RICHARD'S CORONATION.
When Richard had expressed his intention to usurp the English crown,
he fixed the 6th day of July, 1483, for his coronation, and caused
preparations to be made for performing the ceremony with such
magnificence as was likely to render the occasion memorable. Never had
arrangements been made on so splendid a scale for investing a king of
England with the symbols of power.
At the same time Richard took precautions against any opposition that
might be offered by the friends of Elizabeth Woodville. From the north
were brought five thousand fighting men, "evil appareled, and worse
harnessed, in rusty armor, neither defensible for proof nor scoured
for show," but with fearless hearts and strong hands. Their leader was
one whose name a Woodville could hardly hear without growing pale.
For it was Robin of Redesdale, who, in other days, had led the half
mob, half army that seized and beheaded old Earl Rivers, and that son
of Earl Rivers who, while in his teens, had wedded a dowager duchess
in her eighty-second year. On the 4th of July these northern soldiers
encamped in Finsbury Fields, and inspired the citizens of London with
emotions of doubt and apprehension.
On the day when Robin of Redesdale and his men startled London, Richard
and his ill-starred queen--the Anne Neville of earlier and happier
times--took their barge at Baynard's Castle, and went by water to
the Tower. After releasing Lord Stanley and the Archbishop of York,
that they might take part in the coronation, the king created his son
Edward Prince of Wales, nominated Lord Lovel to the office of lord
chamberlain, vacant by the execution of Hastings, and appointed Sir
Robert Brackenbury, the younger son of an ancient family long settled
at Sallaby, in the Bishopric of Durham, to the lieutenancy of the
Tower. At the same time he bestowed on Sir John Howard the dukedom of
Norfolk, and to Thomas, eldest son of that pretentious personage, he
gave the earldom of Surrey. Gratified as the vanity of the Howards
might be, Sir John must have blushed, if, indeed, capable of so much
decorum, as he thought of the disconsolate woman in the sanctuary, and
remembered the letter which, twenty years earlier, at the time of her
marriage, he had written to her father, Sir Richard Woodville.
At length the day appointed for the ceremony arrived, and Richard
prepared to place the crown of St. Edward on his head. "The king, with
Queen Anne, his wife," says the chronicler, "came down out of the
Whitehall into the great hall at Westminster, and went directly to the
King's Bench, and from thence, going upon Ray-cloth, barefooted, went
to St. Edward's Shrine; all his nobility going with him, every lord in
his degree."
A magnificent banquet in Westminster Hall brought the coronation
ceremony to a conclusion; and, in the midst of the banquet, Sir Robert
Dymoke, as king's champion, rode into the hall and challenged any
man to say that Richard was not King of England. No one, of course,
ventured to gainsay his title; but from every side rose shouts of "King
Richard, King Richard;" and, his inauguration as sovereign of England
having been thus formally completed, the usurper retired to consider
how he could best secure himself on that throne which he had gained by
means so unscrupulous.