Richard III of England

Richard III
The earliest surviving portrait of Richard (c. 1520, after a lost original), formerly belonging to the Paston family (Society of Antiquaries, London).
King of England
Reign	26 June 1483 – 22 August 1485
Coronation	6 July 1483
Predecessor	Edward V
Successor	Henry VII
Born	(1452-10-02)2 October 1452 Fotheringhay Castle, Northamptonshire
Died	22 August 1485(1485-08-22) (aged 32) Bosworth Field, Leicestershire
Burial	Greyfriars (Franciscan Friary), Leicester
Consort	Anne Neville
Issue	Edward of Middleham, Prince of Wales
House	House of York
Father	Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York
Mother	Cecily Neville, Duchess of York
Signature

Richard III (2 October 1452 – 22 August 1485) was King of England for two years, from 1483 until his death in 1485 during the Battle of Bosworth Field. He was the last king of the House of York and the last of the Plantagenet dynasty. His defeat at the Battle of Bosworth Field was the decisive battle of the Wars of the Roses and is sometimes regarded as the end of the Middle Ages in England. He is the subject of an eponymous play by William Shakespeare.

When his brother Edward IV died in April 1483, Richard was named Lord Protector of the realm for Edward's son and successor, the 12-year-old King Edward V. As the new king travelled to London from Ludlow, Richard met and escorted him to London where he was lodged in the Tower. Edward V's brother Richard later joined him there. Arrangements began to be made for Edward's coronation on 22 June.

However, before the young king could be crowned, Edward IV's marriage to the boys' mother Elizabeth Woodville was publicly declared to be invalid, making their children illegitimate and ineligible for the throne. On 25 June an assembly of lords and commoners endorsed these claims. The following day Richard III officially began his reign. He was crowned on 6 July. The two young princes were not seen in public after August and there arose subsequently a number of accusations that the boys had been murdered by Richard, giving rise to the legend of the Princes in the Tower.

There were two major rebellions against Richard. The first, in October 1483, was led by staunch opponents of Edward IV and most notably by Richard's former ally, Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham. The revolt collapsed and Buckingham was executed at Salisbury near the Bull's Head Inn. In August 1485 there was another rebellion against Richard, headed by Henry Tudor, 2nd Earl of Richmond (later King Henry VII) and his uncle Jasper. Henry Tudor landed in Pembrokeshire, his birthplace, with a small contingent of French troops, and marched through Wales recruiting foot soldiers and skilled archers. Richard fell in the Battle of Bosworth Field, the last English king to die in battle (and the only king to die in battle on English soil since Harold II at the Battle of Hastings in 1066).

Childhood

Richard was born at Fotheringhay Castle, the eighth and youngest child of Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York (who was a strong claimant to the throne of King Henry VI), and Cecily Neville. Richard spent several impressionable years of his childhood at Middleham Castle in Wensleydale 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). While Richard was at Warwick's estate, he developed a close friendship with Francis Lovell, a friendship that would remain strong for the rest of his life. Another child in the household was Warwick's daughter Anne Neville, whom Richard would later marry.

At the time of the death of his father and older brother Edmund, Earl of Rutland, at the Battle of Wakefield, Richard, who was eight years old, was sent by his mother, the Duchess of York, to the Low Countries, beyond the reach of Henry VI's vengeful Queen, Margaret of Anjou. He was accompanied by his elder brother George (later Duke of Clarence). They returned to England following the defeat of the Lancastrians at the Battle of Towton and participated in the coronation of Richard's eldest brother as King Edward IV in 1461. At this time, Richard was named Duke of Gloucester as well as being made a Knight of the Garter and a Knight of the Bath. Richard was then sent to Warwick's estate at Middleham for his knightly training. With some interruptions, Richard stayed at Middleham until early 1465, when he was 12.

Richard became involved in the rough politics of the Wars of the Roses at an early age. Edward appointed him the sole Commissioner of Array for the Western Counties in 1464, when he was 11. By the age of 17, he had an independent command.

For a second time in his youth, Richard was forced to seek refuge in the Low Countries, which were then part of the realm of the Duchy of Burgundy. His sister Margaret had become the wife of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, in 1468. Richard, along with his brother the King, fled to Burgundy in October 1470 after Warwick defected to the side of Margaret of Anjou. Only 18 years old, Richard played crucial roles in two battles which resulted in Edward's restoration to the throne in spring 1471 – Barnet and Tewkesbury.

Reign of Edward IV

During the reign of Edward IV, Richard demonstrated his loyalty and skill as a military commander. He was rewarded with large estates in northern England, and appointed as Governor of the North, becoming the richest and most powerful noble in England. On 17 October 1469, 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 1471, 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 Marches. In contrast, their other surviving brother, George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence, fell out with Edward and was executed for treason.

Richard controlled the north of England until Edward IV's death. There, and especially in the city of York, he was regarded with much love and affection. He raised the churches at Middleham and Barnard Castle to collegiate status. In 1482 Richard recaptured Berwick-upon-Tweed from the Kingdom of Scotland, the last time that the Royal Burgh would change hands between the two realms.

Accession to the Throne

Penny of Richard III

On the death of Edward IV, on 9 April 1483, the late king's twelve-year-old son, Edward V, succeeded him. Richard was named Lord Protector of the young king and quickly moved to keep the family of the Queen mother from exercising power. Elizabeth's brother Anthony Woodville, 2nd Earl Rivers, and others were arrested and taken to Pontefract Castle, where they were later executed under the accusation of having planned to assassinate Richard. He then took Edward and his younger brother, nine-year-old Richard, Duke of York, to the Tower of London, in accordance with advice given by Baron Hastings.

Shortly afterwards, during a council meeting held on 13 June at the Tower of London, Richard accused Hastings and others of having conspired against him with the Woodvilles, with Jane Shore, lover to both Hastings and Thomas Grey, 1st Marquess of Dorset, acting as a go-between. Hastings was summarily executed, while others were arrested. Hastings was not attainted, however, and Richard sealed an indenture which placed his widow Katherine directly under his protection.

Around that time, Robert Stillington, the bishop of Bath and Wells, informed Richard that Edward IV's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville had been invalid due to an earlier union by the King with Eleanor Butler, making Edward V and his siblings illegitimate. On 22 June 1483, a sermon was preached outside St. Paul's Cathedral which declared Edward's children bastards and Richard the rightful king. After the citizens of London, nobles and commons convened, a petition was drawn up, asking Richard to assume the throne. He accepted on 26 June and was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 6 July 1483. His title to the throne was later confirmed by Parliament in January 1484 by the document Titulus Regius.

The princes, still lodged at the Tower of London (the Royal Residence), gradually disappeared from sight. Although Richard III is generally accused of having Edward V and his brother killed, there is considerable debate about the actual fate of the princes in the Tower. The Richard III Society works to prove his innocence.

Richard and his wife Anne endowed King's College and Queens' College, Cambridge, and made grants to the church. He planned the establishment of a large chantry chapel in York Minster, with over one hundred priests. Richard also founded the College of Arms.

Rebellion of 1483

Further information: Buckingham's rebellion

In 1483, a conspiracy arose among a number of disaffected gentry, many of whom were supporters of Edward IV. The conspiracy was led by Richard's former ally Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham. They originally planned to depose Richard III and place Edward V back on the throne. When rumours arose that Edward and his brother (the Princes in the Tower) were dead, Buckingham intervened, proposing instead that Henry Tudor return from exile, take the throne and marry Elizabeth of York, older sister of the Tower Princes. For his part, Buckingham would raise a substantial force from his estates in Wales and the Marches. Henry, in exile in Brittany, enjoyed the support of the Breton prime-minister Pierre Landais, who hoped that Buckingham's victory would cement an alliance between Brittany and England.

In the event, Henry Tudor's ships ran into a storm and had to go back to Brittany. Buckingham's army was greatly troubled by the same storm and deserted when Richard's forces came against them. Buckingham tried to escape in disguise, but was turned in for the bounty Richard had put on his head. He was convicted of treason and beheaded in Salisbury on 2 November. His widow Catherine later married Jasper Tudor, who liaised with Henry Tudor to organise another rebellion.

Richard made overtures to Landais, offering military support for Landais's weak regime under duke Francis II 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 a new invasion in 1485.

Death at the Battle of Bosworth Field

On 22 August 1485, Richard met the outnumbered forces of Henry Tudor at the Battle of Bosworth Field. He was astride his white courser. The size of Richard's army has been estimated at 8,000, Henry's at 5,000, but exact numbers cannot be known. 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. Despite his apparent affiliation with Richard, Baron Stanley's wife, Lady Margaret Beaufort, was Henry Tudor's mother. The switching of sides by the Stanleys severely depleted the strength of Richard's army and had a material effect on the outcome of the battle. Also the death of John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, his close companion, appears to have had a demoralising effect on Richard and his men. Perhaps in realisation of the implications of this, Richard then appears to have led an impromptu cavalry charge deep into the enemy ranks in an attempt to end the battle quickly by striking at Henry Tudor himself. Accounts note that Richard fought bravely and ably during this manoeuvre, unhorsing Sir John Cheney, a well-known jousting champion, killing Henry's standard bearer Sir William Brandon and coming within a sword's length of Henry himself before being finally surrounded by Sir William Stanley's men and killed. Tradition holds that his final words were "treason, treason, treason!", when he found Lord Stanley had turned against him. The Welsh accounts state that Sir Wyllyam Gardynyr killed King Richard III with a poleaxe. The blows were so violent that the king's helmet was driven into his skull. The account reads, "Richard’s horse was trapped in the marsh where he was slain by one of Rhys Thomas’ men, a commoner named Wyllyam Gardynyr." Another account has Rhys ap Thomas himself slaying the king.

Polydore Vergil, Henry Tudor's official historian, would later record that "King Richard, alone, was killed fighting manfully in the thickest press of his enemies". Richard's naked body was then exposed, possibly in the collegiate foundation of the Annunciation of Our Lady, and hanged by Henry Tudor, now King Henry VII, before being buried at Greyfriars Church, Leicester. In 1495 Henry VII paid £50 for a marble and alabaster monument. According to one tradition, during the Dissolution of the Monasteries his body was thrown into the nearby River Soar, although other evidence suggests that a memorial stone was visible in 1612, in a garden built on the site of Greyfriars. The exact location is now lost due to over 500 years of subsequent development. There is currently a memorial plaque on the site of the Cathedral where he may have once been buried, as well as a stone plaque on the bridge where his remains were allegedly thrown into the Soar.

According to another tradition, Richard consulted a seer in the town of 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 the Bow Bridge; legend has it that, as his corpse was being carried from the battle over the back of a horse, his head struck the same stone and was broken open.

Richard III was the last English king to be killed in battle. He was also the second and final monarch to die in battle in England proper; the only other to be so killed was Harold Godwinson.

Henry Tudor succeeded Richard to become Henry VII and sought to cement the succession by marrying the Yorkist heiress, Elizabeth of York, Edward IV's daughter and Richard III's niece.

Succession

Contemporary illumination (Rous Roll) of Richard III, his queen Anne Neville whom he married at York in 1472, and their son Edward the Prince of Wales

Following the decisive Yorkist victory over the Lancastrians at the Battle of Tewkesbury, Richard had married the younger daughter of the Earl of Warwick, Anne Neville on 12 July 1472. Anne's first husband had been Edward of Westminster, son of Henry VI.

Richard and Anne had one son, Edward of Middleham, who died not long after being created Prince of Wales. Richard also had two acknowledged illegitimate children: John of Gloucester, also known as "John of Pontefract", and a daughter Katherine who married William Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke in 1484. Michael Hicks and Josephine Wilkinson have suggested that Katharine's mother may have been Katherine Haute, on the basis of the grant of an annual payment of 100 shillings made to her in 1477. The Haute family was related to the Woodvilles through the marriage of Elizabeth Woodville's aunt, Joan Woodville to Sir William Haute. One of their children was Richard Haute, Controller of the Prince's Household. Their daughter, Alice, married Sir John Fogge; they were ancestors to queen consort Catherine Parr, sixth wife of King Henry VIII. They also suggest that John's mother may have been Alice Burgh. Richard visited Pontefract from 1471, in April and October 1473, and in early March 1474 for a week. On 1 March 1474 he granted Alice Burgh £20 a year for life "for certain special causes and considerations". She later received another allowance, apparently for being engaged as nurse for Clarence's son, Edward of Warwick. Richard continued her annuity when he became king.

Both of Richard's illegitimate children survived him, but they seem to have died without issue. Katharine was almost certainly arrested at Raglan Castle immediately after the Battle of Stoke Field in June 1487 and John was executed in 1491, both on the orders of Henry VII. Katharine apparently died prior to her cousin Elizabeth of York's coronation on 25 November 1487. The mysterious Richard Plantagenet is also a possible illegitimate child of Richard III and is sometimes referred to as "Richard the Master-Builder". He died in 1550.

At the time of his last stand against the Lancastrians, Richard was a widower without a legitimate son. After his son's death, he had initially named his nephew, Edward, Earl of Warwick, Clarence's young son and the nephew of Queen Anne Neville, as his heir. After Anne's death, however, Richard named another nephew, John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, the son of his older sister Elizabeth. However, he was also negotiating with John II of Portugal to marry his sister, Joanna, a pious young woman who had already turned down several suitors because of her preference for the religious life.

Legacy

Richard's death at Bosworth resulted in the end of the Plantagenet dynasty, which had ruled England since the succession of Henry II in 1154. The last male Plantagenet, Edward, Earl of Warwick (son of Richard III's brother Clarence), was executed by Henry VII in 1499.

Richard's Council of the North, derived from his ducal council, greatly improved conditions for Northern England, as commoners of that region were formerly without any substantial economic activity independent of London. Its descendant position was Secretary of State for the Northern Department.

In December 1483 Richard instituted what later became known as the Court of Requests, a court which poor people who could not afford legal representation could apply to, for their grievances to be heard. He also introduced bail in January 1484 to protect suspected felons from imprisonment before trial and protect their property from seizure during that time. He founded the College of Arms in 1484, 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.

Popular culture

Novelists Horace Walpole and Josephine Tey have argued that Richard III was innocent in the death of the Princes, and other novelists such as Valerie Anand have offered alternative versions to the theory that he murdered them. Sharon Kay Penman, in her historical novel The Sunne in Splendour, attributes the death of the Princes to the Duke of Buckingham. In the mystery novel The Murders of Richard III by Elizabeth Peters (1974) the central plot revolves around the debate as to whether Richard III was guilty of these and other crimes. A sympathetic portrayal of Richard III is given in The Founding, the first volume in The Morland Dynasty series by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles. A Rose for the Crown, by Anne Easter Smith, is about Kate Haute who is portrayed as the mother of Richard's illegitimate children. Other sympathetic fictional portraits of Richard III include Marjorie Bowen's 1929 novel Dickon and Tyler Whittle's 1970 novel Richard III, The Last Plantagenet.

Perhaps the best-known film adaptation of Shakespeare's play Richard III is the 1955 version directed and produced by Sir Laurence Olivier, who also played the lead role. Also notable are the 1995 film version starring Sir Ian McKellen, set in a fictional 1930s fascist England, and Looking for Richard, a 1996 documentary film directed by Al Pacino, who plays the title character as well as himself. In the BBC series based on Shakespeare's history plays, An Age of Kings, Paul Daneman played Richard.

In spite of having died at the age of 32, Richard is often depicted as being considerably older: Basil Rathbone, in the Tower of London (1939 film), and Peter Cook were both 46 when they played him, Laurence Olivier was 47 (in his 1955 film), Vincent Price was 51, Ian McKellen was 56 as was Pacino in his 1996 film (although Pacino was 39 when he played him on Broadway in 1979, and Olivier was 37 when he played him on stage in 1944). Ron Cook, then 35, in the 1983 BBC Shakespeare production of the play, was closest in age, and bore some facial resemblance to the Society of Antiquaries portrait. However, Shakespeare had portrayed Richard as being much older than he actually was, in order to show him participating in events that happened before he was born.

In a play within a play in Neil Simon's 1977 film The Goodbye Girl, Richard Dreyfuss reluctantly portrays Richard as overtly homosexual at the insistence of an avant-garde director.

In the television comedy series The Black Adder, Richard III is portrayed by Peter Cook in an alternative version of history as a doting, kindly man who treats his nephews with affection. He parodies Olivier's Richard III, giving a speech starting "Now is the Summer of our sweet content". He is unintentionally killed by Edmund, the titular "Black Adder" (Rowan Atkinson), when Edmund thinks he is trying to steal his horse. His death leads not to the crowning of Henry Tudor, but to the rule of the fictional Richard IV, who in the television series has grown up to be Edmund's father.

In the CBBC children's television show Horrible Histories, Richard III (played by Jim Howick) sings a power ballad in which he attempts to restore his reputation]: "...Never had a hump and my arm was alright, never took the crown with illegal power. Never killed my nephews, the princes in the tower...time to tell the truth about King Richard the third".

Titles, styles, honours and arms

Titles, styles and honours

On 1 November 1461, Richard gained the title of Duke of Gloucester; sometime before 4 February 1466, he was invested as a Knight of the Garter. Following the death of King Edward IV, he was made Lord Protector of England. Richard held this office from 30 April 1483 to 26 June 1483 when he made himself king of the realm. As King of England, Richard was styled Dei Gratia Rex Angliae et Franciae et Dominus Hiberniae (by the Grace of God, King of England and France and Lord of Ireland).

Informally, he may have been known as "Dickon", according to a sixteenth-century legend of a note, warning of treachery, that was sent to the Duke of Norfolk on the eve of Bosworth: "Jack of Norffolke be not to bolde,/For Dyckon thy maister is bought and solde".

Arms

As Duke of Gloucester, Richard used the Royal Arms of England quartered with the Royal Arms of France, differenced by a label argent of three points ermine, on each point a canton gules. As sovereign, he used the arms of the kingdom undifferenced. His motto was Loyaulte me lie, "Loyalty binds me"; and his personal device was a white boar.

• 
  Shield as Duke of Gloucester
• 
  Coat of arms as King Richard III

Ancestry

Family of Richard III of England

16. Edward III of England 8. Edmund of Langley, 1st Duke of York 17. Philippa of Hainault 4. Richard of Conisburgh, 3rd Earl of Cambridge 18. Peter of Castile 9. Infanta Isabella of Castile 19. Maria de Padilla 2. Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York 20. Edmund Mortimer, 3rd Earl of March 10. Roger Mortimer, 4th Earl of March 21. Philippa Plantagenet, 5th Countess of Ulster 5. Anne de Mortimer 22. Thomas Holland, 2nd Earl of Kent 11. Alianore Holland 23. Alice Fitzalan 1. Richard III of England 24. Ralph Neville, 2nd Baron Neville de Raby 12. John Neville, 3rd Baron Neville de Raby 25. Alice Audley 6. Ralph de Neville, 1st Earl of Westmorland 26. Henry de Percy, 2nd Baron Percy of Alnwick 13. Maud Percy 27. Idonea Clifford 3. Cecily Neville 28. Edward III of England (= 16) 14. John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster 29. Philippa of Hainault (= 17) 7. Joan Beaufort 30. Payne de Roet 15. Katherine Swynford

See also

• Cultural depictions of Richard III of England
• Richard III Museum, York

Bibliography

• The Trial of Richard III by Richard Drewett & Mark Redhead (Sutton, 1984) (ISBN 978-0862991982)
• Richard III: A Sourcebook by Keith Dockray (Sutton, 1997) (ISBN 0-75-091479-3)
• Royal Blood: Richard III and the mystery of the princes by Bertram Fields (HarperCollins, 1998) (ISBN 0-06-039269-X)
• Richard III: The Road to Bosworth Field by Peter W. Hammond & Anne Sutton (Constable, 1985) (ISBN 0-09-466160-X)
• Richard the Third by Michael Hicks (Tempus, 2001) (ISBN 0-7524-2302-9)
• Richard III: A Study in Service by Rosemary Horrox (Cambridge University Press, 1991) (ISBN 0-521-40726-5)
• Richard III and the North edited by Rosemary Horrox (University of Hull, 1986) (ISBN 0-8...)
• Bosworth 1485: Psychology of a Battle by Michael K. Jones (Tempus Publishing, 2002) (ISBN 0-7524-2334-7), R3.org
• Richard III: The Great Debate edited by Paul Murray Kendall (W.W. Norton, 1992) (ISBN 0-3...)
• Richard III by David Baldwin (Amberley Publishing, 2012) (ISBN 978-1-4456-0182-3)
• Richard the Third by Paul Murray Kendall (W.W. Norton, 1956) (ISBN 0-393-00785-5)
• The Betrayal of Richard III by V.B. Lamb (Coram, London, 1959; reprint A. Sutton, 1991) (ISBN 0-86299-778-X)
• Richard III and the Princes in the Tower by A.J. Pollard (St Martin's Press, 1991) (ISBN 0-3...)
• Good King Richard? by Jeremy Potter (Constable, 1983) (ISBN 0-09-464630-9)
• Richard III by Charles Ross (Methuen, 1981) (ISBN 0-413-...)
• Richard III: England's Black Legend by Desmond Seward (Penguin Books, 1997) (ISBN 0-1...)
• The Coronation of Richard III: The Extant Documents by Anne Sutton & Peter W. Hammond (St Martin's Press, 1984) (ISBN 0312169795)
• Richard III's Books by Anne Sutton & Livia Visser-Fuchs (Sutton Pub, 1997) (ISBN 0-7...)
• The Princes in the Tower by Alison Weir (Ballantine, 1995) (ISBN 0-3453-9178-0)
• Richard the Young King to Be by Josephine Wilkinson (Amberley, 2008) (ISBN 978-1-84868-513-0)
• Joan of Arc and Richard III: sex, saints, and government in the Middle Ages by Charles Wood (Oxford University Press) (ISBN 0-19-506951-X)

External links

• Richard III Society, American Branch—includes links to online editions of many primary texts and secondary sources
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• The Wars of the Roses Information on Richard and Bosworth
• BBC.co.uk about his final resting place
• Richard III Chronology World History Database
• Illustrated history of King Richard III
• Portraits of Richard III, with commentary by Pamela Tudor-Craig
• BBC: The excavation of Richard III's coffin