Richard The Chird (36 page)

As Richard struggled with the problem, he was pressed by the will of others and borne along on the rapid movement of events. The silvery voice of Buckingham was in his ear—Buckingham, who was so zealously loyal, and so like Clarence in his charm. His other advisers surrounded him with their convictions. Yet they did not speak distinctly to his conscience or light up the murky dilemma of his conflicting loyalties. His wife, Anne, was with him to share, at brief moments, his troubled musings. She was a

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gentle lady—she would say little; but she was the daughter of Warwick and the mother of a prince who could become heir to the throne. There was the young King himself. When Richard entered the royal apartments, Edward's face stiffened and his eyes went blank and he spoke with the obvious wariness of a precocious twelve-year-old. Richard could find no point of contact, no means of establishing communication with this frail youth of scholarly bent. He had no affection for the Duke of Gloucester, to begin with. He had been deeply shocked by the arrest of Rivers, the flight of his mother to sanctuary, the downfall of his party. Since his upbringing had made him impervious to the lawful rights of the Protector, he held Richard directly responsible for all these calamities. When Richard tried to find a nephew, he met only a Woodville. The boy's rearing had drained out of him the blood of his father.

Meanwhile, the rhythm of events themselves sounded an ever more insistent beat in Richard's mind. Perhaps his course had already been determined, blindly, by the wills of men who had been hostile to him. The Woodvilles' attempt to seize power, the conspiracy of Hastings, his own counterblows, now the disclosure of the precontract—had not the gathering momentum of these circumstances swept him past the point of choice? Public opinion took the answer for granted. Most men assumed, whether angrily, cynically, or hopefully, that he would mount the throne; he could read the expectation in their eyes. Perhaps there was no decision to seek; perhaps he was simply struggling to justify what had somehow akeady been decided.

His thoughts swung restlessly between the poles of the past and the future. As a child he had been tossed by the storms which Henry VFs reign had brewed; before he was nine years old he had lost a father and a brother and been forced to flee the kingdom. England had sunk to her knees in a mire of quarreling magnates. Yet Henry's minority had begun more auspiciously than Edward's. Hidden in sanctuaries or in refuges abroad, the King's mother and her numerous kindred awaited only the opportunity to stir up strife in the King's name. There were still partisans of Lancaster ready to make capital of any conflict within the

House of York. Surrounded by Woodville exiles, Henry Tudor was eagerly scanning events from the court of Brittany. And there was no reason to suppose that the nobles had forgotten how to exploit the weakness of a protectorship.

Richard well knew that his office was a slippery eminence, a vulnerable authority. Had not Richard II precipitated his own ruin by turning savagely on those who had governed during his minority? Had not Humphrey of Gloucester, once Henry VTs Protector, been done to death, as it was said, by men who had turned the King's heart against him? Richard realized that if the protectorship continued, there would inevitably develop a King's party to whom the future would belong. On the day that young Edward assumed the scepter for himself, where would the former Protector of the realm find protection against the long-meditated revenge of the King?

In Richard's mind all these elements of feeling, confused by moral misgivings, swam beneath the surface of political considerations and the immediate promptings of the hour. Soon he was driven back upon his only certainty: he would do nothing without the assent of the nobles and commons of the realm. Though he must have recognized that the very act of relinquishing the solution to them half proposed their answer, he set about consulting their wills in all sincerity. Even Polydore Vergil, creator of the official Tudor portrait of Richard, admits that "not withstanding that many of his friends urged him to utter himself plainly and to dispatch at once that which remained, yet, lest his doings might easily be misliked, his desire was that the people might earnestly be dealt with, and the whole matter referred to the determination of others. . . ."

The opinions of the Mayor and the chief citizens were canvassed as carefully as those of the lords. London was not only the heart of the realm; it was the nurse and guardian of the fortunes of the House of York. London had supported Richard's father; London had been the first to acclaim Richard's brother Edward; London had joyfully opened its arms to Edward and Richard in the spring of 1471, when their cause looked far from hopeful Furthermore, Richard's relations with the men of York had

schooled him to respect the intelligence and value the support of the rising middle class. Yet the prominent role which the Londoners played in the events of his elevation also represented a deeper working within his mind. The sermon at Paul's Cross, the appeal to the citizens, the thronging of the three estates to Baynard's Castle, the ceremony of Richard's seating himself in the marble chair of King's Bench and afterward making an offering at the shrine of St. Edward, the claim of hereditary rights confirmed by "popular" election—these events imitate a pattern from the past. It was by such steps that Edward, in March of 1461, had ascended to the throne. Thus did Richard seek to identify himself with the authentic tradition of his House; thus did he grope to regain the brother he had lost to Dame Elizabeth Grey, Hastings, and Mistress Shore, and to redefine his loyalty to the Edward he had worshiped as a boy by mentally divorcing him from the monarch who had fathered a Woodville child. Was it not possible for him to set aside Edward's heir and yet be truer to Edward than Edward had been to himself?

This pattern which Richard had imposed upon events hints at the ultimate means by which he had justified to himself the assumption of the throne. He would succeed his brother to redeem his brother's rule, to return it to its true track, from which it had been deflected by the greed and vanity of the Woodville court. He was deeply religious, but his mind was rigid and un-subtle. Good works, said Holy Church, must be the fruit of faith, the proof of faith. Good works, too, should be his proof. He must stand upon his merits. By the justice and goodness of his rule he would seek to satisfy his conscience and his subjects that he had rightly ascended the throne. All, he now saw, must turn on that. Hence it was that on the first day of his reign he so earnestly lectured the judges and took Sir John Fogge by the hand. He had set himself a task dangerous for any king, doubly dangerous for him who takes a crown another is already wearing. Richard perhaps failed to consider that in the England of 1483 it might be easier to find some color of justification for assuming the throne than to hold it, as he certainly ignored that

it would be easier for a monarch to keep the crown by the uses of power than by the merits of his rule.

Once he had assumed the crown, Richard pressed on his affairs with dispatch, 1 The date of the coronation was immediately set for Sunday, July 6. The day after he had seated himself in the marble chair, he appointed John Russell to be his Chancellor and at Baynard's Castle delivered the Great Seal into his keeping in the presence of Buckingham, Stanley, John Gunthorpe, who had been confirmed in his office of Privy Seal, and other lords and prelates. The fast-rising Catesby was made Chancellor of the Exchequer. Peter Curteys, Keeper of the Wardrobe, plunged into the heavy task of providing garments and all manner of rich stuff for the coronation; he sent hastily for skinners and tailors, promising them bonuses, and began to assemble an array of costly materials, including no less than 68,701 "powderings" (to ornament gowns) made of "bogy shanks" * at twenty shillings the thousand. On Saturday, June 28, Richard girded swords on Thomas, son of Lord Howard, and on Viscount Berkeley, coheir with Howard of the House of Mowbray, which made them the belted earls respectively of Surrey and Nottingham. Upon John Howard himself the King bestowed the cap of maintenance, the coronet, and the golden rod which marked his elevation to the dukedom of Norfolk. In order to secure the speedy adherence of Calais, Richard appointed a commission to acquaint Lord Dyn-ham, the deputy governor, with the change of rule and to supervise the taking of the oath of allegiance to the new King. As a token of his confidence, he empowered Dynham to continue negotiations with Lord Cordes. 2

Within a few days, Richard's forces from the North, accompanied by a scattering of Buckingham's men, finally arrived, under the command of the Earl of Northumberland. They were mustered in Moor Fields, some three or four thousand of them, in their rusty sallets and well-worn gear. 8 * Londoners trooped

* A sort of fur made of lamb's wool clipped from the animal's legs: later called "budge."

out to see the show. Some, who had heard tales that a huge army was marching upon the capital, mocked their own. foolish fears in jibing at the makeshift harness of the band; others took it for granted that the men had been summoned to guard against'a Woodville outbreak while London was thronged for the coronation. 4 When Richard rode out to greet them, they were drawn up in a huge circle in the fields. Around their ranks he passed with bared head, thanked them for their loyal service, and then led them through the city to Baynard's Castle. He had decided to employ them as auxiliary police for the coronation, perhaps as much to give them something to do as for any other reason. Immediately after the ceremony they were dismissed to their homes with thanks and rewards.

Meanwhile, seventeen gentlemen had been summoned to receive the order of knighthood. Nobles and gentry were still crowding into the already crowded city. Mindful of disturbances that had broken out during such occasions in the past, Richard issued a proclamation for the keeping of the peace in London and the vicinity. Men were strictly forbidden to stir up old quarrels, make affrays or challenges, or break into the sanctuaries in order to attack followers of the Woodvilles. Under penalty of death, no one was to harm aliens or strangers, from whom many commercial benefits flowed. The problem of lodgings had become so serious that all new arrivals were required to make application to the royal harbingers, who would find them quarters. Finally, Richard imposed a ten o'clock curfew on the city and forbade all but those duly licensed to carry weapons abroad. 5

On the day before the coronation, Richard rode in a gorgeous procession of magnates, prelates, knights, and household attendants through cheering crowds of Londoners as he took the traditional journey from the Tower to Westminster. Above a doublet of blue cloth of gold "wrought with nets and pine-apples" he wore a long gown of purple velveft, furred with ermine and enriched with 3,300 powderings of bogy shanks. His seven henchmen, or pages, were gay in doublets of crimson satin and short gowns of white cloth of gold. Richard's frail Queen, borne in a richly adorned horse litter, was attended by seven ladies on horseback

and by five henchmen wearing doublets of crimson satin and short gowns of blue velvet. None outshone the Duke of Buckingham, however, who had encased his handsome person in a gown of blue velvet blazing with a design of golden cart wheels. 6 *

On ^ the morrow it was Buckingham who supervised the assembling of the great coronation procession in the White Hall. John Howard had been granted the traditional honor of the Mowbrays, the office of Earl Marshal, and had been created High Steward of England for the crowning of the King; but having, in his own opinion, created a monarch, Buckingham was determined that nobody but himself should be in charge of his enthroning. He had forced Richard to set him above Norfolk as first officer of the coronation. 7 *

On a broad ribbon of red cloth the procession made its way to Westminster Hall and then, with the King and Queen walking barefoot, moved toward the Abbey, led by the royal musicians and heralds. A great cross was borne before a line of priests, abbots, and bishops. Then came the principal magnates with the regalia: Northumberland exhibiting the pointless sword of mercy; Stanley with the Lord High Constable's mace; the Earl of Kent and Viscount Lovell with the pointed swords of justice; the Duke of Suffolk, carrying the scepter; the Earl of Lincoln, the cross with the ball; the Earl of Surrey, the sword of state held upright in its scabbard; and finally the Duke of Norfolk, bearing the jeweled crown between his hands. King Richard walked in a gown of purple velvet with a bishop on either side of him and a cloth of estate borne over his head by the Wardens of the Cinque Ports. His train was held by the Duke of Buckingham, who grasped the white wand of High Steward. A troop of earls and barons preceded the lords who carried the Queen's regalia; then came the Queen, with Stanley's wife, the Countess of Richmond, holding her train. She was followed by the Duchess of Suffolk, the King's sister, walking in state by herself, the Duchess of Norfolk at the head of twenty noble ladies, and a long line of knights and squires and gentlemen.

As they approached the West Front of the Abbey, Richard and his lords could glimpse, in the courtyard of the almonry, the

sign of the Red Pale, where William Caxton, the former mercer, was producing quantities of books by means of his amazing machine. A burst of singing rang against stone arches: the procession was entering the nave.

After hearing a special service of "latin and prick song," the royal couple walked from their seats of estate in St. Edward's shrine to the high altar. Divested of their robes, they stood naked to the waist to be anointed with the sacred chrism. Then they were arrayed in cloth of gold, Cardinal Bourchier set crowns upon their heads, and music burst from the organs. Te Deum having been sung, the consecrated King and Queen resumed their seats of estate in St. Edward's shrine to hear High Mass. On either side of King Richard stood Buckingham and Norfolk, while Surrey held upright before him the sword of state. The Queen was attended by the Duchess of Suffolk and the Countess of Richmond, with the Duchess of Norfolk and other ladies kneeling behind. When the pax had been given, Richard and Anne returned to the high altar to receive Communion. Then, after the King had offered up the crown of St. Edward and other sacred relics at the shrine, trumpets and clarions and the organs sounded and the procession returned upon red cloth to Westminster Hall.