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The story of Richard III’s rise to kingship and the fate of his nephews, one of whom he had supplanted on the throne, is mysterious for many reasons. There are the questions of what actually befell the princes, whether or not they were actually murdered, and if not, what may have become of them. Then there is the further question of who was responsible for their fate, whether Richard was indeed the villain he is often characterized to be. And it’s this question that reveals our recurring theme: the unreliability of historiography. As we shall see in this two-part series on the topic, the record we have received may be grossly inaccurate, a reflection of contemporary historians’ political associations and the pressure placed on later historians to propagandize for the current dynasty. Modern historians tend to fall into a couple of camps: traditionalists, who favor the received version of history as written by Sir Thomas More and immortalized in Shakespeare’s tragedy, which took it even further by portraying Richard as a scheming dissembler and murderous hunchback, and revisionist Ricardians, who espouse the other extreme, that Richard was innocent of all the charges heaped on him and has been wronged by a history written by the victors of a war he lost. The mystery, as always, is where the truth might lie.

It is easy to accept the version of this story that says Richard was a ruthless schemer for the simple fact that he did indeed make moves to seize the throne after his nephew had already been proclaimed King Edward V, but one must consider Richard’s actions in the context of his era and its numerous civil wars over the monarchy, struggles into which he was born, all of which were family affairs. When the Plantagenet King Edward III died in 1377, a year after his eldest son had died, the throne passed not to his next eldest but to the 10-year-old heir of his recently deceased son, crowned Richard II. Meanwhile, two of Edward III’s surviving sons—John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster, and Edmund, the Duke of York, both uncles of King Richard II—established long-lasting branches of the Plantagenet family. The boy-king ended up reigning 22 years before Henry of Bolingbroke, a son of the Lancastrian branch of the family and therefore the king’s own cousin, seized the throne from him, thereby establishing a Lancastrian dynasty that would pass from Henry IV, to the renowned Henry V, to the less-than-legendary Henry VI, who inherited the throne at 9 months old and grew into a man of unsound mind and a feeble ruler with no viable heir. It was during the reign of Henry VI, with outrage at the loss of English territories in France and the rather open liaisons of the conniving Queen Margaret, that many turned to yet another Richard Plantagenet, the grandson of Edmund, Duke of York, urging him to take the throne for himself. Thus the conflicts between the Lancastrian and the Yorkist branches of the family began. When Henry VI’s mental illness worsened, the Duke of York became protector of the realm by parliamentary decree and ruled England, curtailing Queen Margaret’s power, but when the king’s senses improved slightly, the Queen pushed to have the Duke of York’s position revoked and to consolidate the nobility against the Yorkists, claiming that they conspired against the king and his rightful heir, a child whom many believed to have been fathered by one of Margaret’s lovers rather than by Henry. So the War of the Roses commenced, so called because of the heraldic devices of the two houses, the Lancastrian branch of the family having the symbol of the red rose and the Yorkist branch the white rose. Although a civil war waged by noble knights, it saw a number of battles. At the First Battle of St. Albans, Yorkists succeeded and regained the protectorship. Later, after another Yorkist victory at Blore Heath, the Lancastrians took back power at the Battle of Ludford Bridge and branded the Yorkists traitors, causing the Duke of York to flee to Ireland. This was followed by a Yorkist victory at Northampton, where the king was taken captive, prompting Queen Margaret to flee to Wales. With the Duke of York now set to inherit the throne from the feeble-minded Henry VI, things did not look good for the Lancastrians, but with a newly raised army, Lancastrians returned in force and dealt the Yorkists a decisive blow at Wakefield, where Richard, the Duke of York, leaving the safety of a castle to meet a small force, fell in battle after a larger Lancastrian force that had been hiding in the forest surprised and overwhelmed him. It’s said that after he was taken, the duke was made to wear a garland of bulrushes as a mock crown, told to sit on an anthill as though it were his throne, and was taunted as a “king without heritage…and prince without people” before the Lancastrians finally decapitated him and brought his head to Queen Margaret on a pike. And in a final loss, the duke’s 17-year-old son, Edmund, the Earl of Rutland, after being captured, was stabbed in the heart by a Lancastrian lord as he knelt in terror, raising both hands in a silent plea for mercy.

The Murder of Rutland by Lord Clifford, via Wikimedia Commons

Now we come to the more principal characters of our story, the Duke of York’s other sons: Edward, 19; George, 11; and young Richard, 8 years old. Edward took up his slain father’s campaign and led Yorkist forces to victory at Mortimer’s Cross. The Lancastrians countered with a victory at the Second Battle of St. Albans, but it didn’t matter, for Edward had entered London with much fanfare and was acclaimed by the council there as King Edward IV, the first true Yorkist king of England. Thereafter leading his army to an absolute triumph over Lancastrians at Towton and driving Queen Margaret northward to Scotland with the deranged former king and her likely bastard son in tow, King Edward IV went about putting the affairs of state in order. He made his brother George the Duke of Clarence, and his little brother Richard he named the Duke of Gloucester. Now during Edward’s rule, Queen Margaret continued to make abortive attempts to restore her poor, mad husband to the throne, but the bigger conflict that Edward faced came from one who had been his staunchest ally, the Earl of Warwick, called the “kingmaker” for his tireless efforts in getting Edward crowned. To further illustrate Warwick’s loyalty to Edward, it was he who continued to lead Yorkist forces against the Lancastrian forays from Scotland, eventually driving Margaret to flee to France with her son, leaving behind the non compos mentis Henry VI, who was eventually taken and immured in the Tower of London. So what could drive a wedge between the stalwart Warwick and his young king? As was common in a dashing young king, Edward enjoyed bedding women, which was fine with Warwick, but a schism appears to have arisen between them when Warwick was making arrangements for Edward’s marriage to the French king Louis XI’s niece, and Edward went and secretly married a commoner named Elizabeth Woodville, probably because she wouldn’t sleep with him unless he wed her. The entire thing was an embarrassment to the kingmaker, and add to that his resentment over the consolidation of power by the lowborn Woodville family, who had various advantageous weddings arranged for them, and the offense he took when Edward chose not to take his advice in matters of foreign relations, especially with the French, and you had a recipe for betrayal. And eight years into Edward’s reign, Warwick did indeed betray him, and what’s more, he tempted one of Edward’s own brothers to his cause.

Now because of the image we have received of Richard, you might assume it was this Plantagenet, this grasping hunchback, driven by his avarice and unchecked ambition, who betrayed his brother, the king. In that assumption, though, you would be wrong. Richard, the Duke of Gloucester, was ever an unflagging ally and loyal subject to Edward IV, as his personal motto, loyalté me lie, or “loyalty binds me,” would indicate. Regardless of his image as the little goblin-like creature that Richard is often portrayed to have been, he had grown into a strong young man and would prove himself a hero at arms in the struggles Edward IV would soon face. Rather, it was the middle child, George, Duke of Clarence, whom Warwick convinced to join his rebellion. George also resented the power wealth being amassed by the queen’s common-born family, the Woodvilles, thinking that they were reaching far beyond their rightful station. As an example of this perceived overreach, the queen’s brother, John, had entered into “diabolical marriage” with the elderly Duchess of Norfolk, Warwick’s own aunt, a marriage in name only that was very clearly just a scheme to bring money and lands into the Woodville family. George himself, meanwhile, sought to marry the kingmaker’s daughter, but his brother, the king, forbade it, believing the match would result in too dangerous an alliance. And indeed, it did, for George married her anyway, and then he and Warwick led an army against king Edward IV in 1469, succeeding in capturing the king and executing members of the queen’s family, including the offending brother, John, who had dared to marry Warwick’s dowager aunt. But these gains could not be held, and eventually Richard confronted their forces with a force of his own and simply took back his brother, the king, without so much as a battle. And in a stroke of generosity, the king did not even bother to punish the rebels.

This would prove to be a mistake, however, for Warwick the Kingmaker and George, Duke of Clarence, saw they had lost favor and could never improve their positions under the auspices of Edward IV, surrounded by his Woodville in-laws. They rebelled again the next year and were again defeated; then they fled to France, where they threw their lot in with the Lancastrian Queen Margaret. With Lancastrian forces at their back, they promised to rescue her husband, the former king Henry VI from the Tower and restore him to the throne, which they accomplished, driving Edward and his every-faithful brother Richard out of the country. But this Lancastrian restoration was not popular, especially since Warwick, who essentially ruled in the name of the still weak-minded Henry, had made arrangements for an alliance with the French against Burgundy. In a fortuitous turn for the Yorkists, the Duke of Burgundy, beset on all sides, had no choice but put its strength behind Edward and Richard. As they marched toward recovering the throne for Edward, they encountered their disloyal brother George, who true to character, switched sides yet again, threw himself at his brother’s mercy, and added his army to theirs. The three brothers entered London, and Edward was reunited with his wife, Elizabeth Woodville, who in his absence had borne him a male heir and named the boy after his father. Thereafter, Edward the IV routed the Lancastrian forces in two decisive battles at Barnet and Tewkesbury. At both, Richard fought valiantly beside his brother to settle the War of the Roses. And afterward, in a dark foreshadowing of what was to come, the poor, mad Lancastrian monarch, Henry VI, died in the Tower of London, likely murdered in an effort to end the line of the Lancastrian pretenders once and for all.

From then until his passing in 1483, Edward IV ruled as the undisputed king of England. During his reign, the loyal Richard did well for himself, as significant lands came into his possession, many of which had belonged to traitors. Of course, the acquisitive Woodville clan also continued to grow their influence and means. In contrast, the other Plantagenet brother, George, Duke of Clarence, despite all his treachery, still smoldered with bitterness over the favor that Richard had earned and that the low-born Woodvilles had received. He became envious and erratic. More than once during his adventures he had been promised the throne by his co-conspirators, and this notion seemed to haunt him. After his wife died, he sought to increase his influence through marriage, but Edward again forbade his chosen marriage for various reasons, and to add insult to injury proposed a Woodville, another brother of the queen, for the same marriage, sending his brother George into a downward spiral of animosity and unpredictable behavior. He refused to dine with the king, citing fears that they would poison him, and he began to flaunt his disobedience for the rule of law, accusing a servant of poisoning his late wife, robbing her and having her hanged without due process. When Edward spoke against his actions, George had the gall to denounce the king, going so far as to raise an old libel that Edward was illegitimate, essentially claiming that his own mother had engaged in adultery with a French archer while living abroad, Edward being the issue of this clandestine dalliance, making him a bastard unworthy of sitting the throne. Obviously Edward could no longer tolerate his brother’s behavior, for these latest outbursts seemed designed to undermine his very rule and strengthen his brother’s claim to the throne. Therefore, in January of 1478, George, Duke of Clarence, brother and erstwhile betrayer of the king, was executed, according to some reports, by being drowned in a cask of wine, as were his final wishes.

George, Duke of Clarence, drowned in a barrel of wine, via Modern Medievalism

Readers of the first book of the Song of Ice and Fire series or its television adaptation, Game of Thrones, will find parallels in this passage of English history, as indeed it would seem the author George R. R. Martin took at least some inspiration from it. Richard, who had already been made constable of England, established himself as Lord of the North, governing the northern country for his king and shielding the realm from threats out of Scotland. He had helped the king take the kingdom, but he did not necessarily agree with the way he governed it, specifically disagreeing with a treaty the king had made with France and with the execution of his brother, George. Meanwhile, the king’s scheming wife and her power-hungry family consolidated their power at the seat of the realm’s government, and the king gave himself over to profligacy, philandering and drinking until he grew fat and unhealthy. Then one day, the king went out for a bit of sport, fishing to exact, and grew ill upon his return, prompting rumors that he had been poisoned. In April of 1483, Edward died, leaving his 12-year-old son the heir apparent to the crown, but the similarities with Game of Thrones don’t cease there, for before the boy could be crowned Edward V, accusations of his illegitimacy would be raised. But of course, things would play out far differently in this tale than they did in Martin’s.

According to a deathbed revision of Edward IV’s will, Richard was to be the protector of the young king, and having the boy in his charge would mean that Richard would essentially rule. This may have been an attempt on Edward’s part to avoid civil war, for he knew that many would fear the minority rule of his son and would resent the Woodvilles’ unchecked ascendance if the queen remained the boy’s protector, as had originally been planned. But the Woodvilles were not about to accept this limitation on their power and immediately set about scheming how they might avoid sharing power with Richard. First they delayed news of Edward’s death being sent to Richard in the North. Then they seized all the treasure and arms stored in the Tower of London and took control of the English fleet. Finally, taking the dubious position that Richard’s protectorship would cease as soon as the king was crowned, they made all haste to gather an army and escort young Edward to London, where he would be crowned Edward V without delay and, in forming his own council, cement forever the power of the Woodville family. But Richard was aware of their machinations and set out himself with a far smaller force to meet and accompany them. The queen’s brother Anthony, Lord Rivers, led an army of some 2,000 accompanying the boy, and he made efforts to avoid Richard’s party, leading Richard to believe they’d be stopping in one village when indeed they had moved on, and intending to march the young prince through the night while Richard slept, but Richard outsmarted Rivers, requesting that the queen’s brother come and dine with him and then taking the opportunity to arrest him. Then, in a dramatic gambit, Richard rode into encampment of the Woodville army, knelt before his nephew and declared that, as the boy’s father had wished, he would serve as the young king’s protector.

Gloucester conducting Edward V into London, via TudorsDynasty.com

And the maneuver worked. The troops fell in line. Richard accompanied his nephew to London, where the Woodvilles, including Elizabeth, her other son Richard, and her five daughters, having heard that Richard had control of the boy, had taken their treasure and sought sanctuary at Westminster. So it seemed that Richard had won out and would serve as Edward V’s protector. And seeming to take his role with his customary gravity, he swore fealty to his nephew and compelled the convened parliament to take the oath as well. Young Edward was installed in the well-appointed royal apartments in the Tower of London, the traditional residence of recently acclaimed monarchs. Then Richard set about dealing with matters of state, such as reclaiming the fleet stolen by the Woodvilles and preparing for the coronation. But everything changed in early June, 1483, when one Bishop Stillington testified before Richard and his council that prior to Edward IV’s secret marriage to Elizabeth Woodville, he had entered a so-called precontract of marriage with one Lady Eleanor Butler. This arrangement, witnessed by Stillington, had likely been made in order to bed Lady Butler, as the rakish King Edward IV had been known to make all kinds of promises in order to wear down the resolve of his sexual conquests, but according to canon law, a precontract such as this was essentially the same as an actual marriage, thereby invalidating Edward’s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville and making of Richard’s young nephew a bastard with no claim to the throne. As his council prepared to take this case to parliament, Elizabeth Woodville made arrangements to release her other son from their sanctuary in Westminster so that he could join his brother in London, thereby placing both princes in the Tower and under Richard’s control by the time he disclosed the scandal that illegitimated both of them. And on June 25th, Parliament convened and, after considering the evidence that the princes were technically bastards, they acclaimed the princes’ uncle King Richard III.

We see here some stirrings of the power-hungry character of Richard III that has been traditionally transmitted to posterity. The simple timing of Stillington’s revelation makes it dubious to many historians who see in it a very convenient means by which Richard could seize the throne. But what we must scrutinize is whether Richard has been misrepresented, whether his reputation as a villain is accurate or earned or whether he has been wronged by propagandists distorting the past. Bertram Fields, the author of my principal source for this series, Royal Blood: Richard III and the Mystery of the Princes, offers a balanced and most unbiased look at the many historians who have helped in creating the image of Richard III that persists today. He points out the dubious assumptions of traditionalists and revisionists alike, he lays out which ancient chroniclers wrote their histories at or near the time of the events in question and whether their political ties may have colored their depictions, and he takes note of who wrote about Richard after he had been deposed, during the reign of Henry Tudor, the pretender who successfully took the throne from him and went on to malign his name unceasingly—and press historians to do the same—in an effort to further legitimize his own reign. Under Henry VII’s auspices we get some of the most ludicrous myths about Richard, such as that he gestated in his mother’s womb a full two years before emerging with a full head of hair and complete set of teeth. Perhaps the most influential work on Richard III, an unfinished history by Sir Thomas More that he had abandoned but which saw publication after his death, is also one of the principal sources for the nefarious image of Richard, inspiring as it did Shakespeare’s play. But is there any accuracy to the image of Richard that More left us and that Shakespeare popularized—of a monster out of legend, a hunchback with a withered arm and legs of different lengths, lurching about scheming against family and children? As far as the deformities are concerned, likely not. Richard was a renowned warrior known to wield swords, lances and even a battle-ax with expertise, often as not while also riding a horse! None of that would have been possible with a withered arm. As for the hunchback, there is no evidence of his having had armor specially forged to accommodate any deformity such as this. In fact, there are many accounts that describe Richard, commenting on his likeness with his father or remarking on how well-formed a figure he cut. Even in illustrations made after his death, when there would be no pressure to flatter him and indeed when there probably would have been encouragement to make him look bad, Richard is depicted as a healthy and even handsome man. While there do exist some portraits that show one of his shoulders being higher than the other, these have been shown through x-ray to have been altered after the fact, clearly in order to corroborate the legend of Richard’s deformities. What’s more, they couldn’t even agree on which shoulder they should put a hump on! Then in a modern twist, in 2012, a skeleton was found in car park, and it is believed by many historians to have been confirmed through radiocarbon dating and DNA analysis to be the remains of Richard III, although some still have doubts. Interestingly, this skeleton does show signs of scoliosis that may have caused one shoulder to be higher than the other but would not have caused a hunchback or even precluded an active lifestyle, and there is certainly no indication of a withered arm.

Comparison showing alterations to Richard’s portrait, via richard3rd

So the campaign of propaganda seems to have been genuine, a fact which casts doubt on many stories about Richard. It has been claimed that, when Richard was gathering property during his brother’s reign, he actually coerced an elderly widow into signing over her lands to him under threat, an allegation that, if true, would certainly seem to cast him as the greedy and ruthless villain. But the facts of the matter are not so clear. In truth, the old woman was to be deprived of all property by order of the king because her son had organized a treasonous invasion of England, and it was common for lands belonging to traitors and their families to be seized. And it would seem the supposed threat was actually a choice. The lady might remain at the nunnery where she had been forced to reside or take up residence in Richard’s own house in the North and receive a yearly stipend in exchange for the transfer of ownership to Richard of lands that were of no use to her anyway since the king had made his decision against her family. When considered closely, Richard comes off as rather kind in this exchange. And this is true of many affairs in his life. He frequently erred on the side of mercy when dealing with the nobility, even when they engaged in open rebellion. And during his brief reign, rather than ruling as an iron-fisted despot, he is known to have been a beneficent king, undoing injustices that had long been in place, such as the practice of “benevolences,” when the king simply seized wealth and called it a gift. He also strengthened due process and the rights of the common man to petition for change. In all, his rule seems to have been well loved, even if he were not. And it’s not even certain that he wasn’t well-loved. Some historians see his final defeat at Bosworth Field to be the result of the noble families turning against him, but as we shall see, many noble houses turned out to fight for their king, and his defeat seems more due to a couple of unfortunate betrayals by nobles known for their duplicity and by some reckless decisions on his own part.

Nevertheless, the fact that the revelation of a precontract of marriage preceding Edward IV’s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville was disclosed just before Edward the V’s coronation does seem suspect. But was that the timing of its revelation? As Bertram Fields indicates in his book, there is good reason to believe that Bishop Stillington had come forward with this bombshell years earlier. During the time that Richard and Edward’s brother, George, was making treasonous claims and was on his way to getting himself executed, Bishop Stillington was himself arrested and jailed for a time for making statements against the king. We may not know what those statements were, but common sense would dictate that they were the same statements he would later make, based on the special knowledge he had of the precontract. Thus, among the claims that got George executed may have been that, not only was his brother a bastard, but his children, the princes, also were bastards. Stillington does not appear to have been regarded as a dishonest man who would make up such accusations without grounds, and he also doesn’t seem to have had any real motivation for doing so. Edward IV had taken good care of him, making him a bishop just after his marriage to Woodville—perhaps in exchange for his silence over the precontract with another woman? And he stood nothing to gain from lying on Richard’s behalf either, as Richard appears to have offered him no elevated position after his testimony. Indeed, if he were lying, this elderly cleric would have only been putting his own life at risk. And even what we know about the life of Eleanor Butler, the nobleman’s daughter with whom Edward supposedly entered into a precontract, seems to corroborate the story, for she is said to have entered a nunnery in heartbreak.

So, after all, perhaps this was a genuine revelation that the bishop brought to Richard, having waited until after Edward’s death for fear of being jailed again. Think of Richard, confident in his own ability to rule England and troubled at the thought of England under the minority rule of a boy controlled by the Woodville upstarts, now being confronted with evidence that the boys were not technically legitimate and therefore would not serve as the king’s heirs. Was he not right to take the throne to which he had as much a claim as his brother before him? Parliament certainly seems to have believed he was right to do so. And on the throne he could do what was right, staying to true to his motto and remaining loyal to his family, like his nephews, the newly bastardized princes, who despite the circumstances of their birth would remain honored guests at Richard’s court. He moved the boys, who had been residing at the Tower of London during all this, into interior apartments in the Garden Tower, which would later come to be known as the Bloody Tower. And perhaps it would be easier to dismiss the many misrepresentations of Richard as artifacts of a history composed by his conquerors were it not for the fact that the princes seem to have disappeared after that and a rumor began to circulate in the kingdom that some terrible fate had befallen them.

The Princes in the Tower, via Wikimedia Commons

Be on the lookout for part two of the Bastard Princes in the Bloody Tower, in which we’ll further explore the fate of little Edward and Richard, the vanished Plantagenet princes.

The Bastard Princes in the Bloody Tower; Part One: Pretenders to the Throne

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