Richard III Read online

  Popplau’s visit to Richard’s court was against the backdrop of a king determined to demonstrate his military capabilities and defend his kingdom; for several weeks afterwards, Richard would continue to remain in the north, basing himself at Scarborough, where he prepared for naval warfare against the Scots. If Richard was able to express his generosity to Popplau in a confident manner, he hid well his own anxieties and concerns, as well as his own significant personal grief for the sudden loss of his son, Prince Edward, who had died at Middleham in April 1484. Without an heir, Richard’s dynasty seemed even more uncertain than that of his elder brother at the time of his sudden death. Richard, aged only thirty, would have time to father future heirs; far harder was it to rid himself of the rumours that were swirling around the courts of Europe that he had actively initiated the deaths of his brother’s heirs, Edward V and Prince Richard. Just months before, in January 1484, the French chancellor, Guillaume de Rochefort, had warned the Estates General at Tours, faced with the minority of the thirteen-year-old king, Charles VIII, that the French nobility must not follow the example set in England the previous year. ‘Think, I beg you’, de Rochefort had pleaded, ‘what happened in that land after the death of King Edward, that his children already grown up and remarkable, were killed with impunity, and the royal crown was passed, with the people’s blessing, to their killer.’ Hearing the same rumours that surrounded Richard’s ascent to the throne, Popplau noted that ‘King Richard, who reigns at the moment, has also killed King Edward’s sons, as is said, so that he and not they might be crowned.’ Yet Popplau had also heard a different version of the tale, one which he was inclined to agree with, that ‘some say they are still alive and are kept in a dark cellar’.10

  Popplau’s account of Richard’s court presents itself in stark contrast to later accounts of Richard’s reign, providing us with a sense of the ‘real’ Richard, a king both generous, impassioned and learned. Yet if we are to place Richard in the context of his own time, and not that of later accounts such as William Shakespeare’s fabled Richard III, it is to the contemporary sources that we must return if we are to divorce fact from fiction.

  The Richard III we have ourselves inherited through historical tradition is one that has been shaped and moulded by that convenient fiction, of viewing Richard as the personification of evil, a child-killer, a man whom nothing, or no one, would stop him from obtaining his ambition of wearing the royal crown. This later re-invention of Richard III has already been decried by so-called ‘Ricardians’ as ‘Tudor propaganda’, but in many respects the nature of historical debate surrounding Richard III still remains depressingly predictable.

  As far back as 1788, the antiquary William Hutton, in his book The Battle of Bosworth Field, recognised that Richard, ‘of all the English monarchs, bears the greatest contrariety of character’: ‘Some few have conferred upon him almost angelic excellence, have clouded his errors, and blazened every virtue that could adorn a man. Others, as if only extremes would prevail, present him in the blackest dye; his thoughts were evil, and that continually, and his actions diabolical; the most degraded mind inhabited the most deformed body.’ Yet, Hutton admitted, ‘Richard’s character, like every man’s, had two sides … though most writers display but one.’11 Nearly 230 years on, historical scholarship has ensured that more information has been unearthed on Richard III than most medieval monarchs, yet the popular debate has stubbornly refused to move on. All too often, Richard III’s life and reign remain defined by the question, ‘Was he a good or bad king?’, or, more predictably, ‘Did he kill the princes in the Tower?’

  It is difficult to break out of the dramatic cycle of events, moulded by the sources that we are reliant upon. Richard’s fame often has more to do with the deeply ingrained portrait of the king that we have inherited from Shakespeare. Through the dramatist’s pen, Richard was transformed from an historical figure into the archetypal villain. Throughout Shakespeare’s first history cycle, Richard appears as a ‘carnal cur’, ‘hell’s black intelligencer’, a ‘bottled toad’, ‘an indigested and ill-formed lump’ and a ‘lump of foul deformity’, whose penchant for evil deeds and appearance are formed into one hideous personality.

  Shakespeare’s Richard III was not entirely a dramatic invention. Over the past century since Richard’s death, historical writing had sought to denigrate Richard’s name. In the years immediately following the battle of Bosworth, the Warwickshire antiquary John Rous, who had in Richard’s own lifetime praised the king as ‘a mighty prince and especial good lord’ who was ‘full commendably punishing offenders of the laws, especially oppressors of the Commons, and cherishing those that were virtuous, by the which discreet guiding he got great thanks and love of all his subjects great and poor’, now turned against the dead king, who he declared was ‘excessively cruel in his days … in the way that Antichrist is to reign. And like the Antichrist to come, he was confounded at his moment of greatest pride.’ He described the king as ‘small of stature, with a short face and unequal shoulders, the right higher and the left lower’, though even this had been later altered in the manuscript so that Richard’s left shoulder was to be higher than his right, just as portraits of the king would be altered to depict Richard as a hunchback.12

  Popplau’s account of his stay at Richard’s court is the most detailed contemporary description of Richard and his royal household, though further glimpses of Richard’s personality can be gleaned from the king’s own letters, together with surviving payments and warrants. Other contemporary chronicles and accounts also exist to provide flesh to the bones of our knowledge, though, compared to the sixteenth century, the fifteenth century and the narrative accounts of its politics fall into an unsteady period of historical writing, departing from the monastic chronicles of the medieval period, yet not fully ensconced in the humanist histories of the Tudor period. The consequences of this mean that, particularly for the reign of Edward IV, historians possess less strictly contemporary information than any other reign in English history since Henry III. If establishing the precise sequence of events proves problematic at times, still more elusive is the establishment of motive or the understanding of personality in politics. If it is difficult to discern the intentions behind Richard’s actions at times, it is, as Geoffrey Elton observed, ‘because no sound contemporary history exists for this age that its shape and meaning are so much in dispute now’.13 Many authors now considered to be crucial sources of information were unaware that they were writing ‘history’ for a public audience; many simply considered that they were making notes in private commonplace books or letters, interspersing important national events occasionally among events of a more personal or local nature. Personal letters such as those from the Paston, Plumpton, Stonor or Cely collections provide an invaluable window into the private thoughts of individuals reacting to political circumstance, yet compared to the voluminous State Papers collected in the reign of Henry VIII, they are meagre. Other professional recorders of events did so with an agenda that suited their own needs, and not those of the twenty-first-century historian.

  One of the most important sources for the years 1471–85 is the account generally known as the ‘Second Continuation of the Croyland Chronicle’, yet its authorship, and by inference its purpose and bias, remains contested among historians.14 While we know that its author was a doctor of canon law and a councillor of Edward IV, elsewhere he claims that he wrote and completed the narrative within ten days, ending on the last day of April 1486. Even if the work’s direct authorship cannot be concluded upon, it is clear that reference has been made to official documentation in its compilation. Certain elements even demonstrate a distinct personal knowledge of Richard’s reign, such as the recording of an oath taken by the nobility to Richard’s son, Edward, in ‘a certain room near the corridor which leads to the queen’s chambers’.15 One gets the sense that the narrator of events, perhaps told to the scribe who composed the chronicle, was at the heart of power: the fact that John Russell,
bishop of Lincoln and Chancellor during Richard’s reign, is known to have resided at Crowland Abbey during April 1486 surely points to his guiding influence in the composition of the political sections.16

  For Richard specifically, recent discoveries in the twentieth century have transformed our understanding of his reign. The Great Chronicle of London, first published from a manuscript in 1938, was the product of the industry of the draper Robert Fabyan, who was writing up to his death in February 1513. It provides us with important near-contemporary evidence of the reign from a London perspective; the equally important discovery of Dominic Mancini’s manuscript account of the ‘Usurpation of Richard the Third’, in the archives at Lille, reveals another first-hand account of Richard’s ascent to the throne, written no more than six months after the event. Yet even Mancini is the product of what rumours, information and disinformation were circulating throughout the capital during that heady summer of 1483; no source is beyond reproach as truly independent. It was the Italian historian Polydore Vergil, writing in the early sixteenth century, yet whose work, the Anglia Historica, was not published until 1534, who imposed a new pattern of historical development upon the events of the fifteenth century. Instead of writing history in an annalistic fashion, as previously employed by medieval chroniclers, Vergil chose to divide English history into royal reigns. As a result, the personality of a king would now play an ever greater role than before. For Vergil, Richard’s own personality would be critical in understanding the failure of his reign. He was ‘little of stature, deformed of body, the one shoulder being higher than the other’, while he had ‘a short and sour countenance, which seemed to savour of mischief, and utter evidently craft and deceit. The while he was thinking of any matter, he did continually bite his nether lip, as though that cruel nature of his did so rage against itself in that little carcass. Also he was wont to be ever with his right hand pulling out of the sheath to the midst, and putting in again, the dagger which he did always wear. Truly he had a sharp wit, provident and subtle, apt to both counterfeit and dissemble; his courage also high and fierce.’17 It was a highly influential portrait of Richard that would remain for centuries, establishing a template that would be followed by Thomas More, and the later Tudor chroniclers Edward Hall and Ralph Hollinshed, before being cast into literary legend by Shakespeare.

  Admittedly, much has been done to dispel the myth of the ‘black legend’ of Richard III. Since the publication of Horace Walpole’s Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of Richard III, published in 1768, Richard’s memory has found loyal defenders, from Clements Markham to Josephine Tey. Richard’s generosity, his piety and his pronouncements on the dispensing of justice have been held up as signs that he was a ‘good king’, whose virtues have been suppressed, yet these features of Richard’s personality and reign should not be gathered together in an attempt to make a case for the defence of the king, for it ignores the wider context of medieval nobility and kingship that Richard was immersed in. His behaviour and words cannot be taken in isolation; kings before and after Richard acted in a similar manner, for that was what was expected of them. Yet to create a white legend of Richard’s personality seems merely to perpetuate the sterile debate of a ‘good’ Richard versus an ‘evil’ Richard. The history of Richard III needs to be treated with balance and more accurate scholarship, something that can only be achieved by returning where possible to the original sources and contemporary accounts of Richard’s life and reign, exploring his life as it was, not as it was later to be seen.

  Nor can our understanding of Richard’s personality, his motives and ambitions, be gleaned from the last few years of his life alone. For over a decade, Richard stood by Edward IV as his loyal brother, following him into exile and earning his spurs fighting successfully at the battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury. Richard’s experiences in the wars against Scotland shaped his sense of leadership and longing for military glory, while an early taste of Richard’s ruthlessness can be witnessed in his early land transactions and determination to build an affinity and power base of his own. The fact that Richard managed to establish himself as one of the greatest and most powerful noblemen of his age, in spite of his status as one of Edward IV’s younger brothers, demonstrates Richard’s early determination to succeed. Richard’s early career as duke of Gloucester, built as it was on the shifting sands of the brutal world of fifteenth-century politics, is important for understanding why Richard later chose to take the decisions he did in becoming king.

  This work has unapologetically been written as a narrative history of Richard’s life and reign; in doing so, attention has been paid mainly to the high court politics of the age, and Richard’s role within this world. I have attempted to focus also on how Richard constructed his own power base, for it was his northern affinity, constructed in his early years as duke, that would prove so crucial for him obtaining the throne. Richard’s accession to the throne had only been made possible, not just through Richard’s own personality, but through a coalition of support that placed the crown on Richard’s head. Too much attention is traditionally paid to Richard’s individual role in his accession, when, like any political coronation, this was only possible with the support of certain key members of the nobility, who backed regime change. Richard’s success depended as much upon their own individual grievances and ambitions as his own.

  This is surely the key point about the battle of Bosworth, where Richard fell defeated, not by Henry Tudor, but by the defection and loss of support of his own army and his ‘northern men’ on whom he had relied to build his career first as duke of Gloucester, then as Protector and finally as king. While individual personalities are crucial for understanding the nature of power in the fifteenth century, it is important not to forget that kings and noblemen were the corporate representation of a far wider range of ideals, and, more realistically, ambitions, of the men who served them.

  Richard III reigned for just 788 days, yet his reign is unique in late-medieval history for the wealth of archival evidence we have inherited, partly through the survival of his signet docket book, together with privy seal and Exchequer warrants, many of which remain unpublished. It is possible to fashion from these an almost day-by-day account of Richard’s reign, and it is through this detail, of returning to the original sources, that I have attempted to bring a fresh perspective on Richard’s reign.

  Aged only thirty-two at his death, Richard III remains a strong candidate for being our most celebrated and controversial king. Hundreds of books have been written about him, while he remains the only English king with two organisations dedicated to his name, with the Richard III Society, originally founded in 1924, ‘in the belief that many features of the traditional accounts of the character and career of Richard III are neither supported by sufficient evidence nor reasonably tenable’, currently with a membership of several thousand. Recently, popular interest in Richard III has surged with the discovery of the king’s remains in Leicester, prompting even more books, articles and television programmes. This book is not an attempt to compete with the popular mania surrounding Richard. Instead, by exploring Richard’s life in fresh detail, its aim is not only to see the king’s life and reign through the lens of the fifteenth century, but to gain a sense of why Richard behaved and ruled in the fashion he did, for ‘good’ or for ‘evil’.

  * Richard himself told Popplau in a later conversation that the castle was called ‘Pons Fractus’.

  PART ONE

  BROTHER

  1

  SONS OF YORK

  On 21 May 1471, Edward IV rode into the capital in triumph. He was escorted by thousands of horsemen, ‘well accompanied and mightily with great lords, and in substance all the noblemen of the land’, the author of one account recorded, ‘well arrayed for war’.1 It was not the only time during his reign that the king had marched into London ‘in state’, to declare his reign restored. Ten years ago, aged just nineteen, Edward had marched into the capital to claim the throne as rightfully his, disp
lacing the hapless Lancastrian king, Henry VI. Now he returned once more the victor, having won back his kingdom for a second time. This time, however, he had made sure that the Lancastrian cause was all but destroyed. At the battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury, fought just weeks before, not only had Richard Neville, the earl of Warwick, been killed at Barnet, but the Lancastrian prince and heir, Edward, had been slain at Tewkesbury. Henry’s queen, Margaret of Anjou, had been captured, and was now paraded through the streets of London in a heavily guarded carriage, the symbol of his victory of victories on a day of Roman triumph.

  The mayor and aldermen of London went out to meet their restored king in the meadows between Islington and Shoreditch, where they were knighted, the number of knighthoods distributed without parallel. Edward then made his way through the streets of the capital, at the head of a huge force, numbered by several chroniclers as approaching 30,000 men, as banners and tattered standards of war were unfurled, with trumpets and clarions playing. Alongside, or following just behind, rode Edward’s two brothers, George, duke of Clarence, and Richard, duke of Gloucester, together with the dukes of Norfolk, Suffolk and Buckingham, six earls and sixteen barons, ‘together with other nobles, knights, esquires and a host of horsemen larger than had ever been seen before’.2