Richard III of England
For the play Richard III
by William Shakespeare, see Richard III (play)Richard III (
2 October 1452 –
22 August 1485) was
King of
England from
1483 until his death. He was the last king from the
House of York, and his defeat ended the
Wars of the Roses. After the death of his brother
King Edward IV, Richard briefly governed as a regent for Edward's son
King Edward V with the title of
Lord Protector, but he placed
Edward and his brother
Richard in the
Tower (see
Princes in the Tower), and acquired the throne for himself (crowned on
6 July 1483). A rebellion rose against Richard and he fell in the
Battle of Bosworth Field, then known as Redmore or Dadlington Field, as the last
Plantagenet king and the last English king to die in battle, when he faced
Henry Tudor, 2nd Earl of Richmond (later King Henry VII).
William Shakespeare's play
Richard III has made his name particularly infamous.
Richard was born at
Fotheringay Castle, the eighth and youngest and fourth surviving son of
Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York (who had been a strong claimant to the throne of
King Henry VI) and
Cecily Neville. The withered arm, limp, and crooked back of legend are most likely fabrications, asserted primarily by
Thomas More in his questionable history, which made a deep impression upon
Shakespeare.
Richard spent much of his childhood at
Middleham Castle in
Wensleydale, under the tutelage of his uncle
Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick. He was involved in ongoing battles between different alliances of the
House of Lancaster and the
House of York factions during the last half of the
15th Century. At the time of the death of his father and older brother
Edmund at the
Battle of Wakefield, Richard was still a boy, and at that time he was taken into the care of Warwick, known to history as "The Kingmaker" because of his strong influence on the course of the
Wars of the Roses. Warwick was instrumental in deposing Henry VI and replacing him with Richard's eldest brother, Edward. While Richard was at Warwick's estate, he developed a close friendship with
Francis Lovell, a friendship that would remain strong for the rest of his life. Another child in the household was Warwick's daughter
Anne Neville, whom Richard would later marry.
Following the decisive Yorkist victory over the Lancastrians at the
Battle of Tewkesbury, Richard married the widowed
Anne Neville, younger daughter of the late
Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick. Anne's first husband had been
Edward of Westminster, son of Henry VI. Following his death at the
Battle of Tewkesbury in
1471, she disappears from the records for a while, her whereabouts unknown. It is popularly believed that she had fallen under the control of
George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence, who had an interest in preventing her from marrying again, because it gave him full control over the joint inheritance of Anne and her elder sister
Isabella Neville, Duchess of Clarence, George's wife. Richard is said to have found Anne working as a scullery maid in a London chophouse and "rescued" her; but the truth is not known. Their marriage took place on
12 July 1472. However, because of the estates and lands at issue, it is far from clear that he actually loved her, although he was seen to have wept openly at her funeral in 1485, and there are no reports of open unhappiness in their marriage. After all, once he had married her and attained the land, there would have been no need to treat her with kindness from there onward unless he meant it.
Richard and Anne had one son, Edward Plantagenet (also known as
Edward of Middleham,
1473 –
9 April 1484), who died not long after being created
Prince of Wales. Richard also had a number of illegitimate children, including
John of Gloucester and a daughter named Katharine-married to
William Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke. It has been thought that their mother may have been one Katherine Haute, who is mentioned in household records. Both of these children survived Richard.
During the reign of his brother,
King Edward IV, Richard demonstrated his loyalty as well as his skill as a military commander. He was rewarded with large estates in
Northern England, and given the title
Duke of Gloucester and the position of Governor of the North, becoming the richest and most powerful noble in England and a loyal aide to Edward IV. By contrast the other surviving brother,
George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence, was executed by Edward for
treason.
Richard continued to control the north of England until Edward's death. In 1482 Richard recaptured
Berwick-upon-Tweed from the
Scots, and was noted as being fair and just, endowing
universities and making grants to the church.
On the death of King Edward IV, on 9 April
1483, the late King's sons (Richard's young nephews),
King Edward V, aged 12, and
Richard of Shrewsbury, 1st Duke of York, aged 9, were considered to be next in the
order of succession. Appointed Lord Protector of the Realm in his brother's will, Richard was aware of a danger that the Woodvilles would isolate him and would use their influence over Edward V to consolidate their power at Richard's expense.
When the boy King's retinue was on its way from
Wales to
London, for his
coronation, Richard and
Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham joined them at
Northampton. He had the king's guardian,
Anthony Woodville, 2nd Earl Rivers, (brother of
Elizabeth Woodville, Edward's Queen Consort) and other advisors arrested and taken to
Pontefract Castle, allegedly for planning to
assassinate Edward V. Richard then took Edward to stay at the
Tower of London (then a royal
palace), a move widely supported since much of the country distrusted the former queen's family. Richard called himself
Lord Protector and was also made Chief Councillor (head of government).
John Morton,
Bishop of Ely and later
Archbishop of Canterbury under Henry VII, is considered by some to be an important source of the Tudor
propaganda against Richard III. According to Sir Thomas More's
History, which may be based in part on Morton's accounts,
Lord Hastings (a regular visitor to the young
Edward V in the
Tower of London) was arrested for alleged
treason on
13 June 1483 at a meeting of the Royal Council, at the Tower. A few minutes later, he is said to have been
beheaded on Tower Green, a clear violation of his rights (i.e., execution without due process) as a Peer guaranteed under
Magna Carta. It has been argued that Hastings, whose execution was the first recorded at the Tower of London, was indeed arrested on
13 June, but later formally charged with treason, tried, convicted and sentenced, and legally executed on
18 June; no record of such proceedings survives. Edward's younger brother, Richard, was removed to the Tower on
16 June, with his mother's consent.
It is thought that Hastings had allied himself with the
Queen Dowager because of the rise in influence of Buckingham and what he saw as Richard's usurpation of the throne. Morton claimed to have been in the council room when Hastings was arrested, and may have been one of several men who were detained for participating in the conspiracy with Hastings.
Three other members of the alleged conspiracy — the queen's brother Lord Rivers, her second son
Richard Grey, and another chamberlain Sir
Thomas Vaughan — were also convicted and executed elsewhere.
Jane (or Elizabeth) Shore, who had been a mistress of King Edward IV, and then of his step-son
Thomas Grey, 1st Marquess of Dorset, and was now Hastings's mistress, was convicted of only lesser offences and was made to do public penance and briefly imprisoned. Thomas Grey avoided prosecution in the conspiracy by going into
sanctuary at
Westminster with his mother.
John Morton is also thought to be the source of other accusations against Richard, notably
* the murder of Henry VI
* the "private execution" of his brother George, Duke of Clarence
* the murder of his wife's first husband,
Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales
* forcing his wife, Anne Neville, to marry him against her will
* killing his wife so he could marry his niece, Elizabeth of York
* accusing Jane Shore and Elizabeth Woodville of witchcraft in withering his arm
* being illegitimate himself
Each of these stories first appears in writing either in Sir
Thomas More's
The History of King Richard III, believed by some to be based on Morton's account, or on the writings of someone else who had heard the stories. (Historians are divided on the issue of Morton's importance as a source, some pointing out that More's own father was an Edwardian loyalist and well-connected in the government of the City of London.) The question of whether these stories were true was not of great interest to either Morton or More, history then still being regarded as a branch of literature. It was customary for histories to also serve as propaganda on both sides, to support and strengthen one's patron's cause. Not only that, but Morton, having been arrested by Richard III, had fled to exile in Flanders. He only returned when Henry VII was on the throne and was quickly promoted.
On
June 22,
1483, outside
St Paul's Cathedral, a statement was read out on behalf of Richard declaring for the first time that he was taking the throne for himself. When the members of Parliament met on
June 25, it apparently heard evidence from the Bishop of Bath that he had conducted a marriage or betrothal between Edward IV and one
Lady Eleanor Talbot (or Butler) before his marriage to Elizabeth Woodville. Since even a betrothal was a legally binding "pre-contract" in the customs of the time, Edward IV's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville had been bigamous, therefore all their children were illegitimate. Some of the proceedings of that Parliamentary session survive in a document known as
Titulus Regius, which Parliament issued some months later explaining its actions and of which a single copy escaped the destruction of all copies of the Titulus Regius later ordered by Henry VII. The identity of the priest in question - thought to have been Edward IV's sometime Chancellor,
Robert Stillington,
Bishop of Bath and Wells - is known from only one source, the French political commentator,
Philippe de Commines. Titulus Regius also cited two further grounds upon which Edward IV's marriage had been invalid, namely that it was made "in a profane place" and that it was made "without the assent of the Lords".
Despite rumours that Richard's claims were true, evidence was lacking, and until recently it has generally been accepted that Richard's chief motive for taking the crown was that he felt that his own power and wealth would be threatened under Edward V, who was presumably sympathetic to his Woodville relatives. A recently-published theory claims that it was Edward IV who was illegitimate -see
was Edward illegitimate? for details - but hard evidence is lacking.
Richard's three elder brothers were all dead. His elder brother
George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence had been attainted in connection with a treason charge, meaning that his children
Margaret and
Edward, Earl of Warwick were also removed from the line of succession - although they were not personally accused of treason and had been given other honours.
On
July 6 1483, Richard was crowned at
Westminster Abbey. Except for three earls not old enough to participate and a few lesser nobles, the entire
peerage attended his coronation. He was the last
Plantagenet king.
Richard was known as a devout man and an efficient administrator. However, he was a Yorkist and heirless, and had removed the Woodvilles and their allies; he was therefore vulnerable to political opposition. His supporter
Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham turned against him and was executed late in
1483 after joining with Henry Tudor in a failed attempt to overthrow Richard by force.
Richard's enemies united against him. According to local tradition in
Leicester, Richard went to see a
seer in the town before heading off for the
Battle of Bosworth Field on
August 22,
1485 to meet Lancastrian forces led by Henry Tudor. She told him "where your spur should strike on the ride into battle, your head shall be broken on the return". On the ride into battle his spur struck the bridge stone of the Bow Bridge. Afterward, as his dead body was being carried from the battle over the back of a horse, his head struck the same stone and was broken open. Tudor succeeded Richard to become
Henry VII, and cemented the succession by marrying the Yorkist heir,
Elizabeth of York. Legends notwithstanding, Richard was abandoned at Bosworth by the Lords William Stanley and
Henry Percy, 4th Earl of Northumberland, Stanley switching sides which severely depleted his army's strength. Even Tudor accounts note Richard fought bravely and ably during the battle, unhorsing a well-known champion, killing Henry's standard bearer and nearly reaching Henry himself before finally surrounded and killed.
It is said that Richard's naked body was paraded through the streets before being buried at Greyfriars Church, Leicester. According to one tradition, during the
Dissolution of the Monasteries his body was thrown into the nearby
River Soar, although other evidence suggests that this may not be the case and that his burial site may currently be under a car park in Leicester. There is currently a memorial plaque on the site of the Cathedral where he may have once been buried. Skeletal remains recovered from the Soar and initially believed to be Richard's were later found to be those of an Anglo-Saxon warrior who died nearly 500 years before Richard was killed. This conclusion was made through both radiocarbon dating and the size of the body and the thickness of the bones. Richard is described in contemporary accounts as being of somewhat short and slim, conditions not matched by the bones.The greater probability is that despite the Dissolution, Richard's remains still are buried at the original site whereas the tombstone has been destroyed (see link below).
By the time of his last stand against the Lancastrians, he was a widower without a legitimate son. After his son's death, he had initially named his nephew,
Edward, Earl of Warwick, Clarence's young son and also the nephew of Queen Anne Neville, as his heir. After Anne's death, however, Richard named another nephew,
John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, as his heir.
Since his death, Richard III has become one of England's most controversial kings. Modern historians recognise the damage done to his reputation by "historians" of the next reign, and particularly by
William Shakespeare. Among other things, Richard was represented as physically malformed, which in those days was accepted as evidence of an evil character. It is, however, widely believed by modern historians that Richard was directly involved in the execution of his two nephews, the Princes in the Tower, which, along with his own death ended the
Plantagenet Dynasty. Lesser nobility among the Plantagenets were cast aside when the
Tudors came to power, including the
Aston family, one son of whom became an ancestor of
many famous Americans, another of whom's descendents were restored as
Lord Aston of Forfar when the Tudor reign ended.
Richard's
Council of the North greatly improved conditions for
Northern England, as
commoners of that region were formerly without any susbtantial economic activity independent of
London. Its descendant position was
Secretary of State for the Northern Department.
The Society of Friends of King Richard III was set up during the
20th century in order to rehabilitate Richard and to honour his memory. This society is based in the city of
York, where following his death in 1485 it was proclaimed, that "King Richard, late reigning mercifully over us, was.... piteously slain and murdered, to the great heaviness of this city".
The
Richard III Society was also set up during the 20th century and has gathered considerable research material about his life and reign. Its members hold events and preserve the king's memory. The society's database is impressive and is of great value to the historical research community.
Richard appears in the
2002 List of "
100 Great Britons" (sponsored by the
BBC and voted for by the public), alongside such others as
David Beckham,
Aleister Crowley, and
Johnny Rotten. The
BBC History Magazine lists him under "doubtful entrants, based on special interest lobbying or 'cult' status", and comments: "On the list due to the Ricardian lobby, but a minor monarch".
The foremost work of fiction regarding Richard III is considered to be the eponymous play by
William Shakespeare,
Richard III.
A lasting mystery surrounding the accession of Richard was the disappearance and presumed death of Richard's nephews, known as the
Princes in the Tower. One of the most readable accounts of the evidence on all sides of the question is
Josephine Tey's
The Daughter of Time, written in
1951 (when some of the sources currently available had not yet been discovered).
Sharon Kay Penman provides a rich view of the reign of Edward IV and Richard III in
The Sunne in Splendor. This book of more than 900 pages gives a detailed account of the Wars of the Roses in a historically and chronologically accurate way. However, the author has made additions and minor adjustments to enrich the story.
An award-winning novel published in 2003,
The Rose of York: Love & War by
Sandra Worth, also presents the account of Richard III from the Ricardian viewpoint. Worth argues that Richard III's contribution to shaping a just society by improvements to the legal system was buried by the Tudors because it conflicted with the image of a villainous and hated monarch that they wished to present in their attempt to minimize hostility towards their regime.
The American Branch of the Richard III Society carries out its own review of all the suspects in the case of Richard III, in "Whodunit?" in an online library[
1].
Another fictional representation is the
1939 film
Tower of London, where
Basil Rathbone is Richard and
Boris Karloff his evil henchman.
A
secret history of Richard III is presented in the British historical
sitcom Blackadder.
Source material on all aspects of Richard's reign is neatly and impartially brought together by Keith Dockray in
Richard III: A Reader in History (Sutton, 1988).
The Trial of Richard III by
Richard Drewett &
Mark Redhead (ISBN 0862991986)
Royal Blood by
Bertram Fields (ISBN 006039269X)
Richard III: The Road to Bosworth Field by
Peter W. Hammond &
Anne Sutton (ISBN 009466160X)
Richard the Third by Michael Hicks (Tempus, 2001) (ISBN 0752423029)
Richard III: A Study in Service by
Rosemary Horrox (ISBN 0521407265)
Richard III and the North edited by
Rosemary Horrox (ISBN 0859580660)
Richard III: The Great Debate edited by
Paul Murray Kendall (ISBN 0393003108)
Richard the Third by
Paul Murray Kendall (ISBN 0393007855)
The Betrayal of Richard III by V.B. Lamb (ISBN 086299778X)
Richard III and the Princes in the Tower by
A.J. Pollard (ISBN 0312067151)
Good King Richard? by
Jeremy Potter (ISBN 0094646309)
Richard III by
Charles Ross (Methuen, 1981) (ISBN 0413295303)
Richard III: England's Black Legend by
Desmond Seward (ISBN 0140266348)
The Coronation of Richard III by
Anne Sutton &
Peter W. Hammond (ISBN 0904387752)
Richard III's Books by
Anne Sutton &
Livia VIsser-Fuchs (ISBN 0750914068)
The Princes in the Tower by
Alison Weir (ISBN 0345391780)
Joan of Arc and Richard III by
Charles Wood (ISBN 019506951X)
History of the English Speaking Peoples by Winston Churchill, Vol. 1, The Birth of Britain
*
Richard III Society,England*
Richard III Society, American Branch -- includes links to online editions of many primary texts and secondary sources*
The Richard III Society of Canada*
Richard III Society of New South Wales*
Richard III article at dmoz.org*
The Wars of the Roses Information on Richard and Bosworth
* http://www.bbc.co.uk/legacies/myths_legends/england/leicester/article_1.shtml about his final resting place
*
Illustrated history of King Richard III
