The Wars of the Roses

After appearing for some time utterly unsuspicious, Edward, in 1480, resolved on sending an embassador to Paris, and Sir John Howard was selected as the man to urge a speedy celebration of the marriage. The plans of Louis were not then quite ripe, but his statecraft did not desert him; and, at length, after Howard had for some time been silenced by bribes, and Edward deluded by flattering assurances, he set the treaty of Picquigny at defiance, and contracted a marriage between the dauphin and a daughter of the Emperor Maximilian.

Fortunately for Louis, Edward was a much less formidable personage than of yore. Since returning from his French expedition, the English king had given himself up to luxury and indolence. He had drunk deep, kept late hours, sat long over the wine-cup, and gratified his sensual inclinations with little regard either to his dignity as a king or his honor as a man. Dissipation and debauchery had ruined his health and obscured his intellect. Even his appearance was changed for the worse. His person had become corpulent, and his figure had lost its grace. He was no longer the Edward of Towton or of Tewkesbury.

On discovering, however, how completely he had been duped, Edward displayed some sparks of the savage valor which, in other days, had made him so terrible a foe. Rousing himself to projects of revenge, he vowed to carry such a war into France as that country had never before experienced, and commenced preparations for executing his threats. As his resentment appeared implacable, Louis deemed it prudent to find him work nearer home; and, with this object, excited the King of Scots to undertake a war against England.

Some successes achieved by Gloucester in Scotland emboldened Edward in his projects. It happened, however, that he did not live even to attempt the execution of his threats. The excess of his rage against Louis had been such as seriously to affect his health; and, about Easter, 1483, in his forty-second year, the warlike king was laid prostrate with a fever in the Palace of Westminster. Stretched on a bed of sickness, the king found his constitution rapidly giving way; and, losing faith in the skill of his physicians, he referred his quarrel with Louis to the judgment of God, and summoned the lords of his court to bid them farewell.

The king, indeed, could not fail to be anxious as to the fortunes of the family he was leaving. Ever since his ill-starred marriage the court had been distracted by the feuds of the queen's kindred and the old nobility of England. The death of Warwick and the judicial murder of Clarence had by no means restored harmony. At the head of one party figured the queen's brother, Earl Rivers, and her son, the Marquis of Dorset; at the head of the other was the Duke of Buckingham, with whom sided the Lords Stanley and Hastings. Difficult as the task might be, Edward hoped to reconcile the hostile factions ere going to his grave.

When the lords appeared in the king's chamber, and assembled around his bed, Edward addressed to them an impressive speech. Having indicated his brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, as the fittest person to be Protector of the realm, he expressed much anxiety about the affairs of his kingdom and family, pointed out the perils of discord in a state, and lamented that it had been his lot "to win the courtesy of men's knees by the fall of so many heads." After thus smoothing the way, as it were, he put it to his lords, as a last request, that they should lay aside all variance, and love one another. At this solemn appeal the lords acted their parts with a decorum which imposed on the dying man. Two celebrated characters, indeed, were absent, whose talents for dissimulation could not have failed to distinguish them. Gloucester was on the borders of Scotland, and Rivers on the marches of Wales; so that Richard Plantagenet, with his dark guile, and Anthony Woodville, with his airy pretensions, were wanting to complete the scene. But Hastings, Dorset, and others, though their hearts were far asunder, shook hands and embraced with every semblance of friendship; and the king dismissed them with the idea that he had effected a reconciliation.

His affairs on earth thus settled, as he believed, Edward proceeded to make his peace with heaven. Having received such consolations as the Church administers to frail men when they are going to judgment, and committed his soul to the mercy of God, Edward awaited the coming of the Great Destroyer. On the 9th of April his hour arrived; and, complaining of drowsiness, he turned on his side. While in that position he fell into the sleep that knows no breaking; and his spirit, which had so often luxuriated in carnage and strife, departed in peace.

On the day when the king breathed his last he lay exposed in the Palace of Westminster, that the lords, temporal and spiritual, and the municipal functionaries of London might have an opportunity of ascertaining that he had not been murdered. This ceremony over, the body was seared and removed to St. Stephen's Chapel, and there watched by nobles, while masses were sung.

Windsor had been selected as the place of interment. Ere being conveyed to its last resting-place, however, the corpse, covered with cloth of gold, was carried to the Abbey of Westminster under a rich canopy of cloth imperial, supported by four knights, Sir John Howard bearing the banner in front of the procession, and the officers of arms walking around. Mass having been again performed at Westminster, the mortal remains of the warrior-king were placed in a chariot drawn by six horses, and conveyed, by slow stages, along the banks of the Thames. Having been met at the gates of Windsor, and perfumed with odors by the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of Winchester the corpse was borne in solemn procession to the Chapel of St. George, where, placed in the choir, on a hearse blazing with lights and surrounded with banners, it was watched for the night by nobles and esquires. Another mass, more religious solemnities, a few more ceremonies befitting the rank of the deceased, and the last Plantagenet whose obsequies were performed with royal honors was committed to the tomb.

CHAPTER XLI

THE DUKE OF GLOUCESTER

Whether Richard the Third, with his hunch back, withered arm, splay feet, goggle eyes, and swarthy countenance, as portrayed by poets and chroniclers of the Tudor period, very closely resembles the Richard of Baynard's Castle and Bosworth Field, is a question which philosophical historians have answered in the negative. The evidence of the old Countess of Desmond, when brought to light by Horace Walpole in 1758, first began to set the world right on this subject. Born about the middle of the fifteenth century, she lived – when the Plantagenets had been displaced by the Tudors, and the Tudors succeeded by the Stuarts – to affirm, in the seventeenth century, that, in her youth, she had danced with Richard at his brother's court, and that he whom historians had, in deference to Tudor prejudices, represented as a monster of ugliness, was in reality the handsomest man in the room except his brother Edward, and that he was very well made.

It can not be denied that the Countess of Desmond's description of Richard appears extremely complimentary; and, indeed, it would have been something novel in human nature if this lady of the house of Fitzgerald, in old age and penury, had not been inclined to exaggerate the personal advantages of a Plantagenet prince who, in the days of her youth and hope, had distinguished her by his attention. Evidence, however, exists in abundance to prove that Richard was utterly unlike the deformed ruffian introduced into history by the scribes and sheriffs of London, who plied their pens with an eye to the favor of the Tudors.

Portraits and authentic descriptions of the last Plantagenet king which have come down to posterity convey the idea of a man rather under-sized and hard-featured, with dark brown hair, an intellectual forehead, a face slightly deficient in length, dark, thoughtful eyes, and a short neck, and shoulders somewhat unequal, giving an appearance of inelegance to a figure, spare indeed, and wanting in bulk, but wiry, robust, and sinewy; trained by exercise to endure fatigue, and capable on occasions of exercising almost superhuman strength. Such, clad in garments far more gorgeous than good taste would have approved, his head bent forward on his bosom, his hand playing with his dagger, as if in restlessness of mood, and his lips moving as if in soliloquy, appeared to his contemporaries the subtle politician who, at Baynard's Castle, schemed for the crown of St. Edward. Such, arrayed in Milan steel, bestriding a white steed, the emblem of sovereignty, with a surcoat of brilliant colors over his armor, a crown of ornament around his helmet, a trusty lance skillfully poised in his hand, and an intense craving for vengeance gnawing at his heart, appeared the fiery warrior whose desperate valor well-nigh saved St. Edward's crown from fortune and the foe on Bosworth Field.

CHAPTER XLII

THE PROTECTOR AND THE PROTECTORATE

Before "giving up his soul to God" in the Palace of Westminster, the fourth Edward nominated his brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, as Protector of England during the minority of Edward the Fifth. The choice was one of which the nation could not but approve. Richard was in the thirty-first year of his life, and in the full vigor of his intellect; with faculties refined by education and sharpened by use; knowledge of mankind, acquired in civil strife and in the experience of startling vicissitudes of fortune; a courage in battle which had made his slight form and grisly cognizance terrible to foes on fields of fame; a genius for war which had given him an enviable reputation throughout Christendom; a temper hitherto so carefully kept under restraint that any man hinting at the excess of its ferocity would have been deemed insane; and an ambition hitherto so well masked by affected humility that no one could have imagined it capable of prompting political crimes, unjustifiable, save by those Italian maxims associated with the name of Machiavelli.

It was on the 2d of October, 1452, shortly after the Roses were plucked in the Temple Gardens, that Cicely, Duchess of York, gave birth to her youngest son, Richard, in the Castle of Fotheringay. He was, therefore, scarcely three years old when the Wars of the Roses commenced at St. Albans, and little more than eight when the Duke of York was slain by the Lancastrians on Wakefield Green. Alarmed, after that event, at the aspect of affairs, warned by the murder of her second son, the boy-Earl of Rutland, and eager to save George and Richard from the fate of their elder brother, the Duchess Cicely sent them to Holland, trusting that, even in case of the Lancastrians triumphing, the Duke of Burgundy would generously afford them protection and insure them safety.

After being sent to the Continent, Richard and his brother remained for some time in secret at Utrecht; but the Duke of Burgundy, hearing that the young Plantagenets were in that city, had them sought out and escorted to Bruges, where they were received with the honors due to their rank. When, however, his victory at Towton made Edward King of England, he requested Burgundy to send the princes; and, in the spring of 1461, "The Good Duke" had them honorably escorted to Calais on their way home. When, after their return to England, George was dignified with the dukedom of Clarence, Richard became Duke of Gloucester.

At an early age, Richard, who was energetic and highly educated, acquired great influence over the indolent and illiterate Edward; and in the summer of 1470, when scarcely eighteen, he was appointed Warden of the West Marches. The return of Warwick from France interrupting his tenure of office, he shared his brother's flight to the territories of the Duke of Burgundy; and when Edward landed at Ravenspur, to conquer or die, Richard was by his side, and proved an ally of no mean prowess. Being intrusted with high command at Barnet and Tewkesbury, his conduct won him high reputation; and, in spite of his foppery and fondness for dress and gay apparel, he showed himself, at both of these battles, a sage counselor in camp and a fiery warrior in conflict.

The Lancastrians having been put down and peace restored, Richard turned his thoughts to matrimony, and resolved to espouse Anne Neville, daughter of Warwick and widow of Edward of Lancaster. Clarence, wishing to keep the Warwick baronies to himself, as husband of Isabel Neville, attempted, by concealing her sister, to prevent this marriage. But Richard was not to be baffled. He discovered the fair Anne in London, disguised as a cook-maid, and carrying the youthful widow off, placed her for security in the sanctuary of St. Martin's. Nevertheless, Clarence continued unreasonable. "Richard may have my sister-in-law if he will," he said, "but we will part no livelihood." Edward, however, took the matter in hand, pacified his brothers, allotted Anne a handsome portion out of the Warwick estates, and had the marriage with Richard forthwith solemnized. One son, destined to figure for a brief period as Prince of Wales, was the result of this union.

Years rendered memorable by the inglorious expedition to France and the unfortunate execution of Clarence passed over; and in 1482, when Edward conspired with the exiled Duke of Albany to dethrone James, King of Scots, Richard, who, among his contemporaries, had acquired the reputation of being "a man of deep reach and policy," was intrusted with the conduct of the war. Having been nominated lieutenant general against the Scots, and joined by the Earl of Northumberland and Lord Stanley, he led twenty-five thousand men across the Tweed, regained Berwick, which had been surrendered by Queen Margaret, and marched to the gates of Edinburgh. By this expedition Richard acquired an increase of popularity; and he was still in the north when Edward the Fourth departed this life and his son was proclaimed as Edward the Fifth.

At that time the young king – a boy of thirteen – was residing in the Castle of Ludlow, on the marches of Wales, and receiving his education under the auspices of his maternal uncle, Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers. Anthony was eminently qualified for the post of tutor, and every precaution appears to have been taken to render the boy worthy of the crown which he was destined never to wear.

While the news of his father's death was traveling to young Edward at Ludlow, the feud between the ancient nobility and the queen's kindred broke out afresh at Westminster, and London was agitated by the factious strife. Elizabeth, jealous of the designs of the adverse faction, wrote to Rivers to raise a large force in Wales, and conduct the king to the capital to be crowned; and she empowered her son, the Marquis of Dorset, who was Constable of the Tower, to take the royal treasure out of that fortress, and fit out a fleet. Hastings, alarmed at these indications of suspicion, threatened to retire to Calais, of which he was captain; and both parties appealed to Richard, who had hitherto so acted as to give offense to neither.

Richard, on learning the state of affairs, immediately wrote to the queen, recommending that the army gathering round her son should be dismissed; and the royal widow, who was totally devoid of the intellect and sagacity necessary for such a crisis, dispatched a messenger to her brother to disband his troops. The young king, however, set out from Ludlow, and, attended by Earl Rivers, Elizabeth's second son, Richard Grey, and Sir Thomas Vaughan, he approached Northampton on the 22d of April, and learned that Richard had already arrived at that town.

Richard, as we have said, was on the frontiers of Scotland when his brother expired at Westminster. On receiving intelligence of this sad event he rode southward to York, and entered that city with a retinue of six hundred knights and esquires, all dressed, like himself, in deep mourning. At York he ordered a grand funeral service to be performed in the Cathedral; and, having summoned the magnates of the neighborhood to swear fealty to Edward the Fifth, he set them the example by taking the oath first. After going through this ceremony, he wrote to Elizabeth Woodville and to Earl Rivers, expressing the utmost loyalty and affection for the young king; but, at the same time, a messenger was sent to the Duke of Buckingham appointing a meeting at Northampton.

Again taking the road southward, Richard reached Northampton on the 22d of April; and, learning that the king was every hour expected, he resolved to await the arrival of his nephew and escort him safely to London. Ere long Rivers and Richard Grey appeared to pay their respects, and announce that the king had gone forward to Stony Stratford. Richard, who had hitherto given the Woodvilles no cause for suspicion, was doubtless somewhat surprised at this intelligence. He, however, suppressed his emotions, listened patiently to Anthony's frivolous apology about fearing that Northampton would have been too small a place to accommodate so many people, and with the utmost courtesy invited the uncle and nephew to remain and sup.

Rivers and Grey accepted without hesitation an invitation given in so friendly a tone; and soon after, Buckingham arrived at the head of three hundred horsemen. Every thing went calmly. The two dukes passed the evening with Rivers and Grey; they all talked in the most friendly way; and next morning they rode together to Stony Stratford.

On reaching Stony Stratford, Richard found the king mounting to renew his journey; and this circumstance seems to have convinced him that he was intended by the Woodvilles first as a dupe and then as a victim. At all events, their evident anxiety to prevent an interview between him and his nephew afforded him a fair opportunity for taking strong measures, and he did not hesitate. Turning to Rivers and Grey, he immediately charged them with estranging the affections of his nephew, and caused them to be arrested along with Sir Thomas Vaughan.

Having ordered the prisoners to be conveyed to the castle of Sheriff Hutton, Richard and Buckingham bent their knees to their youthful sovereign, and explained to him that Rivers, Grey, and Dorset were traitors; but Edward, educated by his maternal relatives and much attached to them, could not conceal his displeasure at their arrest.

This scene over, Richard dismissed all domestics with whom Rivers had surrounded the young king, and conducted his nephew toward London, giving out as he went that the Woodvilles had been conspiring. On the 4th of May they approached the metropolis; and at Hornsey Wood they were met by Lord-mayor Shaw, with the sheriffs and aldermen, in their scarlet robes, and five hundred of the citizens, clad in violet and gallantly mounted. Attended as became a king, young Edward entered London. Richard rode bareheaded before his nephew; many knights and nobles followed; and, amid loud acclamations from the populace, Edward the Fifth was conducted to the Bishop's Palace. A grand council was then summoned, and Richard was declared Protector of England.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth Woodville had been seized with dread. Alarmed at the report that her brother and son were under arrest, and apprehensive of Richard's intentions, she fled to the sanctuary with her five daughters, her eldest son, the Marquis of Dorset, and her youngest son, Richard, a boy of ten, who had been created Duke of York, and contracted in marriage to an heiress of the Mowbrays who died in infancy. The king, on learning that his mother was alarmed, expressed his grief with tears in his eyes. At first Richard only protested his loyalty, and marveled that his nephew should be so melancholy; but ere long he resolved to turn the royal boy's unhappiness to account, and with this view sent the Archbishop of York to Elizabeth to say that, to the king's happiness, the company of his brother was essential.

The prelate carried the Protector's message to the sanctuary, and found the mournful mother earnestly opposed to delivering up the Duke of York. The archbishop, however, told her plainly that if she did not consent, he feared some sharper course would speedily be taken; and at this warning Elizabeth, who was at once timorous and imprudent, began to yield. At length she took the boy by the hand and led him to the archbishop. "My lord," she said, "here he is. For my own part, I never will deliver him freely; but if you must needs have, take him, and at your hands I will require him."

At that time Richard and other lords were in the Star Chamber, and thither the archbishop led the weeping boy. As they entered, Richard rose, embraced his nephew affectionately, and exclaimed with characteristic dissimulation, "Welcome, nephew, with all my heart. Next to my sovereign lord, your brother, nothing gives me so much contentment as your presence." A few days after this scene was enacted, Richard declared that it was necessary that the king and his brother should be sent to some place of security till the distempers of the commonwealth were healed; and a great council, summoned to discuss the question, resolved, on the motion of Buckingham, that the princes should be sent to the Tower. Accordingly, they were conducted to the metropolitan fortress; and it was intimated that they were to remain there till preparations had been made for the king's coronation.

The fate of Rivers, Grey, and Vaughan having been decided on, the 13th of June was appointed as the day of execution; and Sir Richard Ratcliffe, an unscrupulous agent of Richard, was intrusted with the ceremony. Anthony Woodville was prevented from addressing the people on the occasion, and posterity has been deprived of the satisfaction of reading the accomplished adventurer's vindication; but Vaughan was more lucky in his effort to be heard.

"I appeal," said Vaughan, solemnly, "to God's high tribunal against the Duke of Gloucester for this wrongful murder."

"You have made a goodly appeal," said Ratcliffe, with a sneer, "so lay down your head."

"I die in the right, Ratcliffe," answered Vaughan; and, preparing to submit to the blow, he added, "Take heed that you die not in the wrong."

Ere disposing of the Woodvilles, Richard persuaded himself that his dream of the crown might be realized, and by bribes and promises purchased Buckingham's aid in overthrowing the obstacles that stood in his way. Anxious, also, to gain over Hastings, he deputed the task of sounding him to William Catesby, an eminent lawyer, who descended from an ancient family at Lapworth, in Warwickshire, and who was destined to acquire an unenviable notoriety in Richard's service. The result was not satisfactory. In fact, Hastings, though he heartily concurred in Richard's measures against the Woodvilles, was determined to stand by Edward's sons to the death; and, ere long, matters arrived at such a pass that, while Richard sat at the head of a majority of the council at Crosby Hall, Hastings presided over a minority at the Tower. The party of Hastings appeared formidable. Lord Stanley, among others, took part in its proceedings; and Stanley's son, George, Lord Strange, was reported to be levying forces in Lancashire to give effect to its decisions. Richard was not blind to the fact that if he did not destroy the confederacy forthwith it would destroy him. At such a crisis he was neither so timid nor so scrupulous as to hesitate as to the means.

Some years before his death, Edward of York, while pursuing his amours in the city of London, was captivated by the charms of Jane Shore, a young city dame, whose name occupies an unfortunate place in the history of the period. This woman, after being for seven years the wife of a reputable goldsmith, allowed herself, in an evil hour, to be lured from the house of her husband, and figured for some time as the king's mistress. Notwithstanding her equivocal position, however, Mistress Shore exhibited many redeeming qualities. Her wit and beauty giving her great influence over Edward, she exercised it for worthy purposes, and was ever ready to relieve the needy, to shield the innocent, and protect the oppressed.

When Edward had been laid at rest in St. George's Chapel, and Elizabeth Woodville fled to the sanctuary, Mistress Shore manifested much sympathy for the distressed queen; and, having formed an intimacy with Lord Hastings, she framed something resembling a plot against the Protector. Elizabeth at once forgave Hastings the hostility he had displayed toward her kindred, and forgave Mistress Shore for having supplanted her in Edward's affections, and the three became allies. Richard's jealousy was aroused, and he resolved to make this extraordinary alliance the means of effecting the ruin of Hastings.

It was Friday, the 13th of June – the day on which Rivers, Grey, and Vaughan suffered at Pontefract – and Hastings, Stanley, the Bishop of Ely, the Archbishop of York, with other men of mark, had assembled at nine o'clock in the Tower, when the Protector suddenly entered the council chamber and took his seat at the table. Richard appeared in a lively mood, conversed for a while gayly with those present, and quite surprised them by the mirth which he exhibited.

Having set the lords somewhat at their ease and persuaded them to proceed with business, Richard begged them to spare him for a while, and, leaving the council chamber, he remained absent for an hour. Between ten and eleven he returned, but frowning and fretting, knitting his brow and biting his lips.

"What punishment," he asked, seating himself, "do they deserve who have imagined and compassed my destruction, who am so nearly related to the king, and intrusted with the government of the realm?"

"Whoever they be," answered Hastings, after a pause, "they deserve the death of traitors."

"These traitors," cried Richard, "are the sorceress my brother's wife, and her accomplice, Jane Shore, his mistress, with others, their associates, who have, by their witchcraft, wasted my body."

"Certainly, my lord," said Hastings, after exhibiting some confusion, "if they be guilty of these crimes, they deserve the severest punishment."

"What?" exclaimed Richard, furiously, "do you reply to me with ifs and with ands? I tell thee they have so done, and that I will make good on your body, traitor."

After threatening Hastings, Richard struck the council table, and immediately a cry of "Treason" arose, and armed men rushed into the chamber.

"I arrest thee, traitor," said Richard, turning to Hastings.