87 



RICHARD III. 



RICHARD III. 



tuin.' To the reign of Richard II. have been assigned the complete 

 establishment of the court of the high admiral, and the enlargement 

 of the jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery by the first issuing of 

 fmbpama. Finally, the right of impeachment and prosecution by the 

 Commons in parliament, which had been first asserted in the latter 

 years of Edward III., was finally established in this reign by the 

 impeachment of the Earl of Suffolk, the late chancellor, in 1386. 



Richard II. had no issue by either of his wives (his second indeed 

 was only a child of ten years of age at the time of his death) ; nor are 

 any natural children assigned to him by the genealogists. Queen 

 Isabel returned to France in 1401, and became the wife of her cousin 

 Charles, duke of Orleans, after bearing a daughter to whom, she died, 

 r.t the age of twenty, in 1409. 



RICHARD III., king of England, was the youngest son of Richard, 

 duke of York, whose descent is given in the article on EDWARD IV. 

 Richard was born on the 2nd of October, 1452, at Fotheriugay Castle 

 in Northamptonshire. On the defeat and death of the Duke of York 

 at Wakefield Green, 31et December 1460, where the duke's second 

 surviving son Edmund, styled earl of Rutland, was also killed, Richard 

 and his elder brother George, afterwards duke of Clarence, were sent 

 by their mother to Utrecht, where they remained under the protection 

 of Philip, duke of Burgundy, till the crown of England was acquired 

 (about two mouths after) by their eldest brother Edward. Soon after 

 this event Richard was created duke of Gloucester, made a knight of 

 the Garter, and appointed to the office of lord high admiral, though 

 as yet only in his tenth year. In 1469 he was made one of the 

 wardens of the Scottish marches : in 1470 he fled with the king, his 

 brother, to Flanders on the sudden restoration of Henry VI. by the 

 Earl of Warwick : in 1471 he commanded the fore ward of his 

 brother's army at the battle of Barnet; and he also assisted in 

 gaining for Edward his next and crowning victory of Tewksbury. He 

 and his brother Clarence arc asserted to have been the actual murderers 

 of Henry's son Prince Edward, after the battle. [EDWARD IV.] To 

 Gloucester also was popularly ascribed at the time the murder of 

 Henry himself in the Tower a few weeks after. [HENRY VI.] The 

 following year the Lady Anne Nevil, daughter of the Earl of Warwick, 

 and widow of Prince Edward, was prevailed upon to give him her 

 hand. 



In 1478 Gloucester took a foremost part in the attainder and 

 destruction of his brother Clarence, whose removal placed him next 

 after the king's issue in order of succession to the throne. In 1482 

 he commanded an expedition against Scotland, in the course of which 

 he took the town of Berwick and penetrated as far as Edinburgh. He 

 had only receutly returned from this expedition, and waa still in 

 command of his army on the borders, when the death of his brother 

 took place, in the beginning of April, 1483. 



On the receipt of this intelligence, Richard immediately prepared 

 to set out to London, stopping however on his way at York, where he 

 summoned the gentlemen of the county to swear allegiance to Edward 

 V., taking the oath first himself. At Northampton he was met on the 

 29th of April by the Duke of Buckingham, and it is believed that the 

 measures, probably in part arranged previously by letter, were then 

 finally concerted, by which Richard should be elevated to the throne. 

 On the next day Edward's uncle, Earl Rivers, and his half brother, 

 Lord Grey, who were at Stony Stratford with the king, were both 

 arrested by Gloucester's orders ; and possession was also taken of the 

 royal person. 



From his arrival in London to the disappearance of the young king 

 and his brother towards the end of June [EDWARD V.], Gloucester, 

 who now called himself Lord Protector, kept his residence at Crosby 

 Place in the City, where he held frequent conferences with his con- 

 fidants. On the 13th of June, Lord Hastings was arrested by his 

 orders in the council-room at the Tower, and immediately led to 

 execution ; and two days after, the Lord Grey, Sir Thomas Vaughan, 

 and Sir Richard Hawes underwent the tame fate before the gate of 

 Pontefract Castle. The public were informed by proclamation that 

 these persons had been put to death as having, with the queen and 

 her adherents, ' intended to murder and destroy the Protector and his 

 cousin the Duke of Buckingham, and the old royal blood of the 

 realm.' Lord Stanley, the Archbishop of York, and the Bishop of 

 Ely were also arrested. 



On Sunday the 22nd of June Dr. Shaw preached his famous sermon 

 at Paul's Cross, in which he denounced both the present and the late 

 king as bastards ; and on the Tuesday following the Duke of Bucking- 

 ham harangued the citizens to the same effect from the hustings in 

 Guildhall. The next day, Buckingham, accompanied by other lords, 

 by Shaw the lord mayor (brother of the preacher), and by a number 

 of otlier citizens, proceeded to Bnyuard's Castle, the residence of the 

 Duchess of York, where Richard then was, and in a long address 

 offered him the crown nnd royal dignity in the name of the three 

 estates of the land. Richard, with some affected hesitation, replied 

 that he felt it to be his duty to obey the voice of the people, and that 

 he would from that day take upon himself the royal estate of the two 

 noble realms of England and France. On the following day, the 

 26th, he proceeded to Westminster Hall, and there formally declared 

 himself king. The commencement of his reign is counted from that 

 day, though he was not crowned till the 6th of July. 

 Whether it was the fear inspired by the known determination and 



unscrupulousness of Richard's character, and the executions at London 

 and Pontefract, that operated upon the public mind, or that any consi- 

 derable part of the nation really preferred his claims to those of his 

 nephew and the rest of his late brother's children, it must be admitted 

 that his accession, so far from having been opposed in the first instance 

 from any quarter, appears to have been everywhere hailed with all 

 the evidences of popular approbation and rejoicing. Part of this 

 favour, if it was not a mere show, he may have owed to the clemency 

 and condescension which he affected as soon as he found himself fairly 

 seated on the throne, and to the expectations of a mild or lax govern- 

 ment which the very doubtfulness of his title would excite. But the 

 story, in truth, has been so imperfectly transmitted to i\t, that it is 

 difficult to weave any consistent or satisfactory theory out of the 

 unconnected details that have been preserved. All we know is, that 

 Richard, having immediately after his coronation set out with his 

 queen on a tour through the northern parts of the kingdom, and 

 having been everywhere received with apparently the most cordial 

 gratulations by all classes, was suddenly surprised, while sojourning at 

 York, by intelligence of a formidable confederacy which had been 

 formed against him by the friends of his two nephews in the southern 

 and south-western counties, with his own chief adviser the Duke of 

 Buckingham at its head. It appears that a rising would have taken 

 place immediately throughout Kent, Essex, Sussex, Berkshire, Hamp- 

 shire, Wiltshire, and Devonshire, had it not been prevented for the 

 moment by its being ascertained that the two royal children were 

 dead. This intelligence however only changed the plan of the conspi- 

 rators. By the advice of the Bishop of Ely, the crown was offered 

 to Henry, earl of Richmond, on condition that he should marry 

 Edward IV.'s daughter the Princess Elizabeth; and as soon as his 

 acceptance of the proposal was received from beyond seas, his partisans 

 called their followers to arms on the same day, the 18th of October, 

 in all the parts of the country where they had influence. But this 

 insurrection was quelled almost as soon as it broke out. Richmond, 

 after having reached the coast of Devon, did not venture to disembark; 

 Buckingham was deserted by a force of Welshmen that he had raised 

 at Brecknock, and, falling into the king's hands, had his head imme- 

 diately struck off in the market-place of Salisbury ; of his associates 

 the most fortunate escaped beyond seas ; and by the end of the month 

 not an enemy of Richard's remained in arms in England. 



A parliament was now summoned, which, having met on the 23rd 

 of January 1484, immediately passed an Act declaring Richard to be 

 undoubted king of the realm of England " as well by right of consan- 

 guinity and inheritance, as by lawful election, consecration, and 

 coronation," and bastardising the issue of the late King Edward IV. 

 by Elizabeth Rivers, whom it designated as the late wife of Sir John 

 Gray, and denied to have any rightful title to the dignity of queen- 

 dowager. This Act is known by the name of the ' Titulus Regius,' 

 and is the earliest of what are called the Private Acts, none of which 

 are given in any of the printed collections of the statutes. The 

 ' Titulus Regius ' however has been printed by Sir Robert Cotton, in 

 his ' Abridgment of the Rolls of Parliament.' This Act was followed 

 by others (also classed as private Acts), attainting and confiscating the 

 property of all the principal persons engaged in the late revolt. But 

 various acts of public utility were also passed by this parliament; 

 among others, one authorising every justice of the peace to admit a 

 prisoner to bail, and directing that no officer should seize the goods 

 of a prisoner till after his conviction ; one regulating the impannelling 

 of juries; one declaring and amending the law respecting the levying 

 of tines ; and several relating to commercial affairs, which, if they were 

 not in all points grounded on the most enlightened principles, were at 

 least in accordance with the opinions of the time, and must be regarded 

 as evidences of a considerable interest taken by this parliament in the 

 economical welfare of the country. 



Soon after this however Richard deemed it expedient to adopt a 

 new policy. The queen-dowager, whom the parliament had just 

 declared to have been only the late king's mistress, he now, in alarm 

 at the projected alliance between her eldest daughter and the Earl of 

 Richmond, affected to court as his near and honoured kinswoman ; he 

 proposed marrying the Princess Elizabeth to his own son Edward ; 

 and when that prince died (in April 1484), and his queen, Anne, who 

 had borne him no other children, soon after fell sick, he offered to 

 marry Elizabeth himself. And strange as it appears, both mother and 

 daughter went eagerly into this scheme; the princess in particular 

 showed the utmost impatience for the marriage with her uncle, at 

 least this is the statement made by Sir George Buck, who asserts that 

 he saw a letter written by her to the Duke of Norfolk, protesting that 

 the king was " her joy and maker in this world, and that she was his 

 in heart and thought," and fretfully expressing her fears that Queen 

 Anne " would never die." But when Anne at last did die (on the 

 16th of March 1485), not without suspicion of poison, his two confidants, 

 Radcliffe and Catesby, succeeded in dissuading Richard from venturing 

 upon this incestuous marriage, which they assured him would excite 

 the popular indignation from one end of the kingdom to the other ; 

 and he then took great pains to proclaim that nothing of the kind had 

 ever been contemplated. 



He had the preceding year disembarrassed himself of one considerable 

 source of annoyance and distraction by concluding a peace with Scot- 

 laud for three years ; and affiancing his uiece, the lady Anne de la Pole, 



