Richard III.

Richard III., king of England, was the son of Richard, Duke of York, a descendant of Edmund, Duke of York, fifth son of Edward III., and was born, the eleventh out of twelve children, in Fotheringhay Castle on 2d October 1452. After the defeat and death of his father in 1460 he was sent, along with his brother George, to Utrecht for safety, but returned to England after his eldest brother Edward won the crown (1461). Two years later he was created Duke of Gloucester, his brother George being made Duke of Clarence. In the final struggle between the York and Lancaster factions he took an active share: he led the van at the battle of Barnet, rendered valuable aid in winning the fight of Tewkesbury, and is believed, on fairly good evidence, to have had a hand in the murder of Prince Edward, son of Henry VI., who was slain after that battle. All through the reign of Edward IV. he gave valuable and faithful support to his brother, and was rewarded by him with every confidence, and with numerous high offices. He was believed to have been concerned in the murder of Henry VI. in the Tower on 21st May 1471; but the evidence, although strongly pointing in that direction, is not conclusive. In the following year he married Anne, the younger daughter of Warwick the King-maker, who had been betrothed to the murdered Prince Edward. This alliance was greatly resented by Clarence, who had married the elder sister, and wished to keep all of Warwick's vast possessions in his own hands. Clarence quarrelled too with King Edward, who in 1478 procured his impeachment by parliament. The refractory duke was put to death privately in the Tower on 18th February. Of this judicial murder Gloucester is likewise accused; but the evidence for his complicity is very slight. In 1482 he was put in command of the army that invaded Scotland. Along with the Duke of Albany he entered Edinburgh; but his one warlike achievement was the capture of Berwick town and castle. In the following year, whilst still in Yorkshire, he heard of King Edward's death (9th April), and learned that he himself had been named guardian and protector of his son and heir, Edward V., then aged thirteen. On his way south the Protector arrested Earl Rivers and Lord Richard Grey, the uncle and step-brother of the young king, and confined them in his northern castles. All who were of the old nobility, and resented the rise of the Woodvilles, rallied round Richard. Whether this accession of strength first suggested to him the idea of making himself king, or whether he had conceived it before, cannot of course be known; but certain it is that from this time Richard of Gloucester schemed for the crown, and by craft, boldness, and utter unscrupulousness carried his project into execution.

The arrest of Rivers and Grey had put the king entirely into his hands, for the queen-mother had hastened to take sanctuary at Westminster. On 13th June Gloucester suddenly accused Lord Hastings, an influential member of the council, of treason, arrested him there and then, and had him instantly beheaded. The 'crime' for which Hastings died was changing sides from Richard to the Woodville party. On 16th June the queen-dowager was induced to give up, at the demand of Richard and the council, her other son, the little Duke of York. He was put into the Tower to keep his brother, the king, company. On the Sunday following (22d) a certain Dr Shaw preached at St Paul's cross that the children of Edward IV. were illegitimate, nay, that Edward IV. himself and his brother Clarence were both born out of lawful wedlock. Three days later the parliament desired Richard to assume the crown; on the next day (26th June 1483) he declared himself king, and on 6th July was crowned in state by Cardinal Bourchier. Rivers and Grey were executed at Pontefract on 25th June. In point of form Richard was a duly elected king, and Edward V. had not yet been crowned; all the same, his accession was de facto a usurpation. Richard's principal supporter all through, from the date of Edward IV.'s death, had been the Duke of Buckingham, a descendant of the Duke of Gloucester who was privily slain at Calais when Richard II. was king. Shortly after his coronation Richard set out on a tour through the kingdom, and during the course of it he was surprised by the intelligence that Buckingham was plotting with the friends of Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond (afterwards Henry VII.), the chief representative of the House of Lancaster, to effect his overthrow and proclaim Henry king. But the attempted rising soon collapsed, and Buckingham was taken, and on 2d November executed. It seems to have been shortly before this that Richard contrived the foul crime that has branded his name with infamy, and that caused himself inextinguishable remorse to the day of his death—the murder of his nephews in the Tower. The deed was done so secretly, by Sir James Tyrrell, one of Richard's devoted followers, and a couple of hirelings, that the nation did not know of it until some time after (see EDWARD V.). Indeed, the very fact of their murder has been seriously called in question, though not until much later times. But from the days of Richard himself he was popularly believed to have effected his nephews' destruction, and evidence supports the popular opinion. During the remainder of his short reign Richard directed all his energies to baffling the plans of Richmond, and to making preparations to meet the invasion which he saw to be imminent. But he was rapidly losing his hold upon the nation, alarming and horrifying it by his crimes and tyrannous acts. Henry of Richmond at length landed at Milford Haven on 7th August 1485. Richard met him at Bosworth in Leicestershire on the 22d, and there lost his kingdom and his life, fighting bravely like a king, crown on head, in the midst of his foes (see HENRY VII.). The body of the slain king was subjected to great indignities, carried to Leicester, and there, after being exposed for two days, was buried in the Grey Friars churchyard.

Richard's was a strangely mixed character. Its ruling passion was an inordinate craving for power, to gratify which he stopped at no crime, however heinous. He possessed many of the typical qualities of the best of the Plantagenets—a skilful soldier, of great ability and energy, brave, bold, reckless of consequences, fond of display, yet not incapable of nobler impulses. Had he been born the lawful heir to the throne, and succeeded to it peacefully, he would probably have been a great king; for he was a very capable ruler, aiming at the real welfare of his subjects, promoting justice, and furthering religion and morality. Yet circumstances, conflicting with his insatiable ambition, helped the evil tendencies of his nature to get the upper hand; and these grew and hardened as time went on, till his audacity and unscrupulousness were matched with a cunning and hypocrisy such as are seldom found united in one man. On the other hand, he unquestionably had great charm of manner, and knew how to inspire confidence even in those who had the best reasons for distrusting him. He was liberal too, and, where his own personal ambition was not directly concerned, just and generous. He was also swayed by a lively sense of divine justice; and more than one religious institution owed its foundation to his bitter remorse for the murder of his nephews. Most of his subjects and contemporaries looked upon him as a monster of wickedness; others, however, cherished his memory as that of a wise and good ruler. The real man was probably not quite so black as the Lancastrian (Tudor) chroniclers have painted him, though their portrait is probably fairly accurate in its broad features. In person Richard was short of stature and slight of build, with one shoulder slightly higher than the other; but there is no evidence that he was a hunchback. His face was thin and intelligent, and in portraits wears a look of sadness.

The best biography is James Gairdner's Life and Reign of Richard III. (3d ed. 1898). Attempts to defend his memory from some of the foul crimes laid to his charge have been made by Horace Walpole, Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of Richard III. (1768); J. H. Jesse, Memoirs of King Richard III. (1862); A. O. Legge, The Unpopular King (2 vols. 1885); and C. R. Markham, in English Historical Review (1891). None of them can be said to have been successful in making Richard out a good man or a good king. Sir T. More's History of King Richard III. (1513), though highly coloured and antagonistic, is full of interest and vivid pictures of the king. The Paston Letters, ed. by J. Gairdner (1872-75), convey a good impression of the life and manners of the period. Shakespeare's drama gives the popular idea of Richard.