The Murders of Richard III Read Free Page A

been very cryptic about it, and I don’t see—”
    â€œI’ll get to that. Stop looking wistfully at the waiter; I’m not going to order any more food, you’ve had enough for two people already. Pay attention. I’m not just trying to improve your knowledge of English history; all this has bearing on a very contemporary problem.
    â€œWe return, then, to the time right after Edward the Fourth died. Richard was in the north when it happened, at his favorite castle of Middleham. The new young king had his own household in Wales. At the news of his father’s death he started for London, with his Woodville uncles—the queen had made sure her brothers had control of the heir to the throne—and an escort of two thousand men. Richard, on his way south for the funeral,had only six hundred. He obviously didn’t anticipate trouble.
    â€œBut somewhere along the way, he got word that the Woodvilles were planning to seize power and cut him out of the job of Protector. They may have planned to kill him. They virtually had to; he had the popular support and the legal rights they lacked, and he was not the sort of man to turn the other cheek.
    â€œTwo men warned Richard of what was happening. One was Lord Hastings, his brother’s old friend and drinking companion. The other was the Duke of Buckingham, of royal descent himself, who had been forced to marry one of the queen’s upstart sisters.
    â€œRichard moved like lightning. He caught up with the young king’s entourage, arrested the boy’s Woodville relatives, and escorted young Edward to London. The queen rushed into church sanctuary, taking the other children with her. Later she was persuaded to let the younger boy join his royal brother. The two kids were lodged in the royal apartments in the Tower, which was the conventional place for kings to reside in before their coronations. Up to this time, Richard’s behavior had been perfectly reasonable and forthright.”
    â€œRichard the Forthright,” murmured Jacqueline.
    Thomas pretended he had not heard.
    â€œThen, around the middle of June 1483, all hell broke loose. England was astounded to learn that Edward the Fourth had never been married to Elizabeth Woodville. He had entered into a precontract with another lady, and in those days a precontract was as binding as a marriage ceremony. That meant that all Edward the Fourth’s children were bastards, and that young Edward the Fifth had no right to the throne.
    â€œThe Tudor historians claim Richard invented this story, but all the evidence indicates that it was true. The man who broke the news was no fly-by-night flunky of Richard’s; he was one of the great prelates of England, the Bishop of Bath and Wells. The story was accepted by Parliament and embodied in a formal decree, Titulus Regius, that proclaimed Richard’s right to the throne. Both his brothers were dead; Clarence’s children were barred from the succession because their father had been executed as a traitor; and if Edward’s children were illegitimate, the rightful heir was Richard himself.”
    â€œOh, that’s all right, then,” said Jacqueline. “If the boys were bastards, Richard had every right to smother them.”
    â€œDamn it, he didn’t smother them!” Thomas felt his face reddening. He got control of himself with an effort. “The boys were seen, playing in the Tower, in the summer of 1483. Except for a few doubtful references in the official royal account books, that is the last anyone ever heard of them.
    â€œIn 1485, two years later, Henry Tudor landed in England. Thanks to the treachery of the Stanleys, Richard was killed at Bosworth and Henry became King Henry the Seventh.
    â€œNow, what would you have done if you had been Henry? Here you are, occupying a shaky throne in a country seething with potential rebellion. Your claim to the throne comes via your mother, who is