Richard Plantagenet

The subject of the famous Shakespearean play 'Richard III' and notorious as the murderer of his two young nephews, the prospective heirs to the Throne of England, in the Tower of London, Richard III was a complex, devious, and ruthless individual, a man entirely in tune with the barbaric times in which he lived. The evil reputation he has suffered over the years however seems excess, especially in comparison to the Tudor line that followed him. It is a strange fact – or successful Tudor propaganda and distorted historical perception - that historians appalled by the cool and calculating Richard should take a more lenient view of the murderous propensities of Henry VIII.

Richard Plantagenet, later to be King Richard III and subsequently to be immortalized in the Shakespearean play, was born on 2 October 1452 at Fotheringhay Castle to Richard, Duke of York, and his wife Cicely Neville. Thirteen children had been born to the couple, Richard being the twelfth – six died in infancy, including the child after Richard, which made him the youngest of seven. Small, dark, and sickly, he spent the first seven years of his life at Fotheringhay with his siblings George and Margaret, who were three and six years elder to him – his older brothers, Edward and Edmund, and his older sisters, Elizabeth and Anne, lived away from home as was the custom of the period, respectively in the family stronghold of Ludlow Castle and in the homes of other nobility to learn social mores. It was also customary during that period for the younger children of the aristocrats to be brought up almost entirely by appointed nursemaids and tutors and to be presented to their parents only at certain hours in the day. So Richard had very little contact with his parents growing up. It was a pleasant time growing up for all that until the political events of the day cast their shadow upon the household.

The King of England at that period was the weak-willed Henry VI, who was married to the strong and resourceful Margaret of Anjou. The Royal couple were childless and moreover not popular with their subjects, as Henry was an inept ruler, given to frequent bouts of madness, and was entirely under the thumb of his Queen and corrupt Ministers, and the Queen, with her marriage to Henry, had cost the English the provinces of Maine and Anjou; these provinces, won by Henry V, had been handed back to the French as part of the marriage settlement. In contrast, the Duke of York, who was next in line to the Throne, was a personable, dashing individual and very popular with the masses. He was exactly suited to rule England and it seemed for a time that eventually he would. But then Margaret of Anjou gave birth to a son, Edward, and the Yorkist claim was gone. After having aspired for the throne for so long, the Duke of York was not willing to step aside meekly and this resulted in a prolonged series of warfare between the Lancaster Royals and the Yorkists. These battles came to be romantically known as 'The Wars of the Roses' as the Lancasters supposedly identified themselves with a Red Rose and the Yorkists with a White Rose. In reality there was nothing remotely romantic about the whole bloody conflict and the rose symbols were not actually used; the factual Lancastrian symbol was a white swan and that of the Yorkists a falcon and a fetterlock.

At the onset, on the instigation of Margaret of Anjou, who disliked him intensely and considered him a threat, the Duke of York was summarily relieved of his important government posting in Calais and banished to Ireland. The York lands too were seized. The Duke of York himself, together with his eldest sons Edward and Edmund, managed to escape arrest only narrowly, but his wife and younger sons Richard and George were taken prisoners. Until this point, while laying a claim to the crown, the Duke of York had not seriously opposed the King. Now, however, angered by the treatment meted out to himself and his family, he turned completely against him and, raising a formidable army, returned to fight the Royalists. In the battle that followed, at St. Albans on 22 May 1455, the Yorkists defeated the Royalists. The King agreed to restore the Yorkist lands and released the Duke's family, and some sort of reconciliation was achieved between them. An uneasy peace prevailed for the next three years during which each side secretly plotted against each other. Not surprisingly war broke out again in 1459. After many ups and downs, the Royalists lost again and this time, on 10 July 1460, the King was taken prisoner. At a Parliamentary Meeting convened afterwards the claims of the Duke of York were accepted as legitimate and King Henry VI was left with no other choice than to acknowledge him as his heir. The crown was to remain with Henry VI during his lifetime and then pass on to the Duke of York. The angry Queen however refused to accept such an outrageous decision that would negate and disinherit the rightful claim of her own son, and so she immediately set about gathering supporters for her cause. Die-hard Royalists like the Earl of Northumberland, the Earl of Wiltshire, the Duke of Exeter, the Duke of Somerset, Lord Clifford, Lord Dacre and many others sallied forth with their armies and very soon the Queen had gathered a very large force of over 20,000 men. The Duke of York, with only about 5000 men, retreated from London to Yorkshire in face of this formidable enemy, and took refuge in Sandal Castle where he soon expected to be met with reinforcements. However, before these arrived, on 30 December 1460, the Castle was surrounded by the Lancaster Royalists with Margaret of Anjou at their head. The Duke of York, being a man more proud than wise, could not bear to stay put inside his castle and be thought of as hiding away from a mere woman, especially when the woman concerned was out there needling him to her heart's content with scornful taunts. So he emerged forth with his pitiful force to give battle and within half an hour it was all over. The Yorkists were defeated and the Duke himself was killed. His son Edmund, the seventeen year old Earl of Rutland, was murdered right afterwards by Lord Clifford, who also decapitated the dead Duke of York and foisted the head upon his lance for the pleasure of Margaret of Anjou. It was later, in keeping with the fashion of the period, displayed over the Mickelgate Bar in York.

Edward, the Earl of March, who was the Duke of York's eldest son and the one he had been expecting with reinforcements, now became the Yorkist claimant to the throne. He attacked the Royalists on their way to London in February 1461 and routed them at Mortimer's Cross. The prisoners that fell into his hands were duly beheaded to avenge the deaths of his father and brother. However the Queen's army recouped quickly and only days later, on 17 February 1461, not only defeated the Yorkists at St. Albans, but also rescued King Henry VI, who had so far been held a prisoner. However a triumphant entry into the Capital was denied as the Londoners, fearing being ravaged and plundered by the unruly Border characters in the Lancaster Royal Army, refused to open the town gates under any circumstances. After the Royalists retreated to York however, the gates were duly opened for Edward's party on 4 March 1461 and there was no opposition to his proclaiming himself as the new King Edward IV – in fact, the support for him was such that over 50,000 men flocked under his banner and went with him to fight the Royalists in York. The two armies, evenly matched this time, clashed with an overwhelming, vengeful ferocity in heavy, falling snow on Palm Sunday, 29 March 1461, at Towton Heath, near Tadcaster. It was a long-lasting battle which ended with the Lancastrians fleeing the battle-field to cross the river Cock to Tadcaster and possible safety, and the Yorkists following in hot pursuit, determined not to leave alive even one single enemy soldier. The Cock at this time of the year did not facilitate an easy fording for the Lancastrians and very few managed to get across. Those that did not drown were cut down by the pursuing Yorkists. It is said that the massacre was of such scale that it turned the river waters red with blood. With the loss of this important battle, in which most of their main supporters were killed, Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou's hopes for the House of Lancaster came to a bitter end. They however refused to realize this. And after escaping Scotland, they gathered a new army with French assistance. This army, initially successful, was finally defeated at Hexham on 15 May 1464. The remaining Royal supporters were executed and a year later Henry VI, hiding at Waddington Old Hall on the Yorkshire border, was betrayed, seized, and incarcerated in the Tower of London. His Queen and their young son managed to escape once more to Scotland and from there to France. Edward IV returned to York and was formally declared the King of England. After ascending the throne he made his brothers, Richard and George, the Dukes of Gloucester and Clarence respectively. As Richard, the new Duke of Gloucester, was still too young to assume his appointed office, he was sent to live and be educated in the household of the King's main supporter, the Earl of Warwick, where he met and fell in love with Warwick’s daughter, Anne.

His older brother, the new King, in the meantime became smitten with the beautiful Elizabeth Woodville, the widow of a Lancastrian killed in the second battle of St. Albans, and married her over the strong opposition of his supporters who did not trust her or her family in the least. The King however was in the mood to let bygones be bygones and showered his new bride's family members with important positions. These actions widened the rift between him and his supporters, including his own brothers and mother. In particular it alienated the powerful Earl of Warwick, who suffered from considerable loss of face, since at the time of the King's secret wedding, he had been in France negotiating a marriage alliance on his behalf with the French King's sister-in-law. Enraged and insulted by the King's behavior, Warwick and his two brothers, one of whom was the Archbishop of York and the other the new Earl of Northumberland, began conspiring against him. Taking advantage of an uprising of peasants who had tax-grievances against the government, they gathered enough support to march against the King, defeating his army at Edgecote on 26 July 1469 and taking him himself prisoner at Olney. He was imprisoned at the Warwick stronghold in Yorkshire, Middleham Castle, from where later he managed to escape to France.

There was no public uproar. Edward IV hadn't endeared himself to his new subjects by choosing hedonistic pleasures over important matters of the state, and his flight from England only weakened his cause. The shrewd Warwick declared his departure an abdication and produced the former King Henry VI from a dreadful, nine year imprisonment to once more warm the throne. Warwick promised to support the King and Margaret of Anjou, and to seal the partnership a marriage between their son Prince Edward and his daughter Anne was proposed. Nothing came of that however as her suitor Richard, the Earl of Gloucester and the King's brother, had already raised an army against Warwick and Edward too had returned with mercenaries from the Continent. They took over York, with Edward first pretending, with a religious oath no less, that he accepted Henry VI as King and only claimed his ancestral property, and then, when he could, seizing full control, declaring himself King once more. Then, on Easter Sunday in 1471, they moved into battle against Warwick and company. Warwick died in the fierce fighting and Henry VI was returned to the Tower. Margaret of Anjou, devastated by this turn of fortune as she was, made one more attempt to salvage things, but her efforts came to naught and ended with the murder of her only son, Prince Edward. Her husband later died under suspicious conditions in the Tower of London – the official announcement was 'died from grief', but more likely he was put to death to avoid future troubles. Margaret herself was imprisoned for five years and then released on being ransomed by Louis of France for 50,000 crowns. She returned to France and remained there until her death many years later.

Back in England, King Edward IV conferred his brother Richard with many honors, put him in charge of the army, and gave him permission to marry his beloved Anne. There were still hitches in the path of true love however. Anne was the Ward of Richard's brother George, Duke of Clarence, who had always been jealous of Richard and did not want him to have, by this marriage, Warwick's fine estates. So he forcibly sent Anne into hiding and it took Richard quite a while to find her again. Despite this, before he and Anne were married in 1472, Richard rather generously agreed to let his brother George take the larger portion of Warwick’s estates. George however did not live long to enjoy his new possessions. His penchant for scheming against his own brothers to further his own cause got out of hand and King Edward IV, tiring of such continual disloyalty, finally had him drowned in a cask of malmsey wine.

Richard and Anne had a son, Edward, and for the next twelve years they lived in comparative peace and contentment. That changed upon the death of King Edward IV at the age of forty in 1483, leaving his two sons, the twelve year old Edward V and the eleven year old Richard, and his five daughters in the care of their Uncle Richard. However Richard, despite the affection and loyalty he had had for his brother, wasn't without ambition and considered himself far better suited to rule England than an inexperienced twelve years old, which was true enough, and so the whole succession rigmarole resumed with a new flavor.

Richard seized the throne and declared that the two young heirs were in fact illegitimate and therefore had no right to the kingship. He had the two Princes incarcerated in the Tower of London, ostensibly for their own protection, and they later mysteriously disappeared from here and were never again heard of. According to tradition, they were murdered by their Uncle, and certainly, much later in 1674 during the rule of Charles II, the skeletons of two youngsters, matching the ages of the Princes, were discovered under a Tower stairwell. However certain scholars dispute that these were the skeletons of the Princes – it's impossible to date the skeletons accurately and these were not the only skeletons of children discovered in the Tower. According to some sources – and this idea was popular even in Richard's period – the Princes did not die in the Tower, but were spirited away to France to escape sure deaths, not in the hands of Richard but Henry Tudor. Perhaps they died enroute or later in France. Or perhaps a very long time later. Certainly people claiming to be them kept turning up to plague the Tudors later on. Aside from this, there is also the fact of the good esteem in which Richard continued to be held by Elizabeth Woodville and her eldest daughter Elizabeth of York, mother and sister of the two Princes; surely, if indeed they had considered him the murderer, relations would taken a less rosy hue. Anyway the actual facts about the case never came to light, and it remains a historical mystery.

If indeed Richard killed his two nephews, it didn't do him much good. He was a competent enough ruler really, doing a splendid administration job for Edward IV first, then keeping the country from civil war after his brother's death, and, as King, improving the state of law and education. However, after his nephews disappeared and were presumed dead, he became the prime suspect and that cost him the popular support he had enjoyed so far and his short reign was fraught with conspiracies and wars. Moreover his wife and only son both died after lingering illnesses, leaving him without a heir and with a new accusation that he had poisoned them himself in order to marry his niece Elizabeth of York with whom he had supposedly been in love for sometime. Then in 1485, a new claimant to the throne, Henry Tudor, arrived from France and challenged Richard. In the ensuing battle at Bosworth Field in 1485 Richard was killed and the Tudors became the new power in England.