was conventionally expressed in his foundation of chapels, colleges, chantries, a hospital, and gifts for the repair of churches. But the supposition that Richard was something of a Puritan in temperament is complemented by an extant manuscript which bears what appears to be his genuine autograph: it is a copy of Wyclif s translation of the New Testament. 12 Richard was no secret Lollard—a number of "good Catholics" in this age apparently owned such volumes, simply in order to read the Bible in English—but that he perused a Lollard Testament suggests a religious experience more powerful and more private than conventional piety.

Little is known of Richard's domestic life; nothing, of his relationship with his mother. There survives only one letter of his to that old woman, once the lovely Rose of Raby, who, having seen and suffered much, now followed the strict regimen of a religious in her castle of Berkhamsted. "I recommend me to you as heartily as is to me possible," he writes; "beseeching you in my most humble and eff ectuous wise of your daily blessing to my singular com-

fort and defence in my need. And, Madam, I heartily beseech you that I may often hear from you to my comfort. . . . And I pray God send you the accomplishment of your noble desires. . . . Your most humble son. . . ." Though the letter is cast in a customary form, its tone of filial devotion seems to transcend the merely conventional expression of the times, when sons, even sons of high estate, were expected to be dutiful to their mothers.

It appears that Richard's marriage was happy, that he gave Anne Neville his heart as well as his name. Even the Tudor historians, for all their zest in elaborating monstrous legends of Richard's wickedness, cast no slur upon his marital fidelity, and Mancini gives positive testimony that the purity of his private life was well known to the public. Since he acknowledged, and was at pains to make honorable provision for, two bastard children, it seems likely that they were born before his marriage—the bastards of a bachelor being then regarded as the natural, and therefore unreprehen-sible, consequence of human frailty. The girl, Katherine Plantag-enet, was, in fact, of sufficient age to be married in 1484, and the boy, called John of Pomfret or John of Gloucester, w r as by then old enough, though still a minor, to be appointed to high place. Katherine became the wife of William Herbert, Earl of Huntingdon, Richard settling on the couple property worth 1,000 marks a year and a further annuity of ^152 IDS. lod.

He seems to have possessed, as far as can be ascertained, cultivated tastes and interests. Both Queen Anne and he had a troupe of minstrels; his choirmaster combed the kingdom for voices of suitable beauty for the royal chapel; even when he was traveling, his daily mass was sung so elaborately as to be admiringly remembered by a foreign visitor who heard it. He was a princely builder. He re-edified numerous castles and palaces, sending on occasion across the sea for the best stone of Caen. He made handsome contributions to the two architectural wonders of his day, bestowing an annuity of 250 marks for the finishing of St. George's chapel, and several gifts, crowned by a present of ^300, for the building of King's College chapel, Cambridge. Only the scantiest record remains of the books he must have owned—an English version of

Renatus' De Re Militari, a French chronicle, a folio volume of tales, including two of Chaucer's, on a leaf of which is written in Richard's hand "tant le desieree R. Gloucestre." 13

Of the man himself, the impact that his personality made upon observers, the tone and texture of his daily behavior, very little direct evidence is available. Sir William Stanley, no friend of his— what man who hopes to betray another with impunity is not contemptuous of his intended victim?—provides the merest gleam of light in a letter to a friend who has invited him to come hunting. He replies regretfully that he is too pressed by his duties—there is no hope of getting leave at present from "old Dick." 14 Now Sir William was quite a few years older than King Richard. The epithet "old Dick" suggests, perhaps, a disdain of tedious earnestness, of Richard's plain, dull devotion to work. On the other hand, the diary of a German traveler of noble family records an entirely different impression. Nicolas von Poppelau's account of a nine days' sojourn in the King's household provides the most intimate picture of Richard and his daily life that has been preserved. 15

Arriving in London on April 16, 1484, von Poppelau set out northward to meet the King, and finally joined him early in May at Middleham Castle. After presenting Richard with letters of introduction from the Emperor, von Poppelau delivered a Latin oration, which, he notes, elicited the admiration of all—the King taking him graciously by the hand and ordering a chamberlain to conduct him to his lodgings. Next morning he attended a magnificent singing of the Mass and was then admitted to the royal entourage in order to watch Richard at dinner.

"Afterwards," a summary of his account records, "the King spoke quite alone with von Poppelau, and asked him a great deal about the emperor and the princes of the empire. Finally he came to speak of the Turks, and when Nicolas told of the victory over the Turk gained by the King of Hungary before St. Martin's day 1483, Richard was delighted and cried out, 'I wish that my kingdom lay upon the confines of Turkey; with my own people alone and without the help of other princes I should like to drive away not only the Turks, but all my foes/ " During the remainder of his visit von Poppelau dined every day at the royal table, and he was

honored by Richard with the present of a golden necklace, "which the king took from the neck of a certain lord" Though von Pop-pelau found nothing good to say about the English people, he admired their King. The epitome of his praise was that Richard had a great heart.

^ Yet the testimony of these moments, and the isolating of qualities and parts, do not reproduce the sum of the man. It appears that few in his own day understood or were intimate with Richard, and he eludes us too—a blurred figure, dark . . . with an obscurity not derived from the paucity of records alone; there is a darkness within as well as upon him.

The passionately loyal brother who was Constable of England and commander in his teens, who indef atigably bolstered Edward's throne and won the devotion of the North, may readily be traced in the King earnestly seeking to dispense justice to his subjects and exerting a prodigious vitality to deal with the problems of his government. But between these lives stands the Protector who usurped the throne, the brother who thus doomed, if he did not murder, the boy king who was Edward's son. The dislocation of this middle moment can be divined, it is true, in the progressive corrosion worked upon Richard's relation with his brother by the direction of Edward's later life; and its consequences plainly show themselves in the King's labor to atone for his rupture of the succession, in his compulsive reliance upon loyalty rather than force, and in the haunted and feverish pursuit of well-doing that wore out his heart. Yet it is a fractured life, and the man who lived it must also have been, obscurely, fractured.

His early years had pressed harshly upon him; the sickliness of his body, the violence surrounding his childhood, had thrown him in upon himself; unresilient and unexuberant, he met force of circumstance by force of will He found a master outlet for his emotions and his instinct to aspire—loyalty to Edward; and this drove him to a bare and simple organization of his life, with two basic principles—to grow strong and serve. The responsibilities so early thrust upon him and never afterward lightened worked only to harden the fibers of his character. Thus it was impossible for him to communicate himself easily and warmly to the world. The aus-

tere landscape of his spirit, ribbed with the rock of will, faithfully supported its burdens, but it could not bloom; and thus it somehow intimidated or repelled even as it served.

The earnestness with which Richard applied himself, the stiff restraints of his character, the formidable impact of his control— these sometimes lamed what they accomplished by the unease which they stirred. What his brothers could command with a smile, he could win only by effort. It may be that the tense and passionate and sudden choice which propelled him to the throne represented a cracking of this bleak restraint, the explosion of a spirit too tightly confined. Perhaps he briefly persuaded himself that he could be other than he was, or finally rebelled when the urge to retaliate against the past became irresistible. But the marble chair of Kong's Bench pressed hard and inexorable, forcing him back into the prison of his conscience and the habit of his duty.

He seems to have emerged from an earlier world . , . ruder and more naive and simpler. He had in him something of the first martyrs and something of the Germanic chieftain. An elemental fierceness, subjugated to duty, once broke loose; a grim sense of moral responsibility sat in harsh judgment upon the outburst. If we cannot see his portrait clearly, we can at least choose its painter—not Holbein or even Rembrandt, but perhaps El Greco. Yet though his will was edged with iron and his mind was rigid, he was delicately aware of the feelings of others and sought unwaveringly to work the welfare of those he governed. The harmony he never achieved within himself he did not cease to desire for his fellows. That harmony had been denied him first by circumstance, then by his brother's deterioration, and finally, cumulatively, by the compulsions of his own character.

One flash of that character, a moment of self-revelation, is transmitted in an undated letter which he addressed to his Chancellor, probably when he was on his progress in the summer of 1483.

While Mistress Jane Shore lay in Ludgate prison after doing her public penance for harlotry, a report reached Richard that his Solicitor, Thomas Lynom, was actually on the verge of marrying the woman whose hostile plotting with Hastings he had so recently been investigating. Politically and morally, Richard took a harsh

view of Mistress Shore and he might well have persuaded himself that he was acting for Lynom's good in prohibiting the match. But this is the letter which he wrote to John Russell.

Signifying unto you, that it is showed unto us, that our servant and solicitor, Thomas Lynom, marvellously blinded and abused with the late wife of William Shore, now being in Ludgate by our commandment, hath made contract of matrimony with her, as it is said; and intendeth, to our full great marvel, to proceed to effect the same. We, for many causes, would be very sorry that he should be so disposed; and pray you, therefore, to send for him, in that ye goodly may exhort and stir him to the contrary.

And, if ye find him utter set for to marry her, and none otherwise would be advertised, then, if it may stand with the law of the church, we be content (the time of marriage being deferred to our coming next to London) that, upon sufficient surety being found of her good a-bearing, ye do send for her keeper, and discharge him of our commandment by warrant of these; committing her to the rule and guiding of her father or any other, by your discretion in the mean season.

Lynom decided not to marry Mistress Shore; he apparently continued to serve Richard faithfully, and to enjoy Richard's favor.

Castle of His Care*

. . . like one lost in a. thorny 'wood, That rends the thorns and is rent with the thorns, Not knowing how to find the open air, But toiling desperately to find it out . . .

WITH the beginning of the new year (1485), a murky shadow seemed to descend upon the King. His writs and grants declined in number. Immobile, his life all but hidden, he remained for months immured in his palace. This was the longest sojourn in his capital he was ever to experience. True, the country "was quiet; there was no need for the King to stir abroad. Since Buckingham's rebellion the realm had known internal peace, and as a consequence of Richard's diplomacy and generalship it now enjoyed stable relations with most of its foreign neighbors, Richard had appointed some commissions of oyer and terminer to investigate treasonable activities; but these, like Col-yngbourne's plotting, had apparently been the schemes of Henry Tudor's scattered partisans, representing no real disaffection in the nation at large.

Yet a cloud had descended upon Richard. It was a period of suspension, the man turned inward upon himself. Except for a few forced and painful sallies into the world, these months represented a withdrawal, a lonely wrestling with the shapes of the past and the mocking, amorphous images of the future. King Saul had retired within the cave of the Witch of Endor. He would return to the demands of life with only his courage and his resolution un-ravaged.

Richard lay at his palace of Westminster, waiting. In expectation of Henry Tudor's descent, he could ease his heart a little by commanding his officers to prepare against invasion and the lords and gentry to hold themselves ready to answer his summons. But

against the fast-approaching death of his Queen there was nothing he could do. As January gave way to February, Anne took to the bed from which she would not rise again. While she wasted away, her physicians declared to Richard that her illness was not only mortal but contagious; he must not share her chamber. At least once, the tide of his despair rose beyond his control. To his former enemy whom he had since treated as a friend and a familiar, Thomas Rotherham, Archbishop of York, he cried out in agony that he had lost everything—his son had been taken from him— Anne had been able to bear him no more children—and now she too was slipping away, leaving him barren, alone.

With the coming of March it was clear that she was dying. Groping for a gleam of light in his darkness, for some thread of meaningful continuity in his life, Richard, on March 11, appointed his bastard son John Captain of Calais, calling him in the patent, the writ for which he doubtless wrote out with his own hand, "our dear son, our bastard John of Gloucester whose quickness of inind, agility of body, and inclination to all good customs give us great hope of his good service for the future." x *

Five days kter, while the people of England gaped at a great eclipse of the sun, Anne died. With high ceremony her body was borne to Westminster Abbey and interred near the south door leading into St. Edward's chapel.