THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF YORK.
1471-1485.
[Sidenote: =The Lancastrian line.--Henry, Earl of Richmond.=]
All the males of the house of Lancaster had now fallen by the sword
or the dagger, not only the last representatives of the elder and
legitimate branch which had occupied the throne, but also the whole
family of the Beauforts, the descendants of the natural sons of John
of Gaunt, who had been legitimized by the grant of Richard II. Even in
the female line there remained no one who showed any signs of disputing
the claim of Edward IV. to the throne. The only descendants of John of
Gaunt's first family who survived were the Kings of Spain and Portugal,
who traced themselves back to John's eldest daughter; while the
Beauforts were represented by Lady Margaret Beaufort, daughter of that
Duke of Somerset who had died in 1444, the elder brother of the man who
lost Normandy and fell at St. Albans. The Lady Margaret had married
Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond, the half-brother of Henry VI., and by
him had a single child, Henry, now Earl of Richmond by his father's
decease. In Henry the Beaufort line had its last representative, but he
was but a boy of fourteen, and was over-sea in Brittany, whither his
mother had sent him for safety, while she herself had wedded as her
second spouse Lord Stanley, a peer of strong Yorkist proclivities.
[Sidenote: =Secure rule of Edward IV.=]
Neither the distant Spaniards nor the boy Henry of Richmond were
seriously thought of--even by themselves--as claimants to the English
crown, and King Edward might for the rest of his life repose on the
laurels of Tewkesbury and Barnet, and take his ease without troubling
himself about further dynastic troubles.
He reigned for twelve years after his restoration in 1471, and did
little that was noteworthy in that time. His love of ease gradually
sapped all his energy; his life grew more and more extravagant and
irregular, as he sank into all the grosser forms of self-indulgence. He
completely ruined a handsome person and a robust constitution, and by
the age of forty-two had declined into an unwieldy and bloated invalid.
[Sidenote: =Parliament rarely summoned.--Benevolences.=]
Edward's rule was not so bad for England as might have been expected
from his very unamiable character. His second reign was comparatively
free from bloodshed--if we except one dreadful crime committed on the
person of his own brother. Perhaps he deserves little praise on this
score, for both the Lancastrians and the partisans of Warwick had been
practically exterminated by the slaughters of 1471. It is more to his
credit that he bore lightly on the nation in the matter of taxation.
His pockets were full of the plunder of the house of Neville and the
old Lancastrian families, and, though self-indulgent, he was not a
spendthrift. Indeed, he lived within his means, and seldom asked for a
subsidy from Parliament. This moderation, however, does not imply that
he was a constitutional sovereign. He ruled through a small clique of
ministers and personal dependents, mostly members of his wife's family.
He disliked parliamentary control so much that he seldom summoned a
Parliament at all. For one whole period of five years (1478-82), he was
rich enough to be able to refrain from calling one together. When he
did want money, however, he did not shrink from raising it in the most
objectionable manner, by compelling rich men to pay him forced loans,
called "benevolences." It is fair to add that he generally paid his
debts, and only owed £13,000 when he died. On the whole it may be said
that his rule, though selfish and autocratic, was not oppressive. He
gave the land peace in his later years, and any kind of quiet was an
intense relief after the anarchy of the Wars of the Roses.
[Sidenote: =Revival of industry.=]
Commerce and industry began slowly to rally, and the wealth of the
land seems to have suffered less than might have been expected. The
bloodshed and confiscations of the unhappy years between 1455 and 1471
had fallen almost entirely on the nobles and their military retainers,
and the cities and the yeomen had fared comparatively well. England
had never been left desolate like France at the end of the Hundred
Years' War.
[Sidenote: =Treaty of Picquigny.=]
Edward's foreign policy was feeble and uncertain. At first, after
his restoration, he intended to attack France in alliance with his
brother-in-law, Charles the Rash of Burgundy, who had given him shelter
and succour during his day of exile. He raised an army and crossed the
Channel, talking of recovering Normandy, and of asserting his right to
the French crown. But Lewis XI., the wily King of France, offered to
buy him off, proffering him a great sum down and an annual subsidy,
if he would abandon the cause of Duke Charles. Edward was selfish and
ungrateful enough to accept the offer with delight. He met King Lewis
in a formal interview at Picquigny, in Picardy, and bargained to retire
and remain neutral for 75,000 gold crowns paid down, and an annuity
of 50,000 more so long as he lived. He also wrung a second 50,000 out
of Lewis as a ransom for the unfortunate Queen Margaret of Anjou, a
prisoner since the day of Tewkesbury, and stipulated that the Dauphin
was to be married to his eldest daughter, the Princess Elizabeth (1475).
Edward came home with money in his purse, and found that the French
annuity, which was punctually paid him, was most useful in enabling
him to avoid having to call Parliaments. His betrayal of Charles of
Burgundy was deeply resented by that prince, but Edward took no heed,
and the duke was slain not long after, while waging war on the Swiss
and the Duke of Lorraine.
[Sidenote: =Death of the Duke of Clarence.=]
Two years after the treaty of Picquigny occurred a tragedy which
showed that Edward could still on occasion burst out into his old fits
of cruelty. His brother George, Duke of Clarence, had been received
back into his favour after betraying Warwick in 1471, and had been
granted half the King-maker's estates as the portion of his wife,
Isabel Neville. But Clarence presumed on his pardon, and seems to have
thought that all his treachery to his brother in 1468-70 had been
forgotten as well as forgiven. He was always a turbulent, unwise, and
reckless young man, and provoked the king by his insolent sayings and
open disobedience. Edward had twice to interfere with him, once for
illegally seizing, and causing to be executed, a lady whom he accused
of bewitching his wife Isabel, who died in childbirth; a second
time for trying to wed without his brother's leave Mary of Burgundy,
the heiress of Charles the Rash. When Clarence was again detected in
intrigues with a foreign power--this time with Scotland--the king
resolved to make an end of him. Suddenly summoning a Parliament, he
appeared before it, and accused his brother of treason, though he gave
no clear or definite account of Clarence's misdeeds. Awed by Edward's
wrath and vehemence, the two houses passed a bill declaring the duke
convicted of high treason. The king then condemned him, cast him into
the Tower, and there had him secretly slain (1478).
[Sidenote: =Richard, Duke of Gloucester.=]
Edward for the future placed all his confidence in his youngest
brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who had served him faithfully
all his life, had fled with him to Flanders in 1470, and had fought
gallantly at Barnet and Tewkesbury. Gloucester had always been at odds
with Clarence. He had married Anne Neville, the King-maker's younger
daughter, widow of Edward Prince of Wales, who fell at Tewkesbury.
In her right he claimed half the Neville lands, but Clarence had
endeavoured to keep them from him, and had only been compelled to
disgorge them under the king's stringent pressure. After 1478,
Gloucester acted as his brother's chief councillor and representative,
and showed himself a very capable and zealous servant.
[Sidenote: =Scottish war.--Recovery of Berwick.=]
It was Gloucester who was entrusted with the conduct of a campaign
against Scotland, which was undertaken in 1482, and was the last
important event of Edward's reign. This was a war not at all creditable
to Edward, who intrigued with the rebellious brothers of James III.,
and picked a quarrel with the Scots on frivolous grounds. His real
object was the recovery of Berwick, which had been in Scottish hands
since Queen Margaret surrendered it in the year of Towton. Gloucester
took Berwick, which after being lost for twenty years again became
an English town. He also harried the Merse and Lothian, the Scots
retiring before him without a battle. Soon after they made peace,
ceding Berwick, and promising that their king's eldest son should marry
Edward's daughter Cecily.
[Sidenote: =Death of Edward IV.=]
In the year following this treaty the king died, worn out in early
middle age by his evil living and intemperance. He left a large
family--two sons, Edward aged twelve and Richard aged nine, and five
daughters, of whom Elizabeth, the eldest, had reached her eighteenth
year.
The decease of Edward, though he was little regretted for himself,
threw the nation into great fear and perplexity, for it was confronted
with the dangerous problem of a minority, and no one knew who would
succeed in grasping power as regent for the little king Edward V. It
was almost inevitable that there should be a struggle for the post,
for the late king's court had contained elements which were jealous of
each other, and had only been kept from collision by Edward's personal
influence.
[Sidenote: =Claimants for the Regency.=]
There were two persons to whom the regency might have fallen--the
queen-dowager, Elizabeth Woodville, and the late king's brother,
Richard of Gloucester. Elizabeth's ascendency implied that England
would be ruled by her brothers and the sons of her first marriage--the
lords Rivers and Dorset, Sir John Grey, and Sir Edward Woodville,
all uncles or half-brothers to the little Edward V. Their rule would
mean the banishment or suppression of Gloucester, with whom they were
already at secret feud. In the same way, the rise of Gloucester to
power would certainly mean a like fall for the Woodville clan.
[Sidenote: =Seizure of Earl Rivers.=]
At the moment of his accession the young king was in Shropshire, in
charge of his uncle, Earl Rivers, a fact which put the queen's party at
a great advantage. Rivers at once proceeded to bring his little nephew
toward London, for his coronation, guarding him with a considerable
armed force. On their way Edward and his cavalcade were encountered at
Stony Stratford by Richard of Gloucester, who had also brought with him
a considerable body of retainers from his Yorkshire estates.
The two parties met with profuse protestations of mutual friendship and
esteem, but when Rivers' suspicions were lulled to sleep, Gloucester
suddenly seized him, flung him into fetters, and sent him a prisoner
to the north. Rivers' fate was shared by Sir Richard Grey, the little
king's half-brother, and several more of their party.
[Sidenote: =Gloucester takes charge of the young king.=]
Gloucester then took charge of his nephew's person, and brought him up
to London, where he summoned a Parliament to meet. The queen-dowager,
on hearing that her brother Rivers and her son Richard Grey were cast
into prison, knew that her chance of power was gone, and hastily took
sanctuary at Westminster, with her youngest son, the little Duke of
York, and her five daughters.
[Sidenote: =Schemes of Gloucester.=]
The nation was not displeased to learn that the regency would fall into
the hands of Duke Richard, who was known as a good soldier, and had
served his brother very faithfully; it much preferred him to the Queen
and her relatives, who had a bad reputation for greed and arrogance.
But it soon became evident that there was something more in the air
than a mere transference of the regency. Gloucester not only filled
all the places about the king with his own friends, but commenced to
pack London with great bodies of armed men raised on his own estates, a
precaution quite unnecessary when all his enemies were crushed. He also
made the council of regency confer gifts of money, land, and offices,
on a most unprecedented scale, upon his two chief confidants, Henry,
Duke of Buckingham, and John, Lord Howard. They were evidently being
bought for some secret purpose.
[Sidenote: =Execution of Lord Hastings.=]
Gloucester and his nephew the king had been in London more than a
month, and the day of the young king's coronation was at hand, when
suddenly Duke Richard showed his real intentions by a sharp and bloody
stroke. On the 13th of June the Privy Council was meeting in the Tower
of London on business of no great importance, and the duke showed
himself smooth and affable as was his wont. After a space he withdrew,
but ere long returned with a changed countenance and an aspect of gloom
and anger. "What shall be done," he suddenly asked, "to them that
compass the destruction of me, being so near of blood to the king,
and Protector of this realm?" He was answered by Lord Hastings, the
late king's best friend, a man of great courage and experience, who
had shared in the victories of Barnet and Tewkesbury, and had held
the highest offices ever since. "They are worthy of death," said the
unsuspicious baron, "whoever they may be." Then Gloucester burst out,
"It is my brother's wife," and baring his left arm--which all men knew
to be somewhat deformed since his earliest years--he cried, "Look
what yonder sorceress and Shore's wife and those who are of their
council have done unto me with their witchcrafts." Hastings started
at the mention of Shore's wife, for Jane Shore was his own mistress,
and an accusation of witchcraft against her touched him nearly. "If
they have so done, my lord," he faltered, "they are worthy of heinous
punishment." "Answeredst thou me with _ifs?_" replied Duke Richard. "I
tell thee they _have_ done it, and that I will prove upon thy body,
thou traitor." Then he smote upon the table, and armed men, whom he
had posted without, rushed into the council chamber. Richard bade them
seize Hastings, Lord Stanley, the Archbishop of York, and the Bishop of
Ely, all firm and loyal friends of Edward IV.
Hastings was borne out to the court of the Tower and beheaded then and
there; the others were placed in bonds. This sudden blow at the young
king's most faithful adherents dismayed the whole city; but Gloucester
hastened to give out that he had detected Hastings and his friends in a
plot against his life, and, as he had hitherto been always esteemed a
loyal and upright prince, his words were half believed.
[Sidenote: =Gloucester gets possession of the Duke of York.=]
Richard's real object was to free himself from men whom he knew to
be faithful to the young king, and unlikely to join in the dark plot
which he was hatching. He next went with a great armed following to
Westminster, where lay the queen-dowager and her children. Surrounding
the sanctuary with guards, and then threatening to break in if he
was resisted, he sent Cardinal Bourchier, the aged Archbishop of
Canterbury, to persuade Elizabeth to give up her young son, Richard of
York. Half in terror, half persuaded by the smooth prelate, who pledged
his word that no harm should befall the boy, the Queen placed him in
Bourchier's hands. Richard at once sent him to join his brother in the
Tower (June 16).
Having both his brother's sons in his power, and having crushed his
brother's faithful friends, Richard now proceeded to show his real
intent. He was aiming at the crown, and had been preparing to seize
it from the moment that his brother died. This was the meaning of the
gifts that he had been showering around, and of the masses of armed men
that he had gathered.
[Sidenote: =Doctor Shaw's sermon.=]
On the 22nd of June he laid his purpose open. His chaplain, Doctor
Shaw, was set up to preach to the people at St. Paul's Cross a
marvellous sermon, in which he argued that Richard was the rightful
king, though both Edward IV. and Clarence, his two elder brothers, had
left sons behind them. The Londoners were told to their great surprise
that the late king's marriage with Elizabeth Woodville had been
invalid. Not only had they been secretly and unlawfully married in an
unconsecrated place, but Edward had been betrothed long before to Lady
Eleanor Talbot, the daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury. He had never
been given any clerical dispensation from this bond, and therefore he
was not free to wed, and his sons were bastards. As to Clarence, he had
been attainted, and the blood of his heir was corrupted by his father's
attainder.
[Sidenote: =Gloucester declared king.=]
The Londoners were astonished at this strange argument; they kept
silence and so disappointed Gloucester, who had come to the sermon
in hopes to meet an enthusiastic reception. But two days later, a
stranger scene was enacted at the Guildhall: the Duke of Buckingham,
Gloucester's chief confederate, summoned together the mayor and council
of London, and, repeating all the arguments that Doctor Shaw had
urged, bade them salute Richard as king. A few timid voices shouted
approval, and then Buckingham declared that he recognized the assent
and good-will of the people. Next day there met the Parliament which
should have witnessed the coronation of Edward V. They were summoned
to St. Paul's, where Buckingham presented to them a long document,
setting forth the evil government of Edward IV., denouncing his sons
as bastards, and ending with a petition to Richard of Gloucester to
take upon him as his right the title and estate of king. The Lords
and Commons yielded their silent assent, apparently without a word of
discussion or argument, and Buckingham then led a deputation to Duke
Richard, who, with much feigned reluctance, assented to the petition
and declared himself king. The only excuse for this lamentable weakness
shown by the Houses is that they were quite unprepared for the _coup
d'état_, and were overawed by the thousands of men-at-arms in the
livery of Gloucester and Buckingham, who packed every street.
[Sidenote: =Execution of Rivers and Grey.=]
So Richard was crowned with great pomp if with little rejoicing,
and thought that he had attained the summit of his desires. But his
position was from the first radically unsound. He had seized the throne
so easily because his antecedents had not prepared men for such sudden
and unscrupulous action, so that there had been no time to organize any
opposition to him. But the pious and modest duke had suddenly blossomed
forth into a bloodthirsty tyrant. On the very day of his accession he
had the unfortunate Rivers and Grey beheaded at Pontefract, and six
weeks later he wrought a much darker deed.
[Sidenote: =Murder of the young princes.=]
After starting on a festal progress through the midlands, he sent
back a secret mandate to London, authorizing the murder of his little
nephews, Edward and Richard. They were smothered at dead of night
in their prison in the Tower, and secretly buried by the assassins.
Their graves were never discovered till 1674, when masons repairing
the building came upon the bones of two young boys thrust away under a
staircase. The murder took place between the 7th and 14th of August,
1483, but its manner and details were never certainly known.
[Sidenote: =Buckingham heads a rebellion.=]
The horror which the disappearance of the harmless, unoffending, young
princes caused all over England, was far more dangerous to Richard than
their survival could possibly have been. It turned away from him the
hearts of all save the most callous and ruffianly of his supporters.
Within two months of their death a dangerous rebellion had broken out.
It was headed by Buckingham, the very man who had appeared with such
shameful prominence at the time of Richard's usurpation. No one can
say whether he was shocked by the murder, or whether he was merely
discontented with the vast bribes that the new king had given him, and
craved yet more. But we find him conspiring with the queen's surviving
kindred, the wrecks of the Lancastrian party, and some faithful
adherents of Edward IV., to overturn the usurper. They proposed to call
over the Earl of Richmond, and to marry him to the princess Elizabeth,
the eldest sister of the murdered princes, so blending the claims of
Lancaster and York (October, 1483).
[Sidenote: =Defeat and death of Buckingham.=]
The insurrection broke out in a dozen different districts all over
England, but it was foiled by King Richard's untiring energy and great
military talent. He smote down his enemies before they were able to
unite, and caught Buckingham, who had been separated from the bulk of
his fellow-conspirators by a sudden rising of the Severn. The duke was
executed at Salisbury, with such of his party as were taken, but the
majority escaped over-sea and joined the Earl of Richmond.
This was destined to be the last gleam of success that Richard was to
see. The rest of his short reign (1483-85) was a period of unrelieved
gloom. No protestations of his good-will to England, and no attempts,
however honest, to introduce just and even-handed government, availed
him aught. He summoned a Parliament in 1484, and caused it to pass
several laws of excellent intention, but he was not able to observe
them himself, much less to enforce them on others. After having with
great solemnity abolished the custom of raising benevolences, or forced
loans, such as his brother Edward IV. had loved, Richard was compelled
by the emptiness of his treasury to have recourse to them again, in
less than a twelvemonth after he had disavowed the practice.
[Sidenote: =Death of the king's wife and son.=]
Personal misfortunes came upon the king in a way which seemed to
mark the judgment of Heaven. Less than a year after he had slain his
nephews, his only son Edward, Prince of Wales, died suddenly in the
flower of his boyhood (1484). Eleven months later his wife, Queen
Anne, the daughter of the King-maker, followed his son to the grave.
His enemies accused him of having poisoned her, for all charges were
possible against one who had proved himself so cruel and treacherous.
It is said that Richard thought for a moment, after his wife's death,
of compelling his niece Elizabeth, Edward IV.'s eldest daughter, to
marry him, in order to merge her claim to the crown in his own. But
the mere rumour of the intention so shocked the people that all his
own partisans urged him to disavow it, which he accordingly did. Being
wifeless and childless, he nominated as his heir his nephew, John de la
Pole, Earl of Lincoln, the son of his eldest sister.
[Sidenote: =Renewal of the rebellion.=]
Meanwhile the conspiracy which had failed to overthrow Richard in the
autumn of 1483, was again gathering head. The Earl of Richmond had
obtained loans of men and money from France, and was only waiting
for the news that his friends were ready, to make a second attempt
on England. With him were all the enemies of King Richard who had
escaped death--Dorset, the son of Queen Elizabeth, Edward Woodville,
Morton Bishop of Ely, and the few surviving Lancastrian exiles headed
by the Earls of Pembroke and Oxford. They relied, not on their French
soldiery, but on the secret allies who were to join them in England,
and especially on Lord Stanley, the Earl of Richmond's father-in-law.
That noble, though he had been arrested in company with the unfortunate
Hastings, had been pardoned by King Richard, and entrusted by him with
much power in Lancashire and Cheshire. Richard's court was honeycombed
with treason: his own Attorney-General, Morgan of Kidwelly, kept
Richmond informed of his plans and actions. Of all those about the king
only a very few were really faithful to him.
Richard knew that treason was abroad, though he could not identify the
traitors. He struck cruelly and harshly at all that he could reach; his
ferocity may be gauged from the fact that he actually hung a Wiltshire
gentleman named Collingbourn for no more than a copy of verses. The
unfortunate rhymester had scoffed at Richard's three favourites, Lord
Lovel, Sir William Catesby, and Sir Richard Ratcliffe, in the lines--
"The Cat, the Rat, and Lovel our Dog
Rule all England under a Hog."
The Hog was Richard himself, whose favourite badge was a white boar.
[Sidenote: =Richmond lands in Wales.=]
In August, 1485, Henry of Richmond landed at Milford Haven, and was
joined by many of the Welsh, among whom he was popular because of his
own Welsh blood, that came from his father, Edmund Tudor. Advancing
into England, he met with aid from the Talbots of Shrewsbury and many
other midland gentry. Lord Stanley gathered a considerable army in
Lancashire and Cheshire, but did not openly join the earl, because his
son, Lord Strange, was in the king's hands, and would have been slain
if Richard had been certain of his father's treachery.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Bosworth Field.=]
Advancing still further into the midlands, Henry met the king at
Bosworth Field, near Leicester. Richard's army was twice the size of
that of the earl. He must have conquered if his men had fought honestly
for him. But when the battle was joined, the Earl of Northumberland,
who led one wing of Richard's host, drew aside and would not fight, and
presently Lord Stanley appeared with his contingent and charged the
king in flank. The Yorkists began to disperse and fly, for they fought
with little heart for their cruel master. But Richard himself would not
turn back, though his attendants brought him his horse and besought him
to save himself. He plunged into the thick of the fray, cut his way to
Richmond's banner, and was there slain, fighting desperately to the
last. With him fell his most faithful adherent, John Lord Howard, whom
he had made Duke of Norfolk, and a few more of his chief captains. His
favourite, Sir William Catesby, was taken prisoner and executed when
the battle was over.
Richard's crown, beaten off his helmet by hard blows, was found in
a hawthorn bush, and placed on Richmond's head by Lord Stanley, who
then saluted him as king by the name of Henry VII. The dead monarch's
body was taken to Leicester, and exposed naked before the people, but
ultimately given honourable burial in the church of the Grey Friars.
[Sidenote: =Character of Richard III.=]
Thus ended the prince who had wrought so much evil, and won his
way to power by such unscrupulous cunning and cruelty. He was only
thirty-three when he was cut off. There have been worse kings in
history, and had his title been good and his hands clean of the blood
of his kinsmen, he might have filled the English throne not unworthily.
But the consequences of his first fatal crime drove him deeper and
deeper into wickedness, and he left a worse name behind him than any
of his predecessors. The historians of the next generation drew his
portrait even darker than he deserved, making him a hideous hunchback
with a malignant distorted countenance. As a matter of fact, his
deformity was only that his left arm was somewhat withered, and his
left shoulder consequently lower than his right. His portraits show a
face not unlike that of his brother Edward, but thinner and set in a
nervous and joyless look of suspicion.