The Wars of the Roses

Richard was at Warwick when this answer reached him; and, on hearing that Brackenbury was a man who entertained scruples, he exclaimed, with astonishment, "By St. Paul, whom then may we trust?" He was determined, however, that the deed should be done, and, while musing over the matter, bethought him of his Master of the Horse, Sir James Tyrrel, who was in the next room. This man, a brother, it appears, of the knight of that name who fell with Warwick at Barnet, was turbulent in spirit, and so eager for preferment that, in order to make his fortune, he would shrink from no crime. When, therefore, summoned to the king's presence, he showed himself even readier to execute the murderous deed than Richard was to intrust him with the commission.

"Would you venture to kill one of my friends?" asked Richard.

"Yes, my lord," answered Tyrrel; "but I would rather kill two of your enemies."

"By St. Paul!" exclaimed Richard, "that is the very thing. I want to be free from dread of two mortal foes in the Tower."

"Open the gates to me," said Tyrrel, "and you will not need to fear them longer."

Richard, glad to have found a man capable of executing his commission, gave Tyrrel letters to Brackenbury, commanding that he should be intrusted with the custody of the Tower and of the princes for twenty-four hours. Armed with these letters, Tyrrel hied him to London; and, having freed Brackenbury for a while from the exercise of his official functions, he enlisted in his service a man named Miles Forrest, and a sturdy groom named James Dighton. With the aid of these ruffians, and the sole attendant of the princes, William Slaughter, whom chroniclers call "Black Will," and emphatically describe as a "bloody knave," Tyrrel prepared for the murderous deed.

On a summer night – such is the story so often told – the two princes were sleeping in an upper chamber of the Tower, in that part of the gloomy strong-hold still pointed out as "the Bloody Tower." Their only attendant was "Black Will;" but, as clasped in each other's arms they slept the sleep of boyhood, their very innocence seemed a protection. While Tyrrel remained outside the door, Forrest and Dighton suddenly stole into the room, prepared to set about the work of murder. The spectacle presented would have melted any other than the hardest hearts; but Forrest and Dighton were so hardened as to be impervious to emotions of pity, and they proceeded to their task with a shocking brutality. Wrapping the boys tightly in the coverlet, they placed the pillows and feather bed over their mouths till they were stifled; and then, seeing that their innocent souls had departed, laid the bodies on the bed, and intimated to their employer that all was over.

Tyrrel, on hearing this, entered the room to see with his own eyes that the horrid commission had been faithfully executed. After satisfying himself on this point, the unworthy knight ordered the bodies of the murdered princes to be buried beneath the stair, and hastened back to inform the king that his nephews slept in Paradise.

CHAPTER XLVI

A MOCK KING-MAKER

Among the many men of high estate who aided Richard to usurp the English throne, none played a more conspicuous part than his rival in foppery, Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham. No sooner, however, had the Protector been converted into a king than his confederate became malcontent and restlessly eager for change. The death of Warwick, the captivity of John de Vere, the extinction of the Mowbrays and Beauforts, had left the duke one of the most influential among English magnates then alive and at liberty; and, albeit destitute of prowess and intellect, he appears to have vainly imagined that he could exercise that kind of influence which had rendered Richard Neville so formidable. But, capable as Buckingham might have deemed himself of rivaling "The Stout Earl," who slept with his Montagu ancestors in the Abbey of Bisham, he had none of "the superb and more than regal pride" which rendered the descendant of Cospatrick averse to the gewgaws of royalty. The object of the duke's ambition, when he resolved to break with the usurper, appears to have been the crown which he had helped to place on Richard's head.

With his shallow brain full of ambitious ideas, and hardly deigning to conceal his discontent, Buckingham took leave of Richard. On leaving the court of Westminster, he turned his face toward his castle of Brecknock, and by the way regaled his fancy with splendid visions of crowns and sceptres.

It happened that, on the day before the coronation, when Richard released the confederates of Hastings from the Tower, he found John Morton, Bishop of Ely, decidedly hostile to his pretensions. Unable to gain the support of the prelate, but unwilling, on such an occasion, to appear harsh, Richard delivered him to Buckingham, to be sent to Brecknock and gently guarded in that castle. At Brecknock, musing over his experiences as parson of Blokesworth, his expedition to Towton Field, his exile to Verdun, and his promotion to the see of Ely by a Yorkist king, Buckingham met the bishop when he went thither awakened from his dream of royalty, but panting for enterprise, however quixotic. After so many exciting scenes – suppers at Northampton, orations at the Guildhall, deputations to Baynard's Castle, progresses through London, and coronation banquets at Westminster – the duke doubtless found Brecknock intolerably dull. Feeling the want of company, he threw himself in the bishop's way, and gradually surrendered himself to the fascination of the wily churchman's conversation. The bishop, perceiving that envy was devouring the duke's heart, worked craftily upon his humor; and Buckingham, exposed to the influence of one of the most adroit politicians of the age, by degrees approached the subject which the bishop was anxious to discuss.

"I fantasied," such were the duke's words, "that if I list to take upon me the crown, now was the time, when this tyrant was detested of all men, and knowing not of any one that could pretend before me. In this imagination I rested two days at Tewkesbury. But, as I rode between Worcester and Bridgenorth, I met with the Lady Margaret, Countess of Richmond, now wife to the Lord Stanley, who is the daughter and sole heir of John, Duke of Somerset, my grandfather's elder brother (who was as clean out of my mind as if I had never seen her); so that she and her son, the Earl of Richmond, have, both of them, titles before mine; and then I clearly saw how I was deceived, whereupon I determined utterly to relinquish all such fantastical notions concerning the obtaining the crown myself."

The bishop listened eagerly, and doubtless felt much relieved at this announcement. He had soon more cause for gratification when Buckingham added, "I find there can be no better way to settle the crown than that the Earl of Richmond, very heir to the house of Lancaster, should take to wife Lady Elizabeth, eldest daughter to King Edward, the very heir of the house of York, so that the two Roses may be united in one."

"Since by your grace's incomparable wisdom this noble conjunction is now moved," exclaimed the bishop, almost overcome with joy at the duke's hitting "the mark he had himself aimed at" in forming his projects, "it is in the next place necessary to consider what friends we shall first make privy to our intention."

"By my troth," said the duke, "we will begin with the Countess of Richmond – the earl's mother – who knows where he is in Brittany, and whether a captive or at large."

The conspiracy originated at Brecknock rapidly became formidable. Reginald Bray, a retainer of the Countess of Richmond, was employed to open the business to his mistress; and the countess, approving of the project, commissioned her physician, Dr. Lewis, to treat with Elizabeth Woodville in the sanctuary.

Elizabeth interposed no obstacle to a project which promised her daughter a throne; and Bray, on finding that the negotiation had proved successful, was enabled to draw many men of high rank into the conspiracy. John, Lord Welles, true like his ancestors to the Red Rose, prepared to draw his sword for Lancaster. Peter Courtenay, Bishop of Exeter, and his brother Sir Edward, a man remarkable for his elegance and destined to wed King Edward's daughter Katherine, undertook to raise the inhabitants of the western counties. Dorset, escaping from the sanctuary, repaired to Yorkshire, trusting to rouse the men of the north against the usurper.

Buckingham meanwhile remained at Brecknock, gathering the Welsh to his standard, and dreaming, perhaps, of entering London as Warwick had entered London thirteen years earlier. The duke, indeed, seems to have had no conception of the hazard to which he was exposing himself. He had been so flattered that he believed himself hedged by the nobility of his name. He had not the elevation of soul to dream of a Barnet, and he had too much vanity to entertain a prophetic vision of the crowded market-place, the scaffold, and the block, which, with the headsmen, awaited unsuccessful rebellion.

CHAPTER XLVII

THE COMING MAN

At the time when Richard usurped the English throne, a young Welshman was residing at Vannes, in Brittany. His age was thirty; his stature below the middle height; his complexion fair; his eyes gray; his hair yellow; and his countenance would have been pleasing but for an expression indicative of cunning and hypocrisy. It was Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, grandson of Owen Tudor, and sole heir of his mother, Margaret Beaufort, granddaughter of John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford.

While passing his time at Vannes, Richmond was one day startled by the arrival of messengers with intelligence that a conspiracy had been formed at Brecknock to place him on the English throne, and give him in marriage a young woman who belonged to the house of York, which he had detested from his cradle, and who, moreover, had the disadvantage of being considered illegitimate. Richmond does not appear to have received the proposals with enthusiasm, and matters might never have been brought to a satisfactory issue but for the arrival of the Bishop of Ely. The prelate, by his diplomacy, however, removed all obstacles, and the Duke of Brittany, on being consulted, promised to aid the enterprise.

At that period, Dr. Thomas Hutton, a man of intellect and perception, was in Brittany as English embassador, ostensibly to ascertain whether or not Duke Francis gave any countenance to the Woodvilles, but, doubtless, with secret instructions to defeat the machinations of the exiles at Vannes. Hutton, who had an eye to see and a brain to comprehend, soon became aware of Buckingham's plot, and endeavored to persuade the Duke of Brittany to detain Richmond. But, when the duke, who was already committed, declined to interfere, the embassador sent such intelligence to England as enabled Richard to form a clear notion of the conspiracy formed to hurl him from the throne.

Nevertheless, Richmond, with forty ships and five thousand Bretons, sailed from St. Malo. But his voyage was the reverse of prosperous; and on the very evening when the adventurers put to sea a violent tempest dispersed the fleet. Only the ship which carried Richmond, attended by a single bark, held on her course, and reached the mouth of Poole Harbor, on the coast of Dorset.

And now the Welsh earl had startling proof of Hutton's vigilance. On approaching the English coast, Richmond perceived crowds of armed men, and immediately suspected a snare. However, he sent a boat ashore to ascertain whether they were friends or foes, and his messengers returned with information that the soldiers were friends, waiting to escort him to Buckingham's camp. But Richmond, too cautious to land with so slender a force in an enemy's country, resolved on sailing back to St. Malo. The wind being favorable, Richmond soon came in sight of Normandy, and after a short stay on that coast he returned to Brittany.

Meanwhile, Buckingham's insurrection began, and in autumn Richmond was proclaimed king at various places in England. At the same time, the duke, at the head of a large body of Welshmen, marched from his castle and moved toward the Severn, his first object being to join the Courtenays.

Matters immediately assumed a gloomy aspect; and Buckingham found that heading an insurgent army was less agreeable than dancing with princesses at Windsor, or displaying his gorgeous attire before the citizens of London. While he was blundering along the right bank of the Severn in search of a ford, autumnal rains rendered every ford impassable; and the river, rapidly overflowing its banks, inundated the country around. A scene replete with horrors was the consequence. Houses were overthrown; men were drowned in their beds; children were carried about swimming in cradles; and beasts of burden and beasts of prey were drowned in the fields and on the hills. Such a flood had never been experienced within the memory of man; and, for centuries after, it was remembered along the banks of the Severn as "the Duke of Buckingham's water."

Buckingham was rudely awakened from his delusions. The flooded river and broken bridges created difficulties with which he could not cope. His enterprise – from the beginning never very promising – became utterly hopeless; and the Welshmen, losing heart and finding no provision made for their subsistence, turned their thoughts affectionately to the rude homes and the rude fare they had left behind. The result soon appeared. The Celtic warriors pretended to regard the flood as a sign that the insurrection was displeasing to Heaven, deserted their standards in crowds, and, without exception, returned to their mountains.

Buckingham now lost courage; and, while his confederates – Dorset, the Courtenays, Lord Welles, Sir William Brandon, and Sir John Cheyney – escaped to Richmond in Brittany, the duke fled to Shrewsbury, and took refuge in the house of one of his retainers, named Humphrey Bannister. Tempted by the reward offered for Buckingham's apprehension, Bannister betrayed his master; and the duke, having been conveyed to Salisbury, was beheaded, without trial, in the market-place.

When the conspiracy of Brecknock had been crushed, Richard summoned a Parliament, which declared him lawful sovereign, entailed the crown on his son, and passed a bill of attainder against those who had taken part in Buckingham's attempt at king-making. Nevertheless, Richard did not feel secure. The dread of an invasion, and of his enemies uniting Richmond and Elizabeth, kept the usurper uneasy, and he set himself boldly to the scheme of getting both the Welsh earl and the English princess in his power. The persons who could aid him in this were Peter Landois and Elizabeth Woodville.

The Duke of Brittany now reigned no longer save in name, and Peter Landois – son of a tailor – ruled the province with more than ducal power. Peter, though elevated to so high a position, was not proof to the temptation of a bribe; and Richard, by means of gold, converted him from a friend to an enemy of Richmond, and obtained his promise to send the Welsh earl a prisoner into England.

With Elizabeth Woodville Richard was equally successful. That lady, weary of the sanctuary, not only listened to his proposals, but went with her daughters to court, where Elizabeth, the eldest, was treated with the utmost distinction. Richard is supposed to have intended to match the princess with his son, a boy of eleven, but the death of the prince at Middleham defeated this plan for reconciling conflicting claims.

No sooner, however, had Richard recovered from the grief caused by the death of his son, than he formed a new scheme for keeping Elizabeth in his family. His queen, the Anne Neville of other days, was in feeble health; and Richard, under the impression that she could not live long, determined to obtain a dispensation from Rome, and marry the princess.

Neither mother nor daughter appear to have objected to this scandalous project. Elizabeth Woodville wrote to the Marquis of Dorset to abandon Richmond's cause, as she had formed a better plan for her family; and Elizabeth of York, at the instigation of her mother, no doubt, wrote to Sir John Howard, now Duke of Norfolk, expressing her surprise that the queen should be so long in dying.

At length, in March, 1485, Anne Neville breathed her last, and Richard consulted Catesby and Ratcliffe as to the policy of espousing Elizabeth. Both protested against the project, declaring that such a marriage would shock both clergy and populace, and would, moreover, alienate the men of the north, hitherto so faithful to Richard as the husband of Lord Warwick's daughter. Richard, convinced, banished all thought of marrying Elizabeth; and, having sent her for security to the Castle of Sheriff Hutton, he prepared to encounter the coming man.

CHAPTER XLVIII

FROM BRITTANY TO BOSWORTH

On Christmas day, 1483, a memorable scene was enacted in the capital of Brittany. On that day, Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, appeared in the Cathedral of Rennes; before the high altar, and in the presence of the Marquis of Dorset and many other exiles the Welsh earl swore, in the event of being placed on the English throne, to espouse Elizabeth of York, and thereupon the marquis, with the other lords and knights, did him homage as to their sovereign. On the same day Richmond and the English exiles took the sacrament, and bound themselves by oath never to desist from making war against King Richard till they accomplished his destruction or his dethronement.

Within twelve months after this solemn ceremony, and while Richmond was musing over his prospects, his mother's chaplain one day arrived with a message to the effect that the Welsh earl was no longer safe in Brittany; and, after considering the matter, Richmond resolved upon an escape, and prepared to be gone. With this view he announced his intention to visit a friend in a neighboring village, and, without delay, mounted his horse as if to proceed on the way thither. After riding five miles, however, he entered a wood, and hastily exchanged clothes with one of his servants. Having assumed the character of a valet, Richmond again mounted, and traveling by by-paths without halting, save to bait the horses, he reached Angers, and, accompanied by the exiled lords, pursued his way to the court of France.

Events had recently occurred at the French court which secured Richmond a favorable reception. In the summer of 1483, Louis the Crafty had drawn his last breath, his son Charles then being a boy of thirteen. A struggle for power began between the young king's sister Anne, wife of the Sire de Beaujieu, and Louis, Duke of Orleans, heir-presumptive to the throne. Orleans, it seems, had formed an alliance with Richard; and Anne, from considerations of policy, determined to assist Richmond.

At Paris, therefore, Richmond was received with distinction; and, ere long, Anne, in the young king's name, agreed to furnish him with money and men to undertake an expedition against the King of England. Richmond then commenced preparations for the great adventure.

Matters, however, did not go quite smoothly; and Dorset, despairing, resolved to avail himself of Elizabeth Woodville's invitation; and, with this view, the marquis, who, though young, appears to have been false and calculating as his mother, forgot his oath in the Cathedral of Rennes, and left Paris secretly by night. His disappearance caused some consternation; for, though in most respects a man of arms would have been a greater loss, he was possessed of information which, conveyed to Richard, would have ruined every thing. Humphrey Cheyney, one of Sir John's brothers, was therefore dispatched in pursuit, and succeeded in bringing the renegade back to Paris.

Ere the escape of the marquis, Richmond had been joined by an Englishman whose presence lent dignity to the enterprise, and would have more than compensated for the loss of five hundred Dorsets.

A long and weary captivity, during which his only son had died in the Tower, and his wife lived by needle-work, had not broken the spirit of Oxford's earl. John De Vere was still ready for adventure; and no sooner did he learn that the partisans of the Red Rose were in motion, than, becoming eager to leave Hammes, he tried his eloquence on James Blount, captain of the fortress. Oxford's success was more signal than he anticipated. Won, and touched with admiration at the degree of courage that animated the earl after so long a captivity, Blount not only consented to set Oxford at liberty, but offered to accompany him to Richmond, and place the fortress at the adventurer's service. They went; and Richmond was delighted to have such a castle as Hammes at his disposal, and such a patrician as John De Vere at his right hand.

All that could be done in Paris having been accomplished, Richmond put Dorset in pledge for the money he had borrowed, and left the court of Paris for Harfleur. Having made all preparations, he and his English friends embarked, with a few pieces of artillery and about three thousand men, collected from the jails and hospitals of Normandy and Brittany, and described by Comines as "the loosest and most profligate fellows of all the country." On the last day of July, 1485 – it was a Sunday – the armament, leaving the mouth of the Seine, put to sea, and Richmond ordered the mariners to steer for Wales. The voyage was free from such disasters as attended Richmond's former expedition; and, after having been six days at sea, the adventurers sailed safely into Milford Haven. At the grand national harbor, which gives importance to that part of South Wales, Richmond debarked his soldiers without challenge.

On the morning of Sunday, the 21st of August, about three weeks after his landing, Richmond, having marched from Milford Haven without a check, encamped in Leicestershire at a place then known in the locality as Whitemoors, and erected his standard on the margin of a rivulet now known in the locality as the Tweed. To the north of Richmond's camp was a morass, and beyond the morass a spacious plain nearly surrounded by hills. At the farthest verge of these hills, about three miles north from the camp, but concealed from view by the elevated ground that intervened, was a little town, to which the inhabitants of that part of Leicestershire were long in the habit of repairing weekly to market. Since that time, however, the name of that market-town has become famous as the scene of a great battle, which destroyed a dynasty and overturned a throne. It was Bosworth.

CHAPTER XLIX

RICHARD BEFORE BOSWORTH

While Oxford was leaving Hammes, and Richmond was at Paris maturing his projects, and Reginald Bray was carrying messages from the English malcontents to the Welsh earl, the king appears to have been unaware of the magnitude of his danger.

Richard was not, however, the man to be surprised by armed foemen in the recesses of a palace. No sooner did he hear of an armament at the mouth of the Seine, than Lord Lovel was stationed at Southampton, Sir John Savage commissioned to guard the coasts of Cheshire, and Rice ap Thomas intrusted with the defense of Wales. At the same time, Richard issued a proclamation, describing Richmond as "one Henry Tudor, descended of bastard blood both by father's and mother's side;" who could have no claim to the crown but by conquest; who had agreed to give up Calais to France; and who intended to subvert the ancient laws and liberties of England.

Having thus endeavored to excite the patriotism of the populace, Richard, about midsummer, set up his standard at Nottingham, and around it, with the Earl of Northumberland at their head, came the men of the north in thousands. While keeping his state in Nottingham Castle, Richard heard of Richmond's landing at Milford Haven, and soon after learned, with indignation, that Rice ap Thomas had proved false; that Sir Gilbert Talbot, with two thousand retainers of his nephew, the young Earl of Shrewsbury, had joined the invaders; that, after leaving Shrewsbury, Richmond had pursued his way through Newport to Stafford, and from Stafford to Lichfield, and that men were rapidly gathering to his standard. Vowing vengeance, the king issued orders that his army should forthwith march southward to Leicester.

Meanwhile, many of the lords whom Richard had summoned did not appear; and Lord Stanley, feeling that he, as husband of the Countess of Richmond, was peculiarly liable to suspicion, sent to say that sickness alone kept him from his sovereign's side at such a crisis. But this apology did not prove satisfactory; and Richard having Stanley's son, Lord Strange, in the camp, ordered him to be secured, and made it understood that the son's life depended on the sire's loyalty.