RICHARD III. A.D. 1483--1485.
Richard III. seems to have wished to be a good and great king; but he
had made his way to the throne in too evil a manner to be likely to
prosper. How many people he had put to death we do not know, for when
the English began to suspect the he had murdered his two nephews, they
also accused him of the death of everyone who had been secretly slain
ever since Edward IV. came to the throne, when he had been a mere boy.
He found he must be always on the watch; and his home was unhappy, for
his son, for whose sake he had striven so hard to be king, died while
yet a boy, and Anne, his wife, not long after.
Then his former staunch friend, the Duke of Buckingham, began to feel
that though he wanted the sons of Elizabeth Woodville to be set aside
from reigning, it was quite another thing to murder them. He was a
vain, proud man, who had a little royal blood--being descended from
Thomas, the first Duke of Gloucester, son of Edward III.--and he
bethought himself that, now all the House of Lancaster was gone, and
so many of the House of York, he might possibly become king. But he
had hardly begun to make a plot, before the keen-sighted, watchful
Richard found it out, and had him seized and beheaded.
There was another plot, though, that Richard did not find out in time.
The real House of Lancaster had ended when poor young Edward was
killed at Tewkesbury; but the Beauforts--the children of that younger
family of John of Gaunt, who had first begun the quarrel with the Duke
of York--were not all dead. Lady Margaret Beaufort, the daughter of
the eldest son, had married a Welsh gentleman named Edmund Tudor, and
had a son called Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond. Edward IV. had always
feared that this youth might rise against him, and he had been obliged
to wander about in France and Brittany since the death of his father;
but nobody was afraid of Lady Margaret, and she had married a Yorkist
nobleman, Lord Stanley.
Now, the eldest daughter of Edward IV.--Elizabeth, or Lady Bessee, as
she was called--was older than her poor young brothers; and she heard,
to her great horror, that her uncle wanted to commit the great
wickedness of making her his wife, after poor Anne Nevil's death.
There is a curious old set of verses, written by Lord Stanley's
squire, which says that Lady Bessee called Lord Stanley to a secret
room, and begged him to send to his stepson, Richmond, to invite him
to come to England and set them all free.
Stanley said he could not write well enough, and that he could not
trust a scribe; but Lady Bessee said she could write as well as any
scribe in England. So she told him to come to her chamber at nine
that evening, with his trusty squire; and there she wrote letters,
kneeling by the table, to all the noblemen likely to be discontented
with Richard, and appointing a place of meeting with Stanley; and she
promised herself that, if Henry Tudor would come and overthrow the
cruel tyrant Richard, she would marry him: and she sent him a ring
in pledge of her promise.
Henry was in Brittany when he received the letter. He kissed the
ring, but waited long before he made up his mind to try his fortune.
At last he sailed in a French ship, and landed at Milford Haven--for
he knew the Welsh would be delighted to see him; and, as he was really
descended from the great British chiefs, they seemed to think that
to make him king of England would be almost like having King Arthur
back again.
They gathered round him, and so did a great many English nobles and
gentlemen. But Richard, though very angry, was not much alarmed, for
he knew Henry Tudor had never seen a battle. He marched out to meet
him, and a terrible fight took place at Redmore Heath, near Market
Bosworth, where, after long and desperate struggling, Richard was
overwhelmed and slain, his banner taken, and his men either killed
or driven from the field. His body was found gashed, bleeding, and
stripped; and thus was thrown across a horse and carried into
Leicester, where he had slept the night before.
The crown he had worn over his helmet was picked up from the branches
of a hawthorn, and set on the head of Henry Tudor. Richard was the
last king of the Plantagenet family, who had ruled over England for
more than three hundred years. This battle of Bosworth likewise
finished the whole bloody war of the Red and White Roses.