Cassell's Illustrated History of England/Volume 2/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III.
REIGN OF RICHARD III.
Richard of Gloucester, now seated on the throne of his nephew, took every means which the possession of one of the most cunuing intellects ever possessed by a scoundrel could suggest, to establish him there. No man knew better than himself that he sat in the royal place, not by any affection for him in the people, but by force and terror alone. There have not been wanting historians who have coolly declared that Richard would have made a good monarch if the people could have thought so; that he was a very brave and a very clever fellow, and had only committed the crimes which were necessary to raise him to the desired throne. Those crimes were only murder of his nearest kindred; betrayal of the most sacred trusts which can be reposed in man—the defence of youth and innocence by the powerful hand and influence of an uncle; the destruction of unhappy orphans of his own blood; the violation of all the established ordinances of the realm; the murder, moreover, of a number of the most eminent of the nobility; perjury; the bribery of assassins; the assassination of his brother and late sovereign's family; the most outrageous slander of his brother's wife; the dishonouring and disinheriting of his brother's children; the overawing of the city, the Parliament, and the realm; the treading down public and private rights by soldiery, and the actual extinction of the Magna Charta, and every freedom of person and speech, purchased by ages of suffering exertion; of the nation's highest and most inestimable privileges, won by the nation's best blood. We can only say that such historians are worthy of such a monarch. The English people, even in that dark and corrupted time, refused to tolerate long such an incubus of iniquity; and soon proceeded to put the eternal stamp of a nation's reprobation on the deeds of that foulest of tyrants.
Great Seal of Richard III.
On the 6th of July, not a fortnight after his acceptance of the crown at Baynard's Castle, Richard was crowned with all splendour. The terror of the blood-stained despot was all-potent, and was evidenced in the fact, that few of the peers or peeresses ventured to absent themselves. With consummate tact, Richard, the Yorkist usurper, appointed the heads of the Lancastrian line to bear the most prominent part in the ceremony, next to royalty itself. Buckingham bore his train, and the Countess of Richmond bore that of his queen. Both these persons were descendants of John of Gaunt, and the countess was the wife of that Lord Stanley who had been wounded at the very council board by Richard's ruffian guards, at the time of the seizure of Hastings. There can be little doubt but that it was the intention of Gloucester to have thus got rid, as by accident, of that respectable and powerful nobleman, who had great influence in the north; but having failed in that, he now made a merit of liberating him and his fellows, the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of Ely, from the Tower. On Stanley he conferred the stewardship of the household, and soon after made him Constable of England. Probably, it not only entered the mind of Richard that it would be politic to secure the favour of a nobleman so much esteemed in Cheshire and Lancashire, but that, by ingratiating himself with the Countess of Richmond, the wife of Stanley, and the mother of the young Earl of Richmond, who, during the reign of Edward IV., had been a cause of anxiety, as a probable aspirant to the throne, he might succeed in beguiling Richmond into his hands; and this is the more probable because he was, at the very time, negotiating some private matters with the Duke of Brittany, at whose court Richmond was.
Besides the promotion of Stanley, the Lord Howard was made earl marshal and Duke of Norfolk, his son was created Earl of Surrey, Lord Lovel was made a viscount, and many others of the nobility now received higher rank. The vast wealth which Edward IV. had left, he distributed lavishly amongst those who had done his work, and those whom he sought to win over. The troops who had come from the north, and were seen with wonder and ridicule by the Londoners, from their mean and dirty appearance, and called a rascal rabble, but who were ready at a word to do desperate things, he amply rewarded, and sent home again, as soon as the coronation was over.
This great display over, Richard called no Parliament, but merely assembled the nobility before their returning to their respective counties, and enjoined them to maintain the peace there, and to assist his officers in putting down all offenders and disturbers. But he did not satisfy himself with injunctions. He set out to make a wide circuit through his kingdom, in order to awe all malcontents by his presence. He proceeded by slow journeys to Oxford, Woodstock, Gloucester, and Worcester. At Warwick he was joined by the queen; and as she was the daughter of the late Earl of Warwick, she might be considered as presiding in her ancestral home; and there, therefore, a considerable court was held for the space of a week, the Spanish ambassadors and members of the English nobility coming there. Thence the royal pair advanced by Coventry, Leicester, Nottingham, and Pontefract to York. The inhabitants of that stronghold of Lancastrian feeling had been warned to receive the king "with every mark of joy;" and to conciliate the northern population, Richard sent for the royal wardrobe from London, and once more repeated the coronation in York, as if to intimate that he scarcely felt himself sovereign till he had their sanction and homage.
But after all the crimes perpetrated by Richard, the public had been terrified into silence, not into approval—far less into affection for so detestable a monster. No sooner was the south relieved from his presence than it at once recovered breath and language. As if the oppression of a nightmare were withdrawn, people began to utter their true feelings. Some were for marching in thousands upon the Tower, and forcibly liberating the innocent victims; others suggested that it were wise to enable the daughters of Edward to escape to the Continent, so that Richard should never be freed from the fear of legitimate claimants to the crown. All the foreign potentates had shrunk from entering into alliance with so blood-stained a character, and would be ready to cherish these princesses as a means of annoying or controlling him.
But Richard had thought of all these things long before the public, and had taken such measures to prevent them as would soon make the ears of all England tingle at their discovery. On attempting to communicate with Elizabeth and her daughters in the sanctuary, they found that asylum invested by a strong body of soldiers under one John Nesfield, and that there was no approaching the royal family. The only alternative was to endeavour to liberate the young princes.
For this purpose private meetings were held in nearly all the counties of the south and west. The nobility and gentry bound themselves by oath to take arms and unite for the restoration of Edward V. In the midst of these movements, the agitators were agreeably astonished to find themselves in possession of a most unexpected and powerful ally. This was no other than the Duke of Buckingham, the man who had so unscrupulously taken the lead in putting down all who were formidable obstacles to Richard's plans, and in bringing London to declare for him. The circumstances which produced this marvellous change have rather been guessed at than ever satisfactorily known.
Buckingham was descended from Thomas, Duke of Gloucester, sixth son of Edward III. Yet the Earl of Richmond, of an exactly parallel descent from the Earl of Somerset, but with a flaw of illegitimacy in that earl, was now looked to as a likely aspirant, and actually afterwards became Henry VII. Buckingham, therefore, not only stood higher amongst the princes of the Lancastrian blood than Richmond, but he was married to the sister of Queen Elizabeth, and was thus closely connected with the imprisoned prince. Yet he had at once supported the most unscrupulous of the Yorkists, and helped more than any other man to dethrone his near relative. If this were strange, his sudden conversion was stranger. For his signal services to Richard he had received signal rewards. The Earl of Gloucester, Buckingham's ancestor, had married one of the daughters and co-heiresses of Humphrey Bohun. Earl of Hereford. Their property, on the Yorkist family ascending the throne, had been seized by it. Buckingham had probably made it his bargain for what he was to do for Richard, that these estates should be restored to him. They were, accordingly, restored, and beyond that, he was made Constable of England, justiciary of Wales, and many other honours were heaped upon him. Why, then, this sudden revolt? The real causes were most likely those which have ever separated successful villains—distrust of each other, and the desire of the principal to be rid of his too knowing and therefore, dangerous accessory. Buckingham was the confidant in many and terrible state secrets. He knew why Hastings was suddenly hurried to his death, and all the dark work by which the true prince had been thrust down to a dungeon, and the false one set up.
It is remarkable that Morton, the Bishop of Ely, when liberated from the Tower, was not set quite free, like Stanley and the Archbishop of York, but was consigned to the keeping of Buckingham, at his castle of Brecknock, in Wales. Morton was, perhaps, the shrewdest politician living, not excepting Richard himself. What is so likely as that Morton, in his conversations with Buckingham in the retirement of Brecknock, opened the eyes of the latter to the danger which menaced him from Richard, who spared nobody whom it was his policy to destroy? He might alarm the conscience of Buckingham, as well as his fears, for the share he had had in enabling him to commit his crimes. He might convince him how hollow and unsubstantial was the power of Richard. The ground was already passing from beneath his feet; the country was every day more and more expressing its abhorrence of his atrocities, and would not long tolerate his yoke. His title rested on nothing but the most impudent and unfounded assertions, most disgraceful even to his own family. To endure the sway of so bloody and ruthless a tyrant was a disgrace to the nation, and which it must and would speedily wipe away. Buckingham was a weak, ambitious man; such views, spread before him with all the art and eloquence of Morton, were almost certain to produce the deepest effect, and the prelate would probably stimulate his ambition by representing that as, like Warwick, he had set up this execrable despot, so, like him, he might pull him down, and win universal applause by rescuing and restoring the young king.
Such has been supposed to be the kind of representations which decided Buckingham. He resolved to reinstate Edward V.; and circular letters were addressed to all those chiefs who were likely to unite in the enterprise. In Kent, Essex, Sussex, Berkshire, Hants, Wilts, and Devonshire, preparations were made for the purpose; and Buckingham was about to move forward to put himself at their head, when the confederates were thunderstruck with the news that the king and his brother had been already murdered in the Tower.
The account which has been generally followed of this horrid event, is that of Sir Thomas More. According to the learned chancellor, Richard, while making his holiday progress through the country, was plotting the death of the young princes in the Tower. From Gloucester he dispatched one of his pages to Sir Robert Brakenbury, the Governor of the Tower, commanding him to get them quietly made away with. Sir Robert refused the office of assassin. Richard, however, from Warwick sent Sir James Tyrrel, with orders to command the Tower for one night. This Tyrrel had been vice-constable under Edward IV., and always employed by him to execute illegal commissions, like Tristan, the tool of Louis XI. Tradition holds that the Portcullis Tower was the one in which the young princes were confined, and it is stated that they were under the constant surveillance of four keepers, and waited on by a fellow called Black Will, or Will Slaughter.
The murderer Richard is said to have roused Tyrrel from his bed at midnight, and sent him off; and Brakenbury, though he would not stain his own hands with innocent blood, had to give the keys by the king's command to the man who would. "Then," says Sir Thomas More, "Sir James Tyrrel desired that the princes should be murdered in bed, to the execution whereof he appropriated Miles Forest, one of their keepers, a fellow flesh-bred in murder, and to him he joined one John Dighton, his own horse-keeper, a big, broad, square knave. The young king had certainly a clear apprehension of his fate, for he was heard sighingly to say, 'I would mine uncle would let me have my life, though he taketh my crown.' After which time the prince never tried his points nor anything attended to himself, but with that young babe his brother, lingered in thought and heaviness, till the traitorous deed delivered them from their wretchedness.
"All their other attendants being removed from them, and the harmless children in bed, these men came into their chamber, and suddenly lapping them in the clothes, smothered and stifled them till thoroughly dead. Then laying out their bodies on the bed, they fetched Sir James to see them, who caused the murderers to bury them at the stairfoot, deep in the ground under a heap of stones. Then rode Sir James in great haste to King Richard, and showed him the manner of the murder, who gave him great thanks, but allowed not their bodies in so vile a corner, but would have them buried in consecrated ground. Sir Robert Brakenbury's priest then took them up, and where he buried them was never known, for he died shortly afterwards. But when the news was brought to the unfortunate mother, yet being in sanctuary, that her two sons were murdered, it struck to her heart like the sharp dart of death; she was so suddenly amazed that she swooned and fell to the ground, and there lay in great agony, yet like to a dead corpse."
This dismal news, however, probably did not reach the unhappy queen till some time after the perpetration of the murder, for the tyrant kept the deed close till it suited his purpose to disclose it.
The whole of this circumstantial account has been called in question by some modern historians, on the plea that the history of Richard was written by men after his death, who invented half tho crimes and repulsive features of Richard to please the court of Henry VII. But perhaps two more highly credible historians could not be found than Sir Thomas More and the continuator of the Croyland Chronicle, tho latter of whom wrote immediately after the death of Richard; and every circumstance known confirms their accounts. We shall see that the younger of these princes was supposed to re-appear in the reign of Henry VII. as Perkin Warbeck. But, unfortunately for this story, the bodies of the two murdered children were discovered buried in one coffin or box. This occurred so late as 1674, when workmen were digging down the stairs which led from the king's lodgings to the chapel in the Tower, where, about ten feet deep, they came upon this chest containing the bones of two youths "proportionable to the ages of the two brothers; namely, about thirteen and eleven years."
What is more, all those said to be concerned in this diabolical deed were afterwards specially patronised by Richard. Greene, the messenger, was made receiver of the lordships of the Isle of Wight and Porchester Castle; Tyrrel and Brakenbury received numerous grants of lucrative offices, money, and lands, as may be seen in Strype's notes to Bucke's history, in Kennet. Dighton, one of the murderers, was made bailiff for life of the manor of Aiton, in Staffordshire; and Forest dying in possession of a lucrative post in Bernard Castle, his widow and son received an annuity of five marks. Still further, Sir Thomas More says, "Very truth it is, and well known, that at such time as Sir James Tyrrel was in the Tower for treason against King Henry VII., both Dighton and him were examined, and confessed the murder in manner above written." Henry, in consequence, sought for the bodies, but at that time they could not be found, the chaplain, the depository of the secret, being dead.
The Murder of the Princes in the Tower.
Battle of Bosworth Field.
could not succeed rightfully to the throne. Moreover, Richard is himself stated to have allowed the fact of the murder to come out, in order to crush the rising of Buckingham and his confederates in their behalf. Under all these circumstances, we conceive no event of history stands more strongly authenticated.
It is said to have been in the midst of the gaieties of the coronation at York that Richard received the news of Buckingham's movement, and of the confederation of the southern countries. The circumstances were so alarming that, notwithstanding the execration which he was conscious such an avowal would bring down upon him, he permitted the account of the princes' death to be published. One universal burst of horror, both from friend and foe, went through the kingdom; and from that hour, instead of saving him, the knowledge of that cruel deed repelled all hearts from him.
For the moment, the nobles, marching forward to rescue the young king, were taken aback: the tyrant had anticipated them; the king they would restore had perished. But the astute Bishop of Ely reminded them that there was Henry of Richmond, descended from John of Gaunt, who might marry Elizabeth of York, and thus, uniting the two rival houses, put an end to the divisions of the nation. This uniting all parties would annihilate the murderer. The idea was seized upon with avidity. Reginald Bray, the steward to the Countess of Richmond, was instructed to open the project to her, who immediately embraced it in favour of her son. Dr. Lewis, a Welsh physician, who attended the queen-dowager in the sanctuary, was made the bearer of the scheme to her. Elizabeth was well prepared by the wrongs heaped upon her, the murder of her brother and her three sons, and her own confinement and degradation, to forget her opposition to the house of Lancaster. She fully agreed to the project, on the condition of Richmond swearing to marry her daughter Elizabeth on his arriving in England. She even borrowed a sum of money and sent him, to aid his enterprise. A messenger was dispatched to Henry in Brittany to inform him of the agreement, and to hasten his arrival, the 18th of October being fixed for the general rising in his favour.
But it was not to be supposed that all these arrangements could escape the suspicious vigilance of Richard. He proceeded from York to Lincolnshire as if he were only attending to the ordinary affairs of the kingdom. But on the 11th of October—a week before the day appointed for the rising of the confederates—he summoned all his adherents to meet him at Leicester. Four days afterwards he proclaimed Buckingham a traitor, and set a reward of £1,000, or of £100 a year in land, on his head. For those of the Marquis of Dorset and of the two bishops he offered 1,000 marks, or 100 marks a year in land each; and for the head of any hostile knight half that sum. He sent at the same time to London for the great seal to authenticate these and similar acts.
On the day fixed, the rising, notwithstanding, took place. The Marquis of Dorset proclaimed Henry VII. at Exeter; the Bishop of Salisbury proclaimed him in that city; the men of Kent at Maidstone; those of Berkshire at Newbury, and the Duke of Buckingham raised his standard at Brecon. Few revolutions ever opened with more favourable auspices. The hearts of the people were with the insurgents; the very followers of the tyrant hated and watched only an opportunity to desert him. But untoward events, which it was not in human foresight to anticipate, made wholly abortive this well-planned and popular attempt. The Duke of Richmond set sail from St. Malo on the 12th of October for England, with a fleet of forty sail, carrying 5,000 men; but tempestuous weather prevented him reaching the coast of Devonshire till the dispersion of his unfortunate allies. He therefore put back. In the meantime, Richard had joined his army at Leicester, and issued a proclamation which reads now-a-days like the ravings of a madman.
To draw off the followers of the confederates, while he offered rewards for the heads of their leaders, he granted free pardons to all who would abandon them. And the elements at this moment fought for Richard. Buckingham set out on his march to unite his forces to those of the other leaders, but there fell such heavy and continuous rains during the whole of his march from Brecon through the Forest of Deane to the Severn, that the bridges were carried away, and all the fords rendered impassable. Such rains and floods had not been known in the memory of man; and the inundation of the Severn was long after remembered as Buckingham's Flood.
The Welsh, struck with a superstitious dread from this circumstance, and pressed by famine, dispersed, and Buckingham turned back to Weebly, the seat of Lord Ferrers. The news of Buckingham's failure confounded all the other confederates, and every man made the best of his way towards a place of safety. Morton, Dorset, Courtenay, the Bishop of Exeter, and others, escaped to Flanders and Brittany. Weebly was closely watched, on one side by Sir Humphrey Stafford, and on the other by the clan of the Vaughans, who were promised the plunder of Brecon if they secured the duke. Buckingham, in disguise, escaped from Weebly, and hid himself near Shrewsbury, in the hut of a fellow of the name of Bannister, an old servant of the duke's family. This wretch, to secure the reward, betrayed his master to John Mitton, the sheriff of Shropshire, who conducted him to Richard at Salisbury, who ordered his head to be instantly struck off in the market-place. Amongst others who shared the same fate, Richard had the satisfaction of thus silencing a witty rhymster, William Collingham, who had dared to say that,
"The rat, the cat, and Lovel the dog,
Ruled all England under the hog."
That is, Catesby, Ratcliffe, and Lord Lovel; the hog being in allusion to Richard's crest, the boar.
Richard, thus rescued, as it were, by a favouring Providence, marched into Devonshire, where he put to death, amongst others, Sir Thomas St. Leger, a knight who had married the Duchess of Exeter, his own sister. He then traversed the southern counties in triumph, and, arriving in London, he ventured to do what hitherto he had not dared, that is, call a Parliament. This assembly, prostrate at the feet of the prosperous despot, did whatever he proposed. They pronounced him "the undoubted King of England, as well by right of consanguinity and inheritance, as by lawful election, consecration, and coronation;" and they entailed the crown on his issue; the Lords, spiritual and temporal, binding themselves to uphold the succession of his son, the Prince of Wales. They attainted his enemies by wholesale, and beyond all precedent. One duke, one marquis, three earls, three bishops, with a whole host of knights and gentlemen, were thus deprived of honour, title, and estate; and their lands, forfeited to the crown, were bestowed by Richard liberally on his northern adherents, who were thus planted in the south to act as spies on the southern nobles and gentry. The Countess of Richmond, though attainted, was permitted to hold her estates for life, or rather, they were thus conceded for that term to her husband, Lord Stanley, to bind him to the usurper.
To avenge himself on the queen-dowager for her acceptance of the proposal to bring over Henry of Richmond and unite him to her daughter, Richard now deprived her and her daughters of all title, property, and honour. He treated them, not as the legitimate wife and children of Edward IV., but as what he had before proclaimed them. He had ordered the late murdered king to be called officially "Edward the bastard, lately called Edward V." The queen-dowager was styled "Elizabeth, late wife of Sir John Gray," and her daughters were treated and addressed as simple gentlewomen.
But the design of placing Henry of Richmond on the throne, Richard knew well, though for the moment defeated, was not abandoned. At the last festival of Christmas, Henry had met the English exiles, to the number of 500, at Rhedon, in Brittany, and had there sworn to marry Elizabeth of York as soon as he should subdue the usurper; and thereupon the exiles had unanimously sworn to support him as their sovereign. Henry was, as we have observed, descended on the father's side merely from Owen Tudor, a yeoman of the royal guard, and Catherine, the widow of Henry V. On the mother's side he was descended from Edward III., through John of Gaunt, but from an illegitimate branch. The bar of illegitimacy, though legally removed, would always have operated against his claim to the crown; but, independent of this, there were still various princes and princesses of Spain and Portugal, descendants of John of Gaunt, whoso titles to the English crown were much superior to his. Yet, from his very infancy, there seems to have been a singular feeling that one day he would mount the throne of this kingdom. Henry VI. is said to have laid his hand on his head as a child, and declared that one day the crown would sit there. Edward IV. had evinced a perpetual fear of him, and had not only bargained for his secure detention at the court of Brittany, but on one occasion he had bribed the Duke of Brittany to give him up on the pretence of his intending to marry him to his eldest daughter—that daughter, in fact, he was destined eventually to marry. The duke, however, at the last moment, feeling a strong misgiving, had followed Henry to St. Malo, and there stopped him from embarking. Richard, on succeeding to the throne, had tried to purchase the surrender of Henry from the Duke of Brittany. In short, Henry assured the historian, Comines, that from the age of five years he had either been a captive or a fugitive. With this long traditionary presentiment attached to him, that he was to reign in England, his marriage to Elizabeth of York would at once obviate all scruples as to his complete title. He would come in on the strength of her title, as William of Orange afterwards did on that of his queen, Mary Stuart.
As the prospect of this event became more imminent—as Richard felt too deeply that the heart of the nation was not with him, but that all men were looking to this alliance as the hope of better times, he set himself to defeat it. Though he had so lately robbed, degraded, and insulted Queen Elizabeth and her family—though he had murdered her children and usurped their throne, he now suddenly turned round, and fawned on them. He began to smile most kindly on Elizabeth, and wished her to quit the sanctuary and come to court—a court dyed in the blood of her sons and brothers. He made her the most flattering promises; and, when they failed to draw her forth, he followed them by the most deadly threats. Elizabeth Wydville had never been found insensible to prospects of advantage for herself and family; but to put herself into the power of so lawless a butcher, and to unite her daughter with the son of the murderer of her children, was by no means reconcilable to her feelings. She stood out stoutly; but fear of worse consequences at length compelled her to succumb, and a private contract was concluded. Richard, in the presence of a number of the nobles and prelates, as well as of the lord mayor and aldermen, swore that the lives of Elizabeth and her daughters should be safe; that the mother should receive an annuity of 700 marks for life, and each of the daughters lands to the value of 200 marks on their marriage, which should be to none but gentlemen.
To what a condition of ignominy was this once proud queen reduced, who had not only boldly allied her family with the highest in the state, but had aspired to their sharing one-half of the thrones in Europe! Now, she was compelled to receive a more gentlewoman's pittance from the hand of the murderer; to humbly stipulate with him for the safety of the lives of her remaining children, and that her daughters should not be degraded by marriages with mean and revolting personages, a thing which she evidently feared.
When this bitter draught was swallowed, she had to endure another not the less sorrowful—that was, to appear at the court of the usurper, and behold him sitting in the seat of her murdered son, and receiving that homage which was his right. But this strange patron now smiled sunnily upon her. She and her daughters were received with every mark of distinction, and especially Elizabeth, tho eldest, whom he was intending to pluck from the hopes of Richmond, by wedding her to his own son. But these views were suddenly destroyed by the death of this Richard's only legitimate son. He died at Middleham, where Richard was often residing, but was then with his queen absent at Nottingham. His death, which took place about the 9th of April, had something so remarkable about it, that Rous, the family chronicler, calls it "an unhappy death." Both Richard and his queen were so overwhelmed by this unexpected blow, that the continuator of the Croyland Chronicle says that they almost went mad.
It was indeed a fatal stroke. The son on whom Richard had built the hopes of his family's succession, and for whom he killed his nephews, was now gone, and he was left without an heir, and without any prospect of one. It might be supposed that this event would raise the confidence of the Richmond party; and Richard, appearing to entertain the same idea, conceived the design of securing Richmond, and, no doubt, dealing with him as effectually as he had done with all others who stood in his way. For this purpose he opened secret communications with Francis, Duke of Brittany. That prince, who had been so long the generous protector of Richmond, was now in a feeble and failing state of health, and his minister, Peter Landois, administered his affairs pretty much at his own will. The interest of Landois was purchased by heavy sums, and he agreed to deliver Richmond into the hands of Richard. But the sagacious Morton, Bishop of Ely, gave him timely warning, and Richmond fled for his life. He reached France with only five attendants, and went at once to the French court at Angers, where he was cordially received by the sister of Charles VIII., then acting as regent. He accompanied the French court to Paris, where he again repeated his oath to marry Elizabeth of York, in case of deposing the tyrant, and he was immediately hailed by the students of Paris as King of England. He was promised assistance by the princess regent for his enterprise, and while these things were proceeding, Francis of Brittany, who had recovered his health, and was made acquainted with the villany of Landois, sent a messenger to assure him of his disgust at the minister's conduct, and to offer him aid in his design.
Thus Richard had driven his enemy into a more safe and formidable position, instead of capturing him, and he taxed his subtle genius to thwart this dangerous rival by other means. To prepare for any serious attack from France, he put an end to a miserable state of plunder and reprisal betwixt Scotland and his subjects. He concluded an armistice with James of Scotland; and having, since his son's death, nominated John, Earl of Lincoln, the son of his sister—the Duchess of Suffolk—heir to the crown, he now contracted the sister of the young earl, Anne de la Pole, to the oldest son of the King of Scotland.
But Richard had designs more profound than this. He determined, as he could not marry Elizabeth of York to his son, he would snatch her from Richmond by wedding her himself. True, he had already a wife; but monarchs have frequently shown how soon such an obstacle to a fresh alliance can be removed. Richard now held a magnificent court at Westminster. There was a constant succession of balls, feastings, and gaieties. In the midst of these no one was so conspicuous as Elizabeth of York; and, what very soon excited the attention and the speculations of the court, she always appeared in precisely the same dress as the queen.
The poor queen, Anne of Warwick, who began with hating Richard most cordially, and even disguised herself as a cookmaid to escape him, since the death of her son had never recovered from her melancholy and depression. Probably, knowing the real character of her ruthless Bluebeard, she foresaw what must take place, and was too weary of life to care to retain it. Though she penetrated the designs of the king, these never influenced her in her conduct to Elizabeth, to whom she was kind as became an aunt. And now she fell ill, and Richard is said to have assured Elizabeth that the queen would "die in February," and that she should succeed her.
Most historians have been very severe upon Elizabeth and her mother for their conduct in this matter. They assert that the queen-dowager fell readily into the atrocious plan of marrying her daughter to the murderer of her sons, and thought only of seeing the throne again within the grasp of her family. But Miss Strickland, in her "Lives of the Queens of England," has justly remarked that all these calumnies against Elizabeth Wydville and her daughter rest on the authority of Sir George Bucke, who was the decided apologist of Richard III. It is true that the queen-dowager wrote a letter to her son, the Marquis of Dorset, and to all her partisans, desiring them to withdraw from the Earl of Richmond, and this Henry VII. never forgave; but we must recollect that both Elizabeth Wydyille and all her daughters were in the power of the tyrant, and that she had no alternative but to obey his commands or abide his unsparing vengeance. No woman had displayed a more eager desire to secure honour and rank for her family; but it is an insult to human nature to believe her a willing instrument in so revolting a scheme.
Bucke assures us that he saw a letter of Elizabeth of York in the cabinet of the Earl of Arundel, in which Elizabeth not only declares Richard "her joy and maker in this world, and that she was his in heart and thought," but adds that "the latter part of February is now past, and I think the queen will never die." Were this evidence producible, it must stamp Elizabeth as one of the most heartless young women who ever lived, a fit consort for the bloody Richard. But such letter, Miss Strickland remarks, has never been found, and, therefore, we must give Elizabeth the benefit of that fact. On the contrary, Humphrey Brereton, an officer of Lord Stanley's, has recorded in a metrical narrative, which bears all the air of truth, that he was employed by her to convey to Henry of Richmond in France, her firm assurances of attachment to him, accompanied by a betrothal ring, and that it was through her means that Lord Stanley secretly avowed himself Richmond's stanch adherent, as he proved himself at Bosworth.
Anne of Warwick, the last queen of the Plantagenet line, did not die in February, but she did not survive through March. Yet that event did not in any degree contribute to Richard's marriage with Elizabeth. Whether we are to suppose with Sir Thomas More, and others, that Elizabeth herself manifested a steady repugnance to so abhorrent a union, or whether Richard deemed her in greater security there, he sent her under close guard to the castle of Sheriff-Hutton, in Yorkshire, and no sooner did he permit it to be whispered abroad that such a marriage was probable, than the rumour was received with uuiversal horror. No persons were more resolutely opposed to it than Ratcliffe and Catesby, Richard's great confidants in his crimes. They naturally dreaded the idea of Elizabeth, the sister of the murdered princes, and the representative of a family on which they heaped such injuries, becoming queen, and in a position to wreak her vengeance upon them. But they also saw, quite as clearly, the ruin which the king would certainly bring down upon himself by such a measure, in which they must also be inevitably involved.
The instinct of self-preservation in these men led them to remind the king that a marriage with his own niece would be regarded as incestuous, would be reprobated by the clergy, and abhorred by the people; that there was a general persuasion abroad that he had poisoned his wife, and this union would convert that persuasion into absolute conviction; that the men of the northern counties, on whom he chiefly depended, and who adhered to him, more than for any other cause, through their attachment to the late queen, as the daughter of the great Earl of Warwick, would be totally lost, and nothing but ruin could await him.
This strong and undisguised feeling, displayed thus both in public and private, drove Richard from this design. Just before Easter, he called a meeting of the city authorities, in the great hall of St. John's, Clerkenwell, and there declared that he had no such intention as that of marrying his niece, and that the report was "false and scandalous in a high degree." He also sent a letter to the citizens of York, dated the 11th of April, contradicting such slanderous tales, and commanding them to apprehend and punish all who should be found guilty of propagating them.
But the time was fast drawing near which must decide whether Richard or Henry of Richmond must wear the crown. Richard was informed by his agents on the Continent that Charles of France had permitted the Earl of Richmond to raise an army in that country. They amounted to 3,000 men, consisting of English refugees and Norman adventurers. Richard pretended to be delighted at the news, as confident that now he should speedily annihilate his enemy. He was, however, so impoverished by his lavish gifts and grants to secure the faith of his adherents, that he was unprovided with the means of maintaining an army; neither had he a fleet to intercept that of Henry. He dared not call a Parliament to ask for supplies, for he had expended those granted by the only one he had called. In that Parliament, to cast odium upon the memory of his brother Edward, he had called on his subjects to remember his tyranny in extorting benevolences; yet now he resorted to the very same thing; and the people, in ridicule of his pretended denunciation of benevolences, called them malevolences. By these arbitrary exactions he destroyed the last trace of adhesion to his Government. On all sides he felt coldness—on all sides he saw defection. The brave old Earl of Oxford, John de Vere, who had been a prisoner twelve years in the prison of Ham, in Picardy, was set at liberty by Sir James Blount, the governor of the castle, and they fled together to Henry. Sir John Fortescue, the Porter of Calais, followed the example, and numbers of young English gentlemen, students of the University of Paris, flocked to his standard. The same process was going on in England. Several sheriffs of counties abandoned their charge, and hastened over to France; and numerous parties put off from time to time from the coast. But no nobleman occasioned, however, so much anxiety as Lord Stanley. His connection with Richmond, having married his mother, made Richard always suspicious. He had lavished favours upon him to attach him, and had made him steward of the household to retain him under his eye. Stanley had always appeared sincere in his service, but it was a sincerity that Richard could not comprehend. This nobleman now demanded permission to visit his estates in Cheshire and Lancashire, to raise forces for the king; but Richard so little trusted him that he detained his son, Lord Strange, as a hostage for his fidelity. We have already seen that Stanley had long secretly pledged himself to Elizabeth of York in her cause, and only waited the proper occasion to go over.
Harassed by the anxieties of his approaching contest—torn by doubts of the fidelity of all about him, Richard is also described by Sir Thomas More as haunted by the terrors of his evil conscience. This has been represented to be probably the account of his enemies. Yet, what so natural? His crimes had been of the blackest. They were shocking to every principle and feeling of human nature. Whoever stood in his way, whether stranger or of his nearest kin, he had murdered without hesitation. To suppose that he felt nothing of this in the prospect of a near day when he might be sent to his account, is to imagine that God leaves such souls without a witness. We have, therefore, the fullest reliance on the words of Sir Thomas More:—"I have heard," he says, "by credible report, of such as were secret with his chamberers, that he never had quiet in his mind; never thought himself sure. When he went abroad, his eyes whirled about, his body privily fenced, his hand ever on his dagger, his countenance and manner like one always ready to strike again. He took ill rests at night, lay long waking and musing, sore wearied with care and watch; rather slumbered than slept; troubled with fearful dreams; suddenly sometimes started up, leaped out of bed, and run about the chamber; so was his restless heart continually tossed and troubled with the tedious impression and stormy remembrance of this abominable deed"—the murder of his nephews.
If Richard's domestic peace was broken by remorse and fear, his public displays of royalty were equally embittered. He was celebrating the feast of Epiphany, January 6th, crowned, and in his royal robes, when he received the first assurances that Henry would descend on the English coast in spring. But on what part of the coast? That, with all his spies, he could never learn; and as the landing might be attempted anywhere, he was obliged to bo on the alert everywhere. He employed abundance of spies; he posted men and horses on all the main roads, at the distance of twenty miles from each other, to bring him the fleetest news of any attempt on the coast, or defection in the interior.
In this state of terrible suspense the usurper lived till June, when there was every appearance, from the aspect of Henry's fleet lying at the mouth of the Seine, of a speedy invasion. He then put out a fierce proclamation, which, by the violence of the language, betrays the perturbation of his mind. In it he calls Henry, "one Henry Tudor, of bastard blood, both by the father's and mother's side," endeavours to arouse the patriotic feeling of the nation by representing that "the ancient enemy of England," France, had agreed to aid in this invasion, on condition that Richmond renounced all claims on that country for ever. He endeavours to alarm all the dignitaries of the Church, and the aristocracy, by declaring that "the said Henry Tudor had given away arch-bishoprics, bishoprics, and other dignities spiritual, and the duchies, earldoms, baronies, and other inheritances of knights, esquires, and gentlemen; and that he intended to subvert the laws, and do the most cruel murders, slaughters, robberies, and disherisons that were ever seen in any Christian realm." Wherefore, he called upon all and every of his good subjects to come forth and put themselves under the banner of him, their amiable and spotless monarch, their "diligent and courageous prince," for "the protection of themselves, their wives, children, goods, and hereditaments."
Having issued this flaming tirade against his enemies, whom he again styled "murderers, adulterers, and extortioners," he took the field, and stationed himself at Nottingham, as a central position, whence he could turn to whichever side the danger should come from.
On the 1st of August, 1485, Henry of Richmond set sail for Harfleur, with the united fleet of France and Brittany, and an army of 3,000 men, on that memorable expedition which was to terminate the fatal wars of the Roses, and introduce into England a new dynasty, and a new era of civilisation. On the seventh of that month he landed at Milford Haven. He himself and his uncle, Jaspar Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, went on shore at a place called Dale, while his army was disembarking. The Welsh accosted the old earl with this significant welcome on his setting foot on his native shore, "Welcome! for thou hast taken good care of thy nephew!"
Having refreshed his forces, Henry marched on through Haverfordwest and Pembroke to Cardigan. Everywhere he was received with manifest delight; but his forces did not increase till he reached Cardigan, where Richard Griffith and Richard Thomas, two Welsh gentlemen, joined his standard with their friends. His old friend Sir Walter Herbert, who had been expressly sent by Richard into that quarter with Rice ap Thomas to raise the country in his behalf, though he did not join him, suffered him to pass unmolested. Rice ap Thomas, on receiving a promise of the Government of Wales, went over at once to Henry. When the army reached Newport, Sir Gilbert Talbot, with a decision of character in keeping with the account of him by Brereton, came at the head of the tenantry of his nephew, the Earl of Shrewsbury, 2,000 in number, and there, too, he was followed by Sir John Savage. The invading force now amounted to more than 6,000 men.
"Jocky of Norfolk," killed at Bosworth. From an original painting on panel in the Royal Collection.
Henry crossed the Severn at Shrewsbury. Richard now advanced to Leicester, whence he issued despatches to all his subjects to join him on the instant, accompanied by the most deadly menaces against all defaulters. The Duke of Norfolk was there with the levies of the eastern counties; the Earl of Northumberland with those from the north; Lord Lovel commanded those from London; and Brakenbury those from Hampshire. Stanley alone held aloof, and sent word, in reply to Richard's summons, that he was ill in bed with the sweating sickness. Richard received this ominous message with the utmost rage; and, as he had vowed that, on the first symptom of disaffection on his part, he would cut off the head of Lord Strange, his son. Strange made an instant attempt at flight. He was brought back, and frankly confessed that he and his uncle, Sir William Stanley, chamberlain of North Wales, had agreed to join the invaders; but protested that his father knew nothing of their intention, but was loyal, and his forces already on the way to the royal camp. Richard compelled him to write to his father, bidding him come up at once, or that his son was a dead man.
On the 21st of August Richard rode forward from Leicester, and encamped about two miles from Bosworth, on a heath appropriately called "Redmore." Richard was mounted in the march on a magnificent white courser, and clad in the same rich suit of burnished steel which he wore at his victorious field of Tewkesbury. On his helmet blazed a regal crown, which he had displayed there since he took up his head-quarters at Nottingham. His countenance is represented as stern and frowning; his manner haughty, and as if putting on an air of bravado, rather than of calm confidence; for, though his troops amounted to 30,000, and his cavalry was the finest in Europe, he well knew that there was secret and wide-spread disaffection under all that martial show. Were his followers true to him, the little army of Richmond would be shivered in the first shock, and trodden under foot. But, perhaps, not a man except the Duke of Norfolk was really stanch in his devotion; and that night Norfolk's followers found pinned upon his tent this ominous couplet:—
"Jocky of Norfolk, be not too bold.
For Dickon thy master is bought and sold."
That night Henry, who had reached Tamworth, marched to Atherston. His army did not amount yet to half that of Richard: all were earnest in the cause, and the number of men of rank and character in it gave it a very imposing air in the eyes of the soldiers. On the contrary, Richard's soldiers, if we are to believe "Twelve Strange Prophecies"—still in the British Museum—had been discouraged, not only by the warning to John, or—as he was familiarly called—Jocky of Norfolk, but by the following singular incident. As the king rode out of Leicester by the south gate, at the head of his cavalry, a blind old man, well known as a superannuated wheelwright, sat begging at the foot of the bridge. In reply to the remarks of the soldiers as to the weather, the old man cried out just as the king was at hand—"If the moon change again to-day, which has changed once in the course of nature. King Richard will lose life and crown." This was supposed to allude to Lord Percy, whose crest was a crescent, and of whose faith Richard was sorely in doubt. When Richard passed, his foot struck against a low post placed to defend the corner of the bridge, and the beggar said, "His head will strike there aa he returns at night."
House of the Fifteenth Century, in which Richard is said to have slept on the night before the Battle of Bosworth.
The night before the battle, Henry of Richmond had a secret meeting with Lord Stanley near Atherston, who assured him of his adherence, but showed him how impossible it was that he could join him till Richard was engaged in arraying the battle, or his son's life would immediately be sacrificed. Stanley had 5,000 men, and engaged to appear for Richard till the moment for battle, when his defection would do Henry the most signal service.
On the evening of the 2lst of August, the two armies lay encamped near Merivale Abbey, on Redmore, opposite to each other. Richard is represented by the chroniclers as passing that night in the most agonising state of restlessness and uncertainty. The deeply-rooted disaffection of his troops destroyed his confidence, though his 30,000 were only opposed by Richmond's 6,000. He went through the camp examining secretly the state of his outposts, and finding at one of them a sentinel asleep, he stabbed him to the heart, saying, "I find him asleep, and I leave him so." His own slumbers are said to have been broken, and the chroniclers express his state by saying he "was most terribly pulled and haled by devils."
But other agents than those thus troubling the tyrant's mind were active throughout the camp. Many of his soldiers stole away to Richmond, and probably some of these left the warning to Jocky of Norfolk. These desertions produced dismay in Richard's ranks, and confidence in those of his rival.
When morning broke, Richmond's little army was discovered already drawn up. The van, consisting of archers, was led by the Earl of Oxford; the right wing by Sir Gilbert Talbot; the left by Sir John Savage. In the main body Henry posted himself, accompanied by the Earl of Pembroke. Richard confronted the foe with his numerous lines, taking his place also in the main body, opposite to Richmond, but giving the command of the van to the Duke of Norfolk. Lord Stanley took his station on one wing, and Sir William on the other, so that, thus disposed, they could flank either their own side or the opposed one. The battle was begun by the archers of both armies, and soon became furious. No sooner was this the case, than the Stanleys, seizing the critical moment, wheeling round, joined the enemy, and fell on Richard's flanks. This masterly manoeuvre struck dismay through the lines of Richard; the men who stood their ground appeared to fight without heart, and to be ready to fly. Richard, who saw this, and beheld the Duke of Northumberland sitting at the head of his division, and never striking a single stroke, became transported with fury. His only hope appeared to be to make a desperate assault on Henry's van, and, if possible, to reach and kill him on the spot. With this object he made three furious charges of cavalry; and, at the third, but not before he had seen his chief companion, the Duke of Norfolk, slain, he broke into the midst of Henry's main body, and, catching sight of him, dashed forward, crying frantically, "Treason! treason! treason!" He killed Sir William Brandon, Henry's standard-bearer, with his own hand; struck Sir John Cheyney from his horse; and, springing forward on Henry, aimed a desperate blow at him; but Sir William. Stanley, breaking in at that moment, surrounded Richard with his brave followers, who bore him to the ground by their numbers, and slew him, as he continued to fight with a bravery as heroic as his political career had been—in the words of Hume—"dishonourable for his multiplied and detestable enormities." The blood of Richard tinged a small brook which ran where he fell, and the people are said to this day never to drink of its water.
The body of the fallen tyrant was speedily stripped of his valuable armour and ornaments, and the soldier who laid hands upon the crown hid it in a hawthorn bush. But strict quest being made after it, it was soon discovered and carried to Lord Stanley, who placed it upon the head of Henry, and the victor was immediately saluted by the general acclamations of the army with "Long live King Henry!" and they sung Te Deum, in grand chorus, on the bloody heath of Redmore. From the poetical circumstance of the hawthorn bush, the Tudors assumed as their device a crown in a bush of fruited hawthorn. Lord Strange, the son of Lore Stanley, being deserted by his guards, as soon as the defeat was known, made his way to the field, and joined his father and the king at the close of the battle.
King Henry VII. advanced from the decisive field of Bosworth, at the head of his victorious troops, to Leicester, which he entered with the same royal state that Richard had quitted it. The statements of the numbers who fell on this field vary from 1,000 to 4,000 but of the leaders, the Duke of Norfolk, and Lore Ferrars of Chartley, Sir Richard Ratcliffe, Sir Robert Percy, and Sir Robert Brackenbury, fell with the king On the side of Henry fell no leaders of note.
Henry used his victory mildly; he shed no blood of the vanquished, except that of the notorious Catesby, and two persons of the name of Brecher, who were probably men of like character and crimes. Thus, in one day, the world was relieved of the presence of Richard, and of his two base commissioners of murder, Catesby and Ratcliffe
Richard's naked body, covered with mud and gore was, according to the local traditions of Leicester, flung carelessly across a horse, and thus carried into the town; his head, say these historic memories, striking against the very post which the blind beggar had said it would, and the rude populace following it with shouts of mockery. The corpse was begged by the nuns of the Grey Friars, to whom Richard had been a benefactor, and was decently interred in their church. His camp bedstead, on which he had slept the night before leaving the town, and which contained his military best, remained at the "Blue Boar," his lodging, and, a hundred years afterwards, being discovered to contain considerable treasure, led to a fearful murder. This bedstead was entirely of wood, much carved and gilded. The woman to whom it belonged, a century after the Battle of Bosworth-field, one day perceived a piece of coin drop out of a chink. This led her to make a close inspection, and she discovered that the bottom of the bedstead was hollow, and contained old coins to the amount of about £300. But the discovery excited the cupidity of her servant, who murdered her mistress to obtain it, and was hanged for the deed, so that the gold of Richard seemed to carry a curse with it. The coffin of Richard was torn from its resting-place in the Grey friars Church, at the Reformation, his bones were scattered, and the coffin long after served for a horse-trough.
The reign of Richard III. was only two years and two months, but perhaps in no such space of time has any one man contrived to perpetrate such an amount of crime. As his reign was a most violent and startling one, the execrations which the writers of the succeeding age poured upon Richard have been attributed by writers of our day to motives of party spite, and there has been a great attempt to correct the verdict of Richard's own times by the eulogia of this. But, as we have shown, they have not succeeded in clearing Richard of the awful deeds attributed to him, and if those early writers have somewhat exaggerated the personal deformities of the man, it does not appear possible, with historic impartiality, to render his portraiture attractive.
But however repulsive might be Richard's person, his soul was certainly far more hideous. He was, however, full of talent, eloquent and persuasive in his Language; but these qualities were accompanied by an ambition and a murderous temper, which defeated his otherwise fair chance of becoming a great man, and converted him into one of the most odious characters in history.