should become of age. Richard protected his young nephew as a wolf would protect a lamb. He met the Prince coming up to London from Ludlow Castle, Shropshire, attended by his half brother, Sir Richard Grey, and his uncle, Lord Rivers. Under the pretext that Edward would be safer in the Tower of London than at Westminster Palace, Richard sent the Prince there, and soon found means for having his kinsmen, Grey and Rivers, executed. 310. Murder of Lord Hastings and the Two Princes. Richard shortly after showed his object. Lord Hastings was one of the council who had voted to make him Lord Protector, but he was unwilling to help him in his plot to seize the crown. While at the council table in the Tower of London Richard suddenly started up and accused Hastings of treason, saying, " By St. Paul, I will not to dinner till I see thy head off!" Hastings was dragged out of the room, and without either trial or examination was beheaded on a stick of timber on the Tower green. The way was now clear for the accomplishment of the Ďuke's purpose. The Queen Mother (Elizabeth Woodville, widow of Edward IV) (§ 305) took her younger son and his sisters, one of whom was the Princess Elizabeth of York, and fled for protection to the sanctuary (§ 95) of Westminster Abbey, where, refusing all comfort, "she sat alone, on the rush-covered stone floor." Finally, Richard half persuaded and half forced the unhappy woman to give up her second son to his tender care. With bitter weeping and dread presentiments of evil she parted from him, saying: Farewell, mine own sweet son! God send you good keeping! Let me kiss you once ere you go, for God knoweth when we shall kiss together again." That was the last time she saw the lad. He and Edward, his elder brother, were soon after murdered in the Tower, and Richard rose by that double crime to the height he coveted. 311. Summary. Edward V's nominal reign of less than three months must be regarded simply as the time during which his uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, perfected his plot for seizing the crown by the successive murders of Rivers, Grey, Hastings, and the two young Princes. 1483-1485]. CHARACTER OF RICHARD III -- RICHARD III (HOUSE OF YORK, WHITE ROSE) — 1483-1485 169 312. Richard's Accession; he promises Financial Reform. Richard used the preparations which had been made for the murdered Prince Edward's coronation for his own (§ 310). He probably gained over an influential party by promises of financial reform. In their address to him at his accession, Parliament said, "Certainly we be determined rather to adventure and commit us to the peril of our lives. . . than to live in such thraldom and bondage as we have lived long time heretofore, oppressed and injured by extortions and new impositions, against the laws of God and man, and the liberty, old policy and laws of this realm, wherein every Englishman is inherited." 1 313. Richard III's Character. Several attempts have been made of late years to defend the King against the odium heaped upon him by the older historians. But these well-meant efforts to prove him less black than tradition painted him are answered by the fact that his memory was thoroughly hated by those who knew him best. No one of the age when he lived thought of vindicating his character. He was called a "hypocrite" and a "hunchback." We must believe then, until it is clearly proved to the contrary, that the last of the Yorkist kings was what common report and Shakespeare have together represented him,2-distorted in figure, and with ambition so unrestrained that the words the great 1 Taswell-Langmead's "Constitutional History of England." 2 In this connection it may be well to say a word in regard to the historical value of Shakespeare's utterances, which have been freely quoted in this book. He generally followed the Chronicles of Hall and Holinshed, which constitute two important sources of information on the periods of which they treat; and he sometimes followed them so closely that he simply turned their prose into verse. Mr. James Gairdner, who is a high authority on the Wars of the Roses, calls Shakespeare "an unrivaled interpreter" of that long and terrible conflict. (See the preface to his "Houses of Lancaster and York.") In the preface to his "Richard III" Mr. Gairdner is still more explicit. He says: "A minute study of the facts of Richard's life has tended more and more to convince me of the general fidelity of the portrait with which we have been made familiar by Shakespeare and Sir Thomas More." On Shakespeare's faithful presentation of history see also A. G. S. Canning's " Thoughts on Shakespeare," p. 295; the Dictionary of National (British) Biography under "Holinshed"; Garnett and Gosse's "English Literature," Vol. II, p. 68; and H. N. Hudson's "Shakespeare's Life and Characters," Vol. II, pp. 5-8. See, too, § 298, note 1. English poet has seen fit to put into his mouth may have really expressed Richard's own thought: "Then, since the heavens have shap'd my body so, Let hell make crookt my mind to answer it.” 1 Personally he was as brave as he was cruel and unscrupulous. He promoted some reforms; he encouraged Caxton in his great work (§ 306), and he abolished the forced loans ironically called "benevolences" (§ 307), at least for a time. 314. Revolts; Buckingham; Henry Tudor. During his short reign of two years, several revolts broke out, but came to nothing. The Duke of Buckingham, who had helped Richard III to the throne, turned against him because he did not get the rewards he expected. He headed a revolt; but as his men deserted him, he fell into the King's hands, and the executioner speedily did the rest. Finally, a more formidable enemy arose. Before he gained the crown Richard had cajoled or compelled the unfortunate Anne Neville, widow of that Prince Edward, son of Henry VI, who was slain at Tewkesbury (§ 305), into becoming his wife. She might have said with truth, " Small joy have I in being England's Queen." The King intended that his son should marry Elizabeth of York, sister to the two Princes he had murdered in the Tower (§ 310). By so doing he would strengthen his position and secure the succession to the throne to his own family. But Richard's son shortly after died, and the King, having mysteriously got rid of his wife, now made up his mind to marry Elizabeth himself. The Princess, however, was already betrothed to Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, the engagement having been effected during that sad winter which she and her mother spent in sanctuary (§ 95) at Westminster Abbey, watched by Richard's soldiers to prevent their escape (§ 310). The Earl of Richmond, who was an illegitimate descendant of the House of Lancaster (see Genealogical Table, p. 172), had long been waiting on the Continent for an opportunity to invade England and claim the crown. Owing to the enmity of Edward IV and Richard toward him, the Earl had been, as he himself said, "either a fugitive or a captive 1 Shakespeare's "Henry VI," Part III, Act V, scene vi. since he was five years old." He now determined to remain so no longer. He landed (1485) with a force at Milford Haven, in Wales, where he felt sure of a welcome, since his paternal ancestors were Welsh.1 Advancing through Shrewsbury, he met Richard on Bosworth Field, in Leicestershire. 315. Battle of Bosworth Field, 1485. There the decisive battle was fought between the great rival houses of York and Lancaster ($300). Richard represented the first, and Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, the second. The King went out the evening before to look over the ground. He found one of his sentinels slumbering at his post. Drawing his sword, he stabbed him to the heart, saying, "I found him asleep and I leave him asleep." Going back to his tent, he passed a restless night. The ghosts of all his murdered victims seemed to pass in procession before him. Such a sight may well, as Shakespeare says, have "struck terror to the soul of Richard." 2 At sunrise the battle began. Before the attack, Richard, it is said, confessed to his troops the murder of his two nephews (§ 310), but pleaded that he had atoned for the crime with " many salt tears and long penance." It is probable that had it not been for the treachery of some of his adherents the King would have won the day. When he saw that he was deserted by those on whose help he had counted, he uttered the cry of "Treason! treason!" and dashed forward into the thick of the fight. With the fury of despair he hewed his way into the very presence of Henry Tudor, and killing the standard bearer, flung the Lancastrian 1 Descent of Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond: Henry V (House of Lancaster) married Catharine of France, who after his death married Owen Tudor, a Welshman of Anglesey Henry VI Edmund Tudor (Earl of Richmond) married Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond (also 2 Shakespeare's "Richard III," Act V, scene iii. |