Richard III (October 2, 1452 - August
22, 1485) was king of England from 1483 to 1485.
Richard was born at Fotheringay Castle, the fourth son of Richard, Duke
of York who had been a strong claimant to the throne of King Henry VI.
He was involved in ongoing battles between different alliances of the House
of Lancaster and the House of York factions during the last half of the
1400s. At the time of his father's death at the Battle of Wakefield, Richard
was still a boy, and was taken into the care of Richard Neville, Earl of
Warwick, known to history as "The Kingmaker" because of his strong influence
on the course of the Wars of the Roses. Warwick was instrumental in deposing
Henry VI and replacing him with Richard's eldest brother, Edward.
During the reign of his brother, Edward IV, Richard demonstrated his
loyalty, as well as his prodigious skill as a military commander, and was
rewarded with the title Duke of Gloucester and the position of Governor
of the North. It was from northern England that he always drew his greatest
support, having spent much of his childhood at Middleham Castle, where
he later made his married home. Following the decisive Yorkist victory
over the Lancastrians at the Battle of Tewkesbury, Richard married the
widowed Anne Neville, daughter of the late Earl of Warwick. Anne's first
husband had been Edward of Westminster, son of Henry VI.
Richard and Anne had one son, Edward Plantagenet(1473 - April 9, 1484),
who died not long after being invested with the title of Prince of Wales.
Anne also died before her husband.
On the death of Edward IV, Richard was entrusted with the role of protector
to the king's sons, his young nephews, Edward V and another Richard, Duke
of York. When the boy king's retinue was on its way from Wales to London,
Richard intercepted them and took them into custody at the Tower of London
(then a royal palace). He was wary of the relatives of the boys' mother,
the Woodvilles, who were intent on acquiring power. A little more than
two months after Edward IV's death in 1483, Richard accepted the throne
himself after Parliament declared the two boys illegitimate.
Lord Hastings, who had been a regular visitor to the young Edward V
at the Tower and who, with dowager queen Elizabeth Woodville, was a leading
member of the Lancastrian faction at court, was charged with treason, convicted,
and executed in the Tower of London. Three other members of the conspiracy
-- the queen's brother Lord Rivers, her second son Richard Grey, and Edward
V's chamberlain Sir Thomas Vaughn -- were also convicted and executed elsewhere.
But Jane (or Elizabeth) Shore, who had been mistress of King Edward IV,
and then of his step-son Thomas Grey (who avoided prosecution in the conspiracy
by going into sanctuary at Westminster with his mother), and was now Hastings's
mistress, was convicted of only lesser offences and was made to do public
penance and briefly imprisoned.
When the members of Parliament met on June 25 (although there was no
king to convene a formal session), it apparently heard evidence from a
priest (believed to have been Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells,
although no records survive) that Edward IV's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville
had been bigamous, therefore all their children were bastards. Some of
the proceedings of that Parliamentary session are believed to survive in
a document known as "Titulus Regius", which Parliament issued some months
later explaining its actions and of which a single copy escaped destruction.
Richard's three elder brothers were all dead. The children of George,
Duke of Clarence were attainted because of their father's treason and not
eligible to inherit the throne. With Edward IV's children having been declared
illegitimate, Richard was next in line for the crown. He was the last Plantagenet
king. By the time of his last stand against the Lancastrians, he 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 also
the nephew of Queen Anne Neville, as his heir. After Anne's death, however,
Richard named John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, as his heir.
Richard was, at least outwardly, a devout man and an efficient administrator.
However, he was a Yorkist and heirless, and had ruthlessly removed the
Woodvilles and their allies; he was therefore vulnerable to political opposition.
His enemies united against him, and he was killed at the Battle of Bosworth
Field on August 22, 1485, by Lancastrian forces led by Henry Tudor. Tudor,
though his claim to the throne was weak, was able to rally an army as big
as the king's. He succeeded Richard to become Henry VII, and cemented the
succession by marrying the Yorkist heir, Elizabeth of York. Richard's body
was treated disgracefully before being buried at Greyfriars Church, Leicester.
According to one tradition, during the Dissolution of the Monasteries his
body was thrown into the nearby River Soar, although other evidence suggests
that this may not be the case and that his burial site may currently be
under a car park in Leicester. There is currently a memorial plaque in
the Cathedral where he may have once been buried.
Since his death, Richard III has become one England's most controversial
kings. Modern historians recognise the damage done to his reputation by
"historians" of the next reign, and particularly by William Shakespeare.
Amongst other things, Richard was represented as physically malformed,
which in those days was accepted as evidence of an evil character. However,
it has been demonstrated that he could not have carried out most of the
crimes attributed to him. The major exception is the question of whether
he was responsible for the deaths of his nephews, the "Princes in the Tower".
The Richard III Society was set up during the 20th century in an attempt
to rehabilitate Richard, and has gathered considerable research material
about his life and reign. Its members, known as "Ricardians", hold events,
raise monuments and attempt to preserve the king's memory.
Richard appears in the 2002 List of "100 Great Britons" (sponsored by
the BBC and voted for by the public), alongside such other greats as David
Beckham, Aleister Crowley, and Johnny Rotten. The BBC History Magazine
lists him under "doubtful entrants, based on special interest lobbying
or 'cult' status", and comments: "On the list due to the Ricardian lobby,
but a minor monarch".
Further Reading
Source material on all aspects of Richard's reign is neatly and impartially
brought together by Keith Dockray in
Richard III: A Reader in History
(Sutton, 1988).
-
The Trial of Richard III by Richard Drewett & Mark Redhead (ISBN
0862991986)
-
Royal Blood by Bertram Fields {ISBN 006039269X}
-
Richard III: The Road to Bosworth Field by Peter Hammond & Anne
Sutton (ISBN 009466160X)
-
Richard the Third by Michael Hicks (Tempus, 2001)(ISBN 0752423029)
-
Richard III: A Study in Service by Rosemary Horrox (ISBN 0521407265)
-
Richard III and the North edited by Rosemary Horrox (ISBN 0859580660)
-
Richard III: The Great Debate edited by Paul Murray Kendall {ISBN
0393003108}
-
Richard the Third by Paul Murray Kendall {ISBN 0393007855}
-
Richard III and the Princes in the Tower by A.J. Pollard (ISBN 0312067151)
-
Good King Richard? by Jeremy Potter {ISBN 0094646309}
-
Richard III by Charles Ross (Methuen, 1981) (ISBN 0413295303)
-
Richard III: England's Black Legend by Desmond Seward {ISBN 0140266348}
-
The Coronation of Richard III by Anne Sutton & Peter Hammond
(ISBN 0904387752)
-
Richard III's Books by Anne Sutton & Livia VIsser-Fuchs (ISBN
0750914068)
-
The Princes in the Tower by Alison Weir {ISBN 0345391780}
-
Joan of Arc and Richard III by Charles Wood (ISBN 019506951X)
Fiction about Richard III
A lasting mystery surrounding the accession of Richard was the disappearance
and presumed death of Richard's nephews, known as the Princes in the Tower.
One of the most readable accounts of the evidence on all sides of the question
is Josephine Tey's
The Daughter of Time, written in 1951 (when some
of the sources now available had not yet come to light). The American Branch
of the Richard III Society carries out its own review of all the suspects
in the case of Richard III, in "Whodunit?" in the online library at :http://www.r3.org/bookcase/whodunit.html
(external link). Another fictional representation is the 1939 film
Tower
of London, where Basil Rathbone is Richard and Boris Karloff his evil
henchman; it is available on videotape.
External Links:
-
Richard
III Society, headquartered in London, England
-
Richard
III Society, American Branch -- includes links to online editions of many
primary texts and secondary sources
