The King's Grave: The Discovery of Richard III's Lost Burial Place and the Clues It Holds (11 page)

And as I keep reminding myself, I don’t really know if these are the remains of King Richard III. I have to be logical and go with the evidence.

4

Yearning for a Noble Cause: Richard’s Early Career

R
ESPONDING TO
the flurry of interest in Richard III as the search for his remains got under way, Christie’s put up for auction a document of his written before he became king. It was drawn up at the Yorkshire castle of Pontefract on 22 April, and although no year was given, internal evidence suggested it was probably around 1476. It concerned a legal dispute between some tenants of another magnate, Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmorland. Although it was a relatively minor dispute, Richard had been petitioned to provide redress.

It was one of the few surviving letters drawn up under his signet, and signed by Richard himself and his secretary John Kendall. The estimated price was set between £8,000 and £12,000, but in the event it went for around double the original estimate, selling at £21,250. This was a remarkable price for one medieval manuscript, and showed the strength of interest in Richard that had been aroused.

Richard’s concern for justice and law-giving was a notable feature of his brief reign as king. Tudor histories – unable to deny this – put a different spin on it, suggesting that although Richard brought in measures to further these aims, they were a sham, the semblance of being a good ruler, to distract people from the terrible way in which he had seized the throne. Yet Richard’s belief in effective justice, and a willingness to champion the rights of the poor, had begun far earlier and can be clearly seen during the rule of his brother, Edward IV. To understand Richard as monarch, and the way he took the throne, it is vital to focus first on his early career, and, from this, get a sense of both the man and his motivation.

Richard was born at Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire on 2 October 1452. He was the youngest son of Richard, Duke of York and Cecily Neville, and the youngest surviving of twelve children. His birth may have been difficult, but there is no evidence that he was physically ill, or his life was in danger. His mother Cecily would later write of the painful after-effects of this birth, lamenting in a letter to Margaret of Anjou in the spring of 1453 of the infirmity of her ‘wretched body’, and the results of ‘sloth and discontinuance’, which in the last few months ‘hath grown and grown’. It appears that Cecily was still recovering from Richard’s birth several months later. It may well have been a traumatic and dangerous breech birth, where the mother could not be delivered ‘uncut’, as Thomas More suggested; perhaps the germ of this formed the basis of the hostile Tudor tradition.

At the time of Richard’s birth his father, Richard, Duke of York, was in open conflict with the crown. Earlier that year, he had challenged the weak monarchy of Henry VI directly, in February 1452 marching to Dartford at the head of an armed force with a petition of grievances. This strategy backfired: York was forced to relinquish his demands, and at St Paul’s Cathedral swore a solemn oath that he would never take up arms against the king, an oath that York subsequently felt he had no choice but to break.

As a baby and small child Richard would not have been aware of these concerns, although he may have felt the tension that affected his mother Cecily, who keenly followed her husband’s political fortunes. Cecily complained to Margaret of Anjou in 1453 that her husband’s fall from favour had caused her to be ‘replete with such immeasurable sorrow and heaviness as I doubt not will of the continuance thereof diminish and abridge my days, as it does my worldly joy and comfort’. Cecily dreaded this period of political exile, entreating Margaret that York should no longer be ‘estranged from the grace and benevolent favour … of the king our sovereign lord’. These were heartfelt sentiments, and as Richard grew up he certainly would have heard much more about this exile from court, and reflected upon it.

When Richard was born, Richard, Duke of York was the wealthiest magnate in the realm. He had a distinguished record of service to England’s ruling dynasty, the House of Lancaster, which he had represented as king’s lieutenant, first in France and then in Ireland. He had a keen commitment to good government, and the provision of justice, and was also strongly influenced, as a warrior, by the code of chivalry, in which he took a scrupulous interest. Many of these traits would be passed on to his youngest son, who also bore his name, and consciously adopted by him as a way of commemorating his father and his legacy.

However, in the 1450s Richard, Duke of York had moved from being a loyal servant of the Lancastrian King Henry VI to a political opponent. At first he had insisted that his grievances were not with the king himself, but with the ministers around him, particularly Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset. There is no reason to doubt this statement. York resented Somerset’s dominance over the king, and had good reason for doing so. Somerset had presided over the disastrous loss of Normandy in 1449–50, the duchy that had been triumphantly conquered by Henry V in the years following Agincourt, and regained by the French some thirty years later in a swift campaign that met only token opposition from the English forces stationed there. York believed Somerset’s regime was corrupt and found his conduct cowardly. The military collapse in Normandy was a shameful episode, and York’s indictment of it fully justified.

York was outraged at the hold Somerset retained over Henry VI, even in the aftermath of this debacle. He deeply distrusted his rival, believing Somerset sought to undermine his position within the realm. York was acutely conscious of the nobility of his lineage, and his descent from the royal blood of Edward III, which in the absence of any offspring of Henry VI gave him the right to be heir presumptive to the crown, a right he believed that Somerset was denying him. York was also aware that if descent through the female line was given precedence, his claim to the throne was superior to that of Henry VI himself.

Manuscripts circulating within York’s family circle emphasized the duke’s distinguished pedigree, and likened him to the Roman general Stilicho, a courageous and worthy warrior undermined by an effete and corrupt court party. These were themes that left a deep impression on his youngest son. York’s vendetta against Somerset was virulent; it culminated in the First Battle of St Albans in 1455, when Somerset, accompanying the royal army of Henry VI, was sought out and killed, thereby ending the battle.

York had by now allied himself with a branch of the powerful Neville family, led by the Earl of Salisbury and his son, the Earl of Warwick. Tension with the government of Henry VI and his strong-willed queen, Margaret of Anjou, had become more and more pronounced in the latter part of the decade, and in October 1459 York, Salisbury and Warwick had once more taken up arms – this time against the king directly. But on 12 October at Ludford Bridge, near York’s castle of Ludlow on the Welsh Marches, the Yorkist army dispersed in chaos. That night York and his confederates held a desperate council of war. Fearing the vengeance of the Lancastrians, it was agreed that part of the family should go into exile. The decision was made in terrible haste. York and his second son Edmund, Earl of Rutland would go to Ireland; his oldest son, Edward, Earl of March, would join the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick and attempt to reach Calais. York’s youngest sons, George and Richard, were left behind with their mother Cecily.

This was a dangerous and quite terrifying moment. Cecily, her daughter Margaret and her sons George and Richard were now at the mercy of the Lancastrian army. And those troops were rapidly approaching. As one chronicler put it: ‘King Harry rode into Ludlow, and spoiled [pillaged] the town and castle, where he found the duchess of York and her two young sons, then children.’ Richard, who had just turned seven, was now to see the family home wrecked by marauding soldiers. But another account suggested the situation was more desperate than this: ‘The town of Ludlow,’ the chronicler related, ‘then belonging to the duke of York, was robbed to the bare walls and the noble duchess of York unmanly and cruelly was entreted [dealt with] and spoiled [robbed or raped].’

This was a most startling allegation. The source, known as
A Short English Chronicle,
was favourable to the Yorkists, but also well-informed and reliable. The charge was quite specific, and was likely to have been accurate. If so, Cecily certainly suffered physical violence and probably sexual violence as well. The young Richard, witnessing this appalling attack on his mother, and only too aware that his father and elder brothers had left him, must have feared for his life.

In fact, Cecily and her young children were made prisoners of war. They were taken to the Lancastrian parliament that met at Coventry, where York was charged with high treason and his lands confiscated. Cecily pleaded for mercy from Henry VI, and received a royal pardon, and she and her children were now placed in the custody of Cecily’s sister Anne, Duchess of Buckingham in Tonbridge Castle in Kent. The fortunes of the House of York had reached a nadir. But in the summer of 1460 the Earls of Salisbury, Warwick and March returned from Calais at the head of an army, defeated the Lancastrians at the Battle of Northampton, and captured Henry VI. Margaret of Anjou fled with her son Edward, eventually reaching the safety of Harlech, and taking ship to Scotland.

Cecily and her young children now moved to London, where they stayed in a fine Southwark house that had belonged to the old warrior Sir John Fastolf. And it was here that they heard the news that York had returned from Ireland and landed at Chester. Cecily immediately hastened to meet him, leaving the children in London, and a letter of 12 October 1460 provided an appealing vignette: ‘And she [Cecily] has left here both her sons, and her daughter, and the Lord of March [Edward] cometh every day to see them.’ It is touching that Edward – ten years older than Richard, who had just celebrated his eighth birthday – had made time, with all the pressing political and military concerns, to visit his younger siblings so regularly. Perhaps, after what they had been through, he wanted to reassure them about the future.

When York returned from Ireland the dynastic stakes had been raised, for he now championed the superiority of his own lineage over that of the ruling Lancastrian dynasty. York emphasized that his pedigree ran from Lionel, Duke of Clarence, the second surviving son of Edward III, whereas the Lancastrians were descended from John of Gaunt, Edward’s third son. These facts were already well known, and had been when York remained a loyal subject to Henry VI. Political circumstances were now forcing his hand.

The issue of inheritance to the crown was complex. Lionel had only left a daughter, Philippa, who had married Edmund Mortimer, and it was the granddaughter of this union, Anne Mortimer, York’s mother, who brought the claim into his family. For it to be effective, inheritance through the female line would have to be given precedence, and this was something the judges and lords of the realm were most reluctant to do. Also, as they and many others were well aware, York and his family had for a long time accepted Henry VI as rightful king, and given their oaths of allegiance to him.

In the event, a compromise was reached. York was able to secure an agreement from parliament at the end of October 1460 known as the Act of Accord, which now nominated him as Henry VI’s heir, at the expense of Henry’s own son, Edward, Prince of Wales (born in 1453). The king was a Yorkist captive and may well have been coerced into agreeing to this. From a Lancastrian point of view, York was unprincipled and ruthless; by attempting to claim the throne for himself he had reneged on his earlier oaths of allegiance to Henry VI. But this was not a course of action York had embarked upon lightly.

York was a principled man and he was only too conscious of oaths of loyalty and valued them highly. His belief in his own rightful claim had been forged in an atmosphere of escalating threat and menace, and seemed to have been a genuine response to his continued ostracism from court and government. York had been conspicuously loyal to Henry VI as the king’s lieutenant in France and Ireland. He now feared for his political future and indeed his own life.

When the terms of the arrangement were publicized throughout the realm they led to a full-scale resumption of war. Queen Margaret refused to accept the Act of Accord, and championing the rights of her son, Edward, raised a massive northern army in defiance of the agreement. York marched to meet it in atrocious winter weather. He had stumbled into a trap. At the Battle of Wakefield on 30 December he was overwhelmed by the far larger army of his opponents. York and his second son Edmund died in the fighting.

Within the House of York Wakefield was remembered as ‘the horrible battle’. Chilling details about the fighting had begun to leak out, that Edmund, Earl of Rutland – now seventeen – had actually been killed in cold blood, fleeing the battle, and that York’s body had been desecrated, his dismembered head mockingly adorned with a paper crown and then nailed to York’s Micklegate Bar. One account – the Register of the Abbot Whethamstede, a source close to the House of York, and one Richard would certainly have known about – provided an even more harrowing version. For in Whethamstede’s account York was captured still alive: ‘They stood him on a little anthill,’ the abbot related, ‘and placed on his head, as if a crown, a vile garland made of reeds, just as the Jews did to the Lord, and bent the knee to him, saying in jest “Hail King, without rule. Hail King, without ancestry. Hail leader and prince, with no subjects or possessions.” And having said this, and various other shameful and dishonourable things to him, at last they cut off his head.’

These images of martyrdom and desecration appalled the whole of York’s family, and had a particularly strong impact upon his youngest son, Richard, who years later led the formal reburial of his father in the family resting-place at Fotheringhay. York’s eldest son, Edward, Earl of March was now the Yorkist successor to the throne, and he fought bravely to uphold that claim, winning a stirring victory at Mortimer’s Cross on 2 February 1461. But on 17 February his ally Warwick’s army was defeated at the Second Battle of St Albans, allowing large numbers of Lancastrian soldiers to approach the capital. Still mourning the loss of her husband and son, Cecily decided that her youngest sons were no longer safe if the Lancastrians entered London. Even though they were aged only eleven and eight, Cecily now believed they represented a dynastic threat to the House of Lancaster – and if Lancastrian troops reached the capital the boys might well be killed. So she speedily sent them to the safety of the Burgundian Netherlands until the danger had receded.