Hicks Richard III: Classic Histories Series

1. Auflage 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7524-7326-0
Verlag: The History Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 223 Seiten

Reihe: Classic Histories Series

Richard III has been written off in history as one of England's evil kings. His usurpation of the throne from his nephew Edward V and then subsequent generations of pro-Tudor historians ensured his fame as the disfigured murderer portrayed by Shakespeare. In the twentieth century, Richard found his apologists, those who saw him as more sinned against than sinning. This biography - by the leading expert on Richard - strips away the propaganda of the centuries to rescue Richard from his critics and supporters alike, providing a balanced and compelling portrait of this most infamous of kings.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hicks, Michael

Leseproben

2

RICHARD II AS DUKE OF GLOUCESTER

UPBRINGING AND EARLY LIFE

Few aspects of Richard’s life are more controversial than his birth and deformity. His birth was merely noted at the time. It was after his death that it was first declared unnatural by enemies who tried to denigrate him. Actually it is not unnatural for a mother to have a difficult labour, for a baby to be in the breech position, for an episiotomy or a Caesarean section to be required, or for the infant to arrive with hair; less common, but not unheard of, is birth with teeth; but a two-year pregnancy is not merely unnatural but impossible and quite unbelievable. If there is any truth in any of this, it did not cause Richard congenital weaknesses or hunch his back. Probably he was short of stature, delicate of build and with uneven shoulders, as those who knew him said, but he was certainly neither a cripple nor incapable of bearing arms.

Richard was born at Fotheringhay in Northamptonshire in 1452. His father was Richard Duke of York, Earl of March and Ulster, his mother was one of the well-connected Neville clan, and through them Richard traced descent in three lines from Edward III. He was the youngest of four sons at a time when only the eldest inherited. Edward was destined to be the next duke and Edmund was already an earl, but nothing could be guaranteed for the younger sons, George – the later Duke of Clarence – and Richard. In merely recording his continued existence the Clare Roll may faithfully represent Richard’s significance to his father! The dynastic revolutions of 1460–61, which destroyed their father and brother Edmund, made Edward king and made Richard abruptly into a royal prince, a knight and Duke of Gloucester. At sixteen he was of age and at thirty the premature deaths of his remaining brothers brought him the crown.

Richard’s conventional aristocratic education made him proficient in the use of weapons, pious according to the standards of his day, and literate in English and probably Latin. In 1480 a large cannon (great bombard) was a welcome gift and one of his favourite saints was the patroness of artillerymen. He could be enthusiastic about the crusade. Richard was particularly devoted to no fewer than thirty-nine saints in 1478, an extraordinary total. He expressed a clear preference for the services and ordinal of Salisbury over their York counterparts and ordained that his college at Middleham should celebrate particular masses on three weekdays and specific collects and psalms within them. His capacity to discriminate arose from first hand knowledge of the services which he could have followed in his breviary or missal. Since his surviving primer was evidently for private use, it is probable that he could read Latin. When von Poppelau addressed him at length in Latin in 1484, Richard replied through an interpreter: perhaps he could understand spoken Latin, but lacked the confidence to speak it himself. Whether he ever read his thirteen surviving books is uncertain, but he certainly signed them and could not have valued them purely for their illuminations, which are unexciting or altogether lacking. Among other things they could have acquainted him with a range of history, fabulous and actual, from the Old Testament, the Fall of Troy, and King Arthur almost to the present day.

Immediately after Edward’s accession, Richard was housed with his brother Clarence and sister Margaret at the new palace at Greenwich, whence he moved in about 1464 into the household of Warwick the Kingmaker. Where better could Richard learn to be an aristocrat than in the household of the greatest nobleman of the time? Richard Neville (1428–71), Earl of Warwick and Salisbury, enjoyed estates, revenues, expenditure and a standard of living greater than those of any contemporary duke. Warwick conducted England’s diplomacy and dominated the English marches towards Scotland, Wales and Calais. He wanted to rule England too. He may have viewed Richard as the prospective husband of his younger daughter Anne. Richard could have learnt a great deal: about how to behave and about places and people who bulked large in later life. We know only that in 1464–65 Richard was with the earl, his countess, and two brothers-in-law, when all made offerings at the high altar of St Mary’s, Warwick, that he was in or near York in 1468–69, and that the king paid Warwick for Richard’s keep with the wardship of young Lord Lovell. Only from this time can Richard have been attracted to the North which, to our knowledge, he had never before encountered. All else, regrettably, is conjecture.

Richard’s development must also have been influenced by tenants and companions, about which, again, little is known. His financial affairs – and those of his siblings – were handled at first by old servants of the house of York and of the king himself. Whereas one such, John Peke, passed into Clarence’s service, another, John Milewater, the attendant of his brothers Edward and Edmund in the 1450s, joined Richard. Such ‘servants and lovers’ could have reinforced that loyalty to the Yorkist dynasty that is often seen as one of Richard’s distinctive features. All were older men. Nearer in age if not in rank were Thomas Huddleston and Richard’s esquire Thomas Parr, younger sons of leading Cumbrian families retained by Warwick, whom Richard must surely have met in the earl’s household. Perhaps he encountered others of the same kind there, such as Richard Ratcliffe of Derwentwater and James Tyrell of Ipswich, both of whom later served him well, respectively from at least 1478 and 1473. He certainly encountered Francis Lord Lovell, heir of a major baronial family. Warwick’s ward and later husband of Warwick’s niece, Lovell is usually regarded as Richard’s friend. He was to serve him when duke in Scotland and as chamberlain when king, was created a viscount and knight of the Garter, and died while still resisting Richard’s conqueror. We know of Milewater, Huddleston and Parr because they fell at Richard’s side at Barnet in 1471 and because, much later, he ordained prayers for their souls. Certainly proof of service, this points also to friendship, a strong emotional attachment, and a sense of responsibility on the part of the young duke, which extended beyond the grave and did not fade with time. Conspicuous loyalty to and generous treatment of his retainers was an enduring feature of his career.

The most important figure in shaping Richard’s career was his brother Edward IV. It was he who represented the status quo – the political framework within which Richard had to operate – and he initially shaped that career. Edward it was who took the crucial early decisions. Thus it was he who late in 1468 declared Richard’s majority at the age of only sixteen. Young though he was, Richard was soon sitting on a commission of oyer and terminer, which condemned Lancastrian traitors to death, and electing his brother-in-law Duke Charles the Bold of Burgundy to the Order of the Garter. The surviving offer to Charles of 13 May 1469 bears Richard’s signature. A royal progress to East Anglian shrines was followed by Warwick’s rebellion, the king’s brief incarceration and retreat, and Gloucester’s despatch to Wales as the royal figurehead. The next three years were crowded with practical experience of justice, government, and warfare. Richard shared in Edward’s exile in 1470 and in his victories in 1471, when Warwick was slain. He himself was slightly wounded and lauded in verse as the new Hector, the Trojan hero. Victory was completed by the deaths of Henry VI in the Tower and his son at or after the battle of Tewkesbury. If Richard had any share in their deaths – and probably he did not – he acted at the king’s command and in the interests of public peace. As constable of England, however, it was his duty to summarily try and despatch captured Lancastrian leaders; although initially pardoned, the bastard of Fauconberg suffered the same fate.

Twice Richard had been endowed with lands in the 1460s that ultimately went to others. He lacked the endowment appropriate to a royal duke, still less to Edward IV’s notion of what was fitting. In 1467 Edward had intended his next brother Clarence to have £4,500 a year, three times the qualifying income for a duke. In 1471 at last Richard’s services gave him priority among those deserving royal bounty and Edward gave him most of the possessions forfeited by his defeated enemies. Scattered throughout England and Wales and often contested by others, they required great determination to secure. From 1471–74 Richard was at odds with the Stanleys, his brother Clarence, the Earl of Northumberland and the Countess of Oxford. At some risk to public order, he emerged with an estate equal to that of any magnate and as the dominant figure in the North of England.

For much of Edward’s second reign (1471–83), Richard was preoccupied by the acquisition and consolidation of his estates, the recruitment of a retinue, and, somewhat prematurely, planning the good of his soul. As a royal duke and king’s brother he was a public figure. He had succeeded Warwick as constable and admiral of England, royal offices that required exercise. We still possess his seal as admiral of England and some records of suits before his court of admiralty. As constable he had to update the rules for English tournaments. Later he was Great Chamberlain of England. Not even the Kingmaker held together such a constellation of prestigious offices. However often he may have been in the North, he attended the sessions of parliament of 1472–75, 1478 and 1483, appeared in the royal council at Westminster and at the Garter chapter at Windsor when available, and featured in ceremonial state occasions. He was at court as often as was...