Richard The Chird (25 page)

While the English ambassadors kindly paused at St. Malo, Duke Francis changed his mind and sent his clever treasurer Pierre Landois posting hotfoot to get the Tudor back. While Landois made a pretense of conferring with the ambassadors, his men conveyed the feverish Henry to a sanctuary. To the bitter protests of Edward's outwitted envoys Landois replied coolly that it was by their own negligence their charge had escaped! Duke Francis promised Edward, however, that both the Tudors would be carefully watched. He treated Henry well and apparently grew fond of him, but he kept his promise as long as King Edward lived. 7

Now, lying anxious of heart in the shadow of death, Edward could take small comfort from contemplating the shifting vagaries of Francis' character and the dangerous humiliation which Louis XI had dealt him. The shadow of Henry Tudor was cast upon Edward's mind by the ominous lightning that glared upon the southern horizons.

Far more menacing, however, were the apparitions that lurked in his own palace.

The worm of discord within the court gnawed agonizingly upon his thoughts. As his strength ebbed, he summoned the leaders of the two factions to his chamber and bade his attendants prop him in the bed with pillows. His Queen he did not summon. Elizabeth held small meaning for him, dying, and no more hope for the realm when he was dead.

The courtiers gathered about him. On one side stood the kindred of the Queen—her two sons by her first marriage, the profligate Thomas, Marquess of Dorset, and young Lord Richard Grey; two of her brothers, Lionel, Bishop of Salisbury, and the martial Sir Edward Woodville. On the other side stood representatives of the old nobility, headed by William, Lord Hastings, the King's Chamberlain and dearest friend. Between the parties hovered the shadow of the King's brother Clarence, done to death, all believed, by the insatiable Queen whom he had dared to scorn. Between them yawned the bitter gulf of covert insult, intrigue, and feud.

Looking into their faces, Edward spoke with unwonted earnest-

RICHARD THE THIRD

ness. He was no preacher, he told them, but let them remember that he was soon going to the place the preachers talked about and that he addressed them with the authority not of kingship but of the dying. Unless they loved one another, his son and the kingdom and they themselves would all be brought to ruin. . . .

Exhausted, perhaps having no hope in the power of his words, he rolled over on his right side, face against the pillows, and stared at them. They were moved to tears. The Marquess and Hastings clasped hands and swore to love one another; the rest of the lords and gentlemen followed suit. 8 *

Edward sighed, dismissed them. The strength which his son and the kingdom needed did not lie in these men. There was only one man capable of ordering the realm and subduing the factions which split the court. It was a man he loved well and who, he knew, loved him. . . .

At last he summoned his executors—five great prelates and three lords, not precisely the same group he had appointed for the will he made before he invaded France in 1475. Lord Stanley had been added; Queen Elizabeth had been dropped. With real humility the fast-weakening King begged these men to pay all his just debts, to rectify any extortions of which he might be found guilty, and to distribute a generous portion of his goods to the poor. Then, aware that his minutes on earth were numbered, he added the all-important codicil to his will; he bequeathed his boy heir and his realm to the protection of his brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester. After that, the priests came bearing the Eucharist. Now but a weary son of Holy Church, Edward turned his final thoughts wholly to God. 9 *

Not many hours later, while the bells tolled, the magnates who happened to be in the city gathered at Westminster, among them Lord Howard, who only the day before had arrived in London from his Essex estates. 10 Having assembled at the Guildhall, the Mayor and his brethren, too, made their way to the

palace. The citizens talked or prayed or grieved in silence

perhaps as much for themselves who had lost a good and great master as for the King now facing the dread judgment of Heaven. In the minds of some already stirred the. old saw which the bad

DEATHBED OF A KING

days of Henry VI had too eloquently affirmed: u Woe to that land whose ruler is a child."

In his chamber the dead king lay upon a board, naked save for a cloth which covered him from his navel to his knees. Before the body passed the lords spiritual and temporal and the Mayor and Aldermen of London that they might look upon their master for the last time and witness that he was indeed dead. The next morning he was borne into the chapel of St. Stephen's and the solemn obsequies were begun. Eight days they lasted, as if men were loath to let him go. After a final ceremony in the Abbey, the funeral procession left London for Windsor on April 18. On April 20, in the pomp of regal dominion and the solemnity of Holy Church, King Edward the Fourth was laid at last to rest in the chapel of St. George, gorgeous in its fan vaulting, which he himself had edified. 11

It was a beginning as well as an ending. The Bishops in their albs and chasubles, the magnates and courtiers in flowing black, moved through the ritual unaware that they were characters in the prologue to a high and bloody drama , . . their concord soon to be broken, their vestments to be stained or rent. Some then present had not long to live and would not die quietly. Many who lived would stand in peril of their lives or their honor. For the moment, the Woodvilles—Sir Richard and Sir Edward, the Bishop of Salisbury and the Marquess—offered the Mass penny and knelt in prayer with Hastings and Stanley and Audeley and Howard. Lord Ferrers of Chartley was present, who would die in battle; and a gentleman-usher, William Colyngbourne, who would die horribly, but not for a rhyme; and the gigantic Sir John Cheyney, who would be cut down by a Kong's hand; and John Morton, Bishop of Ely, who would end a cardinal, much hated.

The leading actors of this drama, however, were not present. Somewhere in the palace of Westminster Queen Elizabeth was feverishly arranging the future to suit her heart's desire. At Lud-low Castle in the Marches of Wales dwelt Prince Edward, now Edward the Fifth, a boy of twelve, and his maternal uncle and governor, Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers. Henry Stafford,

second Duke of Buckingham and of the blood royal, was on his Welsh estates. Oversea, at the court of Francis, Duke of Brittany, a young man with a pale, wedge-shaped face, thinning yellow hair, and wary gray eyes waited and watched. And far off at his castle of Middleham lay the dead king's sole surviving brother and the new king's uncle—Richard, Duke of Gloucester.

The Woodvilles*

By Heaven, I think there is no man secure But the Queen's kindred.

TT WAS mid-April when a messenger galloped into the court-I yard of Middleharn Castle bearing the stunning news that

King Edward had died on April 9. Barely two months had passed since Richard had parted from the King. Though his brother's health had not been good, he had.had no surmise that Edward stood near the edge of death. His thoughts were upon bringing the Scots to heel and upon establishing the county palatine by means of which he and his heirs might live safely withdrawn from court in Edward's declining years. The King's death abruptly ended all prospects of such a withdrawal. It ended other things too. With the first words of the messenger, the pole-star of Richard's life had fallen from the sky. 1 *

A chaplain said requiem masses in the chapel of the castle. The household assumed black. Anne doubtless tried to explain to her frail little prince, Edward, now ten years old, why his father looked so pale and stern. Richard had small time for the outward show of grief. The world beyond the southward upthrust of the moors had suddenly turned dangerous. Middleharn lay well over two hundred miles from London and Edward had been dead a week.

The messenger had not been dispatched by the Queen or the Chancellor. He was one of Lord Hastings' men, and he brought more than tidings of Edward's death. Hastings' message was curt and urgent: "The King has left all to your protection—goods, heir, realm. Secure the person of our sovereign Lord Edward the Fifth and get you to London." 2 No formal notice of this new authority having arrived, Richard decided to dispatch a query to Earl Rivers at Ludlow: As Protector and uncle of Edward V,

he wished to honor his sovereign by entering London with him. When and by what route would the young King travel to his capital? 3 *

Before many days had passed, a second messenger in the colors of Lord Hastings clattered across the drawbridge. The Wood-villes, wrote the Lord Chamberlain, had usurped the direction of affairs. Only by a desperate effort had he succeeded in limiting the escort which would bring Edward up to London to two thousand men. Richard should not fail to come strong and secure the King.

There was still no official word from Westminster. Weighing this silence with Hastings' news, Richard composed a letter to Queen Elizabeth, commiserating with her and promising to serve her son. Then he addressed himself to the dead king's council.

He had been loyal to his brother Edward, he began, at home and abroad, in peace and war. He would be equally loyal to his brother's heir and all his brother's issue. He desired only that the new government of the kingdom be established according to law and justice. By his brother's testament he had been made Protector of the realm. If the council were debating the disposition of authority, he asked them to consider the position rightfully due him according to the law of the land and his brother's ordinance. Richard added one warning: nothing which was contrary to law and King Edward's will could be decreed without harm. 4 *

The letter was far from eloquent, except in its massive plainness and its moderation. The law Richard referred to is to be understood, in modern terms, rather as "recognized precedent." In that day there was no body of legislation which defined even the rights of the succession, much less the forming of a regency government. During the minority of Richard II, his uncles had assumed charge of affairs. Henry V had bequeathed the regency of France to his brother Bedford, the regency of England to his brother Humphrey of Gloucester. In leaving the kingdom to the protection of his sole surviving brother, King Edward had followed—Richard was reminding the council—a custom approved by over a century of practice. But the wishes of a deceased mon-

arch, Richard knew, had not always prevailed. Jealous magnates had limited Humphrey's protectorship to a nominal authority which the party of the Beauforts had frequently thwarted. 5

Not long after this letter was dispatched, there arrived at Middleham a courier in the livery of Henry Stafford, second Duke of Buckingham, dusty with the long miles he had ridden from Brecon in South Wales. Buckingham wrote that in the new world that was a-making, he put himself entirely at the Duke of Gloucester's service, with a thousand men if need be. What would Gloucester have him do? The messenger, on his master's behalf, begged to have an immediate answer,

Richard had had small opportunity to know Buckingham well It was clear that the young Duke had written immediately he heard of Edward's death and that he was not averse to stirring in troubles. He was, after Richard himself, however, the noblest blood in England, and he seemed genuinely eager to offer his support. While the courier had his bread and meat and ale, Richard wrote a reply: He was shortly coming south to join the King's progress to London. He would be pleased to have Buckingham meet him on the road—but with a small escort only, not more than three hundred men.

Richard himself had already determined to limit his company to a similar number. 6 These tenants, retainers, and friends he had requested to meet him at York. About April 20 he bade farewell to Anne and his son and began a journey about which he could forecast little but that it was likely to be dangerous. Before he set forth from York, he administered to the men who were accompanying him and to the magistrates of the city the oath of fealty to King Edward V. Northumberland, Warden of the East and Middle Marches, was not there. It may be that Richard had asked the Earl to remain at Berwick in order to watch the Scots; it is possible that Henry Percy used his duties as an excuse to discover how affairs would shape before he put himself at Richard of Gloucester's side/*

As Richard's cavalcade moved southward toward Nottingham, he encountered a courier from Earl Rivers. Sending courteous greetings, Rivers wrote that the King and he would leave Lud-

low on April 24. They should reach Northampton on the twenty-ninth, where, perchance, it might please the Duke of Gloucester to join them. Richard sent back word that he would fall in with this proposal.

The cavalcade now moved at a slow pace, pausing a day or two at Pontefract. Not until April 26 did Richard arrive at Nottingham. Here a second messenger from Buckingham brought him word that the Duke was en route from Wales. Richard bade the man ask his master to join the rendezvous at Northampton. 8

By this time he had received further messages from Lord Hastings, each more pressing and ominous than the last: The Woodvilles had ignored Richard's appointment as Protector. They were moving to crown the King at once in order to keep power in their hands. Richard must secure young Edward at all costs. In his latest communication the usually debonair Lord Chamberlain had written wildly that he stood alone, that his very life was in danger because he had espoused the Protector's cause. 9

It must have been clear to Richard, as he and his troop slowly approached Northampton, that if King Edward had had no brother to assume the protectorship, the two hostile factions of the court would by this time have been stirring civil strife. Hastings had leaped to identify his party with the Protector. Buckingham, who loathed the Queen and her kindred, was obviously chafing to triumph over them. The Woodvilles, on the other hand, had momentarily captured the council in order that they might capture the King. Richard had come to only one decision: to hold himself uncommitted to anything, except his dead brother's ordinance. Precisely what was happening in the capital he could not tell; precisely what attitude Earl Rivers and his two thousand men would take at Northampton he did not know. He did know that the authority of the protectorship was rightfully his, and he trusted to his abilities and to the will of the realm to make good that authority. There is something at once naive and formidable about Richard's rigorous confidence, in the face of opposition so aggressive and a political situation so complex and explosive.