2

‘It Suits the King of England to Marry Straight Away’¹

By 1485, having successfully overcome challenges to his tenure of the throne, Richard III appeared firmly established as King of England. However, he had unfortunately become a king without an heir. While not a disaster, this was certainly a problem – albeit one which could hopefully be remedied relatively easily, now that the queen too was dead. The background to Richard’s problem was the fact that for a hundred years England had been experiencing disputes over the royal succession. This sorry story had begun with another king called Richard, who had likewise found himself with no direct heir. That fact and its sequel were well remembered. It is therefore quite certain that Richard III must have realised he had a problem and that something needed to be done about it. Indeed, it is clear that Richard’s diplomatic activity during the five months from March to August 1485 was precisely focused upon rapidly resolving this dilemma by providing a new queen consort for the kingdom – hopefully leading in due course to a new heir to the throne.

As a matter of fact, the king was not childless. As we have seen he had a son and a daughter, both probably born long before his marriage to Anne Neville. Richard’s son, John of Gloucester (or John de Pountfreit), might possibly have been conceived during Richard’s first solo expedition: a visit to the eastern counties in the summer of 1467, at the invitation of Sir John Howard.² If so, John of Gloucester will probably have been born in about March 1468, and he might even have derived his first name from Sir John Howard, who could have been his godfather. These can only be speculations, because nothing has so far been discovered relating to John of Gloucester’s birth.³ However, if he was born in about March 1468, that same month in 1485 would have marked his seventeenth birthday. It is therefore interesting to note that it was on 11 March 1485 that King Richard announced John’s appointment as Captain of Calais. The royal patent refers to ‘our dear bastard son, John of Gloucester, whose disposition and natural vigour, agility of body and inclination to all good customs, promises us by the grace of God great and certain hope of future service’. Richard goes on to note that John is still a minor, and makes provision to take charge himself of subordinate Calais appointments until John ‘reaches the age of 21 years’.⁴ It is clear from this patent and appointment that Richard III hoped his illegitimate son would become a future support to the dynasty. At the same time, his uncompromising revelation of John of Gloucester’s bastard status precludes any notion that the king would ever have sought to make this lad his heir. Both the house of York as a whole and Richard III personally based their claims to the throne on the principle of absolute legitimacy. We can therefore be confident that Richard would never have countenanced the notion of such an advancement for his own illegitimate son.⁵

Richard was still a young man, and the death of Queen Anne Neville (however sad this may have been in itself) did offer him the possible hope of future royal heirs. He had only to remarry. There can be no doubt whatever that his immediate advisers, well aware of the fact that his consort was dying, had already urged him to begin seeking a new queen even before Anne had breathed her last.⁶ In the secrecy of the royal council it seems clear that well before 16 March the desiderata for a future consort had already been thoroughly thrashed out. A foreign princess was preferable. This would conform with the traditional pattern established for medieval English kings, while at the same time avoiding the dangers inherent in advancing the daughter of any particular English noble family.⁷ Naturally the chosen princess should be of an age to bear children. However, it seems also to have been decided to take advantage of the situation to try to end once and for all the dynastic feud between the heirs of York and Lancaster. That this was the case emerges quite clearly from the points put forward subsequently by the royal councillors of Portugal, to their sovereign and his sister, as one argument in favour of the royal marriage pact proposed to them by Richard III. The Portuguese Council of State recommended the projected English royal marriage to their king’s sister for various reasons, but most specifically ‘for the concord in the same kingdom of England that will follow from her marriage and union with the king’s party, greatly serving God and bringing honour to herself⁸ by uniting as one the party of Lancaster, and York – which are the two parties of that kingdom out of which the divisions and evils over the succession are born’.⁹

FAMILY TREE 1: The heirs of the house of Lancaster (simplified). The three individuals directly involved in the 1485 marriage plans of Richard III are shown in bold type.

In the legitimate male line the house of Lancaster had been extinct since the death of Henry VI in 1471, and there were also no living descendants of any of the Lancastrian kings in legitimate female lines. However, there were living descendants both of Henry IV’s sister, and of his half-sister. The most direct heirs of these two Lancastrian princesses in 1485 were respectively King John II of Portugal and Queen Isabel of Castile.¹⁰ Both Portuguese and Spanish infantas were therefore strongly favoured as possible brides, although preference seems to have been accorded to Portugal, probably because the Portuguese royal house of Avis had a stronger dynastic claim than the Castilian royal house of Trastámara to be the senior surviving Lancastrian heirs.¹¹

Proof that a second wife for the king had already been discussed before the first had died lies in the fact that, on Tuesday 22 March, less than a week after Anne Neville’s death, and before her body had even been buried, Sir Edward Brampton, a converted Portuguese Jew who had long served King Edward IV, was sent back to his former homeland to offer, on Richard’s behalf, for the hand of King John II’s elder sister, the Infanta Joana.¹² It is also as a result of Brampton’s negotiations in Portugal that we have knowledge of the alternative English plan for a marriage with the Spanish infanta, in case the Portuguese match should come to nothing. In fact, the contemporary commentator Álvaro Lopes de Chaves, writing retrospectively in about 1488, reported that the Portuguese Council of State had been very anxious to ensure that the Portuguese marriage proposal was accepted. Behind their forceful support of the proposed Anglo-Portuguese marriage pact lay the councillors’ openly expressed fear that if the Portuguese marriage did not take place, Richard III ‘could marry the Infanta Doña Isabel of Castile [sic] and make alliance with those kings, and become your enemy and opponent’.¹³ Indeed, knowing that such an alliance with England was only too likely to prove agreeable to ‘the Catholic Kings’ of Spain, the Portuguese royal advisers reiterated their anxiety, strongly underlining the risk that if the projected marriage with their own Infanta Joana were not quickly brought to a successful conclusion, ‘the sovereigns of Castile may give him [Richard] their eldest daughter as his wife’.¹⁴ The Portuguese councillors were also well aware that Richard III was in a hurry to remarry, since they commented specifically on the fact that ‘it suits the king of England to marry straight away’.¹⁵

In fact, the marriage proposal brought to Portugal by Sir Edward Brampton was for a double alliance. Richard III himself would marry Joana, while his niece, Elizabeth of York, would marry John II’s cousin Manuel, Duke of Beja (who later became King Manuel I). This point too is established beyond question by Álvaro Lopes de Chaves who referred to a ‘marriage between the daughter of King Edward of England … and the Duke of Beja Dom Manuel … which said marriage had previously been appointed by Edward Brampton on his coming as ambassador of King Richard (brother to the said King Edward) to swear the betrothals and commit the Princess Joana in marriage’.¹⁶ On the Portuguese side it was hoped that, in return for the proposed matches, Richard would provide King John II with English help against dissident members of the aristocracy, who were being supported from Castile.

Brampton’s overtures were later followed up by someone described as the Count or Earl of Scales [Scalus].¹⁷ In earlier publications relating to this subsequent visit, both Barrie Williams and his modern Portuguese source, Gomes dos Santos, mistakenly assumed that the activities of this ‘Count Scales’ represented a follow-up embassy from Richard III. In addition, Williams embroils himself in vain speculations as to the identity of ‘Count Scales’.¹⁸ Unfortunately, he is at sea in suggesting that Richard Woodville might have inherited the Scales title from his elder brother, Anthony. In fact this title had merely been acquired by Anthony Woodville as a result of his marriage to the Scales heiress. Nevertheless, it is known that Anthony attempted to bequeath it to his other brother Edward.¹⁹ This attempt had no legal validity, but it explains why Edward Woodville might have called himself ‘Lord Scales’ – and indeed, the Portuguese records establish beyond question that in fact he did so.

They also prove that Edward Woodville’s visit to King John took place after Richard III’s death, in 1486, at a time when Edward was returning home to England after taking part in the ongoing Spanish reconquista of the southern kingdom of Granada.²⁰ Thus his visit would be too late in its timing to have any interest for us in the present context, were it not for the fact that the soi-disant ‘count’ sought to revive half of Richard III’s proposed Portuguese marriage pact – namely the part involving the marriage of one of his nieces to Dom Manuel, Duke of Beja (King John’s cousin). By seeking to revive this proposal, Sir Edward explicitly drew attention to the fact that Richard III’s initial overtures in 1485 had included such plans for the marriage of one of Edward IV’s daughters with Dom Manuel. We shall return to this interesting second aspect of Richard III’s Portuguese marriage project shortly.

As for the Infanta Joana, she was a few months older than her prospective husband, having been born in February 1452. She was deeply religious, and had already rejected previous offers of marriage from several other European rulers. However, either because she herself was genuinely interested in the proposed English royal marriage, or because she was placed under considerable pressure by her brother, King John, Joana seems to have given very serious consideration to the idea of marriage to Richard. In fact, had the latter not lost the Battle of Bosworth, the Portuguese royal marriages would very probably have taken place.²¹

As has already been noted, of the two princesses who were apparently regarded as the leading potential contenders for the English consort’s crown, it must have been the fact that the Infanta Joana was the most senior living heir of the house of Lancaster (after her brother, King John) which chiefly influenced Richard III and his council in her favour, for in other respects she might well have been considered less than ideal. As a childless and hitherto unmarried princess, thirty-three years of age, her chances of bearing for Richard the all-important son and heir he so badly needed must, in retrospect, be regarded as somewhat questionable. There is no doubt that, in terms of age, the fourteen-year-old Spanish infanta, Doña Isabel de Aragón y Castilla, who shared Richard III’s birthday (2 October) but who was eighteen years his junior, would have been a far more promising prospective mother of a future prince of Wales.²²

As we have seen, the proposed Portuguese marriage was part of a package deal. Not only was Richard III to marry Joana, but also his niece, Elizabeth of York – the eldest illegitimate daughter of Edward IV by Elizabeth Woodville – was to marry the Portuguese prince Manuel, Duke of Beja, cousin (and eventual successor) of King John II. The subsequent attempts on the part of ‘Count Scales’ to revive this second marriage proposal were aided by the fact that Richard III’s negotiations had apparently never referred to Elizabeth of York by name, but had simply spoken of ‘[a] filha del Rej Duarte’ ([the] daughter of King Edward).²³ For Richard III this circumlocution may have been advantageous in that it skirted round the potentially tricky problem of Elizabeth of York’s status. In 1485 she was, of course, a mere royal bastard and not an English princess – but unfortunately for Richard there were no legitimate English royal daughters then available for the marriage market. Without actually being openly deceitful, the terminology employed by Richard’s envoys tended to imply that the proposed bride was an English princess – and indeed, probably the most senior royal daughter available.²⁴

There may also have been one other advantage. If anything should happen to Elizabeth, one of her sisters could easily be substituted for her without the need for renegotiations. This was a period when death readily claimed young victims, and even promising royal sprigs did not always manage to successfully complete their journey into adulthood. Some children of Edward IV by Elizabeth Woodville had already died young.²⁵ The names of Elizabeth, Cecily and Anne of York may have meant little even to King John II, while his cousin, Dom Manuel (who was to marry this English girl), was at that time a relatively minor member of the Portuguese royal house, whose marriage negotiations probably did not demand the detailed precision which would, for example, have surrounded the betrothal of King John’s son and heir. But undoubtedly both the Portuguese king and his cousin had heard of King Edward IV himself. Thus ‘King Edward’s daughter’ was in every way a convenient phrase.

Later, this rather vague terminology proved fortunate for ‘Count Scales’, because at the time of his negotiations in 1486 Elizabeth of York was actually no longer available (having recently married Henry VII). However, Cecily of York was then on the marriage market. The annulment of Cecily’s previous marriage at about this juncture – and at the behest of Henry VII – may have been no accident, for she was more or less of an age with Dom Manuel. Failing her, her younger sister Anne could also have been considered. Indeed, evidence survives that Anne of York was put forward as a candidate for the hand of Dom Manuel. This evidence comprises a papal dispensation permitting such a marriage in spite of the fact that the proposed partners were related within the prohibited degrees.²⁶

Given all these points, it is not surprising that, in 1486, ‘Count Scales’ continued to refer vaguely to ‘the daughter of King Edward’ in his Portuguese marriage negotiations. Moreover, the existence of the dispensation of 1491 strongly suggests that Edward Woodville may have been acting on direct instructions from Henry VII who, in one way or another, was intent on picking up and carrying into effect at least some of the matrimonial projects of Richard III.²⁷

There were two reasons why Richard III should have included Elizabeth of York in his marriage plans in 1485. The first was the fact that, as we have already noted, no legitimate English princesses were available as marriage pawns. The second point is the fact that one of Richard III’s promises to the girl’s mother, Elizabeth Woodville – solemnly made towards the end of the eleven months (April 1483–March 1484), during which the latter had remained in sanctuary with her daughters at Westminster Abbey – had been that, if she would emerge from her self-imposed seclusion, she and her daughters would be well treated and that suitable marriages would be arranged for the girls:

Memorandum that I Richard by the grace of God king of England and of Fraunce and lord of Irland in the presens of you my lords spirituelle & temporelle and you Maire and Aldermen of my Cite of London promitte & swere verbo Regio & upon these holy evangelies of god by me personally touched that if the doghters of dam Elizabeth Gray late calling her self Quene of England that is to wit Elizabeth Cecille Anne Kateryn and Briggitte wolle come unto me out of Saintwarie of Westminstre and be guyded Ruled & demeaned after me than I shalle see that they shalbe in suertie of their lyffes and also not suffer any maner hurt by any maner persone or persones to theim or any of theim in their bodies and persones to be done by wey of Ravisshement or defouling contrarie to their willes not theim or any of theim emprisone within the Toure of London or other prisone but that I shalle put theim in honest places of good name & fame and theim honestly & curtesly shalle see to be(e) foundene & entreated and to have alle thinges requisite & necessarye(te) for their exibicione and findings as my kynneswomen And that I shalle do marie sucche of theim as now bene mariable to gentilmen borne and everiche of theim geve in mariage lands & tenementes to the yerely valewe of CC marc for terme of their lyves and in like wise to the other doghters when they come to lawfulle Age of mariage if they lyff and suche gentilmen as shalle happe to marie with theim I shalle straitly charge from tyme to tyme loyngly to love & entreat theim as their wiffes & my kynneswomen As they wolle advoid and eschue my displeasure And over this that I shalle yerely fromhencefurthe content & pay or cause to be contented and paied for thexibicione & finding of the said dame Elizabeth Gray during her naturelle liff at iiij termes of the yere that is to wit at pasche Midsomer Michilmesse & Christenmesse to John Nesfelde one of the squires of my body (&) for his finding to attende upon her the summe of DCC marc of lawfulle money of England by even porcions And moreover I promitte to theim that if any surmyse or evylle report be made to me of theim or any of theim by any persone or persones that than I shalle not geve thereunto faithe ne credence not therefore put theim to any maner ponysshement before that they or any of theim so accused may be at their lawfulle defence and answere In witnesse wherof to this writing of my othe & promise aforsaid in your said presences made I have set my signemanuelle the first day of Marche the first yere of my Reigne.²⁸

Richard had already taken positive steps to demonstrate that this had been no empty promise on his part. In 1484 he had arranged the marriage of his own illegitimate daughter, Catherine, to one of his supporters, the Earl of Pembroke, and although the precise date is not on record it was probably at about the same time that he also arranged the marriage of his niece, Cecily (the second surviving daughter of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville), to Ralph Scrope, a younger brother of Thomas, 6th Baron Scrope, who was another of Richard’s supporters.²⁹

Cecily’s Scrope marriage was a perfectly respectable one for the bastard daughter of a deceased monarch. But the Portuguese royal marriage that was now in prospect for her elder sister went far beyond Richard’s promise to marry the girls to gentlemen born, and must have delighted their mother, Elizabeth Woodville. This marriage would heal the split in the Yorkist ranks by offering the Woodvilles a dynastic alliance, which would pose no threat to Richard. Had the marriage taken place, it would instantly have restored Elizabeth of York to legitimate royal rank. Indeed, it would one day have made her Queen of Portugal – though no one could possibly have foreseen that in March 1485. The young girl herself was very excited by the proposal, and apparently wrote to her uncle’s right-hand man, John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, imploring him to urge the king, on her behalf, to press on with the project.³⁰ The fact that Elizabeth of York’s letter to Norfolk was written as early as mid-February 1484/85 shows that key members of the royal council were already aware of the possibility of a double royal marriage pact with Portugal at least four weeks before Queen Anne Neville breathed her last. But naturally no such plans could proceed until Richard’s first consort died, and the fact that Anne was lingering in mortal illness seems to have led the young Elizabeth of York to remark, in a rather thoughtless and unkind way – excusable perhaps on the grounds of her youth and her eagerness to be a princess once again – that ‘she feared the queen would never die’.³¹

It may also have been some ill-considered, indiscreet remark on the part of Elizabeth of York or some member of her mother’s family that led to the leaking out of rumours of marriage plans for both the girl and the king. These rumours were promptly misunderstood. Instead of a dual marriage pact with the house of Avis, what began to be spoken of in England was a single marriage, between Richard III and his niece. Such rumours gave cause for concern, and their circulation was discussed by the royal council. As a result, ‘Sir Richard Ratcliffe and William Catesby … told the king to his face that if he did not deny any such purpose’ there could be serious consequences.³² Convinced of the need for some official statement, the king then acted very quickly to scotch this unfortunate misunderstanding. On the Wednesday of Holy Week (30 March), at the Priory of St John in Clerkenwell, in the presence of the mayor and citizens of London, he publicly and very firmly denied any plans for a marriage between himself and Elizabeth of York, commanding the mayor to arrest and punish anyone found spreading this tale.³³ A couple of weeks after Easter, on 19 April, he wrote in similar terms to the city of York. Given that his own legitimacy as king depended absolutely upon the bastardy of his late brother’s Woodville children, it must have seemed vital to Richard to set the record straight in respect of this unfortunate rumour.³⁴

In addition to his own illegitimate children, and the prospect of future children as a result of his projected second marriage, Richard III also had other potential Yorkist heirs to hand. It is often stated that when his own son died he named one of his nephews, either Edward, Earl of Warwick (son of the Duke of Clarence) or John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln (son of the Duchess of Suffolk), as heir to the throne.³⁵ In fact there is no evidence that either nephew was ever formally designated as Richard’s heir, and the fact that various authors have given conflicting accounts of their supposed elevation merely serves to underline the lack of proof. Indeed, as affairs stood in April 1485 there was no conceivable reason for precipitate action on the part of the king. As we have seen, in this first full month of the medieval English year of 1485, Richard III was undoubtedly planning to remarry. He thus had every prospect of a legitimate son of his own as heir to the throne. Hence there was no necessity to designate an alternative heir. So far as Richard was aware, many years of his reign still lay before him, offering him ample time and opportunity to train his as yet unborn son for future kingship.³⁶

However, likely looking Yorkist princes such as his nephews were still an investment for the future. Hopefully both Lincoln and Warwick would become bulwarks supporting and maintaining the royal house of York well into the sixteenth century. Thus there was every reason to train and promote them – not as future monarchs, but as key supporters for the throne. The elder of the two, the Earl of Lincoln, was certainly given some preferment, and this must be seen as part of that same policy which led Richard to give John of Gloucester the Calais post. The king was firming the foundations of his dynasty by promoting its future senior members to important posts, in which they could learn the business of government, while at the same time themselves becoming known to the aristocracy and to the country as a whole.

Lincoln had been born in about 1460. He was the eldest son of Richard’s sister, Elizabeth of York, and her husband, John de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk. Edward IV had created him Earl of Lincoln on 13 March 1467, and he had subsequently received knighthood, together with Edward’s own sons, on 18 April 1475. He had attended Lady Anne Mowbray on the occasion of her marriage to Edward IV’s second son, Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York, in January 1478; had borne the salt at the baptism of Edward’s daughter Bridget in November 1480, and (in the absence of the future Richard III himself) had acted as the chief mourner at the funeral of King Edward IV in 1483. He then went on to carry the orb at Richard III’s own coronation.³⁷ By 1485 he was already a young adult.

Lincoln supported Richard against the rebels of October 1483 and was rewarded the following April with land worth £157, and the reversion of Beaufort estates worth a further £178 after the death of Thomas, Lord Stanley, who had been granted a life interest in the land which his wife, Margaret Beaufort, had forfeited for her part in the rising. In the following month Lincoln was granted an annuity of £177 13s. 4d. from the duchy of Cornwall until the reversion materialized.³⁸

Prior to his early demise, Richard III’s own son, Edward of Middleham, Prince of Wales, had briefly held the important post of Lieutenant of Ireland.³⁹ This post was normally exercised through a deputy, so that the boy’s youth would not have been of much significance. It is noteworthy that, following Edward of Middleham’s death, Richard appointed his nephew, the Earl of Lincoln, to this post. Given that the Plantagenet dynasty as a whole (and the house of York in particular) had always acknowledged that the right to the Crown could be transmitted through the female line, Lincoln must certainly have been regarded as a potential heir to the throne. Indeed, it is arguable that he automatically became the heir presumptive following Edward of Middleham’s death – given that the sons of Edward IV were all illegitimate, and, therefore, excluded, while the Earl of Warwick, son of Richard III’s brother, the Duke of Clarence, was ruled out by reason of Edward IV’s act of attainder against his father. The king’s eldest sister, Anne of York, Duchess of Exeter, had given birth to two children, one by each of her two successive husbands. However, both of these had been girls, and while the capacity of female heirs to transmit rights to the throne was recognised, the possibility of a female heir actually succeeding to the English throne in person had not yet been conceded. It is, therefore, entirely plausible that after the death of the Prince of Wales, Richard III regarded Lincoln as his interim heir. Nevertheless, no specific statement to that effect was issued – and indeed, none would have been strictly necessary.

In addition to being appointed to the lieutenantship of Ireland (21 August 1484), Lincoln was given further prominence by being granted also the presidency of the council in the north. This was a body established in the summer of 1484 ‘as the successor to the prince’s council, which had itself replaced Gloucester’s ducal council as a way of maintaining Richard’s authority in the north’.⁴⁰

The other Yorkist princeling in whom Richard III clearly took an interest is Edward, Earl of Warwick (1475–99), the only surviving son of the Duke and Duchess of Clarence, and thus the nephew both of Richard III and of Queen Anne Neville. But for Edward IV’s act of attainder against his father, the young Earl of Warwick would actually have ranked higher in terms of the succession to the throne than Richard III himself. However, as things stood in 1485, Edward IV’s act of attainder against Clarence ruled Warwick out of the succession entirely. Even so, acts of attainder were not irreversible – though given Warwick’s seniority in the royal bloodline, Richard III would have needed to handle with some care any reversal of the attainder which excluded this particular nephew from the throne.

Warwick had been born in February 1475 at Warwick Castle, and was named for his godfather and uncle, Edward IV, who had given him the title ‘Earl of Warwick’ at his baptism. In a sometimes puzzling and misleading note on him for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Christine Carpenter states that ‘on his father’s attainder in February 1478, Edward’s lands, consisting essentially of the Warwick earldom as it stood at Clarence’s death, were taken into royal custody. This was officially for his minority only, and he was indeed subsequently on occasion referred to as Earl of Warwick. In practice, however, the attainder was never reversed.’⁴¹ Carpenter’s last sentence is nonsensical. Edward’s tenure of the earldom of Warwick was incontrovertible, since it was an inheritance derived from his mother, not his father. Moreover, he had explicitly and personally been granted this title by Edward IV in 1475. His tenure of it was, therefore, unaffected by his father’s attainder. Following his father’s execution, in 1481 Warwick was made the ward of Thomas Grey, Marquess of Dorset. He had attended his uncle Richard III’s coronation in July 1483, and been knighted on the occasion of the investiture of his cousin Edward of Middleham, as Prince of Wales, in September the same year. Like his other cousin Lincoln, Warwick was a member of the council in the north.⁴² In Warwick’s case (given his youth) this membership was probably largely nominal in 1485, but it certainly indicates Richard III’s intention that this nephew, too, should be trained to play some role in the politics of the future.