On 9 April 1483 King Edward IV died. Contemporaries reacted to the news with anxiety and fear. Even before the King’s burial there was a sense of foreboding about the future. The King’s eldest son by Elizabeth Woodville should now be crowned as Edward V, but one writer was unsure what would really happen. It was as if he sensed the tension at the heart of the house of York. Now that the sovereign was dead, he warned, ‘we do not know who will become our lord and rule over us’.1
News took time to travel in the Middle Ages, and the group of Woodvilles in London, the Queen, her relatives and the younger of the two princes in the Tower, were at an immediate advantage. They moved quickly, securing the royal treasure, gaining control of the fleet and bringing forward the planned coronation of the young Edward V, to be backed by an army of their supporters. Edward himself was at Ludlow on the Welsh Marches, with his uncle Earl Rivers. Richard was furthest away, in the north of England.
But it was Richard who responded most decisively. Under the guise of a rendezvous with the young King – to lend him support as he journeyed to the capital – he seized him and arrested his followers. This was the first portent of the political upheaval that had been feared and panic ensued in London, particularly amongst the Woodville faction. The Queen sought sanctuary at Westminster Abbey with her younger son and daughters. The remnants of the family were unable to raise an army to contest Richard’s advance, and he entered the capital unopposed on 4 May.
What do these actions of Richard tell us? Here was an opportunity to translate the more nebulous concept of family legitimacy into real action, and he took it with conviction and authority. The requirement of realpolitik was to wrongfoot those who would not see his claim to the throne as rightful successor to be justified. For what the house of York now envisaged was divisive and there would be many who remained loyal to the memory of Edward IV and his designated succession.
At some point, and it is impossible to know when, Richard must have decided not to advance his own claim to the throne at this crucial moment. Instead, he would wait until his own position was further strengthened. In the summer of 1469 his brother Clarence had also gained control of the King, but he had been unable to capitalise on this advantage. A resurgence in support of Edward IV had thwarted him, a drama Richard had observed at close quarters. He would now demonstrate what he had learned from his brother Clarence’s mistakes.
Richard stated publicly his intention to protect the young King, and reinforced a popular view that it was the Woodville faction who were not to be trusted. These utterances carried enough plausibility for him to be chosen protector by the council at a meeting on 10 May. At this stage it still appeared that Richard was fulfilling his brother’s intentions for the governance of the realm.
But for the house of York a far greater principle was at stake: that if Edward IV’s designated successor were crowned, the rights of a bastard line would be confirmed on the throne of England. A high-level meeting had taken place at Baynard’s Castle, Cecily’s London residence, three days earlier, on 7 May. It had been agreed in the presence of the Archbishop of Canterbury that Edward IV’s will would not be executed. This gives us a clear indication of the family’s evolving strategy.
Naturally, Edward had believed his successor would be his elder son by Elizabeth Woodville, and his will, updated and revised shortly before his death, contained bequests and provisions for his heir and other offspring. Goods that he had wished to pass on to chosen beneficiaries were now confiscated on the authority of the Archbishop. The decision was one of powerful symbolic importance, the beginning of the formal setting aside of Edward IV’s authority and legitimacy, for what more intrinsic right can there be than to have one’s will enacted? Under the auspices of his mother, the right of the late King to determine dynastic succession was now undermined. An illegitimate son had no right to his legacy.2 These rights would now pass back to what the family regarded as the legitimate line, that is Richard, the true surviving son of the Duke of York. It appears from the entry in his register that the Archbishop of Canterbury was highly impressed by the person and presence of Cecily, whose rank and dignity within the realm he extolled. Clearly this most unusual decision required the moral authority of Cecily herself, and the choice of her residence for the meeting probably meant that these events were taking place with her sanction. For the foremost churchman in the land to give his consent to this measure, we can assume that persuasive evidence was offered to justify it. It is possible that at this stage Cecily revealed to the Archbishop that her eldest son had been a bastard. If so, what had previously been spoken of only in high emotion and within the family, was emerging as a measured rationale for ruthless public action.
Once the house of York had set aside the King’s will, with the approval of the ecclesiastical authorities, it followed that the position of his intended heir was also in jeopardy. It was vital not to move too quickly, however, and the grounds set out in Baynard’s Castle were not widely disseminated at this time. The lessons of 1469 had been digested, and it was felt necessary to proceed cautiously in order to retain control. This is just what Richard appears to have done.
In the immediate aftermath of the decision at Baynard’s Castle, Richard took day-to-day control of government in his role of protector. He concentrated initially on routine business. The twelve-year-old Edward V was placed in the residential quarters of the Tower of London and preparations for his coronation seemed to be going ahead.
It made sense for Richard not to show his hand too soon. It is worth recalling likely family tradition around his father’s attempt to take the throne in 1460.York had acted in a bold and overt manner, openly displaying his intentions. When he reached Westminster Hall he strode up to the vacant throne and laid his hand on it in full public view. Opponents and doubters understood him clearly, and therefore had time to determine their own course of action and frustrate his ambition. He was forced to accept a compromise, being recognised as heir apparent rather than actual king, an arrangement which antagonised his enemies and led to the Wakefield campaign, whilst leaving his principal goal unachieved. The cruel ‘coronation’ after the battle mocked his pretensions.
Cecily, who had been called to York’s side as he progressed to London, would have remembered this all too clearly. By acting covertly and with prudence, Richard had the chance to avenge Clarence and put right the perceived wrong done to his father. Cecily, too, had shown a gift for dissimulation in her behaviour toward Margaret of Anjou, claiming that her husband supported the Lancastrian regime of Henry VI when this was far from being the case. Her political subtlety and craft may have informed and guided her son at this momentous time. Thus in Richard’s response to the challenge of 1483 we see united the experience and acumen of his Yorkist progenitors.
The flurry of activity leading to Richard’s appointment as protector was followed by a month of relative calm, a pause that gave the house of York a sustained opportunity to consider and to develop its strategy. There then followed a sudden and rapid sequence of events that convulsed the body politic. Richard wrote to his supporters in the north, expressing his fear that a powerful Woodville conspiracy was out to destroy him, and seeking military reinforcement. He arrested a number of councillors and executed the late King’s leading supporter, William, Lord Hastings. He ensured the younger of the two princes was taken from sanctuary into his own custody. He ordered the execution of the young King’s uncle, Earl Rivers, and others in his following. Then, as an army of his northern allies moved on the capital, Richard publicised his own claim to the throne for the first time.
Years of hatred for the Woodvilles were now unleashed in a murderous family vendetta. The ferocity shown here was reminiscent of 1469. Whether or not the Woodvilles actually presented a threat of the magnitude claimed, there was an abiding suspicion of their intentions, and this was all the justification the house of York needed to strike.
Once again Cecily’s house was the location, on 25 June, as a claim to the throne was at last set out. Richard sought acclamation, and crucial information had now to be revealed in order for a popular mandate to be achieved. This was done, and the illegitimacy of Edward IV publicly declared. It was announced that Edward had been conceived in adultery, and was in every way unlike his supposed father. The physical dissimilarity between them was emphasised, both in height (York had been short whereas Edward was unusually tall) and facial resemblance. In contrast, Richard’s likeness to his father was seen as clear proof of his legitimacy. It is unusual in any case to find so great a discrepancy between the height of a father and his son. The fact that attention was called to it in an age when details of physical appearance were less remarked upon, emphasises how striking this must have been. It would be just the kind of matter a family would comment upon amongst themselves, and this painful area of uncertainty was now shared with a public which was invited to draw its own conclusions.3
The astonishing information was disseminated widely. It was preached in open-air sermons within the capital, formed part of an address to the mayor and dignitaries of the city, and most importantly, was one of the cornerstones of the petition of assembled magnates and gentry, apparently prepared to accept Richard’s right to rule. The initial reaction of many was a stunned disbelief. Men stood in silence, hardly able to comprehend what they were hearing. Some were suspicious and fearful, seeing this as little more than a flimsy pretext for Richard’s ruthless seizure of power. Such suspicions were fanned by the way Edward IV’s illegitimacy was announced. The house of York now wanted Edward’s bastardy widely known, but remained unwilling to submit their evidence to any process of formal verification. Instead, it hung in the air, whilst other vital arguments were provided in support of Richard’s accession. These included a different revelation – that Edward had been pre-contracted to marry another woman, which at this time rendered his union with Elizabeth Woodville invalid and its issue illegitimate. And it was the latter case that now emerged as the prime justification for Richard’s actions.
It seems that there had been a change of plan within the family. But it was hurriedly executed and closer examination reveals an underlying confusion. The idea of pre-contract came somewhat in advance of the selection of a candidate for intended bride. The allegation itself was a shrewd choice, for Edward IV’s womanising behaviour gave it a general plausibility. However, it was first alleged that such a contract had been negotiated with a foreign princess. The possibility of another contract then emerged, this time with one of Edward’s mistresses, Elizabeth Lucy. There is evidence to suggest that Cecily was behind both these charges. But when a candidate was finally agreed upon, Lady Eleanor Butler, the supposed secret betrothal was revealed by the Bishop of Bath and Wells, Robert Stillington. It was most convenient, to say the least, that a senior churchman who had been aware of an impediment for twenty years should suddenly choose to reveal it now.
Interestingly, Stillington had backed Warwick and Clarence’s earlier imprisonment of Edward IV, and as chancellor had been in frequent contact with Warwick in August 1469, when rumours of Edward’s bastardy were first put about. And when the same accusation re-appeared at the time of Clarence’s trial and execution in February 1478, he was briefly imprisoned for words uttered against the King. It was helpful that a justification which the house of York wished to circulate was now endorsed by this most amenable Bishop.
Why might this alternative justification be needed? The public announcement of Edward IV’s bastardy was shocking enough for contemporaries. To claim his marriage was invalid as well almost invited disbelief. As a result, some were openly sceptical. Dominic Mancini met those in the capital who believed Richard had been overcome by an insane lust for power. Historians have placed little credence in the arguments he advanced. Yet there is a different way of reading the evidence, if we allow for the part played by Richard’s mother in the establishment of his claim. Her disclosure in relative privacy was one thing, but a full ecclesiastical examination, which would then be required to verify her astounding allegation regarding her eldest son, would have been quite another. She was now elderly, a little over sixty-eight years old. Presented with this humiliating prospect, it may have been felt necessary to protect her. Perhaps at the eleventh hour this proud and distinguished house shrank from the exposure of its matriarch as an adulteress. We may find it quite bewildering that a family that would not flinch from cold-blooded murder hesitated at this point. Once again, it shows us in chilling fashion the gulf between those inside such a family and those thrust beyond it. The charge that the Woodville marriage was invalid would be used to establish the illegitimacy of the princes instead.
If this was the case, it is revealing that the imputation of Cecily’s adultery was mentioned at all. She would have been more fully shielded from scandal if these revelations had been omitted. Despite the embarrassment involved, and the inevitable slur on Cecily’s reputation, it seems her adultery was the real reason for the house of York’s action and the family was unable to entirely lay it aside.
The matter of Edward IV’s illegitimacy was still being referred to, albeit more obliquely, the following year when parliament approved Richard’s title as King. Richard’s birth in England was given substantial emphasis, as having placed his parentage and status beyond doubt, in implicit contrast to that of his brother Edward. This was more than just propaganda for public consumption. It found its way into Richard’s personal book of hours, in which the King proudly recorded his birth at Fotheringhay, in England. The mention of this matter in an entirely private manuscript emphasises its central importance to Richard, and once more indicates its significance within the family.4
This portrayal of Cecily gives her for the first time an active role in the events of 1483, as a matriarch vigorously pursuing a family strategy. It is difficult to assess the political influence of a medieval woman of rank and standing. Such influence was covert rather than overt, behind the scenes rather than in the thick of the action. Images of women of power show them watchfully observing events. Their manner is discreet rather than obvious, and sources of the time, whether chronicles or documents, are less likely to pick up their activities. Richard’s use of his mother’s residence at Baynard’s Castle has been noted, but its significance not fully understood. It has not been known whether Cecily was actually there at the time. There is also the question of her piety. Her increasing devotion to the Bridgettine order is seen as excluding a political role. Yet the career of Margaret Beaufort during the reign of her son, Henry VII, shows that genuine piety did not preclude an active political presence. Tudor legend ensured Cecily was distanced from the machinations of Richard’s reign. The Tudor court historian Polydore Vergil reported Cecily’s bitter complaint that Richard had slandered her reputation.5 By the time of Shakespeare she angrily curses him. I have already rehearsed the grounds for Cecily’s involvement in the extraordinary events of Edward IV’s reign. In stark contrast to the Tudor account, I now wish to share my evidence for the part she played in advancing the cause of her son Richard.
I will start with an important and neglected remark by a well-informed minister within the Tudor government. Thomas Cromwell was Henry VIII’s personal secretary. In 1535 he acknowledged, in the course of a diplomatic exchange, that at the time Richard seized the throne Cecily actually gave a formal statement, before witnesses, that her son Edward IV was a bastard.6 The gloss Cromwell put on this was further proof of Richard’s wickedness; he had callously intimidated his mother into doing it. But his confirmation that the testimony happened establishes other vital pieces of the story. It corroborates the thrust of Dominic Mancini’s comment. First Cecily flew into a terrible rage, and let slip that Edward was the product of an adulterous affair, an incident I have placed in the spring of 1469. Then she was later willing to make a formal deposition to that effect. A date for the latter can now be suggested. Cromwell believed some form of statement was made around the time Richard’s claim was first aired in public, in a sermon of 22 June 1483, preached at St Paul’s Cross by Ralph Shaw. This would put Cecily at Baynard’s Castle with her son Richard during these crucial few days. The sermon by Shaw astounded those who heard it. It alleged Edward was conceived in adultery, and was:
in every way unlike the late Duke of York, whose son he was formerly said to be, but Richard... who altogether resembled his father, was to come to the throne as legitimate successor.
One might accept the Tudor account that Cecily’s role was passive – she was coerced into such a deed by Richard. But further information undermines this scenario. We now turn to the pre-contract intended to render Edward’s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville invalid. Having baulked at an official, public verification of Cecily’s adultery it was upon the discovery of this pre-contract that Richard’s claim would finally rest. Again, Dominic Mancini gives us an important insight into what was happening. He tells us that a different candidate was originally selected. It was first put about that Edward went through a form of proxy marriage with a French princess. Such an event might be placed during the Earl of Warwick’s visit to France in 1464, or in earlier negotiations between the Duke of York and the French crown. Richard would have only been a child at this time and his mother was the likeliest source for this initial attempt to discredit the Woodville marriage.
Then there is the revealing digression made by Thomas More. I have suggested it was provided by Edward IV’s mistress, Elizabeth Shore. This is a hostile view of Cecily that shows her determined to damage Edward’s marriage. More tells us of an attempt by her to find out if he had already been pre-contracted to a certain Elizabeth Lucy, the probable mother of his bastard son, Arthur. Cecily summoned Lucy before her and put her under considerable pressure to admit that some form of matrimonial ceremony had taken place. Lucy refused to be intimidated and denied that this had happened. More is uncertain of the chronology of this, and puts it in 1464, at the time the Woodville marriage was first announced. But this makes little sense. Faced with the bombshell that her son had married an Englishwoman of relatively humble status, it would be pointless during Edward’s reign to try and replace the unsuitable candidate with a woman of even more lowly origins. This would not improve the situation in any way. But if we place it in June 1483, with her youngest son Richard moving to establish his power, it becomes much more plausible. Now that the King is dead, the goal is to invalidate his marriage and thus remove the legitimacy of its offspring. It no longer matters with whom the pre-contract existed. Cecily is now directing events rather than being at the mercy of them.
Elizabeth Shore would certainly have been well-informed about this unfolding drama. After Edward IV’s death she had become the mistress of one of his principal counsellors, Lord Hastings. In the violence of Richard’s accession she saw her new lover executed and was herself forced to do public penance through the streets of London as a harlot. The penance was part of a broader campaign against sexual immorality. Richard’s pursuit of it is puzzling. He already had at least two acknowledged bastard children, and as King his own court was hardly a puritan environment. Even one of his admirers was forced to concede that ‘sensual pleasure holds sway to an increasing extent’. The language of these pronouncements echoes Bridgettine texts on moral living with which Cecily was familiar, with their strictures against lechery and indulgence of the flesh. It is intriguing to speculate that she may have been behind this campaign. It is not implausible that discomfort with the fateful act, back in Rouen in the summer of 1441, which had had such momentous consequences, may have caused Cecily to lash out at the sexual misconduct of others. If so, for Elizabeth Shore the hypocrisy of a former adulteress inflicting a penance on her may have continued to rankle, and provided the motive for telling her side of the story.7
Once the new Yorkist regime was established, it had to decide what to do with the princes in the Tower, the designated successors it had ousted. As Richard set out his claim to the throne, the two boys were removed from the residential quarters of the Tower of London and placed instead in the inner recesses of the prison. Medieval chroniclers captured this drastic change, noting how they were first seen playing in the gardens, then looking out from the windows, and finally were not visible at all. Documentary evidence confirms this bleak picture, showing that by the middle of July 1483 all their household servants had been dismissed. The two boys were now regarded as bastards and consequently were no longer entitled to reside in state apartments, with servants to wait on them, the trappings appropriate to their former rank. It was a ruthless demotion. And as there were those who did not accept this loss of status and still recognised their right to the throne, they were now to be guarded carefully. Their removal from public gaze was a grim warning that they might be removed permanently.
The disappearance of the princes in the Tower is one of our most enduring murder mysteries. At this stage, it is worth making a crucial observation. If Richard believed in his legitimate right to the throne, he would not be compelled to kill the princes for his own accession to take place, for as bastards, they could be set aside. Whereas if he was an usurper, with no rights to the crown, there would be an awful necessity to do just that.
Here it is important to reflect further on the medieval sense of family, who did or did not belong within it, and the notion of legitimate inheritance, which allowed access to its inner sanctum. A medieval aristocratic family defined itself through its bloodline. Its course was visually represented in genealogies and memorials, which showed the family’s ancestry and also its links, or affinity, with other great families of the realm. These connections were proudly displayed through the shields and coats of arms that adorned their monuments. This was an exclusive, members only club. Its right of entry was jealously guarded and outsiders were most unwelcome. Admission rested on the purity of one’s bloodline or pedigree. If this was tainted, or to use the medieval term, corrupted, succeeding generations of the family carried the stigma. And this stigma would threaten not only reputation but the material essence of what the family represented, its rightful inheritance, the body of landed estates and titles guarded with extraordinary vigilance. For if ancestry was questioned, so was one’s right or title to landed wealth and position.
This made the issue of bastardy acutely sensitive. It showed others that an undesirable intruder had breached the hallowed family preserve. In the case of adultery by the woman, the breach was far more serious, for greater confusion and uncertainty existed over who was or was not legitimate. Faced with such an intrusion, a family might together seek to banish the outsider, to remove any entitlement and to place them on the periphery of affairs, in order to purge their own lineage. However, if the outsider had already been recognised and accepted within the family circle, such exclusion was far more difficult to achieve. And if it did not ultimately take place, excision of the intruder’s offspring was needed instead. Then the bloodline could be diverted back to its rightful course.
From a familial perspective, Richard’s actions come across differently. Shakespeare’s dangerous loner, ruled only by his own ambition, isolated the princes to more effectively destroy them. The boys’ disappearance from the royal apartments of the Tower was a sinister and frightening precursor of their fate. Yet if Richard saw himself as true successor and believed his eldest brother a bastard, he would cast Edward’s issue out of what was not rightfully theirs as a matter of family honour. And there could be no greater affront to Yorkist dignity than to have the offspring of a bastard son and an unacceptable marriage occupying the residence of the King of England.
After declaring the princes bastards and removing them from their apartments and servants, the house of York achieved its principal goal. Once King, Richard may have taken a pragmatic approach to dealing with them. He would weigh the risk of killing them, the moral outrage at the murder of children, against the danger of not doing so, that they might be rescued and set up as alternative claimants to the throne. As far as we can tell, Richard’s initial decision was an expedient one: he kept them alive but securely guarded as he undertook a progress of the realm. Then, as the King began his travels, a most unexpected event took place, which undermined such a strategy.
A decision by Richard to put the princes to death still remains the most likely outcome of this much-debated ‘mystery’. But we can now reappraise why he might have ordered their deaths, and this vital question is, I believe, more important. At the end of July 1483 a dramatic attempt was made to rescue the princes from the Tower of London. This incident has received little attention in the modern histories of Richard’s reign. Yet it was a daring escape bid directed against the most secure fortress of the realm. To gain the boys’ release the conspirators infiltrated the Tower garrison, planning to open the gates to a body of men gathered outside the walls who would then storm the prison quarters. But their brave effort failed and its leaders were caught and executed. News of the plot seems to have shocked and surprised Richard and led him to take more stringent precautions.8
From this, a possible explanation of the princes’ fate can be constructed. As Richard continued his progress, he decided he could no longer risk keeping them alive, and ordered them to be killed. Their murder would have occurred some time in August 1483.This grim scenario fits with the only account offering a date for the boys’ deaths, the reconstruction made by Sir Thomas More, and broader evidence that by the following month most people no longer believed them alive. It may be as close as we are able to get.
With this in mind, Richard’s behaviour during his stay in York from late August until early September is revealing. He had cultivated a close relationship with the city whilst he amassed his landed power in the north in the second half of Edward IV’s reign. Richard was popular in York and remained so. After his death at Bosworth the city’s governing body took the considerable risk of putting in writing its sorrow at his death, an action which can hardly have endeared them to the new Tudor King Henry VII. On progress in the summer of 1483 Richard chose to spend over a week in York, and what he did during his visit tells us about the style of his kingship and how a monarch might try to communicate with his subjects through ritual and display. The themes put across anticipate Richard’s battle preparations at Bosworth Field.
There were two sides to this particular royal coin. Richard and his Queen undertook a lengthy crown-wearing within the city, showing themselves to the people. In a magnificent ceremony the couple’s son, Edward of Middleham, was invested as Prince of Wales. Here we can see the new King as dynast, ritually marking his son as successor and celebrating the triumph of his lineage. It is tempting to imagine his considerable relief that the rival line had now been obliterated.
Entry in the city of York civic records recording the death of Richard III ‘late mercifully reigning upon us’ at the battle of Bosworth, ‘piteously slain and murdered, to the great heaviness of this city’.
Another and very different act strengthens such a possibility. Alongside the celebration, Richard performed an act signifying extraordinary contrition. He made plans to set up an enormous chantry chapel within York Minster, intending it to be lavishly equipped with no fewer than a hundred priests. In the Middle Ages chantries were set up by royal and aristocratic families not just as memorials but as vehicles of intercession, so that the souls of the founders could be prayed for – a kind of posthumous insurance policy. The size of Richard’s foundation meant that Masses for his soul would be offered almost continuously. This could be read as a quite exceptional act of penance.9
Richard’s behaviour is certainly thought-provoking. It offers us a different way of seeing him as he embarked upon his reign, one which contains more depth and complexity than his Shakespearean portrait. In it, Richard displays a renewed sense of purpose as rightful successor of his dynastic line, but is also aware that he has sinned grievously in its establishment. Nevertheless, the sin has been committed for a larger ideal: the restoration of family honour. Its resolution will come through pious contrition and righteous action and its test will be found on the field of battle.
Shakespeare has so formed our image of Richard that we find it hard to visualise him commanding any kind of loyalty. His followers must therefore be ramshackle, disorganised and lacking in morale. Under the stress of combat such an army would quickly fracture, as we see happening in the final scenes of Shakespeare’s play. It is nearly impossible to picture Richard leading a cause and an army of supporters who believed in that cause sincerely and who were ready to fight valiantly for it. But if the commander were inspired by a sense of mission and at the head of men motivated and enthused by his self-belief, then Bosworth becomes a very different battle.
Where there was a consciousness of sin, a genuinely pious man would search for redemption. As the bearer of his father’s martial legacy, Richard sought to supplant the shame of an ignominious defeat and death at Wakefield with a glorious affirmation through victory at Bosworth. God’s forgiveness would be made manifest to him through his triumph over his enemies and provide final confirmation of his right to be king. The means of securing this triumph should be noble, showing courage and daring rather than subterfuge. The way in which victory was attained would be as important as the victory itself.
Edward of Middleham from the fifteenth-century family tree in the Beauchamp Pageant. Richard III and Anne, his Queen, lost their son in his childhood.
The theme of redemption was central to Richard in his preparations to fight at Bosworth. A fuller understanding of this concept and its personal power for him will cast the battle in a new and very different light. Redemptive struggle, in which wrongdoing is atoned for through an act offered to God, is a powerful motif in the Middle Ages. It culminated in the widespread desire to go on crusade, where fighting to regain the Holy Land for Christianity was thought to cleanse the crusader of his sins. We now recognise that a crusade was a flawed ideal, which could involve cruelty and greed. However, crusaders also performed acts of genuine heroism and what is important here is not the sometimes brutal reality but the uplifting vision imagined by contemporaries.
Ever since the First Crusade, when Jerusalem had been captured through remarkable acts of courage and valour, the cause had embodied the ideals of nobility, chivalry and piety. Although the city was later lost again, and the Ottoman Turks overran most of Eastern Europe, the wish to go on crusade still remained strong in the late fifteenth century. For Richard it exerted a particular magnetism.
This power, which will be a crucial element in our understanding of the battle of Bosworth, was drawn from converging strands of Richard’s self-image. He felt himself to be a legitimate and rightful king, successor of a wronged father and heir to a military and chivalric tradition. His personal piety, and the weight of sin committed to restore the house of York to its proper position, would lead him to seek redemption. The crusading ideal gave this search a powerful expression, offering the chance to buy back the soul of a sinner through martial achievement in a just cause.
It is enlightening to consider these elements in more detail. Firstly, for Richard, Bosworth might set right the defeat and dishonour of his father at Wakefield a generation earlier. The mutilation of York’s body was very much alive in Richard’s consciousness as King. In his summer progress of 1483 he was concerned to restore the landed endowment of Pontefract Priory, dispersed by Edward IV. His grant openly criticised Edward for dispossessing the Priory, an act against all ‘good conscience’. This had been the temporary resting-place for his father’s recovered body before his eventual re-burial at Fotheringhay. This restoration of land therefore honoured his father’s memory and righted a wrong. The same intention lay behind Richard’s plans for a chantry chapel at Towton, where those who had slain York were themselves defeated. This was where Wakefield had been truly avenged. The chapel was founded on Towton’s battle site, in honour of those who had died to make victory possible. Edward IV had not marked their achievement. Again, it was Richard who righted the situation. He funded a most impressive building, ‘expensively and imposingly erected from new foundations’, as Archbishop Rotherham of York later described it:
upon the battleground where the bodies of the first and greatest in the land, as well as great multitudes of other men, were first slain and then buried and interred in the fields around.
Page from ‘Godfrey of Boloyne’ or ‘The Siege and Conquest of Jerusalem’ translated by William Caxton, printed in 1481.
On Richard’s death the roofing of the chapel remained unfinished and the window glass had yet to be put in. His Tudor successor showed little inclination to finish the job, and the memorial intended to honour the fallen was itself left to decay.10
Secondly, Richard very much saw himself as a soldier amongst soldiers, identifying with their values and feeling closely connected to those who had fought under his banner. In July 1477 he made an endowment to Queens’ College Cambridge that not only honoured the memory of his father, and brother Edmund, killed at Wakefield, but also remembered by name the relatively humble soldiers who had fought and died under his standard at the civil war battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury, on 14 April and 4 May 1471. Richard’s bond with these former servants went beyond contemporary norms of due respect and gratitude. Here he showed a keen personal regard for them.11
In one of the books owned by Richard – a history of Troy – these sentiments are echoed. One passage, describing the advantages of fighting in the company of friends who shared a common purpose, was illustrated by a depiction of a crow defending its nest from an attacking falcon. Here two comments had been added to the text, praising the efforts of the crow and applauding the notion of sharing combat with those you most trust: ‘note well the fair words’. A German visitor to Richard’s court also heard directly from the King his wish to go on crusade with ‘his own people alone’.12 This visitor, Nicholas von Poppelau, was in conversation with Richard about the frontiers of Christendom, where intense fighting was taking place with the Ottoman Turks. He was struck by the force and spontaneity with which Richard expressed his longing to join the fighting there and to share the crusaders’ goal. These do not seem to have been merely token comments, and there is strong evidence of Richard’s crusading interest – the epitome of a warrior’s ambition.
Richard closely identified with great crusading kings of England. His empathy is revealed in his patronage of All Hallows, Barking, which he made into a royal free chapel. This was believed to be the place where Richard I’s heart was buried. Richard the Lionheart had made a valiant attempt to regain Jerusalem from Saladin in the twelfth century. Although his efforts failed, they were widely esteemed throughout Europe, and he remained an embodiment of crusading zeal. The association was strengthened through the action of another crusading King, Edward I, who placed an image of the Virgin Mary there, following a dream in which she had promised him success in his endeavours. Richard sought to identify himself with these kings and the ideals they represented.13
For royalty to identify with illustrious predecessors is not uncommon, but this gesture of Richard’s appears sincere and deeply felt. On becoming King he sent a knight of the Order of St John to present his obediences to the Pope. This international order of knights had a few years earlier defended the island of Rhodes from Ottoman attack, and the progress of the siege had been followed closely at Edward IV’s court. Richard’s choice of messenger shows the respect in which he held this great crusading order.
The siege of Rhodes (1480), followed with concern by the royal houses of Europe, as the forces of Christendom defied the Ottoman Turks.
The deeds of renown at this siege spread throughout Europe and fired the imagination of contemporaries. In the last years of Edward IV’s reign an eye-witness account of events was translated into English. Enthusiasm for the cause was widespread, prompting Caxton to bring out a history of the First Crusade.14 In his preface Caxton appealed for a great English captain to lead a new endeavour. Could Richard have seen himself as this captain?
Richard III’s reign was too short to allow the fulfilment of any such ambition and his longing for a great martial enterprise was left untested. Questing for a suitable chivalric arena, he had advocated a resumption of the war in France in the latter half of his brother’s reign. His opposition to a peace treaty culminated in an attempt in 1477 to lead an army to the rescue of his sister Margaret, Dowager-duchess of Burgundy. Although there was no opportunity here to put his beliefs into action, it is interesting that fellow soldiers, who would not easily respect someone merely posturing, thought highly of the more limited campaigns he undertook in Scotland and appreciated his leadership. His raiding tactics across the border were still recalled with admiration a generation later and his capture of Edinburgh in 1482 was greeted with a celebration at the military base of Calais, at which all its guns were fired to salute his achievement. Dominic Mancini caught his growing reputation: ‘such was his renown in warfare, that whenever a difficult and dangerous policy had to be undertaken, it would be entrusted to his discretion and generalship’.15
This is a telling contrast with Earl Rivers, a leading member of the Woodville family, whose attempt to go on crusade in Spain was met with ridicule. In this case, a rather different motive for wishing to leave the country was quickly detected: Edward IV accused Rivers of cowardice in trying to avoid difficulties at a critical time at home. The hapless Earl clearly did not share Richard’s genuine ambition to fight alongside the Burgundians. On arriving at their camp and being invited to join a battle, Rivers recalled a pressing engagement elsewhere and rode off at some speed.16
What I am attempting to gauge here is the sincerity of Richard’s crusading desire. Far from being the mere public gesture of Rivers, the crusading ideal seems to have been really important to him. It was not posturing, but formed an integral part of his self-image. Here the evidence of one of the earliest surviving portraits of Richard as King is fascinating. It was an early copy of a now lost picture for which Richard sat. Made between 1518–23, it shows us the process of Tudor distortion well underway. They have painted up one of the shoulders and altered the shape of the King’s eyes, to give him a more deformed and villainous look. Yet despite the deformity, there are elements in the picture that survive from the original composition, in which Richard must have been painted in the way he wished to appear.
One detail is particularly interesting. Inserts above the portrait are decorated with classical motifs, on the left the head of a male ruler wearing a radiate crown, on the right a woman with her hair tied back. It is likely that these were part of a setting designed for Richard, and were duly copied into the later version, perhaps without their significance being understood. There is good evidence for an identification of the heads as those of the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great and his mother St Helena. A gold medallion of Constantine, struck in his lifetime, shows the same crown and facial resemblance, and Helena is depicted with her hair tied back – as in the painting. Constantine had introduced Christianity as the official religion of the Roman empire, and his mother Helena was believed in the Middle Ages to have been the discoverer of the True Cross and the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem. By the insertion of these figures in an official portrait Richard was identifying himself with the values of pioneering Christendom and making a statement of crusading intent. He also aligned himself with the religious devotion of his mother. The principal relic owned by Cecily was a supposed piece of the True Cross, placed in a magnificent setting, a cross of silver gilt adorned with stones of beryl.17
When John Hardyng drew up a version of his chronicle for Richard’s father, the Duke of York, he noted the family’s interest in their descent from twelfth-century kings of Jerusalem. Hardyng, anxious for the house of York’s patronage, elaborated on this in his dedication, with the leading comment:‘To Jerusalem I saye ye have great right’. He expounded on an illustrious history, which boasted links with the crusader Godfrey de Bouillon, one of the commanders who captured Jerusalem in 1099. Hardyng’s subsequent narration detailed how even though the Holy City had once again been lost to the Saracens, the crusading orders had kept hope of regaining it alive.18
Hardyng’s text would have been known to Richard and of great interest to him. He may already have drawn on its content, for the chronicler had advocated renewed war with Scotland, and had provided a map of the border country which Richard may have used on his 1482 campaign. Hardyng wished to flatter the aspirations of the house of York, and the greatest of these seems to have been a crusade to the Holy Land. It was here that Edward IV had disappointed. In 1469 one of the complaints made against his rule was that he had done nothing to bring this about, but instead had diverted crusading money for his own purposes. Richard III’s portrait shows him taking on the house of York’s commitment to crusading values and thus acting as heir and successor of the family’s destiny.
The portrait is perhaps the most telling public representation of Richard’s longing for a crusade. But this was also a matter of deep private reflection for him. Such a pre-occupation was brought out in one of the additions made to his book of hours. This was a votive Mass against the heathen, beseeching divine aid and protection for a beleaguered Christendom. It is interesting to note the plea that God’s anger be lifted from his people, whose previous inaction has invoked it and created the situation of present menace. The plea is conventional in religious terms but nonetheless forceful. Even when wrongdoing has incurred God’s displeasure, there is a belief that due contrition and appropriate conduct can set things right.19
Richard’s anticipation, even yearning, for a great crusading battle, was observed by contemporaries as the rival armies lined up at Bosworth. According to one account, Richard made specific reference to the crusading ideal in front of his troops, expressing a longing to fight against the Ottoman Turks. He communicated this in most solemn fashion, not as part of an oration but as a vow sworn before his soldiers on the holy name of Jesus. This was a carefully thought out act and those who heard it linked it to the ritual of crown-wearing. It created a deep impression, for it is found in the ballads associated with Richard’s opponents, the Stanley family.20 It is this pre-battle ceremony which provides an interpretative key for Bosworth.
I believe that the crusading ideal could inspire a soldier-king and offer a form of resolution to his life. During the wars in France, Henry V had expressed his own hope of leading a crusade. This was no idle boast, for Henry commissioned a detailed report of the Holy Land, a reconnaissance of its ports and fortresses and the road system to Jerusalem. He did not live to see its completion, but his unfulfilled wish deeply moved contemporaries. Such a late medieval value system is well set out in Caxton’s Order of Chivalry, a translation of a classic thirteenth-century text, which the printer dedicated to Richard III. Its author, Ramon Lull, had devoted his life to the conversion of the Saracens of North Africa and extolled the crusading ideal as the highest duty of a Christian knight. Caxton added in his epilogue an astute compliment to Richard that he might be well-disposed to the holding of tournaments, to encourage men to maintain their fighting skills. Caxton recognised Richard’s martial self-image and we can be sure that the King was familiar with the subject matter of the book.
At this point I would like to explain more fully my own approach to battle history. Studies of medieval battles tend to focus on the aspects of terrain, tactics and strategy. These factors are relevant and important, if available evidence allows them to be determined. But they are often ascribed a pivotal role in an overall picture of the conflict. However, the Burgundian commanders who fought at Montlhéry recognised a different, more complex truth, that even when a plan of battle had been drawn up, events on the field might supercede it. Orders might never reach certain units, and the shape of an engagement could become radically different from that planned. So how far can we reconstruct a medieval battle?
We have to understand something of the extraordinary confusion of medieval combat. The mêlée, the clash of rival forces in intense, hand-to-hand fighting, defies neat description. For Verneuil, a major battle of the Hundred Years War, historians have devised orderly maps and diagrams to represent the action, indicating the movements of key detachments of the opposing armies. But contemporaries told of the chaos of the mêlée, how combat crashed backwards and forwards with ferocious energy like the incoming waves of the sea. Capture and recapture were made, standards lost and recovered. In limited visibility and faced with a desperate struggle for survival, men looked to their banners as rallying points and followed the war cries of their fellows. Whether we can shape and polish such bloody confusion is highly debatable.
My own belief is that a surer sense of battle is to be found by focussing on why men fought: the motivation of the army. This understanding is informed by the rituals undertaken before combat. Verneuil offers a good example of this: the English army faced imminent defeat; they turned their fortunes around through sheer will-power and raw courage. The ceremony performed by their commander took the form of a pageant and procession before the troops, where costume was used to communicate the cause for which they were all to fight. The decision to confront their opponents was made with a solemn oath to St George, witnessed by the whole army, and the detail of this chivalric ritual gives us a window onto why men fought as they did.21 It reveals to us the most vital aspect, characterised by a great military historian of the medieval period, the Belgian Verbruggen as ‘the whole psychology of the soldier’.
Medieval battles were highly ritualistic. This was even true of private feuding during the Wars of the Roses. Battles between rival magnates with scores to settle still employed the choreography of challenge and defiance before combat. We have particular reason to take Richard’s battle ritual seriously. His father had been highly sensitive to chivalric protocol and a bitter feud with a rival magnate was derived from York’s belief that this man’s conduct in the French war had besmirched his own honour. Richard inherited his father’s scrupulousness. This can be seen in his interest in the office of heralds when he was constable of the realm in Edward IV’s reign. It was a responsibility of his military post, but Richard’s concern was real. He took especial interest in the heraldic markings of nobility, owning two lavishly illustrated rolls of arms, the insignia which distinguished noblemen when they gathered together in peace or war. He drew up ordinances to regulate the conduct of the heralds, instructing them to record feats of arms and ceremonies, and as King gave them a charter of incorporation and their own London residence. Heralds were responsible for observing the minutiae of ceremony, they organised tournaments and processions – Richard’s close personal patronage shows that such matters were important to him. Given this, we might expect him to orchestrate his own battle ritual with care.22
We then return to Richard’s crown-wearing ceremony before his army. As we have seen, this emphasised the legitimacy of his rule and righted an injustice done to his father. But a still higher ideal was being served. By using the coronation crown itself, Richard drew on the sacred power of the royal regalia. At his coronation he found special significance in the anointing oil, believed to have been miraculously given to St Thomas à Becket by the Virgin Mary, decreeing that it should now be held at Westminster Abbey with other relics and, significantly, making special instruction that it should be returned to him whenever he needed it. Legend also had it that the oil would anoint the king who regained the Holy Land, and if carried, would grant the bearer victory in battle.23 This suggested the consecration of a crusader. By exhibiting the regalia to his army, Richard employed his deep sense of mission in this role in a manner designed to inspire his followers, offering them the chance to participate in a noble and worthy cause.
We have come a long way from Shakespeare’s depiction of Richard’s army as battle at Bosworth was imminent. Far away from the nightmare in which there is no time, no proper preparation, no shared focus and no clear or effective leadership, we now encounter a very different state of affairs. Things have been done in a measured way, the King himself has prepared his army, there is a strong sense of mission binding the soldiers together and the leader has set his stamp powerfully on the proceedings. Rather than a nightmare, we have a vision that arises from private reflection and public enactment. The murderous stain on Richard’s kingship will now be cleansed through offering this battle to God.
What might such a vision have meant to a medieval audience? Its source lay in the belief that private devotional life might give access to a personal revelation. Both Richard and his mother Cecily owned copies of a text that described the life of a thirteenth-century religious visionary. Matilda of Hackeborn was a mystic who experienced an intense personal faith through vivid images, which are described with wonderful sensitivity. There is a love of the freshness of colour, but also of the beauty of pageantry: processions, banners and coats of arms. In the late Middle Ages her work was popular amongst the Bridgettine order, to which Cecily was increasingly drawn, and formed part of the ‘holy matter’ read aloud at the Duchess’s dinner table. Again we see a close connection between her and her youngest son, for Richard owned his own English translation of Matilda’s book.24 This life detailed the reward of one devotee’s piety as a series of revelatory visions. Its manifestation lay in the possibility of a visionary act of kingship. York’s prowess before Pontoise had lifted the morale of his followers. Now his son sought an even greater demonstration of just cause, through a crusading victory offered to God. Such an ideal would readily inspire a medieval soldier.
Bosworth becomes the vision in action. Richard and his army had a cause to fight for and were fully able to do so. With this in mind, let us turn to the challenger, Henry Tudor, who sought to unseat the Yorkist King.