13

‘The Honour of a King’¹

While Richard III lay undisturbed in his grave in Leicester, his reputation was changing. Some of the change may have been natural, but many aspects of it were orchestrated by the regime and dynasty which had replaced his rule. As a result Richard III became, and remains, one of the most controversial figures in English history. Some contemporary writers certainly characterised him as a good king.² He appears to have been for many years a loyal son, brother and husband.³ Yet – unsurprisingly perhaps – after his defeat and death at the battle known as Bosworth Field he became the subject of vilification under the ‘Tudor’ regime which replaced his own Yorkist dynasty. It may be worth emphasising at this point that the unsupported word of Henry VII is not invariably trustworthy, since clear evidence exists that on occasions the first ‘Tudor’ monarch told lies or rewrote history. Thus, as we saw earlier, during his exile in France he represented himself as a son of Henry VI in order to enhance his dubious ‘Lancastrian’ credentials. Once on the throne he ruthlessly wrote Lady Eleanor Talbot out of history, and falsified Richard III’s claim to the throne. These are not matters of opinion, but of fact.

However, Henry VII’s position on his predecessor was complex, and was apparently subject to a degree of evolution. Henry purported to champion the cause of the house of Lancaster, and this inevitably implied overall opposition to the claims of the house of York. But at the same time, Henry claimed to be reuniting the rival Yorkist and Lancastrian claims (just as Richard himself had been planning to do in 1485). In Henry’s case this aim was furthered by means of his marriage to Elizabeth of York, eldest daughter of Richard III’s elder brother, Edward IV, by Elizabeth Woodville. In general, therefore, Henry had no choice other than to accept the legitimacy of Edward IV as King of England. He is even on record as having referred to Edward as his ‘father’.⁴ This in itself was a somewhat anomalous position for the ‘Tudor’ monarch to take, since there can be no question that King Edward had deposed and replaced Henry VII’s ‘uncle’, Henry VI, for whose subsequent death Edward IV may also have been responsible. The political correctness of the new ‘Tudor’ regime in 1485 certainly stressed that Edward IV had been a lawful and (on the whole) good king. It also suggested that Edward V would have been a lawful – and probably good – king had circumstances allowed him the opportunity. On the other hand, Richard III was initially presented as an evil usurper, from whose illegal tyranny Henry VII had rescued England. Even in 1485, however, the de facto kingship of Richard III had perforce to be acknowledged for practical reasons. Moreover, only if Richard was de facto king could Henry VII, by defeating him, have gained the crown. Richard had also to be publicly acknowledged as a valiant warrior, since Henry’s victory over him was thereby magnified and seen to be glorious.

At a slightly later date, when a putative son of Edward IV appeared on the scene to challenge Henry’s right to rule, the latter’s position was inevitably subject to a degree of modification. Although not all writers on the period seem to have grasped this fundamental point, in reality it was always absolutely clear that in legal terms the respective claims to the throne of Richard III and the sons of Edward IV were mutually exclusive. Supporters of the house of York could not simultaneously claim both Edward V and Richard III as lawful monarchs. If Richard was the rightful king then Edward IV’s sons were bastards with no claim to the crown. Conversely, if Edward’s sons were legitimate claimants, Richard III was a usurper. Richard himself had demonstrably perceived this point with absolute clarity. Nor was it lost on Henry VII. Thus, in the 1490s, when Henry was confronted with the ‘Perkin Warbeck’ phenomenon, he appears to have modified his position on Richard III. As previously noted, it was at this period that Henry created a royal tomb for Richard, almost certainly furnished with a carefully worded epitaph, the text of which has fortunately survived.

Later still, when the threat of ‘Perkin’ had been overcome, and the pretender was safely dead, Henry largely reverted to his earlier stance on Richard. It was at this stage that – for the first time – Richard was accused of having killed Edward IV’s sons. This claim seems to have been initially advanced in a posthumously published ‘confession’ allegedly made by Sir James Tyrell of Gipping (Suffolk), Captain of Guines.⁵ This ‘confession’ killed two birds with one stone. It had the effect of blackening Richard’s name (by attaching to it the opprobrium of what was to become his most notorious supposed crime), while at the same time also conveniently removing Edward IV’s sons from the running in respect of the succession, by purporting to establish beyond question (and for the first time) that both of the boys were long dead.

Opinions about Richard III have been violently polarised ever since. Chief among the controversies associated with Richard’s name remain the propriety of his accession to the throne, and the fate of his nephews, those so-called ‘princes in the Tower’. Various attempts have recently been made, by means of new evidence and new approaches to existing evidence, to shed light on the matter of Richard’s accession.⁶ In order to try to elucidate the fate of the so-called ‘princes’ it will be necessary to seek new sources of information. One potential new source might be the DNA sequences of key members of the house of York, and this is an area which the author has been researching for some time. Aspects of this ongoing DNA research – what has so far been learnt from it, and what we may yet hope to learn – constitute the main subject of the chapters which follow. Finally, we shall look into the future to see what further discoveries might yet be made, and by what means.