on the 29th of April 1483, supported by the duke of Buckingham, he intercepted his nephew at Stony Stratford and arrested Lord Rivers and Richard Grey, the little king's half-brother. It was in Richard's charge that Edward was brought to London on the 4th of May. Richard was recognized as protector, the Woodville faction was overthrown, and the queen with her younger children took sanctuary at Westminster. For the time the government was carried on in Edward's name, and the 22nd of June was appointed for his coronation. Richard was nevertheless gathering forces and concerting with his friends. In the council there was a party, of whom Hastings and Bishop Morton were the chief, which was loyal to the boy-king. On the 13th of June came the famous scene when Richard appeared suddenly in the council baring his withered arm and accusing Jane Shore and the queen of sorcery; Hastings, Morton and Stanley were arrested and the first-named at once beheaded. A few days later, probably on the 25th of June, Rivers and Grey were executed at Pontefract. On the 22nd of June Dr Shaw was put up to preach at Paul's Cross against the legitimacy of the children of Edward IV. On the 25th a sort of parliament was convened at which Edward's marriage was declared invalid on the ground of his precontract with Eleanor Talbot, and Richard rightful king. Richard, who was not present, accepted the crown with feigned reluctance, and from the following day began his formal reign.
On the 6th of July Richard was crowned at Westminster, and immediately afterwards made a royal progress through the Midlands, on which he was well received. But in spite of its apparent success the usurpation was not popular. Richard's position could not be secure whilst his nephews lived. There seems to be no reasonable doubt that early in August Edward V. and his brother Richard (whom Elizabeth Woodville had been forced to surrender) were murdered by their uncle's orders in the Tower. Attempts have been made to clear Richard’s memory. But the report of the princes' death was believed in England at the time, "for which cause king Richard lost the hearts of the people" (Chronicles of London, 191), and it was referred to as a definite fact before the French states-general in January 1484. The general, if vague, dissatisfaction found its expression in Buckingham's rebellion. Richard, however, was fortunate, and the movement collapsed. He met his only parliament in January 1484 with some show of triumph, and deserves credit for the wise intent of its legislation. He could not, however, stay the undercurrent of disaffection, and his ministers, Lovell and Catesby, were unpopular. His position was weakened by the death of his only legitimate son in April 1484. His queen died also a year later (March 16, 1485), and public opinion was scandalized by the rumour that Richard intended to marry his own niece, Elizabeth of York. Thus the feeling in favour of his rival Henry Tudor strengthened. Henry landed at Milford Haven on the 7th of August 1485, and it was with dark forebodings that Richard met him at Bosworth on the 22nd. The defection of the Stanleys decided the day. Richard was killed fighting, courageous at all events. After the battle his body was carried to Leicester, trussed across a horse's back, and buried without honour in the church of the Greyfriars.
Richard was not the villain that his enemies depicted. He had good qualities, both as a man and a ruler, and showed a sound judgment of political needs. Still it is impossible to acquit him of the crime the popular belief in which was the chief cause of his ruin. He was not a monster; but a typical man in an age of strange contradictions of character, of culture combined with cruelty, and of an emotional temper that was capable of high ends, though unscrupulous of means. Tradition represents Richard as deformed. It seems clear that he had some physical defect, though not so great as has been alleged. John Stow told Buck that old men who remembered Richard described him as in bodily form comely enough. Extant portraits show an intellectual face characteristic of the early Renaissance, but do not indicate any deformity.
Bibliography.—The chief original authorities are Sir Thomas More's History of Richard III., based on information supplied by Archbishop Morton, and therefore to be accepted with caution; the more trustworthy Continuation of the Croyland Chronicle in Fulman's Scriptores, the History of Polydore Vergil, written in a Tudor spirit; the Chronicle of London (ed. C. L. Kingsford, 1905), and its biased expansion in Fabyan's Chronicle. See also Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Reigns of Richard III. and Henry VII., ed. J. Gairdner, in Rolls Series. Of later accounts those in Stow's Annales (preserving some oral tradition) and George Buck's Richard III. ap. Kennet History of England deserve mention. Horace Walpole attempted a vindication in his Historic Doubts (1768). The best modern account is James Gairdner's Life of Richard III. (2nd ed., 1898). The latest and fullest defence is given in Sir Clements Markham's Richard III., His Life and Character (1906); G. B. Churchill's Richard the Third up to Shakespeare (Palaestra x., 1900) is a valuable digest of material. (C. L. K.)
RICHARD, FRANÇOIS MARIE BENJAMIN (1819—1908), archbishop of Paris, French prelate, was born at Nantes on the 1st of March 1819. Educated at the seminary of St Sulpice he became successively vicar-general of Nantes, bishop of Belley, and in 1875 coadjutor of Paris. In 1886 the death of Archbishop Guibert was followed by Mgr. Richard's appointment to the see of Paris, and in 1889 he received a cardinal's hat. In January 1900 the trial of the Assumptionist Fathers resulted in the dissolution of their society as an illegal association. Next day an official visit of the archbishop to the Fathers was noted by government as an act of a political character, and Mgr. Richard was officially censured. His attitude was in general exceedingly moderate, he had no share in the extremist policy of the Ultramontanes, and throughout the struggle over the law of Associations and the law of Separations he maintained his reasonable temper. He presided in September 1906 over an assembly of bishops and archbishops at his palace in the rue de Grenelle, a few days after the papal encyclical forbidding French Catholics to form associations for public worship, but it was then too late for conciliation. In December he gave up the archiepiscopal palace to the government authorities. He was then an old man of nearly ninety, and his "eviction" evoked great sympathy. Cardinal Richard died on the 29th of January 1908.
RICHARD, HENRY (1812–1888), Welsh politician, was the son of the Rev. Ebenezer Richard (1781–1837), a Calvinistic Methodist minister, and was born on the 3rd of April 1812. Educated at Llangeitho grammar school, he also studied at a college at Highbury, and in 1835 he became minister of a Congregational church in the Old Kent Road, London, a position which he retained for fifteen years. Richard is chiefly known as an advocate of peace and international arbitration. In 1848 he became secretary of the Peace Society, and in this capacity he helped to organize a series of congresses in the capitals of Europe, and was partly instrumental in securing the insertion of a declaration in favour of arbitration in the treaty of Paris in 1856. He resigned this post in 1885. In 1868 Richard was elected member of parliament for the Merthyr boroughs, and he remained in the House of Commons until his death at Treborth, near Bangor, on the 20th of August 1888. In parliament he was a leading member of the party which advocated the removal of Nonconformist grievances and the disestablishment of the church in Wales; in 1877 he was chairman of the Congregational Union of England and Wales. Among Richard's writings may be mentioned: Defensive War (1846, and again 1899); Memoirs of Joseph Sturge (1864); Letters on the Social and Political Condition of the Principality of Wales (1866, and again 1884); and The Recent Progress of International Arbitration (1884). He also prepared some of the material for the life of his friend and associate, Richard Cobden, which was written by Mr John, now Lord, Morley; and he did some journalistic work in the Morning Star and the Evening Star.
See C. S. Miall, Henry Richard, M.P. (1889); L. Appleton, Memoirs of Henry Richard (1889); and articles in Cymru Fydd for 1888.
RICHARD OF CIRENCESTER (c. 1335–c. 1401), historical writer, was a member of the Benedictine abbey at Westminster, and his name ("Circestre") first appears on the chamberlain's list of the monks of that foundation drawn up in the year 1355. In the year 1391 he obtained a licence from the abbot to go to Rome, and in this the abbot gives his testimony to Richard's
