The Wars of the Roses

Richard, on learning the state of affairs, immediately wrote to the queen, recommending that the army gathering round her son should be dismissed; and the royal widow, who was totally devoid of the intellect and sagacity necessary for such a crisis, dispatched a messenger to her brother to disband his troops. The young king, however, set out from Ludlow, and, attended by Earl Rivers, Elizabeth's second son, Richard Grey, and Sir Thomas Vaughan, he approached Northampton on the 22d of April, and learned that Richard had already arrived at that town.

Richard, as we have said, was on the frontiers of Scotland when his brother expired at Westminster. On receiving intelligence of this sad event he rode southward to York, and entered that city with a retinue of six hundred knights and esquires, all dressed, like himself, in deep mourning. At York he ordered a grand funeral service to be performed in the Cathedral; and, having summoned the magnates of the neighborhood to swear fealty to Edward the Fifth, he set them the example by taking the oath first. After going through this ceremony, he wrote to Elizabeth Woodville and to Earl Rivers, expressing the utmost loyalty and affection for the young king; but, at the same time, a messenger was sent to the Duke of Buckingham appointing a meeting at Northampton.

Again taking the road southward, Richard reached Northampton on the 22d of April; and, learning that the king was every hour expected, he resolved to await the arrival of his nephew and escort him safely to London. Ere long Rivers and Richard Grey appeared to pay their respects, and announce that the king had gone forward to Stony Stratford. Richard, who had hitherto given the Woodvilles no cause for suspicion, was doubtless somewhat surprised at this intelligence. He, however, suppressed his emotions, listened patiently to Anthony's frivolous apology about fearing that Northampton would have been too small a place to accommodate so many people, and with the utmost courtesy invited the uncle and nephew to remain and sup.

Rivers and Grey accepted without hesitation an invitation given in so friendly a tone; and soon after, Buckingham arrived at the head of three hundred horsemen. Every thing went calmly. The two dukes passed the evening with Rivers and Grey; they all talked in the most friendly way; and next morning they rode together to Stony Stratford.

On reaching Stony Stratford, Richard found the king mounting to renew his journey; and this circumstance seems to have convinced him that he was intended by the Woodvilles first as a dupe and then as a victim. At all events, their evident anxiety to prevent an interview between him and his nephew afforded him a fair opportunity for taking strong measures, and he did not hesitate. Turning to Rivers and Grey, he immediately charged them with estranging the affections of his nephew, and caused them to be arrested along with Sir Thomas Vaughan.

Having ordered the prisoners to be conveyed to the castle of Sheriff Hutton, Richard and Buckingham bent their knees to their youthful sovereign, and explained to him that Rivers, Grey, and Dorset were traitors; but Edward, educated by his maternal relatives and much attached to them, could not conceal his displeasure at their arrest.

This scene over, Richard dismissed all domestics with whom Rivers had surrounded the young king, and conducted his nephew toward London, giving out as he went that the Woodvilles had been conspiring. On the 4th of May they approached the metropolis; and at Hornsey Wood they were met by Lord-mayor Shaw, with the sheriffs and aldermen, in their scarlet robes, and five hundred of the citizens, clad in violet and gallantly mounted. Attended as became a king, young Edward entered London. Richard rode bareheaded before his nephew; many knights and nobles followed; and, amid loud acclamations from the populace, Edward the Fifth was conducted to the Bishop's Palace. A grand council was then summoned, and Richard was declared Protector of England.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth Woodville had been seized with dread. Alarmed at the report that her brother and son were under arrest, and apprehensive of Richard's intentions, she fled to the sanctuary with her five daughters, her eldest son, the Marquis of Dorset, and her youngest son, Richard, a boy of ten, who had been created Duke of York, and contracted in marriage to an heiress of the Mowbrays who died in infancy. The king, on learning that his mother was alarmed, expressed his grief with tears in his eyes. At first Richard only protested his loyalty, and marveled that his nephew should be so melancholy; but ere long he resolved to turn the royal boy's unhappiness to account, and with this view sent the Archbishop of York to Elizabeth to say that, to the king's happiness, the company of his brother was essential.

The prelate carried the Protector's message to the sanctuary, and found the mournful mother earnestly opposed to delivering up the Duke of York. The archbishop, however, told her plainly that if she did not consent, he feared some sharper course would speedily be taken; and at this warning Elizabeth, who was at once timorous and imprudent, began to yield. At length she took the boy by the hand and led him to the archbishop. "My lord," she said, "here he is. For my own part, I never will deliver him freely; but if you must needs have, take him, and at your hands I will require him."

At that time Richard and other lords were in the Star Chamber, and thither the archbishop led the weeping boy. As they entered, Richard rose, embraced his nephew affectionately, and exclaimed with characteristic dissimulation, "Welcome, nephew, with all my heart. Next to my sovereign lord, your brother, nothing gives me so much contentment as your presence." A few days after this scene was enacted, Richard declared that it was necessary that the king and his brother should be sent to some place of security till the distempers of the commonwealth were healed; and a great council, summoned to discuss the question, resolved, on the motion of Buckingham, that the princes should be sent to the Tower. Accordingly, they were conducted to the metropolitan fortress; and it was intimated that they were to remain there till preparations had been made for the king's coronation.

The fate of Rivers, Grey, and Vaughan having been decided on, the 13th of June was appointed as the day of execution; and Sir Richard Ratcliffe, an unscrupulous agent of Richard, was intrusted with the ceremony. Anthony Woodville was prevented from addressing the people on the occasion, and posterity has been deprived of the satisfaction of reading the accomplished adventurer's vindication; but Vaughan was more lucky in his effort to be heard.

"I appeal," said Vaughan, solemnly, "to God's high tribunal against the Duke of Gloucester for this wrongful murder."

"You have made a goodly appeal," said Ratcliffe, with a sneer, "so lay down your head."

"I die in the right, Ratcliffe," answered Vaughan; and, preparing to submit to the blow, he added, "Take heed that you die not in the wrong."

Ere disposing of the Woodvilles, Richard persuaded himself that his dream of the crown might be realized, and by bribes and promises purchased Buckingham's aid in overthrowing the obstacles that stood in his way. Anxious, also, to gain over Hastings, he deputed the task of sounding him to William Catesby, an eminent lawyer, who descended from an ancient family at Lapworth, in Warwickshire, and who was destined to acquire an unenviable notoriety in Richard's service. The result was not satisfactory. In fact, Hastings, though he heartily concurred in Richard's measures against the Woodvilles, was determined to stand by Edward's sons to the death; and, ere long, matters arrived at such a pass that, while Richard sat at the head of a majority of the council at Crosby Hall, Hastings presided over a minority at the Tower. The party of Hastings appeared formidable. Lord Stanley, among others, took part in its proceedings; and Stanley's son, George, Lord Strange, was reported to be levying forces in Lancashire to give effect to its decisions. Richard was not blind to the fact that if he did not destroy the confederacy forthwith it would destroy him. At such a crisis he was neither so timid nor so scrupulous as to hesitate as to the means.

Some years before his death, Edward of York, while pursuing his amours in the city of London, was captivated by the charms of Jane Shore, a young city dame, whose name occupies an unfortunate place in the history of the period. This woman, after being for seven years the wife of a reputable goldsmith, allowed herself, in an evil hour, to be lured from the house of her husband, and figured for some time as the king's mistress. Notwithstanding her equivocal position, however, Mistress Shore exhibited many redeeming qualities. Her wit and beauty giving her great influence over Edward, she exercised it for worthy purposes, and was ever ready to relieve the needy, to shield the innocent, and protect the oppressed.

When Edward had been laid at rest in St. George's Chapel, and Elizabeth Woodville fled to the sanctuary, Mistress Shore manifested much sympathy for the distressed queen; and, having formed an intimacy with Lord Hastings, she framed something resembling a plot against the Protector. Elizabeth at once forgave Hastings the hostility he had displayed toward her kindred, and forgave Mistress Shore for having supplanted her in Edward's affections, and the three became allies. Richard's jealousy was aroused, and he resolved to make this extraordinary alliance the means of effecting the ruin of Hastings.

It was Friday, the 13th of June – the day on which Rivers, Grey, and Vaughan suffered at Pontefract – and Hastings, Stanley, the Bishop of Ely, the Archbishop of York, with other men of mark, had assembled at nine o'clock in the Tower, when the Protector suddenly entered the council chamber and took his seat at the table. Richard appeared in a lively mood, conversed for a while gayly with those present, and quite surprised them by the mirth which he exhibited.

Having set the lords somewhat at their ease and persuaded them to proceed with business, Richard begged them to spare him for a while, and, leaving the council chamber, he remained absent for an hour. Between ten and eleven he returned, but frowning and fretting, knitting his brow and biting his lips.

"What punishment," he asked, seating himself, "do they deserve who have imagined and compassed my destruction, who am so nearly related to the king, and intrusted with the government of the realm?"

"Whoever they be," answered Hastings, after a pause, "they deserve the death of traitors."

"These traitors," cried Richard, "are the sorceress my brother's wife, and her accomplice, Jane Shore, his mistress, with others, their associates, who have, by their witchcraft, wasted my body."

"Certainly, my lord," said Hastings, after exhibiting some confusion, "if they be guilty of these crimes, they deserve the severest punishment."

"What?" exclaimed Richard, furiously, "do you reply to me with ifs and with ands? I tell thee they have so done, and that I will make good on your body, traitor."

After threatening Hastings, Richard struck the council table, and immediately a cry of "Treason" arose, and armed men rushed into the chamber.

"I arrest thee, traitor," said Richard, turning to Hastings.

"Me, my lord?" asked Hastings, in surprise.

"Yes, thee, traitor," said Richard; "and, by St. Paul, I swear I will not to dinner till I have thy head off."

While this conversation was passing between the Protector and Hastings, one of the soldiers, as if by accident or mistake, struck a blow at Lord Stanley. But the noble baron, who had no ambition to share his ally's fate, and who, indeed, contrived to carry his wise head to the grave, saved himself on this occasion by jerking under the table, and escaped without any other bodily injury than a bruise.

While Lord Stanley, the Archbishop of York, and the Bishop of Ely were arrested, and shut up in various parts of the Tower, Hastings was hurried outside for immediate execution. Richard would not even allow the headsman time enough to erect a scaffold; but a log of wood answered the purpose. This, having been found in the court of the Tower, was carried to the green near the chapel; and the lord chamberlain, after being led thither, was without farther ceremony beheaded. At the same time the sheriffs of London proceeded to Mistress Shore's house, took possession of her goods, which were valued at three thousand marks, and conveyed her through the city to the Tower. On being brought before the council, however, on the charge of sorcery, no evidence worthy of credit was produced, and an acquittal was the consequence.

The sudden execution of the lord chamberlain naturally excited much interest in the city; and, as Hastings happened to be a great favorite with the inhabitants, Richard deemed it necessary to vouchsafe an explanation. Having therefore sent for some of the influential citizens, and frankly justified himself as having acted simply in self-defense, he, within two hours, caused a proclamation, under the great seal, fairly written on parchment, to be read by a herald-at-arms, with great solemnity, in various parts of London. Unfortunately, this vindication appeared so soon after the execution that people could not help suspecting that it had been drawn up before.

"Here's a gay goodly cast," remarked the schoolmaster of St. Paul's, as the document was read at the Cross, "soul cast away for haste."

"Ay," said a merchant standing by, "I think it has been written by the spirit of prophecy."

CHAPTER XLIII

THE USURPATION

After mewing the princes in the Tower, beheading Hastings in London and the Woodvilles at Pontefract, placing such foes to his pretensions as Lord Stanley and the Bishop of Ely under lock and key, and arousing the people's moral indignation by the scandal of a king's widow taking counsel with her husband's mistress to embarrass the government carried on in the name of her son, Richard applied himself resolutely to secure the prize on which he had set his heart. Ere long, the citizens who discussed the proclamation about Hastings were destined to have fresh subjects for gossip.

Among the numerous ladies upon whom Edward, about the beginning of his reign, cast admiring eyes, was Eleanor Talbot, granddaughter of the great Earl of Shrewsbury. This patrician dame was the widow of Lord Butler of Sudeley, and had seen fifteen more summers than her royal lover. Edward, not on that account the less enamored, asked her to become his wife; and, won by the ardor of his attachment, Eleanor consented to a secret marriage. The ceremony was performed by Dr. Stillington, Bishop of Bath; but, as time passed on, the Yorkist king's amorous heart led him into another engagement, and the neglected Eleanor was astonished with news of his having married Elizabeth Woodville. On hearing of his faithlessness she fell into a profound melancholy, and afterward lived in sadness and retirement.

This silent repudiation of a daughter of their house shocked the propriety and hurt the pride of the Talbots, and they applied to Stillington to demand satisfaction. Not relishing the perilous duty, the bishop spoke to Richard on the subject, and Gloucester mentioned it to the king. This intercession proved of no avail; and Edward displayed such fury on learning that the secret was known, that nobody who valued a head would have cared to allude to it while he was on the throne. But Richard, who had not forgotten a circumstance so important, now saw that the time had come when the secret might be used to advance his own fortunes. It was necessary, however, that the facts should be published in such a way as to produce a strong impression, and a plan was devised for bringing together a multitude.

For this purpose, Richard caused Mistress Shore to be again dragged into public, and tried before the spiritual courts for her scandalous manner of life. The Protector was not this time disappointed. However unfounded the charge of sorcery, there was no lack of evidence as to her frailties, and she was condemned to do open penance. Sunday was appointed for this act of humiliation; and on that day, through streets crowded with spectators, the erring woman was under the necessity of walking to St. Paul's barefooted, wrapped in a white sheet, and holding a lighted taper of wax in her hand.

This exhibition was of itself deemed likely to advance the Protector's interests by impressing people with a high opinion of his worth as a reformer of morals; but Richard had arranged that, ere the crowd assembled as spectators had time to disperse, another and a far more important scene should be enacted. In this the chief actor was Dr. Shaw, an Augustine friar of high reputation and great popularity. Mounting the pulpit at St. Paul's Cross, Shaw, who was a brother of the lord-mayor and an adherent of the Protector, preached from the text, "The multiplying brood of the ungodly shall not thrive, nor take deep rooting from bastard slips;" and proceeded boldly to prove that the princes in the Tower were illegitimate.

Richard appears to have found this stratagem unsuccessful; but he did not dream of abandoning his ambitious project. Nor can he, with justice, be severely blamed for setting aside the sons of Elizabeth Woodville. However the matter may have been slurred over by men writing with the fear of the Tudors before their eyes, hardly any doubt can exist that Edward was guilty of bigamy, and that his marriage with Elizabeth was invalid; for Philip de Comines bears witness to having heard Bishop Stillington state that he had married the king to Lady Butler; and Eleanor undoubtedly survived that unfortunate ceremony performed on a May morning in the chapel at Grafton.

But the illegitimacy of Edward's offspring did not make Richard heir of the house of York. Between him and the crown stood the children of Clarence, Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, and his sister Margaret, afterward Countess of Salisbury and mother of Cardinal Pole. The claim of these children was such as could not decently be rejected; but, having gone too far to recede, Richard pretended that their father's attainder disqualified them from inheriting, and adopted measures for usurping the crown.

Richard again invoked the aid of Buckingham; and, on the Tuesday after Dr. Shaw's sermon, attended by nobles, knights, and citizens, Buckingham appeared on the hustings at Guildhall, and harangued the populace. The duke's oratory was successful. Some of the wealthy citizens, indeed, asked time for consideration; but the multitude tossed their bonnets in the air, and shouted, "Long live King Richard."

At Baynard's Castle, with the Duchess of York, Richard was then residing; and thither, to wait upon him, the citizens sent a deputation, headed by the lord-mayor and accompanied by Buckingham. On being informed that a number of people were in the castle court, Richard affected alarm and declined to receive them; but, at length, they were admitted, and Buckingham presented an address, praying Richard to take the crown as his by right of birth and the election of the estates of the realm.

"I little thought, cousin," said Richard, angrily, "that you, of all men, would have moved me to a matter which, of all things, I most decline."

"The free people of England will never be ruled by a bastard," said Buckingham; "and if you, the true heir, refuse the crown, they know where to find another who will gladly accept it."

"Well," said Richard, with the air of a man making a great sacrifice, "since I perceive that the whole realm is resolved not to permit my nephew to reign, and that the right of succession belongs to me, I am content to submit to the will of the people."

On hearing this speech the citizens raised a cry of "Long live King Richard, our sovereign lord;" and the brief reign of Edward the Fifth was at an end.

CHAPTER XLIV

RICHARD'S CORONATION

When Richard had expressed his intention to usurp the English crown, he fixed the 6th day of July, 1483, for his coronation, and caused preparations to be made for performing the ceremony with such magnificence as was likely to render the occasion memorable. Never had arrangements been made on so splendid a scale for investing a king of England with the symbols of power.

At the same time Richard took precautions against any opposition that might be offered by the friends of Elizabeth Woodville. From the north were brought five thousand fighting men, "evil appareled, and worse harnessed, in rusty armor, neither defensible for proof nor scoured for show," but with fearless hearts and strong hands. Their leader was one whose name a Woodville could hardly hear without growing pale. For it was Robin of Redesdale, who, in other days, had led the half mob, half army that seized and beheaded old Earl Rivers, and that son of Earl Rivers who, while in his teens, had wedded a dowager duchess in her eighty-second year. On the 4th of July these northern soldiers encamped in Finsbury Fields, and inspired the citizens of London with emotions of doubt and apprehension.

On the day when Robin of Redesdale and his men startled London, Richard and his ill-starred queen – the Anne Neville of earlier and happier times – took their barge at Baynard's Castle, and went by water to the Tower. After releasing Lord Stanley and the Archbishop of York, that they might take part in the coronation, the king created his son Edward Prince of Wales, nominated Lord Lovel to the office of lord chamberlain, vacant by the execution of Hastings, and appointed Sir Robert Brackenbury, the younger son of an ancient family long settled at Sallaby, in the Bishopric of Durham, to the lieutenancy of the Tower. At the same time he bestowed on Sir John Howard the dukedom of Norfolk, and to Thomas, eldest son of that pretentious personage, he gave the earldom of Surrey. Gratified as the vanity of the Howards might be, Sir John must have blushed, if, indeed, capable of so much decorum, as he thought of the disconsolate woman in the sanctuary, and remembered the letter which, twenty years earlier, at the time of her marriage, he had written to her father, Sir Richard Woodville.

At length the day appointed for the ceremony arrived, and Richard prepared to place the crown of St. Edward on his head. "The king, with Queen Anne, his wife," says the chronicler, "came down out of the Whitehall into the great hall at Westminster, and went directly to the King's Bench, and from thence, going upon Ray-cloth, barefooted, went to St. Edward's Shrine; all his nobility going with him, every lord in his degree."

A magnificent banquet in Westminster Hall brought the coronation ceremony to a conclusion; and, in the midst of the banquet, Sir Robert Dymoke, as king's champion, rode into the hall and challenged any man to say that Richard was not King of England. No one, of course, ventured to gainsay his title; but from every side rose shouts of "King Richard, King Richard;" and, his inauguration as sovereign of England having been thus formally completed, the usurper retired to consider how he could best secure himself on that throne which he had gained by means so unscrupulous.

CHAPTER XLV

THE PRINCES IN THE TOWER

When the sons of the fourth Edward and Elizabeth Woodville had been escorted through London, conducted to the Tower, and given into the keeping of Sir Robert Brackenbury, the populace saw their faces no more.

According to the chroniclers who wrote in the age of the Tudors, the young king had, from the time of the arrest of his maternal kinsman at Stony Stratford, been possessed with vague presentiments; and he no sooner heard of the usurpation than he revealed the alarm he felt for his personal safety. "Alas!" exclaimed the boy, on being informed that Richard was to be crowned, "I would mine uncle would let me enjoy my life, though I lose my kingdom and my crown."

The lives of the princes might have been spared; but it happened that, after causing his coronation to be celebrated with so much splendor at Westminster, Richard undertook a progress to York, to have the ceremony repeated in the capital of the north. While on his way, Richard learned that the friends of Elizabeth Woodville were conspiring to deliver the princes from the Tower, and to place young Edward on the throne. The usurper, it is said, then resolved on having his nephews put to death ere they could be used by his enemies to disturb his reign. With this view, while at Gloucester, Richard dispatched a messenger, named John Green, to Brackenbury, with instructions to make away with the princes; but Brackenbury, though elevated to office by Richard, declared that he must decline the commission.