Betrayal of Richard III: An Introduction to the Controversy
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Betrayal of Richard III: An Introduction to the Controversy
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Overview
In this classic work, Peter Hammond and the late V.B. Lamb survey the life and times of Richard III and examine the contemporary evidence for the events of his reign, tracing the origins of the traditional version of his career as a murderous tyrant and its development since his death. The evident grief of the citizens of York on hearing of the death of Richard III — recording in the Council Minutes that he had been 'piteously slane and murdered to the Grete hevynesse of this citie' — is hardly consistent with the view of the archetypal wicked uncle who murdered his nephews, the Princes in the Tower, and there is an extraordinary discrepancy between this monster and the man as he is revealed by contemporary records. An ideal introduction to one of the greatest mysteries of English history, this new edition is revised by Peter Hammond and includes an introduction and notes.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780750963329 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The History Press |
| Publication date: | 02/02/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 160 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
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The Betrayal of Richard III: An Introduction to the Controversy
By V.B. Lamb, Peter Hammond
The History Press
Copyright © 2015 V.B. Lamb and Peter HammondAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7509-6332-9
CHAPTER 1
Edward, by the Grace of God
When Edward IV died at Westminster on April 9th, 1483 he had been King of England for twenty one years and nine months with a short intermission in 1470–71. He inherited his claim to the throne from his father, Richard Duke of York, killed at the battle of Wakefield on December 30th, 1460, and there is no doubt that this claim was valid in law. The House of York was descended through the female line from Lionel of Clarence, third surviving (effectually the second) son of Edward III, whereas the House of Lancaster which it superseded derived its descent from John of Gaunt, the fourth son of the same King, and owed its possession of the throne to the usurpation of Henry of Bolingbroke, who had deposed his cousin Richard II, whom he imprisoned in Pontefract Castle where the unfortunate King met a diversely reported but undoubtedly unpleasant end, while Henry had himself crowned as Henry IV.
In 1460 the throne was nominally occupied by Henry's grandson, Henry VI, who had succeeded as an infant of nine months, and after a long and disturbed minority had grown into a saintly but feeble-witted man, quite unfitted to govern a turbulent realm. As a result the government of the country was in the hands of his wife, Margaret of Anjou, and her successive favourites, the Dukes of Suffolk and Somerset, whose relations with the Queen gave rise to considerable scandal. It was generally thought that her only son, Edward of Lancaster, was in fact the son of Somerset, a rumour which received considerable impetus when King Henry, on being informed of the birth of an heir, remarked that it must have been through the agency of the Holy Ghost. However pleasing such divine intervention might be to the saintly King, it was hardly calculated to inspire confidence in his subjects, a large proportion of whom were bitterly discontented with the oppressive rule of the foreign woman and her lovers. During the 1450s the country seethed with discontent and sporadic outbreaks of civil strife, and an increasingly large number of the people began to look to the Duke of York as the rightful King of England and their only hope of stable government. These hopes were dashed when the Duke was killed in a fight with Queen Margaret's army at Wakefield, to be swiftly revived in the person of his son, Edward.
Edward was the eldest of the sons of Richard of York who survived to reach manhood, the other two being George, afterwards Duke of Clarence, and Richard, afterwards Duke of Gloucester. Their mother was Cecily Neville, daughter of Ralph Earl of Westmorland and aunt of Richard Earl of Warwick later to be known to history as the Kingmaker. Edward was liberally endowed to be a leader of men and a lover of women. Six feet four inches tall, with the frame of a giant, he was dazzlingly fair and famous for his good looks throughout Europe. He was also, when he chose to exert himself, a brilliant commander and a shrewd man of business.
At the time of his father's death, when it seemed that the White Rose of York had withered past revival, he was not quite nineteen and was engaged in raising an army in Wales to go to the Duke of York's assistance. Within six weeks of receiving the news of the disaster at Wakefield he had won the battle of Mortimer's Cross and received a delirious welcome to London, where he was formally offered the Crown in the great hall of his mother's house, Baynard's Castle. Before another two months had passed he had smashed the Lancastrian armies at Towton, and on June 29th he was solemnly crowned King of England. Margaret of Anjou with her precious son took refuge in France, where she received a restrained welcome from Louis XI, who showed no enthusiasm for the cause of a penniless and dethroned relative.
Edward was firmly seated on the throne to which he had every right, and for three years the sun of York blazed in an almost cloudless sky. The Lancastrian nobility was scattered, either dead or in exile with the luckless Margaret. Edward had the powerful support of his cousin the Earl of Warwick to whom, after his own genius for command, he to a large extent owed his throne. If he felt any resentment at the obligation no rift was apparent between them, and when the important question of a suitable wife for the King of England arose it was to Warwick that the negotiations were entrusted.
Edward's marriage was a matter of the utmost importance. On it, in the eyes of Europe, depended the stability of his newly-won throne and the dynastic future of his house. He could, and did, take his extra-marital relaxations where he chose, but his marriage was something which could not be trifled with. Several royal alliances were under consideration, among them being Isabella of Spain and the Princess Bona of Savoy, sister-in-law of Louis of France, the latter being favoured by Warwick. Unfortunately for the peace of England and the future of the House of York the most important factor to be reckoned with was Edward's own temperament. Not only was he immensely attractive to women and accustomed to getting his own way with them; he was also extremely susceptible, and where a woman was concerned his natural shrewdness seems to have been lacking. Also he was very young and very successful. At twenty he was the victor in two pitched battles against superior odds, he was a king, and the idol of his people. It would hardly be surprising if in his own mind he was a law unto himself with the conviction that the King could do no wrong.
Whatever the reasons it was at this critical moment, when the question of his marriage was being gravely discussed by his Council, that he committed an act of supreme folly which was destined to destroy the House of York. On a hunting trip to Grafton, the home of Richard Woodville, Baron Rivers, he met the eldest daughter of his host, the widow of Sir John Grey, who had lost his life at the battle of St Albans fighting for the Lancastrians. Elizabeth Woodville, Lady Grey, was an amazingly beautiful woman some six years older than the King; the moment Edward set eyes on her he fell desperately in love and determined to have her no matter what the cost. This proved to be very much higher than that which he was accustomed to pay on these occasions. The lady, probably with a shrewd sense of her own value, firmly refused to become his mistress. It was marriage or nothing. Edward, frantic at this unusual check to his desires, threw overboard the foreign marriage, his Council, and the Earl of Warwick, and on May 1st, 1464, very secretly at Grafton, he married the beautiful Elizabeth, and by that rather furtive little May Day ceremony he doomed his dynasty and his whole family to extinction.
Five months elapsed before Edward plucked up courage to tell his Council what he had done, during which time Warwick continued his negotiations for a foreign bride for his King and cousin. When at last it was no longer possible to conceal the disastrous marriage the reaction was immediate. Warwick was furious at having been made to look a fool before the courts of Europe, and never forgave his cousin. Edward's other supporters deeply resented this marriage with the daughter of one Lancastrian and the widow of another, both of obscure origin, for Lord Rivers was of very new creation and his chief claim to importance had so far lain in his marriage, as her second husband, to Jacqueline of Luxembourg, sister of the Count of St Pol and the widow of Henry V's brother the Duke of Bedford, a lady of doubtful reputation which included a suspicion of dabbling in sorcery and the black arts. A Queen with such antecedents could never be acceptable to the proud Yorkist nobility, but added to these disadvantages Elizabeth Woodville was one of a numerous family of brothers and sisters, all ambitious and all of them determined to make the most of the amazing piece of good fortune which had raised their sister to the throne. There were also her two sons by her first marriage, who in due course became candidates for honours which should more properly have gone to others.
In a very short time Edward had given all his Queen's male relations large estates and positions which made them the equals of the highest in the land. Her father was made Earl Rivers while her sisters were married to leading members of the old aristocracy who had to submit, but who regarded this influx of Lancastrian upstarts with bitter hatred which time did nothing to assuage. The arrogance of the new family still further exacerbated the outraged feelings of the old nobility, while their rapacity made them universally hated by the commons. The wound was never healed, and never again was Edward to enjoy the unanimous support of his followers. Intrigue and jealousies grew and flourished, and as Habington wrote in his Life of Edward IV: '... the outward face of the court was full of the beauty of delight and majesty while the inward was all rotten with discord and envy'.
The unfortunate marriage had cast a shadow over the bright future of York which was never to lift, and as time went by grew ever deeper and more threatening until it swallowed up the glory on an August day on Bosworth field twenty-one years later.
In 1470 Edward's own particular chickens came home to roost with the rebellion of his cousin and former friend the Earl of Warwick, supported by George of Clarence who had married, against Edward's wishes, Isobel, the elder of Warwick's two daughters, and who found the pretensions of the Woodville clan as intolerable as did his father-in-law. Warwick and Clarence fled to France where they joined forces with Margaret of Anjou and entered into a pact by which they agreed to help her to regain the English throne for her husband and son, cementing the alliance by the marriage of Warwick's younger daughter Anne Neville to Edward of Lancaster.
With ships and men provided by King Louis, Warwick and Clarence invaded England, forcing Edward to flee the country with his youngest brother Richard of Gloucester and a handful of friends, in such haste that they arrived in Flanders, where their sister Margaret was married to Duke Charles the Bold of Burgundy, in a state of penury. In England Warwick dragged the imbecile Henry from his devotions in the Tower, where he had led a congenial life since his capture after the battle of Towton, suitably attended by a retinue of priests and servants, decked him in the royal robes, paraded him about London and declared him King. Edward and Richard were attainted, while Elizabeth Woodville, who had taken sanctuary at Westminster, there gave birth to the long hoped for son whose inheritance at that moment seemed to be more than doubtful.
Adversity however had a good effect on Edward. He threw off the sloth of the past years which had enabled his enemies to drive him into exile, raised a small force with the help of his sister and her husband, and accompanied by the faithful Richard of Gloucester he set sail for England in March 1471, landing in Yorkshire. From thence he executed a lightning march southwards and in a matter of six weeks had recaptured London, defeated and killed Warwick at the battle of Barnet, and three weeks later finally annihilated the main Lancastrian army at Tewkesbury where Edward of Lancaster was, according to the contemporary Fleetwood Chronicle and the Paston Letters, slain in the battle. The Paston Letters contain a list headed 'Ded in the Feld'. The first name is that of Edward of Lancaster.
Most of the leading Lancastrians either died at Tewkesbury or were executed immediately afterwards, but among the few who escaped were the Earl of Pembroke and his nephew the young Earl of Richmond, aged fifteen, who was later to become Henry VII. On his father's side Henry was the grandson of Owen Tudor, who had secretly married the widow of Henry V, and his mother, Margaret Beaufort, was a descendant of John of Gaunt by his mistress, Katherine Swinford, who had married Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond. After the now childless Henry VI she and her son alone represented the Lancastrian strain of the blood of Edward III, albeit illegitimately. Henry Tudor fled to Brittany where he led a precarious existence for the next fifteen years.
The victor of Tewkesbury returned in triumph to London and shortly afterwards Henry VI, who had been returned to his seclusion in the Tower, was found dead. The account given out by Edward said that he had died of grief at the news of Tewkesbury and the death of his son; this explanation may well be true, and his death was certainly very convenient, but it is equally likely that he was murdered as the result of a decision taken by Edward in Council to obviate any possibility of further disturbances on his behalf. This explanation is borne out by a cryptic reference to his death in the near-contemporary Chronicle of Croyland.
Edward was now firmly restored to his throne and reunited to his family. The birth of a son after a succession of four daughters had made the position of the Queen and her family stronger than ever, if not more popular. Clarence, who had become reconciled to his brother before the battle of Barnet was in no way deterred by his own record from voicing his dislike of the Woodvilles, and the upheavals of the past year had done nothing to reconcile the discordant elements which composed the Court. True, the Woodville family had lost two of its members during the recent disturbances; Earl Rivers and his son John Woodville had been captured by insurgents near Chepstow. Among the rebels' demands to the King was that the hated family should be removed from their positions of influence, but the capture of Rivers and his son gave them the opportunity for more direct action which they were not slow to seize, and the two Woodvilles were summarily executed. John Woodville was particularly hated for his marriage at the age of twenty to the enormously wealthy dowager Duchess of Norfolk who was in her eighties. It was known as the diabolical marriage, and had shocked the entire country.
There were, however, plenty of Woodvilles left. The new Earl Rivers was the only member of the family who seems to have achieved some degree of popularity. He was a man of culture, a patron of the arts, and was instrumental in establishing Caxton and his printing press at Westminster. Of the Queen's other surviving brothers, one, Lionel, was Bishop of Salisbury while the other, Edward, and her younger son Richard had received military rank and generous grants of lands. Her elder son by her first marriage, Sir Thomas Grey, had been created Marquis Dorset and was one of the King's favourite companions on his less reputable excursions, while five of her sisters had been married into the great houses of Buckingham, Essex, Kent, Arundel, and Huntingdon. The Woodville roots had spread far and wide.
In 1475 Edward embarked on a full-scale expedition against France. He had received a request for help from his brother-in-law, Charles the Bold of Burgundy, in the perpetual state of war which existed between Burgundy and France. Edward owed Charles a considerable debt for the help he had received in regaining his own kingdom and was not in a very strong position to refuse the Duke's appeal. Also a foreign diversion which would occupy his own nobles with matters other than their own squabbles had some appeal for the King. Finally a war with France was popular in the country and would serve to unite those of his subjects who might still hanker after the lost Lancastrian cause. The English had felt bitterly the loss of their French conquests and were very ready to follow their English hero in an attempt to regain the lost crown of France. This support was very necessary, for large sums of money were needed to fit out the expedition which had to be raised by taxation. In order to raise this money Edward used a device which was euphemistically called a 'benevolence'. This form of taxation was supposed to be a free gift to the King from his loving subjects; in fact there was nothing free about it. It was a capital levy assessed on every man's ability to pay, the King having a very shrewd idea of what that ability was through an intricate network of spies who kept him informed of the financial status of his subjects. Edward was not above using his sex appeal to increase the contributions; one old lady gave him more than he asked for 'for the sake of his lovely face'. The gratified King thereupon kissed her and the contribution was promptly doubled!
One way and another, by kisses or curses, a large sum of money was raised, and in July 1475 the King crossed the Channel with his two brothers and the largest army that had ever left the shores of England, followed by the high hopes and patriotic fervour of the whole nation. Two months later it was back in England without having drawn a sword. Edward had found Charles the Bold an unreliable and irresponsible ally whose performance fell far short of his promises. The subtle Louis of France took advantage of the brothers-in-law's disagreements to suggest to Edward that hard cash was a better proposition than the conquest of a devastated country, which, even if won, would be a constant source of trouble and expense to hold. The two kings met at Picquigny where a treaty was signed whereby Louis betrothed his eldest son to the Princess Elizabeth of York and paid Edward the sum of seventy-five thousand gold crowns cash down, with the promise of a pension of fifty thousand crowns annually. Edward's nobles also received handsome presents and annuities, the largest sums going to William Lord Hastings, Edward's Chamberlain and closest friend. Edward called the annuity a tribute and the French called it a bribe, so that everyone was satisfied at the somewhat inglorious ending to the campaign except the Duke of Gloucester who expressed the deepest disgust at the whole transaction, and presumably the people of England who were the poorer by their benevolences and who had been cheated of their dreams of victory.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Betrayal of Richard III: An Introduction to the Controversy by V.B. Lamb, Peter Hammond. Copyright © 2015 V.B. Lamb and Peter Hammond. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Title,Dedication,
Acknowledgements,
List of Illustrations,
Genealogical Table,
Introduction by Peter Hammond,
Foreword,
PRELUDE TO DISASTER,
I Edward, by the Grace of God,
II The King's Brother,
III Lord Protector of England,
IV Treason,
THE LEGEND,
V The Usurper,
VI Birth of a Legend,
VII Uneasy Crown,
VIII The Legend is Established,
IX Sir Thomas More,
X The Later Tudors,
XI After the Tudors,
XII Some Bones,
XIII Summing Up,
XIV No Murder in the Tower,
Bibliography,
Copyright,