Richard III Read online

  By coincidence Margaret shared the same physician as Elizabeth Woodville, a Welshman from Caerleon called Dr Lewis. She was therefore able to contact the former Queen, who was still immured at Westminster, and propose that the Woodvilles should support Henry’s claims; in return he would marry Elizabeth of York. ‘Dame Elizabeth Grey’ accepted the terms with alacrity. (She too must have known that by now her royal sons were dead.) Margaret then told Reginald Bray to enlist supporters among the gentry. When he brought news, probably totally unexpected, from Dr Morton that – of all people – her nephew Buckingham had decided to come out for Henry, she saw a real chance of a successful rising. Immediately she dispatched a messenger to her son in Brittany to explain the situation and to tell him to join Buckingham in Wales. It was probably Henry Tudor’s first intimation that one day he might be King of England. The messenger also delivered ‘a good, great sum of money’.

  Elizabeth of York was almost certainly told of the plan and the projected marriage. ‘The Most Pleasant Song of the Lady Bessy’ is a late version of the contemporary ballad in her honour, ‘Ladye Bessiye’, composed in her lifetime, though written down only afterwards. (The author seems to have been a household man of Lord Stanley, Humphrey Brereton.) It is often pure fantasy and is full of anachronisms. However, it may be correct in saying that Elizabeth sent a ring and a letter to Henry – by the hand of the poet himself – together with a large consignment of gold, presumably from the treasure her mother had brought into Westminster.

  The conspiracy gathered momentum. Everywhere there were people who welcomed the hitherto almost undreamt of idea of the Earl of Richmond as Pretender. (Which surely indicates that, like Buckingham, Morton, Margaret and Elizabeth Woodville and her daughters, they were already fairly certain that Edward V and his brother had by now been murdered.) From Kent Sir Richard Guildford sent a messenger, Thomas Romney, to Henry, pledging his support. By late September the Duke of Buckingham himself was in direct communication with the Earl.

  It shows a quite extraordinary lack of political acumen on Richard’s part that when the news of a revolt arrived he had not yet recognized that Henry Tudor was the most dangerous of his enemies. Apart from a sense of outrage at the Duke’s betrayal, the King’s chief reaction was probably alarm at the strategic implications. Not only was Buckingham the Constable of England – Commander-in-Chief – but he had been made supreme in Wales, on the Welsh Border and in the West Country, and given control of all fortresses and arsenals throughout these areas largely because they were hotbeds of die-hard Lancastrianism. If in 1471 Margaret of Anjou’s Westcountrymen had succeeded in outmarching Edward IV and linked up with their Welsh comrades, Henry VI might still have been on the throne in 1483. The Severn had foiled them. Now the Duke of Buckingham controlled both banks of that vital river. Moreover, he also possessed a base in the Home Counties, in Kent; from his father he had inherited Penshurst Place – a tower there is still called ‘Buckingham’s Tower’ – near Tonbridge.5 The local Kentish landowners would have known his household men and had very likely met the Duke himself.

  Probably Richard’s government at first found some difficulty in identifying just who was involved with Buckingham. There had been rumours of angry discontent since the usurpation. It seems that as soon as the new King’s progress reached the Midlands, ‘meetings and confederacies’ began among the gentry all over the South and West Country, ‘who had begun to murmur greatly’, to discuss how to rescue Edward V and York; none of them realized that they were dead. The Croyland Chronicle – if it really was Richard’s Lord Chancellor who supplied the basic text – gives us an invaluable summary of the situation as it must have appeared to the King and his Council in the last half of October.

  The people round about London, and throughout Kent, Essex, Sussex, Hampshire, Dorset, Devon, Somerset, Wiltshire and Berkshire, as well as some other Southern counties, decided to set matters right [i.e. restore Edward V]; upon which it was publicly announced that Henry, Duke of Buckingham, who was then at Brecon in Wales, regretted his former conduct and would be a leader of the movement, but then a rumour spread that King Edward [IV]’s sons had died a violent death, though how it was not known.

  (Dr Hanham thinks that the writer means that Richard actually encouraged the rumour, in order to scotch the rebellion.) Accordingly the men who had started the revolt, realizing that without a Pretender they were doomed, suddenly thought of Henry, Earl of Richmond. The chronicler continues, ‘The Duke of Buckingham, acting on the advice of the Lord Bishop of Ely, who was his prisoner at Brecon, sent a message to him which asked him to come to England to marry Elizabeth, the late King’s daughter, and take possession of the throne.’ As the days went by, Richard was to be made aware that a very large number of his subjects indeed regarded him as ‘the wretched, bloody and usurping boar’.

  The regions ready to rise against the King are interesting. As has been seen, the West Country was still fiercely anti-Yorkist, while much of Wales was involved – though not very willingly – under Buckingham. Both were traditionally Lancastrian areas, as was Kent. But the districts round London and the central southern counties had hitherto been Yorkist.

  To a certain degree the rising in the southern counties was the long expected Woodville counter-coup. Lord Dorset and his uncle, Bishop Lionel, suddenly appeared in the latter’s see of Salisbury, where they busily recruited supporters. In Berkshire Sir Richard Woodville found an ally in Sir William Stonor, an old friend of Dorset. In Devon there was Sir Thomas St Leger, who wanted Dorset’s son as a husband for his daughter. Sir George Browne, of Betchworth Castle near Reigate in Surrey, was the stepson of old Sir Thomas Vaughan, who had been beheaded at Pontefract. In Kent Sir John Fogge was married to a Haute, a cousin of the man who had perished with Vaughan.

  But it is quite wrong to see the Southerners as being restricted to Woodvilles and their kindred. As has been seen, Buckingham possessed a base in Kent which was only a few hours’ ride from the houses of Browne and Fogge. Moreover, there were plenty of Lancastrians, especially in the West. In Devonshire there was Sir Edward Courtenay of Boconnoc (rightful Earl of Devon) with his kinsman Peter Courtenay, Bishop of Exeter, and in Cornwall the Arundells. And some of the plotters even belonged to Richard’s household, while he had made Sir Thomas Lewkenor a Knight of the Bath at his Coronation. Primarily, however, the rebels of 1483 were men who remained loyal to the memory of Edward IV. A considerable number had been members of the late King’s household. They rose out of furious resentment at Richard’s treachery towards the children, his stealing of their inheritance.

  10. Sir John Fogge, once Treasurer of the Household to Edward IV and a kinsman of the Woodvilles. Richard pardoned him after the coup of 1483, publicly shaking his hand when he came out of sanctuary at Westminster. He took part in Buckingham’s rising but received a second pardon. From fragments of a brass of 1499 at Ashford, Kent.

  What is also striking is that so many of the conspirators – over a dozen at least – had been Members of Parliament, where they may have first become acquainted. Stonor had represented Oxfordshire, Browne Surrey and Canterbury, and Fogge Kent – Stonor’s rising in Berkshire was joined by another former MP, John Norris; Browne in Surrey by yet another, Sir Thomas Bourchier of Horsley, who had fought at Barnet. (He was a kinsman of the Cardinal Archbishop and thus of the King himself.) In Sussex Sir Thomas Lewkenor of Bodiam Castle had likewise represented his county. In East Anglia there was Sir William Knyvet, once MP for Norfolk. In Wiltshire both Sir John Cheyney and Sir Walter Hungerford of Farley Hungerford had been members for their county, as in Somerset had Sir Giles Daubeny (one of Reginald Bray’s recruits). In Devonshire St Leger too had been an MP – for Surrey – and Sir Richard Edgecombe had represented Tavistock. These were persons of standing, with wide lands and valuable offices, rich, middle-aged men, leaders of local society and not hot-headed, penniless adventurers with nothing to lose. They were able to rally many lesser gentry and substantial yeomen to their cause
.

  Their eventual plan of campaign was not ill-conceived. Separate but concerted risings were timed for 18 October, St Luke’s Day. The Kentishmen and the men of Surrey, Sussex and Essex would make a feigned attack on London to divert Richard from the real onslaught from Wales and the West Country. The south-eastern musters were to be at Maidstone, Guildford and Gravesend under Fogge, Browne and Knyvet with the valuable assistance of Sir Richard Guildford and his son (from Rolvenden on the edge of Romney Marsh). More serious would be gatherings in Berkshire and Wiltshire under Stonor and Cheyney, since they hoped to be speedily reinforced from the West Country; Sir Richard Woodville was with Stonor at Newbury, Bishop Lionel with Cheyney at Salisbury. The South West would be led by Dorset, St Leger and the Courtenays. But the most important blow was to be struck by Buckingham, who intended to cross the Severn with his Welsh levies and link up with the Westcountrymen. (It was Somerset’s campaign of 1471 in reverse.) Finally Henry Tudor, with 5,000 Breton mercenaries – hired with money lent by Duke Francis – would land on the south-western coast.

  11. Nicholas Gaynesford (1427–98) of Carshalton, Surrey and his wife Margaret. He was an Esquire of the Body to Edward IV and Henry VII, she one of the ‘Gentilwommen’ to their Queens He was also Usher to Elizabeth Woodville. Formerly Sheriff for Surrey and Sussex, he tried to raise the South East against Richard in autumn 1483. From a brass at Carshalton.

  The King received news of the impending rebellion and of Buckingham’s involvement on 11 October. His spies had discovered the plot just in time. It took him so completely by surprise that he was without the Great Seal. On 12 October he wrote from Lincoln to the Lord Chancellor, ordering him to send it with all speed possible. Richard added a postscript, which rings with almost hysterical rage. It contains these words:

  Here, loved be God, is all well and truly determined, and for to resist the malice of him that had best cause to be true, the Duke of Buckingham, the most untrue creature living; whom with God’s grace we shall not be long till that we will be in those parts and subdue his malice. We assure you there was never false traitor better purveyed for …

  (The phrase ‘loved be God’ has a personal sound about it, and may often have been on the King’s lips with perhaps a Yorkshire accent.) The Great Seal arrived soon enough, being delivered to Richard on 18 October at the Angel and Royal Inn at Grantham. His army – including 300 men from York – assembled at Leicester, in sufficient strength for him to be justified in his savage optimism and to march south on 24 October.

  As Lord High Constable of England, Buckingham had been the King’s senior military officer. Among his duties was that of presiding over courts martial. To replace him Richard therefore appointed a Vice-Constable. He chose Sir Ralph Assheton of Fritton-in-Redesdale. Born in 1420 and consequently well over sixty, Assheton was by origin a Lancashire man, although he lived in Yorkshire and had been a Sheriff of that county. Not only had he served with distinction in the Scottish War, but he came from a family noted for soldiers, his father having been one of Henry V’s most trusted senior commanders in France. A long-standing member of the Household, Sir Ralph had ridden in his master’s Coronation procession. He appears to have had an extremely unpleasant name, perhaps partly from the fact that his half-brother was a famous alchemist and partly from his affectation of always wearing black armour, though chiefly because of his ferocity. His conduct during the subsequent campaign in 1483 earned him much hatred. The King gave him power to try treason cases ‘without formalities or appeal’. A grim jingle ran:

  Sweet Jesu for thy mercy’s sake

  And for thy bitter Passion,

  Save us from the axe of the Tower

  And from Sir Ralph of Assheton.

  The ‘Black Knight’, as he was popularly known on account of his armour, is credited – in legend – with rolling prisoners downhill in barrels filled with spikes. Unquestionably he was the best man for stamping out rebellion of any sort, but Richard did not endear himself to his subjects by employing someone with quite so sinister a reputation as the Black Knight.

  Luckily for the King the Duke of Norfolk happened to be in London, where the news of the rising broke on 10 October. Apparently the rebels in the Home Counties would not wait and rose prematurely. He at once began to assemble troops; he wrote to John Paston, among others, asking him to bring ‘six tall fellows in harness’ (armour) and explaining that ‘the Kentishmen be up in the Weald and say that they will come and rob the City’. One may guess that Norfolk had the fervent support of the Londoners, who remembered other visitations from Kent, such as those by Jack Cade and the Bastard of Fauconberg, only too well. The Duke quickly dispatched a small force to occupy Gravesend, and this effectively stopped the Kentishmen from crossing the Thames to join their friends from Essex. He also occupied Reigate, which frightened off the Surrey men at Betchworth Castle, and sent out raiding parties. Shaken, the rebels withdrew to Guildford to await the arrival of their main army from the West country.6

  However, the Duke of Buckingham raised his standard at Brecon on 18 October, as originally planned. This was the same day that Norfolk was occupying Reigate. Accompanied by the Bishop of Ely and various others – including a certain Thomas Nandike, ‘necromancer of Cambridge’, as he was to be described in the subsequent Bill of Attainder – Buckingham began his fateful march. The Westcountrymen also rose as planned, and seem to have proclaimed the Earl of Richmond ‘King Henry VII’ at Bodmin.

  Richard, acting ‘in no drowsy manner’, according to the Croyland chronicler, had already used his agents to stir up the Welsh Yorkists. These raided the Duke’s lands as soon as he marched off. The local Welsh had been bullied and oppressed by Buckingham, ‘a sore and hard dealing man’, and must have caused considerable damage – no doubt news of it was brought to the Duke’s levies, who began to desert. In any case few of his ‘tenants’ felt any obligation to join him. Still more important, one of the henchmen, Sir Humphrey Stafford of Grafton – presumably with the campaign of 1471 in mind – speedily organized breaking down bridges and blockading roads into England. However, it was all unnecessary. The heavens opened and a deluge like Noah’s Flood descended. Soon the Severn and the Avon broke their banks and every little stream became a raging torrent; fords vanished and roads turned into quagmires – the Vale of Evesham transformed itself into an inland sea. The ‘Duke of Buckingham’s Water’ was long remembered, with horror. The chronicler Grafton is almost certainly reporting accurate folk memory when he says that ‘Men were drowned in their beds, children were carried about the fields, swimming in cradles, beasts were drowned on hills; the rage of water lasted continually for ten days.’

  Buckingham never succeeded in even crossing the Severn, and only got as far as the Forest of Dean. Sodden, famished, hopelessly demoralized, his unexpectedly small army simply disintegrated and ran for cover. He himself retreated north, perhaps making for Brecon, though by now his stronghold there had been stormed by the King’s men. The Duke had already entrusted his son Lord Stafford to the wife of a faithful follower, Lady Delabeare, who shaved the little boy’s head, dressed him like a girl and concealed him in a safe place. Buckingham disguised himself as a labourer and took refuge near Wem in Shropshire in the house of a supposedly trustworthy retainer, his servant Humphrey Bannister. Dr Morton, whose instinct for survival was much more strongly developed, made discreetly for East Anglia and, after hiding for a while in the Fens of his diocese, crossed unnoticed to Flanders. (Ludicrously Richard’s latterday partisans have accused the fugitive prelate of finding time, while on the run, to visit Croyland Abbey and falsify its monks’ chronicle.)

  Meanwhile, the furious King, with his undoubted flair for strategy, was marching southwards – first towards Coventry, and then towards the West Country, which he had correctly identified as the most dangerous region. He had issued an extraordinary proclamation, phrased in his most self-righteous style, against the ‘traitors, adulterers and bawds’. Headed ‘Proclamation for the Reform of Mora
ls’, it alleges that Dorset was a dishonourer of ‘sundry maids, widows and wives’ and that the rebels were guilty of ‘the damnable maintenance of vices and sin as they had in times past, to the great displeasure of God and evil example of all Christian people’. (Ross comments that it ‘reads more like a tract against sexual licence than a condemnation of armed treason’.)7 More practically, besides these clumsy attempts of character assassination, he offered huge rewards for their capture; whoever apprehended Buckingham would receive either £1,000 or lands worth £100 a year (the fortune of a substantial squire or even knight), though some rebels rated only £12 a year. Richard soon learnt how Norfolk had ended any threat to London, then of the disaster which had overtaken Buckingham.

  So did the rebels in the West Country and the Home Counties, themselves demoralized by the wretched weather. They dispersed in panic, those who could fleeing abroad, some going into sanctuary, others taking to the woods. When Richard reached Salisbury at the very end of October, he met no opposition whatever. Shortly afterwards the Duke of Buckingham was brought in by the Sheriff of Shropshire, to whom he had been betrayed by Bannister. (The latter was set up as a gentleman in reward, as Lord of the Manor of Yalding in Kent.) Buckingham was immediately tried by a court presided over by Assheton and sentenced to death. He begged frantically for an audience of the King, who refused, perhaps wisely, since years later the Duke’s son claimed that his father had meant to kill Richard with a hunting knife. The over-mighty, over-subtle Harry Buckingham was beheaded in Salisbury market place on Sunday 2 November, although it was All Souls’ as well as the Lord’s Day. His vast estates were forfeited to the Crown. The King marched on into the far West Country, right down to Exeter, where he had arrived by 8 November; he installed himself in the Bishops’ Palace from where Peter Courtenay had fled only a few hours before. He was watching the situation throughout the entire South and sent orders to besiege Bodiam in Sussex – though that mighty fortress put up little resistance, quickly surrendering to the Earl of Surrey.8