Richard III and the Murder in the Tower (3 page)

News of the events from Stony Stratford reached the queen and the rest of her party in London.
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Realising their plans for near-term control were now defunct, they separated in order to find their respective places of safety. Elizabeth Woodville herself, now the queen dowager (
see
Figure 3), decamped with her youngest son and daughters to Westminster Abbey. She was certainly familiar with these surroundings, since she had previously availed herself of this sanctuary
²²
and it was here that she subsequently stayed throughout the tumultuous summer to come.

The king in waiting, Edward V, and his uncle, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, entered London on the auspicious twelfth anniversary of Edward IV’s famous victory at Tewkesbury. It was 4 May 1483 and the old king had been dead less than a month. At this juncture, all appeared to have been proceeding as everyone would have expected and, despite the Woodville intrigues, the plan for the young boy’s coronation progressed on schedule.
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Up to this point, we have no direct indication of any action by Richard that would show that he was seeking the throne. This is not necessarily to say that he was not. However, none of his actions to that time directly support such an interpretation and many of his actions, in contrast, show him discharging his duties as Protector appropriately.
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Just over two months later, however, Richard was crowned king, and it is the events of this critical period of transition which form the present focus.

Preliminary preparations for Edward V’s coronation, which was now scheduled for 24 June, appear to have been proceeding as planned. Letters were sent out summoning those who were to be honoured at the coming ceremony, which was indicated in some documents to occur on 22 June.
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Those individuals so summoned seem to have begun preparations to attend on the young king in Westminster Abbey. A coronation of a new king was an involved business and from the records that we have, that business seems to have been proceeding apace. Letters also appear to have been sent out summoning individuals to a parliament to be held shortly after the coronation on 25 June.
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What is vital here is to try to establish a specific window in time in order to identify when Richard takes the decision to deviate from this generally anticipated course of action. We can ascertain this date by working both forwards and backwards from events around this general interval to fix, with the greatest level of confidence that we can, when the fateful decision was made. De Blieck argues convincingly that a major dimension which would influence the timing of any such decision must have been the presence of troops in the capital available to Richard and by which he could enforce his decision. It is a dimension that certainly underlies the consideration of the account which follows.
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Let us now see what we know of those events early in June 1483.
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We know that Richard, Duke of Gloucester was at the Tower of London on Monday 2 June, as we have evidence of his presence there on that day.
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Further, it is believed that Richard’s wife, Anne Neville, arrived in London on Thursday 5 June, since on this same day it has been reported, perhaps incorrectly, that she sent wafers to John Howard’s wife.
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Richard wrote a letter to the city of York and gave it to John Brackenbury to deliver.
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Richard moved from Baynard’s Castle to Crosby Place, his London home, a move which may well have been associated with his wife’s arrival in the capital. Letters were sent out in Edward V’s name to individuals who would be honoured at the forthcoming ceremony.
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The letter read:

Much appears to depend upon how prepared some of these individuals were to receive the coming honours. The letter, dated 5 June, might have taken a number of days to reach some of the more distant points in the kingdom. Further, the individual who was, by this command, required to attend at the Tower was required to reach there by Wednesday 18 June. A journey of five days for the letter to reach the north country and five days for the individual in their turn to reach London would have left some honourees precious little time to prepare for such an important occasion.

It has been claimed that on this day Robert Stillington, the Bishop of Bath & Wells, provided evidence to the Council of the pre-contract between Edward IV and Eleanor Butler. The first individual to have identified Stillington as the source of this information was De Commines.
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However, this specific date appears to originate with the early-twentieth-century speculation of Markham.
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We shall return to this proposition later. However, in contrast to this later speculation, one contemporary observer, Simon Stallworth, who recorded the events of the Council that day, reported no such revelation.
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It is highly probable that Stallworth would have made at least a note of such a significant happening had this actually occurred. The absence of any such observation in Stallworth’s letter reflects unfavourably on the accuracy of Markham’s interpretation of De Commines’s report.
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As we have seen, the letter that Simon Stallworth, the servant of John Russell, Bishop of Lincoln, wrote on this day, 9 June 1483, to Sir William Stonor is a vital clue in our search for the truth of the present matters.
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He noted that, ‘There is great business against the coronation which shall be this day fortnight as we say.’ This we may take to mean that there was much business associated with the preparations which were going ahead for the crowning of Edward V. While plans for the coronation were quickly going forward, the negotiations between the Council and Elizabeth Woodville, the Queen Dowager, now in sanctuary in Westminster Abbey, had broken down. Council members refused to visit her any more, and Stallworth comments:

Stallworth noted that a meeting of the Council had occurred, but had nothing to report except the plans for the coronation, now scheduled for 22 June. He said that the queen, her children, her brother Lionel Woodville and others remained in sanctuary. Stallworth also mentioned that the Prior of Westminster was in trouble because of certain goods that the queen’s son, Thomas Grey of Dorset, had delivered to him (presumably in support of his mother). Stallworth’s observations are critical here since they indicate that, although there were problems with the queen, the plans for Edward V’s coronation were still progressing. In this light, we can see that Richard, Duke of Gloucester continued to fulfill his duties as Protector. Up to this point, then, there is no evidence that Richard had made any move which would indicate unequivocally that he intended to seek the throne.

One day later, on Tuesday 10 June, Richard himself wrote to his supporters in the city of York. The letter, which eventually reached York five days later, on the 15 June (just one day after the letter sent on 5 June) specifically asked for help in relation to the actions of the queen, her blood adherents and affinities. He indicated that they were trying to destroy him, Buckingham and the old royal blood of the realm.
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(Parenthetically, this letter cannot have left London until the day after, the 11th, since, as discussed below, it was carried by the same messenger as another letter dated on this subsequent day.). However, these appeals to his adherents in the city of York only reiterate what Richard had known since the events at Stony Stratford and most probably even before. Thus, the letter can hardly be described as recognition of any antipathy in respect to William, Lord Hastings who, after all, had himself warned Richard of the Woodville intentions in the first place. Again, from this evidence, we can look to place the window of Richard’s decision in regard to the throne after the 10th and most probably after 11 June. The cessation of Privy Seal writs under Edward’s name is, however, pertinent to the timing of this decision. Assuming Sunday 8th was exempt from business, this suspension of action would appear to have started on Monday 9 June. This observation is open to multiple interpretations, including the possibility that such issuances ceased because of other concerns or a natural lull in activity or a natural focus upon the more important business of the upcoming coronation. However, it is a point that should be borne in mind as we progress.

As well as the letter cited above, Richard had written a further communication to his supporter, Ralph, Lord Neville of Raby, which Ratcliffe had carried to the North.
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This letter, addressed ‘To My Lord Nevill, in haste,’ stated:

At the same time, he may have been carrying the warrants for the executions of Rivers, Grey and Vaughan. Although Richard’s decision here might well be considered to be one in defiance of the Council, it may well be an act of self-defence against the queen, her family and her adherents. This being so, it shows that Richard was certainly looking to counteract the Woodville strategy in the strictest possible way. This possibility also accords with Thomas More’s observation about Hastings, knowing of the coming execution of these individuals for whom he had little regard and indeed much noted antipathy. Perhaps Hastings had actually seen Richard issue these warrants of execution?

On this day, Richard sent out a summons to Buckingham, Hastings, Morton, Rotherham, Stanley, John Howard and his son, Thomas, to attend a Council meeting at the Tower the next day, while he scheduled another one for the same day at Westminster, ostensibly for the finalisation of the coronation plans, with John Russell presiding. The Croyland Chronicler noted that this division of the Council represented a ‘remarkable shrewdness’ on the part of the Protector,
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but this is fundamentally a
post hoc
interpretation in which the reporting individual already knew the outcome of the events of the following day. It represents yet another case of hindsight bias.
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It was on this tumultuous day that William, Lord Hastings was executed (see Appendix II). How and why this happened is the central concern of the present work.
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A brief summary here is sufficient to introduce what is considered the standard version of the events of that day. The most detailed account we have provides extensive details of the meeting, but these assertions, made by Sir Thomas More, have to be analysed carefully.
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The authorship of this extract has been the subject of extensive discussion, particularly because there are several events which seem to have been witnessed first hand, ostensibly by the author. The suggestion is that Thomas More was either helped or highly influenced by John, Cardinal Morton who, as Bishop of Ely, was present that day at the Tower and in whose house More was brought up. Thus when we hear More’s words we have to consider that they are, almost certainly, coloured by the opinion of one of Richard’s most vehement enemies.
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More implies that William, Lord Hastings was ‘escorted’ to the Tower on this fateful morning. He further implies that Thomas Howard, son of John Howard, was the individual deputed to ensure Hastings’ presence. This errand was apparently somewhat hampered by Hastings tarrying to talk with others along the way. The joke made about Hastings not needing to talk to a priest (who was one of the individuals he stopped to talk with) is certainly an effort to imply premeditation as to what was about to occur. However, this is fundamentally hearsay, being again a
post hoc
construction, and it is almost certain that More the lawyer would have seen through such a flimsy attempt at incrimination in his own practice. It is virtually certain that Hastings had no premonition as to what would happen later that morning (although again this is imputed by accounts of ‘dreams and nightmares’). If he had any real suspicions, it is most probable that an old campaigner like Hastings would have provided himself with some form of protection. Indeed, as we shall see, Hastings was completely taken by surprise by the turn of events and this is an important dimension that any attempted explanation of what went on must tackle.