Richard The Chird (33 page)

made of the political situation in London, the council clerk did not record, but he did record the Protector's verbal instructions which Ratcliffe relayed to the Mayor and his fellows: "The credence of the which letter is that as much fellowship as the city may make defensibly arrayed, as well of horse as of foot, be on Wednesday at even next coming [June 18] at Pontefract, there attending upon my lord of Northumberland, and so with him to go up to London, there to attend upon my said lord's good grace." The burghers of York wasted no time. They at once had Richard's appeal published through the city and on the following day they determined to send southward no less than three hundred men, under the joint captaincy of their parliamentary representatives, Thomas Wrangwysh and William Wells. 8 * Meanwhile, Sir Richard Ratcliffe had galloped on to deliver the remaining messages to Richard's adherents, of which the surviving letter, addressed "To My Lord Nevill, in haste," is doubtless a typical example:

My Lord Nevill, I recommend me to you as heartily as I can; and as ever ye love me and your own weal and security, and this realm, that ye come to me with that ye may make, defensibly arrayed, in all the haste that is possible; and that ye give credence to Richard Ratcliffe, this bearer, whom I now do send to you, instructed with all my mind and intent.

And, my Lord, do me now good service, as ye have always before done, and I trust now so to remember you as shall be the making of you and yours. And God send you good fortunes.

Written at London, i ith day of June, with the hand of your heartily loving cousin and master,

R. GLOUCESTER. 9

In his "credence" to the Mayor and to Lord Neville, Ratcliffe doubtless enlarged on the combination of the Woodvilles with Lord Hastings' party. For the commonalty of York, however, a simple rallying cry was obviously desirable; hence the appeal directed solely against the Queen and her kindred, who had already demonstrated their opposition to the Protector and had long been unpopular. Yet this call for aid probably did not spring from Richard's fear of the present conspiracy, against which he

had already determined on a course of action. He was anticipating the need of armed force to check the counterblow which might follow or some other upheaval which lay hidden in the now uncertain future.

The remarkable terms of this sudden pressing appeal shed some light on its purpose but even more upon the character of its author. In the moment of urgency Richard does not, as well he might, demand support for the government against rebels, emphasizing his authority as Protector to secure troops; he reverts to the primitive seignorial obligation. It is as their "good lord" that he stirs the men of York; to Neville he writes as "cousin and master." He invokes the theme of loyalty and personal feeling which animated his relation with the men of the North. It was a feeling that his brother Edward understood but was too sophisticated to depend upon and that was as alien to the earlier Tudors as it would have been comprehensible to both the victor and the vanquished at Hastings.

There are lesser touches of interest in the letters. The prominence of Buckingham in the message to York suggests the acceleration of his influence; the theme of "the old royal blood" reflects basic Yorkist doctrine, here raised against the Woodvilles, which Richard's father had used against Lancaster and Beaufort. Of a piece with the dominance of instinct and feeling in this appeal is its destination. By appealing only to Yorkshire for help, Richard impoliticly disclosed that the Protector of the whole realm still saw himself as Lord of the North.

Many hours before Ratcliffe reached York, Richard had moved to crush the conspiracy of Hastings and the Woodvilles. On Thursday, June 12, he appointed two meetings of councilors for the following morning. One group, headed by Chancellor Russell, was to discuss at Westminster certain matters relating to the coronation. The second group was requested to attend in the council chamber of the Tower at ten o'clock in the morning. It consisted of Hastings, Stanley, Morton, and Rotherham, and Buckingham, Howard, and other intimate advisers of the Protector. On Friday morning, June 13, these lords and prelates came from their various abodes in the city to assemble in the large chamber in the White

Tower. For different reasons, they were all doubtless very conscious of the presence, in the nearby apartments of state, of young Edward, their sovereign lord. Perhaps Hastings was still a little under the spell of Mistress Shore's embraces. Not six weeks ago he had been fond of remarking at any opportunity that the government had been transferred from two of the Queen's kindred to two more powerful persons of the King's without causing so much blood to be shed as would be produced by a cut finger. 10 This elation had long since evaporated; on this morning he nursed other thoughts. The councilors took their seats about the table with a rustling of rich gowns and a crosscurrent of greetings. The usher shut the chamber door. Sitting stern of face at the head of the table, Richard opened the meeting.

There had just been detected, he declared abruptly, a conspiracy against the government. The Queen and her adherents were among the ringleaders. And Shore's wife. There were others, however. . . . After an instant of strained silence, Richard directly accused Hastings and Stanley and Morton and Rotherham of plotting with the Woodvilles against the protectorship. Hastings tensely denied the charge. Richard flung on the board the dreaded word treason. The Lord Chamberlain made a hot rejoinder. Men sprang to their feet. Perhaps Hastings and Stanley reached for weapons. The usher flung open the door, bawling, "Treason! Treason!" A band of armed men rushed into the room. There was a scuffle. . . .

In a moment it was all over. Morton and Rotherham were escorted to prison quarters in the Tower. Stanley was put under special detention in his own lodgings. Hastings, in the grasp of guards, was summarily informed that he was to be executed at once, and at Richard's order was hurried from the chamber. A priest was found so that the Lord Chamberlain might briefly be shriven; then he was led to the green by the Tower chapel. On a square piece of timber intended for building repairs, William, Lord Hastings was beheaded forthwith. 11 *

By this time the cries of treason in the Tower had roused the city. Rumor galloped in a thousand tongues. Down Tower Street raced the flying tales, along Bishopsgate, through the goldsmiths'

shops in the Poultry and Cheapside. Citizens poured into the streets or apprehensively looked to their weapons. A yeoman of the Protector's household galloped to the home of Edmund Shaa, Mayor and goldsmith of London, bidding him repair to the Tower immediately. The City hummed and buzzed.

It was not long, however, before a royal herald appeared in the streets, a trumpet commanding silence for his proclamation. Lord Hastings had been executed—he read from his parchment—by the authority of the royal council, after being detected in a plot to destroy the Lord Protector and the Duke of Buckingham so as to rule King and realm at his pleasure. He had been immediately punished for his treason in order to forestall riotous attempts to deliver him. The government was secure. There was no cause for alarm. The city was to go peacefully about its business. Hastings, the herald concluded, had been an evil councilor to Edward the Fourth, enticing the King to dishonor and setting him an example of vicious living. This very night past he had lain with Shore's wife, who was herself one of the plotters. 12 *

Men went back to their homes, put up their weapons. Apprentices resumed their labors. On his return from the Tower, the Mayor assured the principal citizens that a dangerous outbreak had been happily prevented. The city quickly resumed its accustomed mien. Many accepted, or thought it best to accept, the explanation of the Lord Protector. A number, however, were skeptical. Henceforth, there grew a creeping surf of whispers that the King's uncle would assume the crown. 13 *

Richard could hardly have denounced Hastings' licentious living under the supposition that it was an issue ripe for exploitation. The rivalry of the Lord Chamberlain and the Marquess in procuring the King's pleasures, the royal amours themselves— even when they touched the wives of citizens—were rather looked upon with complacence by Edward's subjects than endured with shame. 14 * It is the feelings of Edward's brother rather than the calculated propaganda of the Protector which this passage reveals. Richard's urge to justify to others what he could not reconcile to his own conscience resulted in a plea which had little appeal for anyone except himself. The speed with which Hastings

was hustled to the headsman was perhaps prompted by Richard's fear that if he paused to reflect, he would be unable to commit the deed.

The body of the Lord Chamberlain was borne to Windsor, and by the Protector's order, interred in the unfinished chapel of St. George close to the tomb of Edward the Fourth, who in his will of 1475 had expressed the wish that Hastings be buried near him. Not many weeks later, Richard sealed an indenture, swearing to take Katherine, Hastings' widow, directly under his protection and to secure for her the enjoyment of her husband's lands, goods, and privileges, the custody of their heir until the boy came of age, and the wardship of the young Earl of Shrewsbury, who was married to their daughter Anne. Hastings, he promised, would never be attainted; Katherine would be defended against any attempt by intimidation or fraud to deprive her of her rights. Though, in a moment of doubt, Richard soon removed Hastings' brother from the captaincy of Guisnes Castle, he thereafter wooed his support and treated him generously, and eventually permitted him to repurchase the reversion of the office he had lost. 15 Thus did he seek to atone for what, clearly, he could never forgive himself. The act represented a breach in his character, forced by the pressures of an unhappy past which had not been of his making and the insidious demands of a complex, subtle present with which the earnest, strong-willed lord of the moors could not deal without corroding his nature.

Hastings' colleagues got off very lightly. Two of them were, after all, bishops. The ineffectual Rotherham suffered only a brief imprisonment. At Buckingham's request, John Morton was dispatched to the Duke's favorite castle of Brecknock, where he was comfortably lodged. Stanley's art of landing on the winning side had not deserted him. In a few days he was not only released but restored to his place in the council. To forgive Stanley was a kind of twisted expiation for the execution of a better and a dearer man. Besides, Stanley was a timeserver. With Stanley, Richard felt no competition in loyalties. 16 *

Not many hours after the death of Hastings, Richard assembled a full council in order to explain and justify his act. The evidence

of conspiracy he exhibited may not have reconciled by any means all of the councilors to that violent stroke, but there is no reason to doubt that many of them were convinced of the Protector's need to take action of some kind. Though Richard, and Buckingham, had certainly overawed the council, the power of the Protector was still supported only by men's wills.

He now rode the momentum of events to deal with the Wood-villes, proposing to the council that if the Queen herself could not be induced to come forth from the sanctuary, the little Duke of York must be secured. The King needed his brother's companionship; the coronation ceremony would be maimed by his absence; the spectacle of the Queen Dowager hiding her children under the wings of the Church cast an intolerable obloquy upon the government. Was not the Queen, in fact, holding little York as a political hostage? Buckingham eloquently developed the theme, affirming that, since the child neither needed nor was capable of wanting sanctuary, he could be removed without rupture of the holy right. The lords spiritual were divided. Some held with the horrified Archbishop of Canterbury that to fetch the child, no matter what arguments might be marshaled, would violate a refuge that St. Peter himself had sanctified. Other bishops, however, and all the temporal lords agreed that if the Queen would not relinquish the little Duke, he must be fetched.

On Monday morning, June 16, the councilors assembled at the Tower and then, accompanied by a body of armed men, were rowed up river to Westminster. The armed men surrounded the sanctuary. Richard, Buckingham, and a part of the council retired to the Star Chamber, while the rest, headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Howard, proceeded into the abbot's quarters to seek the Queen. Appalled by the thought of force, the old Archbishop pleaded hard with the beleaguered Elizabeth. At first she was adamant in her refusals, but the grim faces of Howard and the other lords shook her resolution. After the Archbishop had renewed his assurances that her son would be most respectfully tended, the Queen consented, with apparent good will, to let him go. That her feelings did not match her words is probable enough.

The Archbishop took the nine-year-old boy by the hand and led him forth, followed by the train of councilors. Standing alone in the vast space of Westminster Hall, Buckingham welcomed the lad and conducted him to the door of the Star Chamber. Here Richard greeted him affectionately, talked with him a little, and returned him to the care of the Archbishop, who escorted him to his brother in the Tower. About this same time Richard had taken into his own household another scion of the House of York. Young Edward, Earl of Warwick, Clarence's ten-year-old son, had been brought up from the country and placed in the care of Richard's wife, his aunt.

Meanwhile, Richard had decided that Rivers, Vaughan, and Grey must be executed. 17 *

In his prison at Sheriff Hutton, on Monday, June 23, Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers, is informed that, as a result of his sister's plotting, he has been sentenced to death by Richard of Gloucester, Constable and Protector. He is given spiritual consolation. He is given pen, ink, paper. In a maelstrom of all moods he desperately gathers his thoughts and sets himself to make his will:

He earnestly desires that his debts be paid. He prays that sufficient of his goods be allowed to his executors so that bequests to the poor and to the Church will be honored. Struggling to cleanse his soul, he recalls some recent transactions in property in which he may have acted with a high hand and begs that the matter be looked into and justice done. Uncertain of where he will die, he nominates resting places for his body both north and south of Trent. He names five executors, among them, Chancellor Russell and William Catesby. Finally, he begs Richard, Duke of Gloucester, to oversee the carrying out of his wishes. Then he is informed that he will be conveyed to Pontefract Castle and there, with Sir Thomas Vaughan and Lord Richard Grey, beheaded. He adds a last sentence to his will, asking to be buried at Pontefract with the Lord Richard. 18