Richard iii new biography books
Richard III of England
King of England from to
"Richard III" redirects here. For other uses, see Richard III (disambiguation).
"Richard of Gloucester" redirects here. For other uses, see Richard of Gloucester (disambiguation).
Richard III (2 October – 22 August ) was King of England from 26 June until his death in He was the last king of the Plantagenet dynasty and its cadet branch the House of York.
His defeat and death at the Battle of Bosworth Field marked the end of the Middle Ages in England.
Richard was created Duke of Gloucester in after the accession of his brother Edward IV. This was during the period known as the Wars of the Roses, an era when two branches of the royal family contested the throne; Edward and Richard were Yorkists.
In , Richard married Anne Neville, daughter of Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick and widow of Edward of Westminster, son of Henry VI. He governed northern England during Edward's reign, and played a role in the invasion of Scotland in When Edward IV died in April , Richard was named Lord Protector of the realm for Edward's eldest son and successor, the year-old Edward V.
Before arrangements were complete for Edward V's coronation, scheduled for 22 June , the marriage of his parents was declared bigamous and therefore invalid. Now officially illegitimate, Edward and his siblings were barred from inheriting the throne. On 25 June, an assembly of lords and commoners endorsed a declaration to this effect, and proclaimed Richard as the rightful king.
He was crowned on 6 July Edward and his younger brother Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York, called the "Princes in the Tower", disappeared from the Tower of London around August
There were two major rebellions against Richard during his reign. In October , an unsuccessful revolt was led by staunch allies of Edward IV and Richard's former ally, Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham.
Details: As Richard spends his teenage years under the watchful gaze of his older brother, Edward IV, he is eventually placed in the household of their cousin, the Earl of Warwick, remembered as the Kingmaker; but as the relationship between a king and his most influential magnate breaks down, Richard is compelled to make a choice when the House of York fractures. An important addition to the bookshelves of any student of the Wars of the Roses and of this enduringly compelling monarch. Loading interface Also Available:.
Then, in August , Henry Tudor and his uncle, Jasper Tudor, landed in Wales with a contingent of French troops, and marched through Pembrokeshire, recruiting soldiers. Henry's forces defeated Richard's army near the Leicestershire town of Market Bosworth. Richard was slain, making him the last English king to die in battle. Henry Tudor then ascended the throne as Henry VII.
Richard's corpse was taken to the nearby town of Leicester and buried without ceremony. His original tomb monument is believed to have been removed during the English Reformation, and his remains were wrongly thought to have been thrown into the River Soar. In , an archaeological excavation was commissioned by Philippa Langley with the assistance of the Richard III Society on the site previously occupied by Grey Friars Priory.
The University of Leicester identified the human skeleton found at the site as that of Richard III as a result of radiocarbon dating, comparison with contemporary reports of his appearance, identification of trauma sustained at Bosworth and comparison of his mitochondrial DNA with that of two matrilineal descendants of his sister Anne.
He was reburied in Leicester Cathedral in
Early life
Richard was born on 2 October , at Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire, the eleventh of the twelve children of Richard, 3rd Duke of York, and Cecily Neville, and the youngest to survive infancy. His childhood coincided with the beginning of what has traditionally been labelled the 'Wars of the Roses', a period of political instability and periodic open civil war in England during the second half of the fifteenth century, between the Yorkists, who supported Richard's father (a potential claimant to the throne of King Henry VI from birth), and opposed the regime of Henry VI and his wife, Margaret of Anjou, and the Lancastrians, who were loyal to the crown.
In , his father and the Yorkists were forced to flee England, whereupon Richard and his older brother George were placed in the custody of their aunt Anne Neville, Duchess of Buckingham, and possibly of Cardinal Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury.
When their father and elder brother Edmund, Earl of Rutland, were killed at the Battle of Wakefield on 30 December , Richard and George were sent by their mother to the Low Countries.
They returned to England following the defeat of the Lancastrians at the Battle of Towton. They participated in the coronation of their eldest brother as King Edward IV on 28 June , when Richard was named Duke of Gloucester and made both a Knight of the Garter and a Knight of the Bath. Edward appointed him the sole Commissioner of Array for the Western Counties in when he was By the age of 17, he had an independent command.
Richard spent several years during his childhood at Middleham Castle in Wensleydale, Yorkshire, under the tutelage of his cousin Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, later known as 'the Kingmaker' because of his role in the Wars of the Roses.
Warwick supervised Richard's training as a knight; in the autumn of , Edward IV granted Warwick £1, for the expenses of his younger brother's tutelage. With some interruptions, Richard stayed at Middleham either from late until early , when he was 12 or from until his coming of age in , when he turned [note 1] While at Warwick's estate, it is likely that he met both Francis Lovell, who was his firm supporter later in his life, and Warwick's younger daughter, his future wife Anne Neville.
It is possible that even at this early stage Warwick was considering the king's brothers as strategic matches for his daughters, Isabel and Anne: young aristocrats were often sent to be raised in the households of their intended future partners, as had been the case for the young dukes' father, Richard of York.
As the relationship between the king and Warwick became strained, Edward IV opposed the match. During Warwick's lifetime, George was the only royal brother to marry one of his daughters, the elder, Isabel, on 12 July , without the king's permission. George joined his father-in-law's revolt against the king, while Richard remained loyal to Edward, even though he was rumoured to have been having an affair with Anne.[note 2]
Richard and Edward were forced to flee to Burgundy in October after Warwick defected to the side of the former Lancastrian queen Margaret of Anjou.
In , Richard's sister Margaret had married Charles the Bold, the Duke of Burgundy, and the brothers could expect a welcome there. Edward was restored to the throne in the spring of , following the battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury, in both of which the year-old Richard played a crucial role.
During his adolescence, and due to a cause that is unknown, Richard developed a sideways curvature of the spine (scoliosis).[20] In , after the discovery of Richard's remains, the osteoarchaeologist Dr.
Jo Appleby, of Leicester University's School of Archaeology and Ancient History, imaged the spinal column, and reconstructed a model using 3D printing, and concluded that though the spinal scoliosis looked dramatic, it probably did not cause any major physical deformity that could not be disguised by clothing.[21][22]
Marriage and family relationships
Following a decisive Yorkist victory over the Lancastrians at the Battle of Tewkesbury, Richard married Anne Neville on 12 July [23] Anne had previously been wedded to Edward of Westminster, only son of Henry VI, to seal her father's allegiance to the Lancastrian party.
Edward died at the Battle of Tewkesbury on 4 May , while Warwick had died at the Battle of Barnet on 14 April Richard's marriage plans brought him into conflict with his brother Paston's letter of 17 February makes it clear that George was not happy about the marriage but grudgingly accepted it on the basis that "he may well have my Lady his sister-in-law, but they shall part no livelihood".
The reason was the inheritance Anne shared with her elder sister Isabel, whom George had married in It was not only the earldom that was at stake; Richard Neville had inherited it as a result of his marriage to Anne Beauchamp, 16th Countess of Warwick. The Countess, who was still alive, was technically the owner of the substantial Beauchamp estates, her father having left no male heirs.
The Croyland Chronicle records that Richard agreed to a prenuptial contract in the following terms: "the marriage of the Duke of Gloucester with Anne before-named was to take place, and he was to have such and so much of the earl's lands as should be agreed upon between them through the mediation of arbitrators; while all the rest were to remain in the possession of the Duke of Clarence".
The date of Paston's letter suggests the marriage was still being negotiated in February In order to win George's final consent to the marriage, Richard renounced most of the Earl of Warwick's land and property including the earldoms of Warwick (which the Kingmaker had held in his wife's right) and Salisbury and surrendered to George the office of Great Chamberlain of England.
Richard retained Neville's forfeit estates he had already been granted in the summer of [32] Penrith, Sheriff Hutton and Middleham, where he later established his marital household.
The requisite papal dispensation was obtained dated 22 April Michael Hicks has suggested that the terms of the dispensation deliberately understated the degrees of consanguinity between the couple, and the marriage was therefore illegal on the ground of first-degree consanguinity following George's marriage to Anne's sister Isabel.
There would have been first-degree consanguinity if Richard had sought to marry Isabel (in case of widowhood) after she had married his brother George, but no such consanguinity applied for Anne and Richard. Richard's marriage to Anne was never declared null, and it was public to everyone including secular and canon lawyers for 13 years.
In June , Richard persuaded his mother-in-law to leave the sanctuary and come to live under his protection at Middleham.
Later in the year, under the terms of the Act of Resumption, George lost some of the property he held under royal grant and made no secret of his displeasure. John Paston's letter of November says that King Edward planned to put both his younger brothers in their place by acting as "a stifler atween them". Early in , Parliament assembled and Edward attempted to reconcile his brothers by stating that both men, and their wives, would enjoy the Warwick inheritance just as if the Countess of Warwick "was naturally dead".
The doubts cast by George on the validity of Richard and Anne's marriage were addressed by a clause protecting their rights in the event they were divorced (i.e. of their marriage being declared null and void by the Church) and then legally remarried to each other, and also protected Richard's rights while waiting for such a valid second marriage with Anne.[39] The following year, Richard was rewarded with all the Neville lands in the north of England, at the expense of Anne's cousin, George Neville, 1st Duke of Bedford.
From this point, George seems to have fallen steadily out of King Edward's favour, his discontent coming to a head in when, following Isabel's death, he was denied the opportunity to marry Mary of Burgundy, the stepdaughter of his sister Margaret, even though Margaret approved the proposed match. There is no evidence of Richard's involvement in George's subsequent conviction and execution on a charge of treason.
Reign of Edward IV
Estates and titles
Richard was granted the Dukedom of Gloucester on 1 November , and on 12 August the next year was awarded large estates in northern England, including the lordships of Richmond in Yorkshire, and Pembroke in Wales.
He gained the forfeited lands of the Lancastrian John de Vere, 12th Earl of Oxford, in East Anglia. In , on his birthday, he was made Constable of Gloucester and Corfe Castles and Admiral of England, Ireland and Aquitaine and appointed Governor of the North, becoming the richest and most powerful noble in England. On 17 October , he was made Constable of England.
In November, he replaced William Hastings, 1st Baron Hastings, as Chief Justice of North Wales. The following year, he was appointed Chief Steward and Chamberlain of Wales. On 18 May , Richard was named Great Chamberlain and Lord High Admiral of England. Other positions followed: High Sheriff of Cumberland for life, Lieutenant of the North and Commander-in-Chief against the Scots and hereditary Warden of the West March.
Two months later, on 14 July, he gained the Lordships of the strongholds Sheriff Hutton and Middleham in Yorkshire and Penrith in Cumberland, which had belonged to Warwick the Kingmaker. It is possible that the grant of Middleham seconded Richard's personal wishes.[note 3]
Exile and return
During the latter part of Edward IV's reign, Richard demonstrated his loyalty to the king, in contrast to their brother George who had allied himself with the Earl of Warwick when the latter rebelled towards the end of the s.
Following Warwick's rebellion, before which he had made peace with Margaret of Anjou and promised the restoration of Henry VI to the English throne, Richard, the Baron Hastings and Anthony Woodville, 2nd Earl Rivers, escaped capture at Doncaster by Warwick's brother, John Neville, 1st Marquess of Montagu. On 2 October they sailed from King's Lynn in two ships; Edward landed at Marsdiep and Richard at Zeeland.
It was said that, having left England in such haste as to possess almost nothing, Edward was forced to pay their passage with his fur cloak; certainly, Richard borrowed three pounds from Zeeland's town bailiff. They were attainted by Warwick's only Parliament on 26 November. They resided in Bruges with Louis de Gruthuse, who had been the Burgundian Ambassador to Edward's court, but it was not until Louis XI of France declared war on Burgundy that Charles, Duke of Burgundy, assisted their return, providing, along with the Hanseatic merchants, 20, pounds, 36 ships and 1, men.
They left Flushing for England on 11 March Warwick's arrest of local sympathisers prevented them from landing in Yorkist East Anglia and on 14 March, after being separated in a storm, their ships ran ashore at Holderness. The town of Hull refused Edward entry. He gained entry to York by using the same claim as Henry of Bolingbroke had before deposing Richard II in ; that is, that he was merely reclaiming the Dukedom of York rather than the crown.
It was in Edward's attempt to regain his throne that Richard began to demonstrate his skill as a military commander.
military campaign
Once Edward had regained the support of his brother George, he mounted a swift and decisive campaign to regain the crown through combat; it is believed that Richard was his principal lieutenant as some of the king's earliest support came from members of Richard's affinity, including Sir James Harrington and Sir William Parr, who brought men-at-arms to them at Doncaster.
Richard may have led the vanguard at the Battle of Barnet, in his first command, on 14 April , where he outflanked the wing of Henry Holland, 3rd Duke of Exeter, although the degree to which his command was fundamental may have been exaggerated. That Richard's personal household sustained losses indicate he was in the thick of the fighting.
A contemporary source is clear about his holding the vanguard for Edward at Tewkesbury, deployed against the Lancastrian vanguard under Edmund Beaufort, 4th Duke of Somerset, on 4 May ,[69] and his role two days later, as Constable of England, sitting alongside John Howard as Earl Marshal, in the trial and sentencing of leading Lancastrians captured after the battle.
invasion of France
At least in part resentful of King Louis XI's previous support of his Lancastrian opponents, and possibly in support of his brother-in-law Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, Edward went to parliament in October for funding a military campaign, and eventually landed in Calais on 4 July Richard's was the largest private contingent of his army.
Although well known to have publicly been against the eventual treaty signed with Louis XI at Picquigny (and absent from the negotiations, in which one of his rank would have been expected to take a leading role), he acted as Edward's witness when the king instructed his delegates to the French court, and received 'some very fine presents' from Louis on a visit to the French king at Amiens.
In refusing other gifts, which included 'pensions' in the guise of 'tribute', he was joined only by Cardinal Bourchier. He supposedly disapproved of Edward's policy of personally benefiting—politically and financially—from a campaign paid for out of a parliamentary grant, and hence out of public funds. Any military prowess was therefore not to be revealed further until the last years of Edward's reign.
The North, and the Council in the North
Richard was the dominant magnate in the north of England until Edward IV's death.
There, and especially in the city of York, he was highly regarded; although it has been questioned whether this view was reciprocated by Richard.[note 4] Edward IV delegated significant authority to Richard in the region. Kendall and later historians have suggested that this was with the intention of making Richard the Lord of the North; Peter Booth, however, has argued that "instead of allowing his brother Richard carte blanche, [Edward] restricted his influence by using his own agent, Sir William Parr." Following Richard's accession to the throne, he first established the Council of the North and made his nephew John de la Pole, 1st Earl of Lincoln, president and formally institutionalised this body as an offshoot of the royal Council; all its letters and judgements were issued on behalf of the king and in his name.
The council had a budget of 2, marks per annum and had issued "Regulations" by July of that year: councillors to act impartially, declare vested interests and to meet at least every three months. Its main focus of operations was Yorkshire and the north-east and its responsibilities included land disputes, keeping of the king's peace and punishing lawbreakers.
War with Scotland
Richard's increasing role in the north from the mids to some extent explains his withdrawal from the royal court.
He had been Warden of the West March on the Scottish border since 10 September , and again from May ; he used Penrith as a base while 'taking effectual measures' against the Scots, and 'enjoyed the revenues of the estates' of the Forest of Cumberland while doing so. It was at the same time that the Duke of Gloucester was appointed High Sheriff of Cumberland for five consecutive years, being described as 'of Penrith Castle' in
By , war with Scotland was looming; on 12 May that year, he was appointed Lieutenant-General of the North (a position created for the occasion) as fears of a Scottish invasion grew.
Louis XI of France had attempted to negotiate a military alliance with Scotland (in the tradition of the "Auld Alliance"), with the aim of attacking England, according to a contemporary French chronicler.
Richard had the authority to summon the Border Levies and issue Commissions of Array to repel the Border raids. Together with the Earl of Northumberland, he launched counter-raids, and when the king and council formally declared war in November , he was granted 10, pounds for wages.
The king failed to arrive to lead the English army and the result was intermittent skirmishing until early Richard witnessed the treaty with Alexander, Duke of Albany, brother of King James III of Scotland.
Northumberland, Stanley, Dorset, Sir Edward Woodville, and Richard with approximately 20, men took the town of Berwick as part of the English invasion of Scotland. The castle held out until 24 August , when Richard recaptured Berwick-upon-Tweed from the Kingdom of Scotland. Although it is debatable whether the English victory was due more to internal Scottish divisions rather than any outstanding military prowess by Richard, it was the last time that the Royal Burgh of Berwick changed hands between the two realms.
Lord Protector
On the death of Edward IV on 9 April , his year-old son, Edward V, succeeded him.
Richard was named Lord Protector of the Realm and at Baron Hastings' urging, Richard assumed his role and left his base in Yorkshire for London. On 29 April, as previously agreed, Richard and his cousin, Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, met Queen Elizabeth's brother, with Anthony Woodville, 2nd Earl Rivers, at Northampton.
At the queen's request, Earl Rivers was escorting the young king to London with an armed escort of 2, men, while Richard and Buckingham's joint escort was men. Edward V had been sent further south to Stony Stratford. At first convivial, Richard had Earl Rivers, his nephew Richard Grey and his associate, Thomas Vaughan, arrested.
They were taken to Pontefract Castle, where they were executed on 25 June on the charge of treason against the Lord Protector after appearing before a tribunal led by Henry Percy, 4th Earl of Northumberland.
Richard iii new biography books releases There is the skeleton of a good book, maybe even an excellent one buried beneath the adipose tissue of this volume. His life and rule has inspired a huge amount of literature, not least Shakespeare's great play, and controversy still surrounds his seizure of the throne in , the mystery of the disappearance of the Princes in the Tower, and his defeat and death at the Battle of Bosworth in David Hipshon. That's like saying that after WWI there were 20 years of peace.Rivers had appointed Richard as executor of his will.
After having Rivers arrested, Richard and Buckingham moved to Stony Stratford, where Richard informed Edward V of a plot aimed at denying him his role as protector and whose perpetrators had been dealt with. He proceeded to escort the king to London. They entered the city on 4 May, displaying the carriages of weapons Rivers had taken with his 2,man army.
Richard first accommodated Edward in the Bishop's apartments; then, on Buckingham's suggestion, the king was moved to the royal apartments of the Tower of London, where kings customarily awaited their coronation.
Richard iii new biography books Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews. This book starts slowly but it rewards patience. Richard marries basically to obtain lands and his wife apparently agrees to the marriage for the same reason. Our website offers shipping to the United States and Canada only.Within the year , Richard had moved himself to the grandeur of Crosby Hall, London, then in Bishopsgate in the City of London. Robert Fabyan, in his 'The new chronicles of England and of France', writes that "the Duke caused the King (Edward V) to be removed unto the Tower and his broder with hym, and the Duke lodged himselfe in Crosbyes Place in Bisshoppesgate Strete."[96] In Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, he accounts that "little by little all folke withdrew from the Tower, and drew unto Crosbies in Bishops gates Street, where the Protector kept his houshold.
The Protector had the resort; the King in maner desolate."[97]
On hearing the news of her brother's 30 April arrest, the dowager queen fled to sanctuary in Westminster Abbey. Joining her were her son by her first marriage, Thomas Grey, 1st Marquess of Dorset; her five daughters; and her youngest son, Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York.
On 10/11 June, Richard wrote to Ralph, Lord Neville, the City of York and others asking for their support against "the Queen, her blood adherents and affinity" whom he suspected of plotting his murder. At a council meeting on 13 June at the Tower of London, Richard accused Hastings and others of having conspired against him with the Woodvilles and accusing Jane Shore, lover to both Hastings and Thomas Grey, of acting as a go-between.
According to Thomas More, Hastings was taken out of the council chambers and summarily executed in the courtyard, while others, like Lord Thomas Stanley and John Morton, Bishop of Ely, were arrested. Hastings was not attainted and Richard sealed an indenture that placed Hastings' widow, Katherine, under his protection.
Bishop Morton was released into the custody of Buckingham. On 16 June, the dowager queen agreed to hand over the Duke of York to the Archbishop of Canterbury so that he might attend his brother Edward's coronation, still planned for 22 June.
King of England
Bishop Robert Stillington, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, is said to have informed Richard that Edward IV's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville was invalid because of Edward's earlier union with Eleanor Butler, making Edward V and his siblings illegitimate.
The identity of Stillington was known only through the memoirs of French diplomat Philippe de Commines. On 22 June, a sermon was preached outside Old St. Paul's Cathedral by Ralph Shaa, declaring Edward IV's children bastards and Richard the rightful king. Shortly after, the citizens of London, both nobles and commons, convened and drew up a petition asking Richard to assume the throne.
He accepted on 26 June and was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 6 July. His title to the throne was confirmed by Parliament in January by the document Titulus Regius.[]
The princes, who were still lodged in the royal residence of the Tower of London at the time of Richard's coronation, disappeared from sight after the summer of Although after his death Richard III was accused of having Edward and his brother killed, notably by More and in Shakespeare's play, the facts surrounding their disappearance remain unknown.
Other culprits have been suggested, including Buckingham and even Henry VII, although Richard remains the primary suspect.
After the coronation ceremony, Richard and Anne set out on a royal progress to meet their subjects. During this journey through the country, the king and queen endowed King's College and Queens' College at Cambridge University, and made grants to the church.
Still feeling a strong bond with his northern estates, Richard later planned the establishment of a large chantry chapel in York Minster with over priests. He also founded the College of Arms.[]
Buckingham's rebellion of
Further information: Buckingham's rebellion
In , a conspiracy arose among a number of disaffected gentry, many of whom had been supporters of Edward IV and the "whole Yorkist establishment".
The conspiracy was nominally led by Richard's former ally, the Duke of Buckingham, although it had begun as a Woodville-Beaufort conspiracy (being "well underway" by the time of the Duke's involvement).[note 5] Davies has suggested that it was "only the subsequent parliamentary attainder that placed Buckingham at the centre of events", to blame a disaffected magnate motivated by greed, rather than "the embarrassing truth" that those opposing Richard were actually "overwhelmingly Edwardian loyalists".
It is possible that they planned to depose Richard III and place Edward V back on the throne, and that when rumours arose that Edward and his brother were dead, Buckingham proposed that Henry Tudor should return from exile, take the throne and marry Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Edward IV. It has also been pointed out that as this narrative stems from Richard's parliament of , it should probably be treated "with caution".
For his part, Buckingham raised a substantial force from his estates in Wales and the Marches. Henry, in exile in Brittany, enjoyed the support of the Breton treasurer Pierre Landais, who hoped Buckingham's victory would cement an alliance between Brittany and England.
Some of Henry Tudor's ships ran into a storm and were forced to return to Brittany or Normandy, while Henry anchored off Plymouth for a week before learning of Buckingham's failure.
Buckingham's army was troubled by the same storm and deserted when Richard's forces came against them. Buckingham tried to escape in disguise, but was either turned in by a retainer for the bounty Richard had put on his head, or was discovered in hiding with him. He was convicted of treason and beheaded in Salisbury, near the Bull's Head Inn, on 2 November.
His widow, Catherine Woodville, later married Jasper Tudor, the uncle of Henry Tudor.[] Richard made overtures to Landais, offering military support for Landais's weak regime under Francis II, Duke of Brittany, in exchange for Henry. Henry fled to Paris, where he secured support from the French regent Anne of Beaujeu, who supplied troops for an invasion in
Death at the Battle of Bosworth Field
Main articles: Battle of Bosworth Field and Exhumation and reburial of Richard III of England
On 22 August , Richard met the outnumbered forces of Henry Tudor at the Battle of Bosworth Field.
Richard rode a white courser (an especially swift and strong horse).
The most recommended Richard III books - Shepherd Great Britain's only Prime Ministerial library, it is based on Gladstone's personal collection. This sort of meandering is very annoying to the serious reader. That's like saying that after WWI there were 20 years of peace. Defining Richard's character as central to the analysis of his actions, David Hipshon emphasises the need to separate the man himself from the caricature that has so often been painted.The size of Richard's army has been estimated at 8, and Henry's at 5,, but exact numbers are not known, though the royal army is believed to have "substantially" outnumbered Henry's. The traditional view of the king's famous cries of "Treason!" before falling was that during the battle Richard was abandoned by Baron Stanley (made Earl of Derby in October), Sir William Stanley, and Henry Percy, 4th Earl of Northumberland.
The role of Northumberland is unclear; his position was with the reserve—behind the king's line—and he could not easily have moved forward without a general royal advance, which did not take place. The physical confines behind the crest of Ambion Hill, combined with a difficulty of communications, probably physically hampered any attempt he made to join the fray.
Despite appearing "a pillar of the Ricardian regime" and his previous loyalty to Edward IV, Baron Stanley was the stepfather of Henry Tudor and Stanley's inaction combined with his brother's entering the battle on Tudor's behalf was fundamental to Richard's defeat.[] The death of Richard's close companion John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, may have had a demoralising effect on the king and his men.
Either way, Richard led a cavalry charge deep into the enemy ranks in an attempt to end the battle quickly by striking at Henry Tudor.
All accounts note that King Richard fought bravely and ably during this manoeuvre, unhorsing Sir John Cheyne, a well-known jousting champion, killing Henry's standard bearerSir William Brandon and coming within a sword's length of Henry Tudor before being surrounded by Sir William Stanley's men and re Vergil, Henry VII's official historian, recorded that "King Richard, alone, was killed fighting manfully in the thickest press of his enemies".
The Burgundian chronicler, Jean Molinet, states that a Welshman struck the death blow with a halberd while Richard's horse was stuck in the marshy ground. It was said that the blows were so violent that the king's helmet was driven into his skull. The contemporary Welsh poet Guto'r Glyn implies a leading Welsh Lancastrian, Rhys ap Thomas, or one of his men killed the king, writing that he "killed the boar, shaved his head".[] The identification in of King Richard's body shows that the skeleton had 11 wounds, eight of them to the skull, clearly inflicted in battle and suggesting he had lost his helmet.[] Professor Guy Rutty, from the University of Leicester, said: "The most likely injuries to have caused the king's death are the two to the inferior aspect of the skull—a large sharp force trauma possibly from a sword or staff weapon, such as a halberd or bill, and a penetrating injury from the tip of an edged weapon."[] The skull showed that a blade had hacked away part of the rear of the skull.
Richard III was the last English king to be killed in battle.[] Henry Tudor succeeded Richard as King Henry VII. He married the Yorkist heiress Elizabeth of York, Edward IV's daughter and Richard III's niece.
After the Battle of Bosworth, Richard's naked body was then carried back to Leicester tied to a horse, and early sources strongly suggest that it was displayed in the collegiate Church of the Annunciation of Our Lady of the Newarke, prior to being hastily and discreetly buried in the choir of Greyfriars Church in Leicester.[] In , Henry VII paid 50 pounds for a marble and alabaster monument.
According to a discredited tradition, during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, his body was thrown into the River Soar,[] although other evidence suggests that a memorial stone was visible in , in a garden built on the site of Greyfriars. The exact location was then lost, owing to more than years of subsequent development, until archaeological investigations in revealed the site of the garden and Greyfriars Church.
There was a memorial ledger stone in the choir of the cathedral, since replaced by the tomb of the king, and a stone plaque on Bow Bridge where tradition had falsely suggested that his remains had been thrown into the river.
According to another tradition, Richard consulted a seer in Leicester before the battle who foretold that "where your spur should strike on the ride into battle, your head shall be broken on the return".
On the ride into battle, his spur struck the bridge stone of Bow Bridge in the city; legend states that as his corpse was carried from the battle over the back of a horse, his head struck the same stone and was broken open.[]
Legacy
Richard's Council of the North, described as his "one major institutional innovation", derived from his ducal council following his own viceregal appointment by Edward IV; when Richard himself became king, he maintained the same conciliar structure in his absence.
It officially became part of the royal council machinery under the presidency of John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln in April , based at Sandal Castle in Wakefield. It is considered to have greatly improved conditions for northern England, as it was intended to keep the peace and punish lawbreakers, as well as resolve land disputes. Bringing regional governance directly under the control of central government, it has been described as the king's "most enduring monument", surviving unchanged until
In December , Richard instituted what later became known as the Court of Requests, a court to which poor people who could not afford legal representation could apply for their grievances to be heard.
He also improved bail in January , to protect suspected felons from imprisonment before trial and to protect their property from seizure during that time.[] He founded the College of Arms in ,[] he banned restrictions on the printing and sale of books,[] and he ordered the translation of the written Laws and Statutes from the traditional French into English.
During his reign, Parliament ended the arbitrary benevolence (a device by which Edward IV raised funds),[] made it punishable to conceal from a buyer of land that a part of the property had already been disposed of to somebody else, required that land sales be published, laid down property qualifications for jurors, restricted the abusive Courts of Piepowders, regulated cloth sales, instituted certain forms of trade protectionism, prohibited the sale of wine and oil in fraudulent measure, and prohibited fraudulent collection of clergy dues, among others.
Churchill implies he improved the law of trusts.
Richard's death at Bosworth marked the end of the Plantagenet dynasty, which had ruled England since the succession of Henry II in [] The last legitimate male Plantagenet, Richard's nephew Edward, Earl of Warwick (son of his brother George, Duke of Clarence), was executed by Henry VII in
Reputation
There are numerous contemporary, or near-contemporary, sources of information about the reign of Richard III.[] These include the Croyland Chronicle, Commines' Mémoires, the report of Dominic Mancini, the Paston Letters, the Chronicles of Robert Fabyan and numerous court and official records, including a few letters by Richard himself.
However, the debate about Richard's true character and motives continues, both because of the subjectivity of many of the written sources, reflecting the generally partisan nature of writers of this period, and because none was written by men with an intimate knowledge of Richard.
During Richard's reign, the historian John Rous praised him as a "good lord" who punished "oppressors of the commons", adding that he had "a great heart".[] In , the Italian observer Mancini reported that Richard enjoyed a good reputation and that both "his private life and public activities powerfully attracted the esteem of strangers".
His bond to the City of York, in particular, was such that on hearing of Richard's demise at the battle of Bosworth the City Council officially deplored the king's death, at the risk of facing the victor's wrath.
During his lifetime he was the subject of some attacks. Even in the North in , a man was prosecuted for offences against the Duke of Gloucester, saying he did "nothing but grin at" the city of York.
In , attempts to discredit him took the form of hostile placards, the only surviving one being William Collingbourne's lampoon of July "The Cat, the Rat, and Lovell the Dog, all rule England under a Hog" which was pinned to the door of St. Paul's Cathedral and referred to Richard himself (the Hog) and his most trusted councillors William Catesby, Richard Ratcliffe and Francis, Viscount Lovell.
On 30 March Richard felt forced to summon the Lords and London City Councillors to publicly deny the rumours that he had poisoned Queen Anne and that he had planned marriage to his niece Elizabeth, at the same time ordering the Sheriff of London to imprison anyone spreading such slanders. The same orders were issued throughout the realm, including York where the royal pronouncement recorded in the City Records dates 5 April and carries specific instructions to suppress seditious talk and remove and destroy evidently hostile placards unread.
As for Richard's physical appearance, most contemporary descriptions bear out the evidence that aside from having one shoulder higher than the other (with chronicler Rous not able to correctly remember which one, as slight as the difference was), Richard had no other noticeable bodily deformity.
John Stow talked to old men who, remembering him, said "that he was of bodily shape comely enough, only of low stature"[incomplete short citation] and a German traveller, Nicolas von Poppelau, who spent ten days in Richard's household in May , describes him as "three fingers taller than himselfmuch more lean, with delicate arms and legs and also a great heart." Six years after Richard's death, in , a schoolmaster named William Burton, on hearing a defence of Richard, launched into a diatribe, accusing the dead king of being "a hypocrite and a crookbackwho was deservedly buried in a ditch like a dog."
Richard's death encouraged the furtherance of this later negative image by his Tudor successors due to the fact that it helped to legitimise Henry VII's seizure of the throne.
The Richard III Society contends that this means that "a lot of what people thought they knew about Richard III was pretty much propaganda and myth building."[] The Tudor characterisation culminated in the famous fictional portrayal of him in Shakespeare's play Richard III as a physically deformed, Machiavellian villain, ruthlessly committing numerous murders in order to claw his way to power;[] Shakespeare's intention perhaps being to use Richard III as a vehicle for creating his own Marlowesque protagonist.
Rous himself in his History of the Kings of England, written during Henry VII's reign, initiated the process. He reversed his earlier position, and now portrayed Richard as a freakish individual who was born with teeth and shoulder-length hair after having been in his mother's womb for two years. His body was stunted and distorted, with one shoulder higher than the other, and he was "slight in body and weak in strength".
Rous also attributes the murder of Henry VI to Richard, and claims that he poisoned his own wife.[] Jeremy Potter, a former Chair of the Richard III Society, claims that "At the bar of history Richard III continues to be guilty because it is impossible to prove him innocent. The Tudors ride high in popular esteem."
Polydore Vergil and Thomas More expanded on this portrayal, emphasising Richard's outward physical deformities as a sign of his inwardly twisted mind.
More describes him as "little of stature, ill-featured of limbs, crook-backed&#; hard-favoured of visage". Vergil also says he was "deformed of body&#; one shoulder higher than the right". Both emphasise that Richard was devious and flattering, while planning the downfall of both his enemies and supposed friends. Richard's good qualities were his cleverness and bravery.
All these characteristics are repeated by Shakespeare, who portrays him as having a hunch, a limp and a withered arm.[] With regard to the "hunch", the second quarto edition of Richard III () used the term "hunched-backed" but in the First Folio edition () it became "bunch-backed".
Richard's reputation as a promoter of legal fairness persisted, however.
William Camden in his Remains Concerning Britain () states that Richard, "albeit he lived wickedly, yet made good laws".Francis Bacon also states that he was "a good lawmaker for the ease and solace of the common people". In , Cardinal Wolsey upbraided the aldermen and Mayor of London for relying on a statute of Richard to avoid paying an extorted tax (benevolence) but received the reply "although he did evil, yet in his time were many good acts made."
Richard was a practising Catholic, as shown by his personal Book of Hours, surviving in the Lambeth Palace library.
As well as conventional aristocratic devotional texts, the book contains a Collect of Saint Ninian, referencing a saint popular in the Anglo-Scottish Borders.[]
Despite this, the image of Richard as a ruthless tyrant remained dominant in the 18th and 19th centuries. The 18th-century philosopher and historianDavid Hume described him as a man who used dissimulation to conceal "his fierce and savage nature" and who had "abandoned all principles of honour and humanity".
Hume acknowledged that some historians have argued "that he was well qualified for government, had he legally obtained it; and that he committed no crimes but such as were necessary to procure him possession of the crown", but he dismissed this view on the grounds that Richard's exercise of arbitrary power encouraged instability. The most important late 19th century biographer of the king was James Gairdner, who also wrote the entry on Richard in the Dictionary of National Biography.
Gairdner stated that he had begun to study Richard with a neutral viewpoint, but became convinced that Shakespeare and More were essentially correct in their view of the king, despite some exaggerations.
Richard was not without his defenders, the first of whom was Sir George Buck, a descendant of one of the king's supporters, who completed The history of King Richard the Third in The authoritative Buck text was published only in , though a corrupted version was published by Buck's great-nephew in Buck attacked the "improbable imputations and strange and spiteful scandals" related by Tudor writers, including Richard's alleged deformities and murders.
He located lost archival material, including the Titulus Regius, but also claimed to have seen a letter written by Elizabeth of York, according to which Elizabeth sought to marry the king.[] Elizabeth's supposed letter was never produced. Documents which later emerged from the Portuguese royal archives show that after Queen Anne's death, Richard's ambassadors were sent on a formal errand to negotiate a double marriage between Richard and the Portuguese king's sister Joanna, of Lancastrian descent, and between Elizabeth of York and Joanna's cousin Manuel, Duke of Viseu (later King of Portugal).
Significant among Richard's defenders was Horace Walpole.
New biography books releases Join the discussion. Orders placed for in-stock items and sent using first-class delivery should arrive in 1 to 3 working days. Rating Required Select Rating 1 star worst 2 stars 3 stars average 4 stars 5 stars best. Rate this book.In Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third (), Walpole disputed all the alleged murders and argued that Richard may have acted in good faith. He also argued that any physical abnormality was probably no more than a minor distortion of the shoulders.[] However, he retracted his views in after the Terror, stating he now believed that Richard could have committed the crimes he was charged with, although Pollard observes that this retraction is frequently overlooked by later admirers of Richard.
Other defenders of Richard include the noted explorer Clements Markham, whose Richard III: His Life and Character () replied to the work of Gairdner. He argued that Henry VII killed the princes and that the bulk of evidence against Richard was nothing more than Tudor propaganda. An intermediate view was provided by Alfred Legge in The Unpopular King ().
Legge argued that Richard's "greatness of soul" was eventually "warped and dwarfed" by the ingratitude of others.
Some 20th-century historians have been less inclined to moral judgement, seeing Richard's actions as a product of the unstable times. In the words of Charles Ross, "the later fifteenth century in England is now seen as a ruthless and violent age as concerns the upper ranks of society, full of private feuds, intimidation, land-hunger, and litigiousness, and consideration of Richard's life and career against this background has tended to remove him from the lonely pinnacle of Villainy Incarnate on which Shakespeare had placed him.
Like most men, he was conditioned by the standards of his age." The Richard III Society, founded in as "The Fellowship of the White Boar", is the oldest of several Ricardian groups dedicated to improving his reputation. Other historians still describe him as a "power-hungry and ruthless politician" who was most probably "ultimately responsible for the murder of his nephews."[][]
In culture
Main article: Cultural depictions of Richard III of England