Richard III and the Princes in the Tower E-Book

A. J. Pollard

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 359

Beschreibung

Richard III has divided opinion for over 500 years. Traditionally, he has been perceived as a villain, a bloody tyrant and the monstrous murderer of his innocent nephews. To others he was and remains a wronged victim who did his best for kingdom and family; a noble prince and enlightened statesman tragically slain. Richard III and the Princes in the Tower explores the story of Richard III and the tales that have been woven around the historic events, and discusses his life and reign and the disappearance of the Princes in the Tower. It also assesses the original sources upon which much of the history is based. A number of picture essays explore particular aspects of Richard III's life and reign: his birth sign of Scorpio, historical paintings, the symbolism of pigs and boars, Richard's saints, his books, the Princes, and cartoons and caricatures. This classic work is one that no enthusiast should be without.

Leseprobe

Fortune, attended by Reason and Virtue, turns her wheel full circle as a new king rises, the current ruler topples and the old is crushed. This was a familiar and commonplace image in the fifteenth century. Contemporaries well knew that Fortune was fickle, as events after Edward IV’s death amply demonstrated

Front cover illustrations: The Princes in the Tower (John Everett Millais, 1878)

(Royal Holloway picture collection, London) and the Tower of London (Unsplash).

First published 1991

First published in paperback 1993

This paperback edition first published 2024

The History Press

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Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© A.J. Pollard, 1991, 1993, 1995, 2024

The right of A.J. Pollard to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 80399 638 7

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

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Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

1 Early Stories of Richard III

2 Childhood and Youth, 1452–71

Richard III’s Birth Sign

Portraits of Richard III

3 Richard in the North, 1471–83

Pigs and Boars

4 Usurpation and Rebellion, 1483

5 The Fate of the Princes

The Princes

Historical Paintings of the Princes

6 The Reign, 1483–5

Richard III’s Saints

7 The Man

Richard III’s Books

8 Later Stories of Richard III

Cartoons and Caricatures

Appendix: Selected Documents

Sources

Further Reading

List of Illustrations

1 The wheel of fortune comes full circle (Martin le Franc, Lestrif de Fortune et Vertu, Flemish, late C15, BL MS Royal 16 F IV, fo. 3)

2 Richard III and Queen Anne (The Rous Roll, English, c. 1483, BL MS Add 48976, nos 62–3)

3 Teacher and pupils, from John Stanbridge, Parvulorum Institutio

4 Tudor Rose (Chroniques de France ou de St Denis, French, c. 1487, BL MS Royal 20 E III, fo. 30v)

5 John Rous (Latin version of Rous Roll)

6 Reginald Bray (Magnificat window, Great Malvern)

7 Christopher Urswick (brass rubbing, BL MS Add 32490 Z[31])

8 The monks of Crowland (Inspeximus, 1393, Bodl. MS Ashmole 1831)

9 John Argentine (brass rubbing, BL MS Add 32490 Z[7])

10 Letter to dean and chapter of Salisbury (BL Signet Register of Edward V and Richard III, MS Harley 433, fo. 273)

11 Angelo Cato

12 The kiss of Judas (book of hours, Dutch, c. 1490, KB MS 135 E 45, fo. 36v)

13 Devils attack murderers and tyrants (Le Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur, French, 3rd quarter C15, Bodl. MS Douce 134, fo. 122)

14 Leviticus (La Bible Hystoriale et les Hystoires Scolastiques, Flemish, 1479, BL MS Royal 18 D IX, fo. 173)

15 Antichrist (Le Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur, French, 3rd quarter C15, Bodl. MS Douce 134, fo. 4)

16 The basilisk (Flore de Virtu et de costumi, Italian, C15, BL MS Harley 3448, fo. 12v)

17 Children left to the care of their uncle (The History of the Two Children in the Wood, 1780)

18 Children abandoned in the wood (The History of the Two Children in the Wood, 1780)

19 The murderers fall out (The History of the Two Children in the Wood, 1780)

20 Cely Letter, June 1483 (PRO, SC 1/53/19A)

21 Portrait of a Lady (Penrith parish church)

22 Caesarean birth (Les Commentaires de Cesar, Flemish, 1473, BL MS Royal 16 G VIII, fo. 32)

23 Richard, duke of York (Trinity College, Cambridge)

24 Yorkist genealogy (Genealogical roll, English, temp. Edward IV, BL MS Add 18268A)

25 Pastoral scene (book of hours, Flemish, late C15, BL MS Add 35313, fo. 3)

26 Map of the British Isles (Portolano by Grazioso Benincasa, Venetian, 1473, BL MS Egerton 2855, fo. 8)

27 King in Parliament (Book of Statutes, English, C15, Corporation of London RO, Cartae Antiquae, CUST 7)

28 Gift of a livery collar (Nicholas Upton, Libellus de Officio Militari, English, 1458, BL MS Add 30946, fo. 82v)

29 Sir Thomas Wykeham (effigy, Broughton, Oxfordshire)

30 Hans Memlinc, The Donne Triptych, detail

31 Henry VI with lawyers (PRO, King’s Bench, Coram Rege Roll, Easter 38 Henry VI, KB 27/796 rot 1)

32 Petition to Richard of York (PRO, Warrants for the Great Seal, series I: council warrants, C 81/1546)

33 Yorkist family tree (Genealogical Roll, English, temp. Edward IV, BL MS Harley 7353, no. 11)

34 Battle of Northampton (Genealogical Roll, English temp. Edward IV, BL MS Harley 7353, no. 8)

35 Sandal Castle (Duchy of Lancaster maps and plans, 1562–4, PRO, MPC 97)

36 Bear badge (Fenn’s Book of Badges, English, c. 1466–70, BL MS Add 40742, fo. 10)

37 Sheriff Hutton, North Yorkshire

38 Hunting the stag (Gaston Phoebus, Livre de Chace, BL MS Add 27699, fo. 64)

39 Margaret of Anjou, c. 1463

40 Creation of Louis of Bruges as earl of Winchester (letters patent of Edward IV, 23 Nov. 1472, BL MS Egerton 2830)

41 Loan to Edward IV (PRO, Exchequer, Treasury of the Receipt Privy Seals for loans, E 34/1B)

42 Entries in calendar of a book of hours (English, 1480, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 54, fos 2v–3)

43 Execution of the Duke of Somerset (Historie of the Arrivall of Edward IV, English, C15, University of Ghent, MS 236)

44 Wheel of fortune (Genealogical Roll, temp. Edward IV, BL MS Harley 7353 no. 2)

45 Chertsey Abbey (Chertsey Cartulary, PRO, Exchequer, King’s Remembrancer, Miscellaneous Books, series I, E 164/25, fo. 222)

46 Pontefract Castle (Duchy of Lancaster maps and plans, 1562–4, PRO, MR 16)

47 Mount Grace Priory, North Yorkshire

48 Licence to Margaret Clifford (West Yorkshire Archive Service, photograph: Sotheby)

49 Seal of Lübeck (PRO, Exchequer, Treasury of Receipt Diplomatic Documents, E 30/557)

50 Anne Beauchamp, countess of Warwick (The Beauchamp Pageant, BL MS Cotton Julius B IV, pt 6, fo. 28)

51 Anne Neville and her two husbands (The Beauchamp Pageant C15, BL Julius B IV, pt 6, fo. 28)

52 Isabel Neville and Clarence (The Rous Roll, English, c. 1483, BL, MS Add 48976, nos 58–9)

53 Eagle badge (Fenn’s Book of Badges, BL MS Add 40742, fo. 6)

54 Gateway to Hornby Castle

55 William Burgh

56 South Cowton Castle

57 Sir Richard Conyers

58 Knaresborough Castle (Duchy of Lancaster maps and plans, 1562–4, PRO, MR 14)

59 Richard III’s admiralty seal (BL, seal CLI. 1)

60 Middleham Castle, North Yorkshire

61 Durham Cathedral

62 William Dudley’s seal (BL, seal CLIV. 92)

63 The Guildhall, York

64 Hugo van der Goes, James III of Scotland

65 Map of Scotland (John Hardyng’s Chronicle, Bodl. MS Arch Selden B 10, fo. 184)

66 Boating expedition (Chemin de Vaillance, Flemish, C15, made for Edward IV, BL Royal 14 E II, fo. 218)

67 Lord Hastings’s seal (BL MS Add Ch 19808)

68 Signatures of Edward V, Gloucester and Buckingham (BL MS Cotton, Vespasian F XIII, fo. 123)

69 Letter from duke of Gloucester as protector (BL MS Add Ch 5987)

70 Luton Guild Book

71 Troops surrounding a church (Les Commentaires de Cesar, Flemish, c. 1473, BL MS Royal 16 G VIII, fo. 292)

72 Earl Rivers’s coat of arms (BL MS Add 37340, fo. l0v)

73 Seal of Calais (PRO, Exchequer, Treasury of Receipt, Diplomatic Documents, E 30/548)

74 Bishop Stillington’s signature (Council Warrant, 1463, PRO Chancery, Warrants for the Great Seal, series I, C 81/1547 m 5 dorse)

75 Adultery (Gratian, Decretals, Cap XXI, Italian, C14, BL MS Add 15275, fo. 87v)

76 John Howard, Duke of Norfolk

77 Sir John Conyer’s coat of arms (BL MS Add 37340, fo. 10v)

78 Thomas Rotherham, Archbishop of York

79 Warrant for the trial of certain persons (signet letter, 29 July 1483, PRO, Chancery, Warrants for the Great Seal, series I, C 81/1392, no. 1)

80 Margaret Beaufort

81 Letter of Richard III to bishop of Lincoln (signet letter, 12 Oct 1483, PRO, Chancery, Warrants for the Great Seal, series I, C 81/1392, no. 6)

82The Pylgrymage of Sir Richard Guildford

83 Margaret Beaufort’s prayer book, c. 1500 (Westminster Abbey MS 39, fo. 1)

84 The Tower of London (Poems of Charles, duke of Orleans, Flemish, late C15, BL MS Royal 16 F II, fo. 73)

85 The Anlaby Cartulary (Fitzwilliam Museum MS 329, fo. 8)

86 Philippe de Commynes (Le Sejour de deuil pour le trespas de Messire Philippes de Commines, French, early C16, KB MS 76 E 13, fo. 4v)

87 Children’s bones

88 Elizabeth of York

89 Payment to captain of Calais (Accounts of the Treasurer of Calais, PRO, Exchequer, King’s Remembrancer, Accounts Various, E 101/200/15)

90 Perkin Warbeck’s signature (BL MS Egerton 616, fo. 6)

91 Treatise by Lewis Caerleon (Lewis Caerleon, Astronomical Tables etc., English, c. 1485, BL MS Royal 12 G I, fo. 8v)

92 Seal of Bermondsey monastery (PRO, SC13/H.82)

93 Elizabeth Woodville

94 Massacre of the Innocents (KB MS G 21, fo. 74v)

95Pearl (English, late C14, BL MS Cotton Nero A X, fo. 42)

96 Hunwick Hall Farm, Durham

97 Grants to Sir Richard Ratcliffe (Signet Register of Edward V and Richard III, BL MS Harley 433, fo. 285)

98 Viscount Lovell’s signature (Letters of denisation for John Giglis, PRO, Warrants for the Privy Seal, series I, PSO 1/64 no. 54)

99 Viscount Lovell’s garter stall plate (St George’s Chapel, Windsor)

100 Tomb of a boy, Sheriff Hutton, North Yorkshire

101 Earl of Westmorland’s tomb, Brancepeth, Durham

102 William Catesby (brass rubbing, BL MS Add 32940 N 46)

103 Titulus Regius (Parliament Roll, 1 Richard III, PRO, C 65/114)

104 Early requests document (Petition to Richard III, PRO Exchequer, Treasury of Receipt, Council and Privy Seal, E 28/29/16 v)

105 Court of King’s Bench (Inner Temple Library MS Misc 188)

106 Benevolences (PRO, Exchequer, Treasury of Receipt, Privy Seals for loans, E 34/1B)

107 Dyers at work (Bartholomaeus Anglicus, Liber de proprietatibus rerum, tr. Jean Corbechon, Flemish, 1482, BL MS Royal E III, fo. 269)

108 Edward of Middleham (The Rous Roll, English, c. 1483, BL MS Add 48976 no. 64)

109 Tomb effigy of Duke Francis of Brittany, Nantes

110 Anne of Beaujeu

111 Henry VII (Recueil d’Arras)

112 Dancing at Court (Jean de Meung, Roman de la Rose, French, late C15, Bodl. MS Douce 195, fo. 7)

113 Henry VI as a saint (book of hours, English, 1480, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 55, fo. 141v)

114 Adultery (Jean de Vignay, Legenda Aurea, French, 1480, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 22, fo. 91v)

115 Marriage within prohibited degrees of consanguinity (Gratian, Decretals, cap XXXV, Italian, C14, BL MS Add 15275, fo. 134)

116 Map of Shrewsbury (BL MS Royal 18 D III, fos 89v–90)

117 Licence for Dadlington chantry (signet letter, 23 Aug 1511, PRO, Warrants for the Great Seal, series II, C 82/367)

118 Richard III’s banner at Bosworth (BL MS Harley 4632, fo. 242)

119 John Sachaverel (brass rubbing, BL MS Add 32490 M 48)

120 Lancastrian rose (PRO, King’s Bench, Coram Rege Roll, Trinity 15 Henry VII, KB 27/956 rot. 1)

121 Vespasian (Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, Milan, c. 1443, Fitzwilliam Museum MS Maclean 162, fo. 164v)

122 Richard III (The Rous Roll, English, c. 1483, BL MS Add 48976 no. 17)

123 St Catherine (Pietro Carmeliano, Life of St Catherine, 1483–5, Bodl. MS Laud, Misc 501, fo. 2v)

124 Fortitude (Jacobus de Cessolis, Libellus de Moribus et . . . ludum Scacchorum, Italian, c. 1400, BL Add 15685, fo. 72)

125 Prayer for success against the Saracens (Book of Hours of Alphonso V of Aragon, Spanish, c. 1442, BL MS Add 28962, fo. 78)

126 Ramon Lull and a would-be knight (Ramon Lull, Le Livre de lordre de chevallerie, Flemish, late C15, BL MS Royal 14 E II, fo. 338)

127 Jousting (Jean de Waurin, Chronique d’Angleterre, vol. 3, Flemish, late C15, BL MS Royal 14, E IV, fo. 81)

128 Prostitute and client (misericord, Westminster Abbey)

129 Feasting (Jean de Waurin, Chronique d’Angleterre, vol. 3, BL MS Royal 14, E IV, fo. 265v)

130 Building (Piero de’ Crescenzi, Le Livre de Rustican de prouffiz ruraulx, French, late C15, BL MS Add 19720, fo. 27)

131 Coverham Abbey, North Yorkshire

132 Grant of arms to Thomas Barowe (BL MS Add 37687C)

133 Household at Mass (Book of Hours of Alphonso V of Aragon, BL MS Add 28962, fo. 281v)

134 Hawking (Devonshire Tapestries)

135 Minstrels entertain the court (Romance of Gyron le Courtois, Bodl. MS Douce 383, fo. 3)

136 The Hypocrite (Jean de Meung, Roman de la Rose, late C15, BL MS Egerton 2022, fo. 8v)

137 Dying man tormented by demons (Dream Poem, C15, BL MS Add 37049, fo. 42)

138 Marlon Brando as Don Corleone in The Godfather

139 Horace Walpole

140 J.L. David, Marie Antoinette on the way to the scaffold (Collection Edmond de Rothschild)

141 J.M.W. Turner, Barnard Castle

142 Richard III (National Portrait Gallery)

143 James Butler, statue of Richard III, Leicester

144 Moors above Middleham, North Yorkshire

145In the Shadow of the Crown, Susan Bowden, 1987

146Rose of Rapture, Rebecca Brandewyne, 1984

147This Ravished Rose, Anne Carsley, 1980

148The Trial of Richard III

149 Bedesman, Harewood, West Yorkshire

Picture Essays

1 Richard III’s birthday (book of hours, English, C15, Lambeth Palace, MS 474, fo. 7v)

2 Scorpio replacing Libra (Le Calendrier de Bergers, French, late C15, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 167, fo. 7v)

3 Scorpio and October (Hours of the Virgin, French, late C15, BL MS Egerton 2019, fo. 10)

4 Scorpio and the body (Tres Riches Heures de Jean Due de Berry, French, C15, Musee Conde MS 65, fo. 14v)

5 Scorpio and the penis (Guild Book of the Barber Surgeons of York, English, C15, BL MS Egerton 2572, fo. 50v)

6 Richard III as idealized monarch (The Rous Roll, English, c. 1483, BL MS Add 48976 no. 17)

7 Richard III as Edward IV’s right-hand man (Dictes of the Philosophers, tr. Earl Rivers, English, 1477, Lambeth Palace MS 265, fo. 1v)

8 Richard III represented heraldically (Salisbury Roll, BL Loan MS 90, p. 154)

9 Richard III wearing the garter (Jean de Waurin, Chronique d’Angleterre, vol. 1, Flemish, C15, BL MS Royal 15 E IV, fo. 14)

10 Detail of 9

11 Richard III, c. 1520 without deformity (Society of Antiquaries)

12 Richard III, c. 1520 with deformity (Royal Collection)

13 Detail of 12

14 Detail of 12

15 Stone Boar, The Bank, Barnard Castle

16 Glass Boar, St Martin-cum-Gregory, York

17 Wax Boar (Charter of Richard III, Glamorgan RO, MS D/D C1228)

18 Boar hat badge (Yorkshire Museum, York)

19 Boar sniffing a rose (Hours of the Virgin, Flemish, C15, BL MS Egerton, 1147, fo. 49)

20 Boar hunt (Devonshire Tapestries)

21 The boar slain (Devonshire Tapestries)

22 St Anthony protected by the pig (choir stalls, Carlisle Cathedral)

23 Ceiling boss, St Anthony’s pig (St Anthony’s Hall, York)

24 Edward V with his family (Dictes of the Philosophers, tr. Earl Rivers, English, 1477, Lambeth Palace MS 265, fo. 1v)

25 Edward V (Little Malvern Priory)

26 Richard of York (Canterbury Cathedral)

27 Edward V (Canterbury Cathedral)

28 The uncrowned Edward V (St George’s Chapel, Windsor)

29 Perkin Warbeck (Bibliothèque Municipale d’Arras)

30 Richard of York masquerading as John Clements (Hans Holbein, Sir Thomas More and his family, Nostell Priory)

31 Detail of 30

32 James Northcote, King Edward V and his brother, Richard, Duke of York murdered in the Tower by order of Richard III (Petworth House)

33 Murder of the Princes in the Tower (Cassell’s Illustrated History of England)

34 Paul Delaroche, Edward V and the Duke of York in the Tower

35 Sir John Everett Millais, The Princes in the Tower

36 Giovanni Battista Cipriani, Elizabeth, Queen of Edward IV parting with her youngest son

37 G.M., The Princes in the Tower (A Nursery History of England, Nelson, ed.)

38 St Cuthbert (York Minster)

39 St George (Church of St Peter and St Paul, Pickering)

40 St Ninian (book of hours, French, C15, BL MS Add 30761, fo. 97)

41 St Anthony (book of hours, French, early C15, BL MS Add 15677, fo. 150)

42 Alabaster of Sr Catherine

43 St Barbara (Hans Memlinc, The Donne Triptych)

44 St Margaret (Hours of the Virgin, French, late C15, BL MS Egerton 2019, fo. 216)

45 The Annunciation (book of hours, English, C15, Lambeth Palace MS 474, fo. 15)

46Visions of Matilda (Matilda of Hackenborn, The Booke of Gostlye Grace, English, mid-C15, BL MS Egerton 2006, fo.94v)

47 The siege of Meaux (Chroniques de France ou de St Denis, French, late C14, BL MS Royal 20 C VII, fo. 134)

48 Arms of Queen Anne (Vegetius, De Re Militari, English, late C15, BL MS Royal 18 A XII, fo.49)

49 Unadorned page (Romance of Tristan de Leonnais, French, C15, BL MS Harley 49, fo. 5v)

50 Hector goes into battle (Guido de Colonna, Historia Troiana, French, early C15, BL MS Royal 16 F IX, fo. 39)

51 After Quentin Massys, caricature of an old woman

52 John Tenniel, the duchess and her baby (Alice in Wonderland)

53 John Tenniel, Alice and the pig (Alice in Wonderland)

54 Four panels from Winters of Discontent (Jonny Quest, no 10)

55 Six panels from Winters of Discontent

56 Six panels from Anne Stanyon, Prove It!

Maps

1 Richard of Gloucester’s principal estates in the north

2 The itinerary of Richard III, July to Nov. 1483 (from R. Edwards, The Itinerary of Richard III, xxi)

3 Sites of Bosworth (adapted from P.J. Foss, ‘The Battle of Bosworth’, Midland History, 13 [1989], 25)

Picture Credits

Photographs and illustrations were supplied by, or are reproduced by courtesy of and the kind permission of the following: the author (96, picture essay 15); Bantam Books (145); The Bodleian Library, Oxford (8, 13, 15, 65, 123, 135); Bridgeman Art Library (picture essay 4, 34, 35, 51); British Library (1, 2, 4, 7, 9, 10, 14, 16, 22, 24, 25, 26, 28, 33, 34, 36, 38, 40, 44, 50, 51, 52, 53, 62, 66, 67, 68, 69, 71, 72, 75, 77, 84, 90, 91, 95, 97, 102, 107, 108, 115, 116, 118, 119, 122, 124, 125, 126, 127, 129, 130, 132, 133, 136, 137, picture essays 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 19, 40, 41, 44, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50); The Trustees of the British Museum (11); His Grace the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry (picture essay 8); Burrell Collection, Glasgow Museums and Art Galleries (54); Dean and Chapter of Carlisle Cathedral (picture essay 22); Collection Edmond de Rothschild (138); College of Arms (5); Comico – the Comic Company (picture essays 54, 55); Margaret Condon (17, 18, 19, 29); Corporation of London Record Office (27); Country Life (63); Dean and Chapter of Durham Cathedral (61); Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (42, 85, 114, 121, picture essay 2); Futura Publications, Macdonald & Co. (Publishers) Ltd (147); Photographic Giraudon (109, 110, 111, picture essay 29); Glamorgan Record Office (picture essay 17); Grafton Books, part of HarperCollins Publishers (146); Carolyn Hammond (145, 146, 147); the Master and Fellows of St John’s College, Cambridge (80); Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Den Haag (12, 86, 94); His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Trustees of Lambeth Palace Library (picture essays 1, 7, 24, 45); London Weekend Television (148); The Louvre, Paris (picture essay 34); National Gallery, London (30, picture essay 43); National Gallery of Scotland (62); National Portrait Gallery, London (86, 142); The National Trust (picture essay 32); Old School Arts Workshop, Middleham (55); Oxford University Press (picture essay 46); Paramount Pictures Corporation (138); Public Record Office, Crown Copyright (20, 31, 32, 35, 41, 45, 46, 49, 58, 73, 74, 79, 81, 89, 98, 103, 104, 106, 117, 120); Her Majesty the Queen (62, picture essays 12, 13, 14); The Master and Fellows of Queens’ College, Cambridge (93), Dr Jean Ross, (85); The Lord St Oswald, Nostell Priory (picture essays 30, 31); Michael J. Stead (37, 47, 60, 131, 144, picture essays 16, 23); Society of Antiquaries of London (picture essay 11); Sotheby’s (48); The Treasurer and Members of the Bench of the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple (105): the Board of Trustees of the Victoria and Albert Museum (39, 134, picture essays 20, 21, 36, 42); Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey (83, 87, 128); Christine Weightman (111); Geoffrey Wheeler (5, 6, 21, 23, 43, 70, 76, 99, 100, 139, 143, 149, picture essays 25, 26, 27, 28); Paul Mellon Collection, Yale Center for British Art (139); Dean and Chapter of York Minster (78, picture essay 38)

Picture research: Margaret Condon and Louise Kirby.

Acknowledgements

This book would not have been written had not Alan Sutton twisted my arm. The concept owes much to him; the execution to Peter Clifford and Jaqueline Mitchell who not only saw it through the press but also played a major role in its formation. But the concept could not have been realized without the tireless and frequently inspired picture research of Margaret Condon. In the attempt to match illustration with text, there has in reality been joint authorship. I would also like to record my thanks to Carole Rawcliffe, Pauline Bennett and Marie Dixon for helping with astrology and saints; to Geoffrey Wheeler for making both his substantial collection of photographs and his archive of cuttings and photocopies available to me; and to Carolyn Hammond for helping to hunt down some of the more bizarre manifestations of Ricardian enthusiasm. To both Geoffrey and Carolyn I apologise for the absence of frying pans. I would also like to express my gratitude to my family for putting up with long periods of seclusion in the study while I pursued this boring obsession; and to Dr Barnes Mair-Goyder for answering successive mayday appeals. Finally I would like to acknowledge the part played by several generations of final year students at Teesside Polytechnic with whom the ideas in this book were worked out. To them and other friends it is dedicated.

Hurworth-on-TeesSeptember 1990

Richard III and Queen Anne in full glory as king and queen of England, taken from the version of the Rous Roll completed between 1483 and 1485. It contains a eulogy of the king and a description of the queen as ‘semely, amiable and beuteus . . . and accordynge to the interpretation of hire name, Anne, full gracyous’

Chapter 1

Early Stories of Richard III

Richard III has divided opinion for five hundred years. To many he has always been a villain, a bloody tyrant and detestable child murderer deservedly overthrown. To others he was and remains a hero, a noble prince and enlightened statesman tragically slain. So strong is his appeal in the twentieth century that a flourishing society exists, dedicated to the task of clearing his name. Uniquely among the kings of medieval England he has the power to generate passionate commitment and blind devotion. In the eyes of some followers there are only anti-Ricardians and pro-Ricardians; pro-Ricardians fighting anti-Ricardians to vindicate Richard’s reputation. There are those for whom Richard’s innocence of the charges laid against him, especially that he murdered the Princes in the Tower, is an article of faith. In the study of history, in which it is assumed that historians approach their subject with an open and objective mind, this is, to say the least, unusual.

The subject of Richard III and the Princes in the Tower thus transcends conventional history. In the late twentieth century the discipline of history has come to mean the methodical search for and assessment of evidence of the past and the dispassionate recording and interpretation of that evidence. It is, as near as it can be, scientific in approach. But it was not always so. As the very word ‘history’ (storia in Italian) suggests, it was once, and some would argue essentially still is, a form of story-telling. What distinguished history from, say, epic or tragedy is that its stories were true stories from the past: poetic licence was excluded. In reality, while the power of the historian’s stories derived from the fact that they were believed to be true, it never was and never has been possible for the historian to tell the facts as they were. As Sir Philip Sidney acidly commented in the sixteenth century, he was ‘loaden with old mouse-eaten records, authorising himself (for the most part) upon other histories, whose greatest authorities are built upon the notable foundation of hearsay’.1 Furthermore in telling the story built upon the foundation of hearsay the historian embellished and adorned it to impart moral and political lessons. Thus dialogue would be invented or unspecified reliable sources would be called upon. This is exactly what Sir Thomas More did to brilliant effect in his influential History of King Richard III.

A teacher imparts moral and political lessons to his pupils. From a woodcut published by Wynkyn de Worde at approximately the same time as Thomas More was writing his history of Richard III with a similar purpose

An appreciation of the literary nature of history is of particular importance in the matter of Richard III precisely because there are two contradictory stories in circulation. The conventional historical assumption would be that one is true, the other is false; the historian’s function being to deploy all his or her sophisticated professional skills to determine which. But, not only does the very nature of the events at the time and the inadequacy of the surviving evidence make it impossible to resolve many of the contradictions, it is also apparent that after five hundred years the stories have generated lives of their own that transcend any mere factual truth that lies hidden and lost to the searching historian: they have themselves become inseparable from the past of which they tell.

The earliest, best known and dominant story is that of the cruel tyrant who murdered his innocent nephews in the Tower. It is enshrined in William Shakespeare’s King Richard III, written and first performed in the 1590s. The play has left its indelible mark on perceptions of Richard III. Shakespeare neither invented the story nor wrote Tudor propaganda; all he did was to dramatize the widely believed and conventional account of his day. One hundred years after the events, he recreated on the stage what he believed in good faith to have happened. His main sources, such as Holinshed’s Chronicles, carried the standard and accepted account of the life and times of Richard III and the terrible murders of the Princes in the Tower. The origins of Shakespeare’s portrait of Richard III may lie in Henry VII’s propaganda, but by the late sixteenth century propaganda had been transformed into historical fact.

An unusual reversed Tudor Rose set in a garter forms part of the decorative border of a chronicle acquired by Henry VII. From the beginning of his reign he deployed the union rose to symbolize the creation of harmony and peace out of the civil war illustrated by a siege in progress at the top of the page

Henry VII, even before he was king, presented himself as a saviour rescuing England from evil tyranny. His messages to supporters in England described Richard III as ‘that homicide and unnatural tyrant which now unjustly bears dominion over you’.2 Soon after he took the throne Henry condemned Richard as ‘the enemy of nature’ and, in his first Parliament, as a man guilty of the crime of the ‘shedding of infants’ blood’.3 Government-inspired publications lost no time at all in presenting the late king as an evil tyrant and the new monarch as a healer of old wounds and a restorer of justice.

Propaganda is not necessarily ill-founded. Would historians today wish to dismiss as a complete tissue of lies the propaganda put out by the Allies against Hitler during and immediately after the Second World War? Governments often need to exploit all the media at their disposal to explain their policies. Independent and impartial contemporary evidence is always needed to distinguish between that which is information and that which is disinformation. Unfortunately, this is almost totally lacking for Richard III. All the accounts of his reign written after Henry VII became king in 1485 are compromised. The works of Sir Thomas More and Polydore Vergil, both composed some thirty years after the event, are histories, not sources, heavily influenced by the official interpretation and the memories of the victors. In the case of Vergil the reminiscences of men like Fox, Bray and Urswick who happily recalled the experience of exile and conspiracy before 1485 are invaluable, but the viewpoint is inevitably partisan.

A self-portrait by John Rous, the Warwickshire chantry priest whose history of the reign of Richard III is unreliable as much because he was out of touch with events as because he was highly partisan

London chroniclers, such as Robert Fabyan, author of the Great Chronicle, were men who had lived through and witnessed some of the most dramatic events in 1483, but they wrote about them much later and were influenced by orthodox interpretation. It is now almost impossible to determine how much of what they wrote was their own independent opinion and an accurate recollection of the events they described two decades later. Similarly one cannot rely on John Rous, writing in his History of the Kings of England between 1487 and 1491, as supplying direct, impartial evidence. His hostility to Richard III in this account, although absent from an earlier comment on the king written before 1485, is transparent. Moreover, an old chantry priest living in seclusion near Warwick, while he would have known about Richard’s religious benefactions and have been at hand when the royal progress passed by in August 1483, would have been too far from the centre of events to pick up more than gossip on most of the main political issues.

Lastly, for all its apparent objectivity and immediacy, the memoir known as The Second Contination of the Crowland Chronicle is not necessarily trustworthy. It was written in the spring of 1486 by a senior civil servant who had been, unlike Rous, at the very centre of events since 1459. However, this was still seven months after Henry VII’s victory; time enough for him to have been influenced by the new king’s propaganda. Thus he greets Henry as, ‘an angel sent from Heaven through whom God had deigned to visit his people and to free them from the evils which had hitherto afflicted them beyond measure’.4 His awareness that a red rose had avenged the white reveals that he was already familiar with the symbolism deployed by the new king in his propaganda. His story, too, is coloured by his knowledge of what happened on and after 22 August 1485 and the current perception of the immediate past. He may independently, of his own conviction, have shared that view; but how can we be sure?

There is but one narrative account of events in 1483 and a handful of passing comments which predate Richard III’s death. Dominic Mancini was an Italian friar who happened to be in London during the spring and early summer of 1483 and thus a witness to the events which saw Richard become king. He wrote the story of what he had seen before the end of November of that year. Not discovered until 1934, Mancini’s account remarkably confirmed the character sketch and interpretation offered by early-Tudor writers. Mancini too, in 1483, suspected that the princes had been murdered, although he honestly admitted that he did not know for sure. In Mancini there appears superficially to lie independent support for the official account. However, a close reading of his text reveals that the author, who probably did not speak English, relied for his information on gossip being picked up by the Italian community in London and the heart-rending story told to him by John Argentine, physician to Edward V and the last of his household to remain in attendance on him. Argentine’s story, as incorporated in the text, is therefore the story of those loyal to Edward V whom Richard III removed from power. In so far as Mancini tells a story deeply hostile to Richard III, it is the story of the losers in 1483 who became the victors in 1485. It is the story from the same side. Indeed Argentine prospered after 1485; he was known by both More and Vergil and may well have been one of the oral sources for their histories. Far from being independent of the ‘Tudor myth’, it is closely linked with it.

The memorial brass of Christopher Urswick and a portrait of Sir Reginald Bray as donor in the Magnificat window at Great Malvern. Urswick and Bray were two of Henry VII’s closest aides, who provided Polydore Vergil with valuable first-hand accounts of recent history

The monks of Crowland kneel before three kings in the illuminated initial letter of the confirmation of their charters issued in 1393. The second continuation of their chronicle was written not by one of their number, but by an anonymous visitor in April 1486

The memorial brass of John Argentine, physician to Edward V, who was Mancini’s principal source of information for the events of the summer of 1483

All that is left for the historian from before 1485 with which to attempt to test the official account are scraps of praise from miscellaneous sources. Thomas Langton, bishop of St David’s wrote in August 1483 to his friend the prior of Christ Church, Canterbury telling him what a fine king Richard promised to make:

he contents the people where he goes best that ever did prince; for many a poor man that hath suffered wrong many days have been relieved and helped by him and his commands in his progress. And in many great cities and towns were great sums of money given him which he hath refused. On my trouth I liked never the condition of any prince so well as his; God hath sent him to us for the weal of us all.5

Here is the very reverse of Henry VII’s propaganda. Richard is the saviour sent from heaven. But this too is to be treated with caution. The author was party to Richard’s triumphal progress undertaken shortly after his coronation and shared the euphoria of the event. He had also been promised promotion to the see of Salisbury by his king. He was not exactly impartial himself. Sadly, no one took it upon himself, either before or immediately after 1485, to write a full narrative account of Richard’s reign from the king’s side for us to balance against the other hostile histories.

There is, therefore, no reliable, well-informed, independent and impartial source upon which the historian can call for the events of 1483–5. Although there are grounds for doubt, it is not possible to verify the version propagated by Henry VII. It has been argued that both Mancini and Crowland were close enough to events for their interpretations to be relied upon. In truth neither is to be perceived as offering objective evidence; they are highly subjective, indeed self-consciously literary, tales. Mancini’s patron, Angelo Cato, was so fascinated by what had happened in England in the summer of 1483 that he could not hear it told too often:

You have often besought me, Angelo Cato, most reverend father in God, to put in writing by what machinations Richard the Third who is now reigning in England, attained the high degree of kingship, a story which I had repeatedly gone over in your presence.6

Dated 8 October 1483 and noted at the head as a model letter, this is the office copy of Richard III’s recommendation of Thomas Langton to the Dean and Chapter of Salisbury Cathedral as their next bishop. Richard’s patronage of Langton helps explain his favourable opinion of the king

A portrait medallion of Angelo Cato, archbishop of Vienne, who was Mancini’s patron and the commissioner of his history of Richard III’s seizure of the throne

And so Mancini did. He told a good story. It is the tale of how Richard III, who all but the most discerning believed to be a man of honour and probity, successfully plotted to seize the throne from his nephew. ‘Actuated by ambition and an insane lust for power’, Richard cunningly exploited hostility to the queen and most of her family first of all to make himself protector and then king. He used his high standing and popularity as a screen. He was a master of deceit and duplicity. Only occasionally, as when his brother Clarence was killed, could he not dissimulate as well. So complete was his duplicity that only a few realized what he was up to. Only when it was too late was it generally realized what his aim was. But then he was cursed with a fate worthy of his crimes.7 It is a highly moral tale on the theme of devilish deceit, but one in which the author cannot disguise his grudging admiration for the sheer cunning of its central character.

Duplicity is a central characteristic of Richard III in all the early tellings of this tale. ‘He contrived a desolate deceit; here’s his deceit between his eyes’, exulted Dafydd Llwyd, the bard celebrating Henry VII’s victory in 1486.8 Two or three years later John Rous strikingly commented:

And like a scorpion he combined a smooth front with a stinging tale. He received his lord king Edward V blandly with embraces and kisses, and within three months or a little more he killed him together with his brother.9

Judas betrays Christ with a kiss in the garden of Gethsemane, an image exploited by Rous and More when they wrote of Richard III’s disloyalty to Edward V. This is taken from a fifteenth-century book of hours

He was both a Judas and a poisonous arachnid. Polydore Vergil, more prosaically said the same: ‘truly he had a sharp wit, provident and subtle, apt both to counterfeit and dissemble’.10 But Thomas More returned to the Judas theme. ‘He was close and secret, a deep dissembler, lowly of countenance, arrogant of heart, outwardly companionable where he inwardly hated, not letting to kiss whom he thought to kill.’11 The figure made famous by Shakespeare was clearly established from a very early date.

Devils attack murderers and tyrants with spears and halberds as they lie in Hell. An image such as this, from a contemporary treatise on Antichrist, was probably in the mind of the Crowland Continuator when he wrote that Richard dreamt of being tormented by demons

Another of Shakespeare’s themes was introduced into the story after 1485; the idea that after committing his terrible crimes in 1483, Richard was wracked by a guilty conscience and finally punished by God for his sins. In 1486 the Crowland Chronicler told of the report that on the night before Bosworth he had seen ‘in a terrible dream, a multitude of demons apparently surrounding him’;12 a tale upon which More elaborated with relish:

For I have heard by credible report of such as were secret with his chamberers that, after this abominable deed was done [the murder of the princes], he never had quiet of mind. . . . He took ill rest at nights, lay long waking and musing. . . . troubled with fearful dreams, suddenly sometimes start up, leap out of his bed and run about his chamber; so was his restless heart continually tossed and tumbled with the tedious impression and stormy remembrance of his abominable deed.13

And Vergil completed the moral. Despite his efforts subsequently by good deeds to merit God’s pardon, ‘the miserable man had suddenly such an end [at Bosworth] as wont is to happen to them that have right and law, both of God and of man, in like estimation as will, impiety and wickedness.’14 The sinner, in the end, meets his just deserts, destroyed in part from within by his own conscience.

The message is clear; cheats do not prosper, crime does not pay. A third strand was quickly added to this configuration. Richard III was said to be physically deformed; the physical deformity symbolizing his moral depravity. Rous was the first to comment on his uneven shoulders; although he had to add subsequently which shoulder was higher than the other.15 Two or three years later, a drunken schoolmaster in York was reported to have declared that the late king was a crookback.16 By the second decade of the sixteenth century this physique was well established. More wrote, ‘He was little of stature, ill-featured of limbs, crook-backed, his left shoulder much higher than his right.’ For good measure he added, ‘It is for truth reported that the Duchess his mother had so much ado in her travail that she could not be delivered of him uncut; and that he came into the world feet forward. . . . and (as the fame runneth) also not untoothed.’17 He thus added to Rous’s tale of an unusual birth, full of ominous portent.

The frontispiece to the book of Leviticus in a biblical history owned by Edward IV shows animals being sacrificed in the temple while the hunchback is excluded as unfit to enter the Holy of Holies. The depiction of Richard III as a hunchback, unfit to be king, almost certainly derives from this literary source

However, there is no contemporary description of Richard III to confirm any physical deformity. Mancini, who saw him, says nothing of his appearance, which would seem to suggest that it was unexceptional. A German visitor in 1484, Nicholas von Poppelau wrote later in his journal that the king was three fingers taller than him, much leaner and more delicate. He noted no deformity.18 The earliest surviving copy of a contemporary portrait of the king (c. 1512–20) gives no indication of a hunchback; only later were portraits doctored to give the ‘correct’ resemblance. The inspiration for Richard Ill’s physical deformity is almost certainly biblical. Leviticus, 21: 16–23 sets down that a hunchback is one of the blemishes which exclude a man from the Holy of Holies. By extension, a crooked body contained a crooked mind. Thus was the idea of deformity elaborated and enlarged to stand as an emblem for the inner wickedness of the man.19

The two-faced Antichrist, whose devilish features are hidden behind a smooth front, sows discord in the world. Thomas More portrayed Richard as just such a figure

The moral and literary dimensions to the early story of Richard III were brought together to powerful effect in Sir Thomas More’s History of the Reign of Richard III