Tudor (8 page)

Happily for the Woodvilles, the leading choice for Protector, Edward IV's surviving brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, accepted
the decision to crown Edward instead. A pious man who had always been loyal to the late king, he swore an oath of loyalty to his nephew promptly at York, where he was based. He also agreed to meet Edward V on his journey to London and accompany him on his formal entrance into the city. Richard was already expected, therefore, when he arrived at the meeting point at Stony Stratford on 30 April, his horse still sweating from the gallop.
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There was no sign in Richard of his brother's decadent style of living. Thirty years old, he was a soldier, about five feet eight, with a wiry build, slender limbs, fine bones and dark features.
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It was claimed later in the century that his right shoulder was notably higher than his left, and indeed the body of Richard excavated in Leicester in 2012 has severe scoliosis (an S-shaped spine.) The Shakespearean legend of Richard's hump may have originated in this, and certainly it would have reduced his height considerably, but it is worth recording that the sixteenth-century Tudor king Edward VI also had one shoulder higher than another, which was not perceived as a gross deformity.
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Riding with Richard and his substantial force of retainers was also the large, imposing figure of Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham. He was a descendant of Thomas Woodstock, the younger brother of John of Gaunt, and the only other adult royal male in the kingdom.
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Edward V knew his maternal uncle, Lord Rivers, had left to have dinner with Richard and Buckingham at Northampton the night before, and it was surprising to see that he wasn't with them. But an explanation would surely soon be forthcoming.

Richard and Buckingham dismounted and fell to their knees before the golden-haired boy, greeting the twelve-year-old with ‘mournful' looks. They expressed profound sorrow at his father's death. But then, to the boy's astonishment, they began to speak angrily of corrupt councillors who had overthrown his father's will, which they said had named Richard as Protector. They accused the same councillors of being responsible for his father's death, in having encouraged him in
his vices, and finally they warned the young king that both his life and Richard's were in danger.

Edward V, described by one of his bishops as having ‘a ripe understanding, far passing the nature of his youth', insisted vigorously his father had appointed his councillors for him, and that he had complete confidence in them, as well as ‘the peers of the realm and the queen'. At this mention of Elizabeth Woodville, Buckingham exploded: ‘it was not the business of women but of men to govern kingdoms, and so if he cherished any confidence in her he had better relinquish it'.
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Buckingham was said to have resented being married off aged eleven to one of Elizabeth Woodville's low-born sisters, and he made it clear he viewed the Woodvilles as upstarts. He had been one of the first to contact Richard with his concerns about the power they were about to wield – but he was not alone. Another contact had been Edward IV's best friend William, Lord Hastings, who had quarrelled previously with members of the Woodville family. Their letters to Richard have not survived, but it is possible they had suggested to Richard his life was in danger, as he claimed. History had seen Edward IV, Henry VI and Richard II all face dangers at the hands of their adult male heirs. The Woodvilles had reason to see Richard also as a possible threat to Edward V, while Richard had the death of his brother Clarence to consider. If one royal duke was easily disposed of, so might another be. At the very least his standing as a royal duke was threatened by a Woodville monopoly of power. It made sense, therefore, for Richard to take the role of Protector long enough to destroy the Woodvilles and gain the king's trust.

There was shock in London when the news arrived that Richard had seized control of Edward V and that Lord Rivers had been arrested on charges of treason. Richard's action appeared, however, to be directed only against the Woodvilles and people were given no reason to suppose that Edward V's coronation would not go ahead. On 4 May, 400 citizens in mulberry gowns greeted the king on his official entry,
and, dressed in blue velvet, he was escorted to the luxury of the Bishop's Palace in St Paul's Churchyard, where he was lodged. Richard, dressed in ‘coarse black cloth' as a mark of mourning for his brother, was to stay nearby in Bishopsgate Street.
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With Elizabeth Woodville in sanctuary at Westminster Abbey along with her youngest son and five daughters, the situation remained tense, nevertheless. Richard issued a reassuring statement, rescheduling the coronation for Sunday 22 June. Events were, however, taking on a momentum that Richard may not have anticipated before he had seized the king. It was clear that Edward V did not accept that he was being rescued from evil councillors. The Woodvilles now had scores to settle with Richard, and when the king grew up, they would get their opportunity. How safe even was the future of Richard's nine-year-old son? It was also valid to wonder if England might not be better off in the hands of an experienced, adult royal, than a child puppet of the upstart Woodvilles. But if Edward V was to be deposed Richard had first to overawe, or dispose of any diehard Edwardian loyalists.

On 10 June Richard wrote secretly to the City of York, summoning his northern supporters. He warned that the queen and her adherents planned to ‘murder and utterly destroy' him and Buckingham, ‘the old Royal blood of this realm'.
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He then called a council meeting to take place at the Tower on Friday the 13th, ostensibly to discuss the coronation. Margaret Beaufort's husband, Lord Stanley, and Edward IV's former intimate, Lord Hastings, were amongst those present. According to a Tudor account, Stanley had slept badly. He told Hastings he had had a nightmare in which they were being gored in the face by a boar and blood was pouring over their shoulders. As everyone knew, Richard's badge was the white boar. Hastings advised him to dismiss his fears.
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But barely had the meeting begun when it descended into violence. Hastings – who had been completely loyal to Edward – was arrested by Richard's men, taken outside and beheaded on Tower Green. Stanley, who
cut his forehead as he ducked under the table, was also arrested, but quickly released.

As a shaken Stanley returned home to Margaret, Richard ordered Elizabeth Woodville to hand over Edward V's little brother, the Duke of York. He claimed the boy was needed to accompany the king for the coronation, which he still insisted was scheduled to go ahead. With the abbey surrounded, Elizabeth Woodville had little choice but to capitulate, and on 16 June the two princes were lodged in the royal apartments at the Tower. This was not imprisonment – at least not officially so. The Tower was a royal palace as well as a fortress, and this was where monarchs traditionally awaited their coronations. But the prospects for Edward V and his younger brother looked increasingly grim. Richard was now courting popularity riding through the capital dressed in regal purple and entertaining significant citizens to dinner.

There was no coronation on Sunday 22 June.
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Instead on the 25th the young king's uncle, Lord Rivers, and his half-brother Richard Grey (a son of Elizabeth Woodville's first marriage to a Lancastrian knight) were executed. The following day an assembly of lords and other notables, led by Buckingham, presented Richard with a petition urging him to accept the throne. The Bishop of Bath had come forward as a witness to claim that Edward IV had been contracted in marriage to another woman at the time of his marriage to Elizabeth Woodville.
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Following this bigamous marriage, it was argued that Edward IV had fallen into further sin, ‘the order of all politic rule was perverted, the laws of God, and God's Church, and also the laws of nature and of England'.
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With the ‘truth' revealed about Edward IV's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville his children were dismissed as illegitimate. The next in line was Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, the eight-year-old son of Richard's elder brother, the executed Duke of Clarence.
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Here it was argued the boy was excluded from the line of succession by his father's treason, since attainder or ‘corruption of blood' deprived any
traitor's descendants of the right to inherit property from or through him. With some display of reluctance Richard accepted the petition and was proclaimed Richard III.
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Edward V's coronation was cancelled indefinitely and his servants dismissed.

The deposed king's doctor, who was amongst the last of his servants to leave his service, reported that Edward V was now ‘like a victim prepared for sacrifice . . . because he believed that death was facing him'.
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The fates of those monarchs deposed previously that century – Richard II and Henry VI – did not bode well for the princes. Nevertheless, the nine-year-old Duke of York remained innocent of the mortal danger they faced. A story related in Burgundy described him as ‘very joyous and witty', ready for ‘frolics and dance'.
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It may have been the little duke who persuaded his older brother to play with him in the gardens of the Tower where they were spotted firing bows and arrows. In the streets men wept for them as ‘day by day they began to be seen more rarely behind the bars and windows till at length they ceased to appear altogether'.
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With the new coronation date set for 6 July no one moved against Richard. The men from the north had answered his summons and thousands were camped on Finsbury Field just outside London.
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But fear would not be enough to keep Richard on the throne. He needed support from the political elite – amongst them the powerful Lord Stanley, who was invited to an audience with the king on the eve of his coronation, along with his wife, Margaret Beaufort. She was anxious to resolve a financial dispute inherited from her mother. Richard was equally anxious to please the wife of a man who controlled large areas of the north. Tellingly, however, nothing was said of Henry Tudor.

According to a slightly later account, Margaret had approached Buckingham about a pardon for her son, reminding him that his father and grandfathers had fought in the Lancastrian cause. She had known Buckingham for years: her late husband, Sir Henry Stafford, had been his uncle. He had even met Henry Tudor as a small child. She
hoped his friendship with Richard would enable him to persuade the king to bring Henry into the fold at last. But if that account is true, her hopes were disappointed and other later claims that Margaret had also hoped to persuade Richard to marry Henry off to one of Edward IV's now illegitimate daughters are nonsensical. Why on earth would Richard have wished to ally them to the remnants of the Lancastrian house, and thereby empower both? There was no advantage to him in that, as Margaret would have known.

Margaret played a leading role at the coronation the following day, as she had in earlier Edwardian ceremonies. Dressed in six yards of scarlet velvet bordered with cloth of gold, she carried the train of Richard's queen, Anne Neville, the widow of Edward of Lancaster, who was crowned alongside her husband.
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That night Margaret changed for the coronation banquet into blue velvet and crimson cloth of gold, and arrived with six attendants dressed in scarlet cloth. A great feast was produced, with delicacies brought from every corner of England: pheasant dressed with tail feathers trailing, sturgeon with fennel, exotic baked oranges and fritters flavoured with rose and jasmine. The dishes may well have been ordered earlier for the expected coronation of Edward V and, for many who attended, this feast was difficult to stomach. Although Richard had kept most of Edward IV's former servants in their posts, there was tremendous anger over his usurpation of Edward V's throne. Soon Margaret would find there was enough even to turn the powerless exile Henry Tudor into a leader, and revive the moribund Lancastrian cause.

6

THE PRINCES IN THE TOWER

F
LUENT IN
F
RENCH, SLIM AND ABOVE AVERAGE HEIGHT, WITH LONG
, wavy brown hair and an animated face, Henry Tudor was regarded at Duke Francis' court as a most ‘pleasant and elegant person'.
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But the twenty-six-year-old had learned to mask his true feelings behind a veneer of charm. Edward IV had hunted him since he was fourteen and for twelve years he had lived with the constant fear that, one day, the feckless Duke Francis would turn him over to his death. Henry was desperate for an opportunity to end his penniless, powerless, exile. It was brought by a fair wind in June 1483, when two English ships, painted vermilion, gold and sky blue, and captained by Elizabeth Woodville's brother, Sir Edward Woodville, arrived off the coast of Brittany.
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If Henry Tudor had not yet learned of the dramatic events in England, he would soon do so.

The following month further ships from England reached Brittany, standards and streamers flying, carrying Sir Edward Woodville's pursuers, the envoys of the newly crowned Richard III. If their primary orders were to persuade Duke Francis to hand over Sir Edward with his men, Henry and Jasper Tudor were also targets.
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In this, at least, Richard was to follow his brother's policy. It seemed Henry's best chance of changing his desperate situation was to help the Woodvilles to restore Edward V to the throne, for a pardon and royal favour would surely follow. Henry was already in
correspondence with his mother and according to the Elizabethan antiquary, Stow, before long he was in contact with men who were planning to rescue the princes from the Tower. What information we have suggests the rescue attempt was made sometime near the end of July, but something went wrong. The men were caught and executed.