Richard The Chird (42 page)

About the nineteenth of August, Prince Edward left Middle-ham to join his parents at Pontefract. At York he probably tarried for a day, during which he spent 135. 4 d. for a primer and a total of js. lod. for black satin cloth to cover it and for a psalter. The boy's health was so poor that, instead of riding a horse, he had to be conveyed in a chariot. He was probably reunited with his parents on August 24, for on that date he was formally created Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester.

Either on Saturday, August 30, or the day before, Richard, Anne, and Prince Edward made their state entry into York, accompanied by their splendid retinue, which included the Bishops of Worcester, Coventry, Uchfield, Durham, St. Asaph's, and St. David's; the Duke of Albany, the Earls of Northumberland, Warwick (Clarence's young son), Surrey, Huntingdon,

and Lincoln; the Lords Stanley, Dudley, Morley, and Scrope; as well as Viscount Lovell (the Lord Chamberlain), the Chief Justice of England, and many officers of the Household. The royal cavalcade had been met at Tadcaster by the two sheriffs of the city, who now rode at the head of the long procession, each bearing his rod of authority. The King and Queen were greeted at Brekles Mills, outside the walls, by the Mayor and Aldermen in scarlet and the council, the bridgemasters, and other chief citizens in gowns of red; as the royal couple came past St. James' church and passed into the city by the Micklegate, they were cheered by a mass of citizens clad in blue velvet and musterdevillers. Then unfolded the array of pageants: one staged just within the gate, another at the bridge over the river Ouse, and a third at Stayngate. After a speech of welcome the Mayor presented King Richard with a hundred marks in a cup of gold and the Queen with a hundred gold pounds in a piece of rich plate. 18

So delighted was Richard by this reception that he and his councilors decided next day to appoint a ceremony at York for the investiture of young Edward as Prince of Wales. Orders were hastily dispatched to the Keeper of the Wardrobe in London to deliver a great variety of raiment: doublets, gowns, cloth of gold, gilt spurs, four religious banners, three coats of arms beaten with pure gold for the King himself, coats of arms for heralds, a thousand pennons, and thirteen thousand costume badges of the white boar. To Sir James Tyrell, now Master of the Kong's Henchmen, and seven of the henchmen themselves were given many yards of Holland cloth and other goods for the ceremony. The ensuing week was occupied by a round of state occasions. The Mayor upheld his dignity by entertaining the chief officers and lords of Richard's court at two dinners. On Sunday, September 7, the "Creed play," a favorite drama in the possession of the Corpus Christi Guild, was acted before the King and Queen in the municipal hall.

The ceremony of investiture took place next day, and so impressive was the report of its splendors that a number of people in other parts of the kingdom supposed that Richard and Anne

had celebrated a second coronation. In the solemn grandeur of York Minster the Prince of Wales was given a golden wand, and a golden wreath was fitted upon his brows. The King took the occasion to knight the Spanish ambassador and place a gold collar about his neck. Then, in state procession, Richard and Anne and their son walked from the Minster with their crowns upon their heads, to the "great honour, joy, and congratulation of the inhabitants, as in show of rejoicing they extolled King Richard above the skies."

He displayed his gratitude ten days later when he called before him in the chapter house of the cathedral the Mayor, Aldermen, and chief commoners of the city. Thanking them for their past services and their present show of good will, he granted them a relief of more than half the taxes which they yearly paid the Crown,

In the course of this happy sojourn, Richard established a royal household at the castle of Sheriff Hutton, the purpose of which was to provide a residence for two of the chief scions of the House of York. Clarence's son, the young Earl of Warwick, who had been taken into the retinue of Queen Anne, went now to Sheriff Hutton to live under the care of his cousin John, Earl of Lincoln, son of Richard's sister, the Duchess of Suffolk. It was from this household that Richard's chief innovation in government, the Council of the North, would develop. 19 *

Shortly after the middle of September the King and Queen parted, Anne apparently accompanying her son to Middleham Castle, while Richard began to retrace his steps southward, conscious that he had been long away from London and that there were signs of restlessness on the political horizon. As a result of warnings he had received from his council at Westminster he had appointed in kte August a commission of oyer and terminer for the capital and one for the belt of counties surrounding it. Probably while he was still at York, he had heard unpleasant tidings from the lips of Georges de Mainbier, envoy of Francis of Brittany, 20

Though Mainbier was full of the Duke's loving protestations of friendship, the proposals which he set forth were arrant black-

mail. Francis had nothing to say about so inconsequential a figure as Sir Edward Woodville, but he had a great deal to say about Henry Tudor. Since the death of Edward IV, King Louis had made many offers for the custody of the "Lord of Richmond/' and Francis having virtuously refused these for fear that Louis was meditating mischief, the French King was now uttering violent threats to make war on Brittany. Such a war Duke Francis could not survive without help. Therefore if Richard did not wish Henry Tudor to be delivered to Louis XI, he must be prepared on a month's notice to send Francis four thousand archers at his own expense and, if required, another two or three thousand at the Duke's expense. Furthermore, since the Estates of Brittany were to meet towards the end of September, an immediate answer to these proposals was requested. Clearly, Duke Francis meant to make all the capital he could out of the fact that Richard was but newly seated in a throne by no means yet secure.

Richard, however, probably had no inclination, and he was certainly in no position, to make even a gesture of assenting to Francis' demands. Though his reply has not survived, subsequent events indicate that Francis did not get what he wanted. Richard realized that he would gain nothing but trouble by giving the Duke of Brittany the idea that the King of England was afraid of Henry Tudor.

After pausing for several days at Pontefract, Richard moved southward toward Lincolnshire at the beginning of October, Spending the night of the tenth at Gainsborough, he came the next day to the city of Lincoln Here he was greeted by the tidings that a rebellion had broken out in the southern counties and that his greatest ally and most powerful minister, Henry, Duke of Buckingham, had risen in revolt against him/ 1

Conspiracy

The deep-revolving, witty Buckingham

IT HAD begun as a movement in the southern and southwestern counties to restore Edward V to the throne, Soon two other conspiracies, animated by quite different motives, were in the making. By the end of September the three centers of insurrection had coalesced into a single, but by no means single-minded, effort to end the rule of Richard III.

Scarcely had the King departed from Windsor in July when "the people of the southern and western parts of the kingdom began to murmur greatly and to form meetings and confederacies in order to deliver the two princes from the Tower. Soon it became known that many things were going on in secret, and some in the face of all the world, to promote this object, especially by those in sanctuary." Queen Elizabeth was urged to smuggle her daughters in disguise from Westminster and send them beyond sea so that if anything happened to the princes, one of these girls might find a husband who would help her to restore King Edward's blood to the throne. But the plan was anticipated or speedily discovered, and the council set John Nesfeld to guard the sanctuary at Westminster. Still, conspiracy continued to burgeon. 1

Even this first movement was motivated by a diversity of interests. A few of its leaders were undoubtedly men who were loyal on principle to the line of Edward IV. Others had been dispossessed by the redistribution of offices which the new regime had put into effect. Sir John Cheyney of Wiltshire, for one, who was Master of the Horse to King Edward, found himself replaced by Sir James Tyrell. There were a number of men among the gentry, particularly in Kent and Devonshire, who for a generation had ever shown themselves ready to seek advantage

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from troubled times. Most of these were old Lancastrians, like the Courtenays—Peter, Bishop of Exeter, and his kinsman Edward —who from their Devon strongholds were eagerly sniffing the air of unrest and gathering their followers, It was the Woodvilles, however, who dominated the movement, provided most of its strength, and directed its energies.

When the first intimations of a rising reached the Marquess of Dorset, apparently hiding somewhere in Yorkshire, he made his way south to Wiltshire and went to work with his uncle Lionel, Bishop of Salisbury, who had slipped away from the sanctuary at Westminster sometime before and was fomenting trouble in his diocese. In Kent and Surrey, Richard Guildford, whose father had been a friend of Earl Rivers, assumed the leadership of the conspiracy. His principal lieutenants were his own kin, relatives of the Woodvilles, and men, like Sir John Fogge, connected with the Woodvilles by marriage. A few adherents seem to have been friends of John Morton, Bishop of Ely. In Berkshire, Sir Richard Woodville was seconded by supporters of his family like Sir William Stonor, who had found favor with the Marquess and had been hostile to Richard when he was Duke of Gloucester. Among the chief plotters at Exeter was Sir Thomas Saint Leger, who was hoping to marry his daughter to the Marquess' son. Aimed at restoring Edward V to the throne, this Woodville conspiracy attracted other elements of discontent by its promise to overthrow King Richard IIL 2

Suddenly, some time in September, the leaders of the movement disclosed to the rank and file the amazing and wonderful news that the Duke of Buckingham himself, repenting of his past conduct, would rise to their support at the head of all his mighty forces. Within a few days, however, the leaders as well as the rank and file were thrown into confusion and dismay by tidings from the Duke of Buckingham—and who could be better informed?—that the sons of King Edward had been put to death, none knew how, 3

It is with the entry of Buckingham that the scene grows murky; the shape of the rebellion is lost in a fog of contrarieties, gross errors of fact, and palpable distortions. This umbrageous con-

fusion radiates from two interlinked centers of darkness: the motives of the Duke of Buckingham and the perplexed enigma of the little Princes' fate. The two principal contemporary sources of information are reliable enough but reflect only the surface of events: the bill of attainder passed by King Richard's Parliament does little more than list the names of the chief rebels and the areas in which they operated; the Croyland chronicler supplies only a scant, terse outline of what happened. Writing a generation later, Thomas More concentrates upon the fascinating alteration in Buckingham's allegiance, but abruptly breaks off his narrative at the crisis of the Duke's transformation; and Poly-dore Vergil either deals disingenuously with accurate information or has been victimized by tales which have taken on the color of Tudor opinions. Still later, Grafton and Hall work the story up into elaborate accounts, vividly punctuated by dialogue and intimate glimpses into Buckingham's mind, which, like jungle snakes, reveal themselves for what they are by the brilliance of their hues.

In Hall's narrative, when Buckingham parts from Richard at Gloucester, he is outraged by the King's irascible and arrogant refusal to grant him the Bohun lands and shocked at the discovery that the sons of Edward have been put to death by royal command. He first decides to claim the throne for himself, and for two days he meditates upon this enticing idea at Tewkesbury. But as he proceeds through Worcester toward Bridgnorth, he happens to meet on the road the Countess of Richmond, wife of Lord Stanley and mother of Henry Tudor. This chance encounter momentarily dashes his hopes by causing him to recollect that Henry Tudor, being descended from John, Duke of Somerset, has a better claim to the throne than he, the grandson of Duke John's younger brother Edmund. His better nature soon asserts itself, however, and he determines to promote the marriage of Henry with one of Edward's daughters and stir up a rebellion to place the crown upon Henry's head. 4

An interesting story it is, but only a story ... a Tudor tale. In the first place, the Countess of Richmond undoubtedly remained in London after the coronation, for she was soon busy

there spinning an intrigue of her own. In the second place, if Buckingham had taken the road through Tewkesbury and Worcester, he would not have parted from King Richard at Gloucester, because that was the very route that Richard himself followed; but nobody on his way to Brecon, which lies west of Gloucester, would ride northwest to Bridgnorth. Third, Richard, as we have seen, had not refused Buckingham the Bohun inheritance; and fourth, More and the later Tudor writers all date the murder of the princes as occurring days after Buckingham had reached Brecon.

Polydore Vergil tells a simpler but scarcely more credible story, which is disfigured at the very outset by the fact that he places Buckingham's rebellion a whole year late, in 1484. He reports the tale that Richard had harshly upbraided the Duke for demanding the Bohun inheritance and that, in consequence, Buckingham decided, when he had brooded at Brecon for a little, to seat Henry Tudor upon the throne if Henry would agree to marry one of Edward's daughters. This plan he disclosed to his prisoner, the Bishop of Ely, who enthusiastically set about putting it into operation by sending word to the Countess of Richmond in London. According to Vergil, this lady had already hit upon the idea, had persuaded Queen Elizabeth to give her consent, and had won to the cause such men as Richard Guildford and John Cheyney. Not only is this story set awry by the confusion in time and the feebleness of Buckingham's motivation T but the Countess of Richmond is made to assume so prominent a role that the Woodville conspiracy, the generating force of the rebellion, disappears altogether. 5