The King's Grave: The Discovery of Richard III's Lost Burial Place and the Clues It Holds (22 page)

Richard’s interest in ritual and ceremony had already been shown in his support of the royal heralds, the experts in chivalry. He had overseen ordinances that encouraged heralds to cultivate manners and eloquence, and record contemporary feats of arms and ceremonies. As king, Richard gave them a charter of incorporation and the London house of Coldharbour as their headquarters. He owned a copy in Latin of Aegidius Colonna’s
De Regimine Principum
(‘The Conduct of Princes’), which was one of the standard fifteenth-century ‘mirrors’ or advice books, in which a prince could find delineated for him the embodiment of his role.

Pietro Carmeliano, who had come to England in 1480 and found employment as a chancery clerk, had few doubts that Richard possessed the virtues of such a good prince. In 1484 he dedicated a copy of his life of St Catherine to Sir Robert Brackenbury, and in his introduction penned a eulogy of praise to Brackenbury’s master: ‘If we look first of all for religious devotion, which of our princes shows a more genuine piety? If for justice, who can we reckon with above him throughout the world? If we contemplate the prudence of his service, both in peace and in waging war, who shall we judge as his equal? If we look for truth of soul, for wisdom, for loftiness of mind united with modesty, who stands before our King Richard?’

Two years later, under Henry VII, Carmeliano was one of the first to change his tune, denouncing Richard as ‘a murderous tyrant’. Was he merely a court flatterer, churning out praises on demand? Or did he, in 1484, write what he believed was genuinely true?

The king was well-educated, and enjoyed the company of a notable group of Cambridge humanists, men such as William Beverley, John Shirwood and his private chaplain John Dokett, a scholar at King’s College, Cambridge, and subsequently a student at Padua and Bologna, where he became a Doctor of Canon Law. Dokett later bequeathed books on canon law and theology to King’s, and it is significant that the University of Cambridge not only supported the basis of Richard’s claim to the throne, but appointed men to preach the justification of it on his behalf.

Richard was always intelligent. The
Croyland Chronicler
remarked that he ‘never acted sleepily, but incisively and with the utmost vigilance’. Even Polydore Vergil praised him as a man ‘to be feared for circumspection and celerity’, who had ‘a sharp wit, provident and subtle’. Richard was able to outwit his opponents in April 1483, surprise or outmanoeuvre Hastings the following June and outface Buckingham and the other rebels in October.

In a famous letter written from Lincoln on 12 October 1483 Richard spoke of his anger over Buckingham’s rebellion, castigating him as ‘the most untrue creature living’. He had evidently just heard of the revolt, and yet what is notable about the letter – amid all the emotion – is its lucidity of thinking. Richard wanted the great seal to be delivered to him, so that he could more readily control government business. His chancellor, John Russell, Bishop of Lincoln, was unwell, and what was revealing in the circumstances was the clarity and courtesy with which Richard set out the arrangements.

Richard now pulled off another striking achievement, persuading Elizabeth Woodville and her daughters to come out of sanctuary at Westminster Abbey. A solemn arrangement was drawn up on 1 March 1484, whereby Richard promised to provide reasonable marriages for the girls and, above all, made a sworn commitment: ‘I shall see that they shall be in surety of their lives.’ This telling phrase begged the question, nowhere made explicit, of what had actually happened to the queen’s two sons, the Princes in the Tower.

As Richard had left on his progress in July 1483, the princes had largely disappeared from view in the inner recesses of the Tower. Their last servants were dismissed on 18 July. Before Dominic Mancini left London at the end of the month people openly said to him they feared the princes were already dead, but Mancini added that no one actually knew their fate. If Richard regarded his own claim to the throne as a cynical piece of deceit, as the Tudors believed, it would be vital to eliminate the princes as quickly as possible. If he felt that his own title was genuine, it would not be necessary to kill the boys, just to keep them securely guarded. This is what Richard seems to have done.

Then something happened that dramatically changed the situation. A plot was hatched to either rescue or remove the princes from the Tower. It involved attendants actually in the Tower complex itself, and starting diversionary fires around London, but the attempt failed and the ringleaders were rounded up and executed. Richard, on progress, seems to have learned of this on 29 July, when he wrote to his chancellor of ‘an enterprise’ recently taken against him: ‘Whereas we understand that certain persons of such as of late have recently taken upon them the fact of an enterprise, as we doubt not that you have heard, be attached and in ward.’ This was the rescue effort, and there now was a substantial risk in leaving the boys alive. Buckingham – who had not been on the first stage of the progress – dramatically rejoined Richard on 2 August at Gloucester. The fate of the princes must have been discussed by the two men. And then there was silence.

On the basis of all the material available we do not know what happened to the princes. (Please note this is an issue where the co-authors disagree – for this, see the debate in Appendix 1.) There is strong circumstantial evidence that Richard now ordered their murder, possibly on the advice or yielding to the persuasion of Buckingham – as most people thought at the time.

This is what Dominic Mancini said:

After Hastings was removed, all the attendants who had waited upon the king [Edward V] were now debarred access to him. He and his brother were withdrawn into the inner apartments of the Tower proper, and day by day began to be seen more rarely behind the bars and windows, till at length they ceased to appear altogether. The physician Argentine, the last of his attendants whose services the king enjoyed, reported that the young king, like a victim prepared for sacrifice, sought remission of his sins by daily confession and penance, because he believed that death was facing him … I have seen many men burst into tears and lamentations when mention was made of him after his removal from men’s sight; and already there was a suspicion that he had been done away with. Whether, however, he has been done away with, and by what manner of death, so far I have not at all discovered.

Mancini’s testimony is deeply moving – and honest. On 15 January 1484, some six weeks before Richard’s arrangement with Elizabeth Woodville was drawn up, the chancellor of France, Guillaume de Rochefort, made this announcement to the Estates-General at Tours: ‘Look at what has happened in England since the death of King Edward IV: how his children, already big and courageous, have been put to death with impunity, and the royal crown transferred to their murderer by the favour of the people.’

Robert Ricart put it very simply in his calendar: ‘in this year [the year ending 15 September 1483] the two sons of King Edward were put to silence in the Tower of London.’ An early London chronicle also gave a key role to Buckingham: ‘This year [1483] King Edward V, late called Prince of Wales, and Richard duke of York, his brother, King Edward IV’s sons, were put to death in the Tower by the vise [advice/design] of the duke of Buckingham.’

Buckingham’s involvement in the murder is entirely plausible; his taking sole responsibility for it far less so. When Nicolas von Poppelau visited Richard’s court in 1484 he was interested in the fate of the princes. Many told him they thought they had been done away with, but how they did not know. Others expressed the hope that they were being hidden somewhere, in a dark enclosed room. ‘This is what I would like to believe,’ said Poppelau. But Richard remains the most likely candidate for their deaths. It may seem extraordinary to us that the widowed queen was now prepared to release her daughters to the man who could have murdered her sons, but what other choice did she have? She could not remain in sanctuary for ever.

If Richard had indeed ordered their deaths (and the evidence is suggestive but not conclusive), and if we allow for the possibility that he genuinely believed in the rightfulness of his own claim, from all that we know of his character, even in this ruthless age it was a course of action he would have embarked upon with reluctance and regret. Events may well have forced his hand – and the survival of his dynasty was at stake.

In the event, Richard’s joy at delivering the daughters of Edward IV from sanctuary was short-lived. In April he learned that his only son, Edward of Middleham, had suddenly died, after a short illness. The
Croyland Chronicler
wrote starkly: ‘You might have seen the father and mother, after hearing the news at Nottingham where they were staying, almost out of their minds for a long time with sudden grief.’

Richard, after having taken such careful steps to secure his son’s succession, now had to begin all over again. He may at first have considered designating Edward, Earl of Warwick, the son of Clarence, as heir to the throne, but Edward was still only a child. Finally the king decided to settle the succession on John, Earl of Lincoln and the de la Pole family, the offspring of the marriage of his sister Elizabeth to John, Duke of Suffolk.

Shakespeare portrayed a king alienated from his family and from society as a whole, but in these difficult months Richard sought solace from his mother, writing to her on 3 June 1484, and asking ‘in most humble and affectionate wise [way] of your daily blessing to my singular comfort and defence in my need’. And his reverence for his father grew ever more pronounced. On 10 September he founded a chantry at Wem, nine miles north of Shrewsbury, where the Duke of Buckingham had been captured after his unsuccessful revolt, and instructed prayers to be said specially for the soul of Richard, Duke of York, as if the invocation of his memory would be a shield against his present troubles.

Much of late medieval monarchy was about public display and utterance, but in September 1484 Richard wrote to the Irish Earl of Desmond in highly personal terms, commiserating with him over the circumstances of his father’s death, in Edward IV’s reign. Richard’s letter opened a remarkable window on the king’s private thoughts. Desmond’s father had been murdered in February 1468, it was alleged, by the Earl of Worcester acting on behalf of the Woodville family. Desmond had told Edward IV that his marriage was entirely unsuitable and the queen had never forgiven him for the remark.

Richard expressed his sympathy, confiding to the earl that ‘he had always had inward compassion of the death of his father’ and then made a striking comparison with the execution of his brother George, Duke of Clarence, telling the earl ‘notwithstanding that the semblable [similar] chance was and happened sithen [since] within this realm of England, as well of his brother, the duke of Clarence, as other his nigh kinsmen and great friends’. Richard’s clear inference here was that Woodville influence lay behind both men’s deaths. It is intriguing to speculate who the other ‘nigh kinsmen and great friends’ might have been. It is possible that Richard was referring to the deaths of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick and his brother John, Marquis of Montagu – in other words blaming the fracture between Warwick and Edward IV, in which Richard had remained loyal to his brother Edward, entirely on the king’s Woodville marriage.

Richard remembered the support Desmond’s father had given to his own father in Ireland, in 1459–60. And in his letter he chose to style himself as the son of Richard, Duke of York rather than the brother of Edward IV, strongly hinting at his alienation from his brother’s court. Richard emphasized that his true feelings had remained ‘inward’ – that is to say it had been unsafe to show them openly. His recollection mirrored the comments of Dominic Mancini, who portrayed a court bedevilled by suspicion and intrigue. If Richard had been forced to keep his opinions to himself for much of his brother’s reign, these were not the actions of a dissembler, but of a man who feared for his own future.

Now times had moved on. In October 1484 the king’s sole remaining challenger, Henry Tudor, fled from Brittany and took shelter in France, protected by the minority regime of Charles VIII. The French took the decision to recognize Henry’s claim to the throne, and asked him to publicize it. In private, they were unable to ascertain whether he had any right to the throne at all. In November Henry set out letters condemning Richard as an ‘unnatural tyrant and homicide’ who had forfeited the right to rule. In the following month, Richard responded, deriding Henry Tudor’s pedigree, which he said gave him no right to the kingdom whatsoever ‘as every man well knoweth’. At Christmas 1484 Elizabeth Woodville sent her daughters to court. She also attempted to persuade the Marquis of Dorset to renounce his allegiance to Tudor, and return to England to make his peace with Richard. Then on 16 March 1485 Richard’s wife Anne Neville fell ill and died of tuberculosis. Rumours began to spread that Richard now wanted to marry his niece, Elizabeth of York. These were unfounded, and Richard vigorously denied them. In fact, after the queen’s death, a match between the king and Joanna of Portugal had been planned. The Portuguese ruling house also held – through their descent from one of Henry IV’s sisters – what was now the primary Lancastrian claim to the English throne. Through this marriage alliance Richard knew he would further undercut Henry Tudor’s credentials and also unite the Houses of York and Lancaster.

It is hard to judge a reign that lasted only a little over two years. As he did not have time to show what manner of king he would be, to a great extent Richard’s achievements will always be overshadowed by the way he took the throne. And yet he brought an idealistic vision and considerable energy to his kingship. He pursued a sensible and effective foreign policy, and some of his administrative innovations were notable, including setting up a Council of the North, to provide better government for the region, and establishing a Court of Requests to give the poor better access to the judicial system. The opportunity to continue such policies would now be dependent on Richard defeating his one remaining political opponent.