in History the Future
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The Wicked Uncle |
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Other material in the History section: History: The Medieval History section: Introduction The Modern History section: |
One of the great 'mysteries' of late medieval/early modern history centres on the succession of the third English king named Richard [Richard, Duke of Gloucester, before his succession and "Gloucester" hereinafter] and the disappearance and presumed death of his nephews, Edward V and Richard, Duke of York. Gloucester was cast, almost from the beginning, as the villain - the archetypal wicked uncle who removed his brother's innocent children when they stood in the way of his ambitions. He was unfortunate in that the history of the period largely derives from the stories written by the sycophants and servants of his conqueror, Henry Tudor, and that Shakespeare's history of his reign cast him as one of the great lip-smacking villains of the stage. In essence, Gloucester appears to have been no more evil than his bother, Edward IV, or his successor, Henry Tudor. Both oversaw the death of rivals who were of an age with the "Princes in the Tower", both were ruthless in their disposition of adult enemies. After all, we're talking about a bloody period of English history when only the strong and the ruthless succeeded. The system of 'good lordship', wherein the nobles were responsible for a large affinity of followers whose future was predicated on the success of the noble, meant that princes like Gloucester, or his brother, or his successor, had to act decisively and effectively for the good of a large number of people. |
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When Edward IV died in 1483, he left England with its third royal minority in just over a century. Edward's early death meant that whatever plans he had for ensuring the safe succession of his sons had not been finalised. Among those he apparently relied on most to ensure the smooth succession of his eldest was his brother, Gloucester, who had been among his most important and trusted subjects. Yet, within three months of Edward's death, Gloucester had seized the throne and, probably, killed his nephews. It is in the events of those three months that the reasons for Gloucester's actions must be found. |
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Edward's will had, it appears, suggested that Gloucester should act as Protector for the heir, Edward V. The choice of Gloucester as Protector would seem sensible as he was largely outside of the major court factions, which saw the Queen's family, the Woodvilles, pitted against the group centred on William Lord Hastings, Edward IV's Chamberlain. However, Gloucester may not have been a completely neutral party in these divisions. One seemingly disinterested observer of most of late 1482 and early 1483 was Domenico Mancini, a Roman scholar who resided in London until just before Gloucester's coronation. Mancini, as a foreigner with a limited grasp of English, may have been overly reliant on limited sources but his manuscript report, not published in English until 1936, provides us with an important source for the period between Edward's death and Gloucester's succession. He suggests that Gloucester already bore a grudge against the Queen's family for its involvement in the death sentence passed on his brother, the Duke of Clarence, and that he had sworn that he would be revenged on them. Gloucester had good reasons to believe that the Woodvilles would treat him the same way they had treated Clarence. Edward V had been in the care of, and his education had been supervised by, the Queen's brother, Earl Rivers, for a decade. As Gloucester had been largely in the north and the heir in the west, the boy would know little of his uncle. Such fears could have dominated Gloucester's thinking in the days after his brother's death. Even if he did not fear Clarence's fate, Gloucester stood to lose much if there were an unsympathetic government. He had been raised up by his brother to a position of power. His position largely depended on lands acquired from the throne or through manipulation of the rules of inheritance. He had the use of Despencer and Warwick lands which should have remained with his mother-in-law, the dowager Countess of Warwick. He also drew income from Neville lands which could revert to the senior male Neville heir. As many of his retainers were feed through these lands, loss of income would have meant loss of his "affinity", and of his power. The Woodvilles had, during Edward IV's reign, shown that they were not averse to manipulation of marriage, inheritances and land for their own aggrandisement. While anxious to be loyal to his brother Edward, as he had always been, Gloucester must have been fearful of his security and his safety. Edward's sudden death had caught several of the main players outside London. Edward V, with Rivers, was in Ludlow on the Welsh border, while Gloucester was on his estates in the north. This meant that the early power plays in London were carried out in the absence of both the young king and the most powerful of his nobles. Mancini tells us that Gloucester was kept informed of the doings in London by Hastings. The fact that he was informed of developments by the Chamberlain, and not by either the Queen or the Chancellor, would have increased his concerns that things were occurring which might be to his detriment. Rosemary Horrox has argued that Gloucester had nothing to fear from the Woodvilles. Colin Richmond, placing a very non-medieval spin on the matter, suggests that his fears arose from "paranoia". However, the reports from London, and their source, would have aggravated any fears he might have harboured about the intentions and actions of the Woodvilles. Contemporary accounts detail the information that Gloucester was receiving. Mancini says that he was told that the Woodvilles had taken a grip on the administration which Edward IV had wanted him to head, controlling the treasury and, by and large, the Council. The Continuation of the Croyland Chronicle, about which more a bit later, says that it was only after Hastings threatened to withdraw from the Council to Calais that the level of Rivers' recruitment of a "retinue" for the young king was kept to reasonable limits. Mancini again is the source for the assertion that the Queen's eldest son, Dorset, had said, in Council: "We are so important, that even without the king's uncle we can make and enforce these decisions". There is no doubt that the Queen's party was planning an early coronation which, by precedent, would have meant the end of any protectorship. Based on Hastings' information, it must have seemed to Gloucester that there was a strong likelihood of either a Woodville-dominated minority or a very young majority wherein the young king would be "advised" by the Woodville faction. In either case, Gloucester would be excluded and disempowered. Mancini tells us that Gloucester was also being advised by Henry, Duke of Buckingham, a senior member of the nobility who, like the Yorkists, was descended from Edward III. Buckingham was one of a group of nobles who saw themselves as victims of the Woodvilles' manipulation of inheritances and noble marriages. He was undoubtedly motivated by self-interest. His actions in the months following Gloucester's usurpation easily lead one to the belief that, as the senior candidate for the throne outside the York family, he was setting up Gloucester to seize the throne so that Buckingham could, in turn, take it from Gloucester. The combination of his own fears and the advice he received from Hastings and Buckingham would have led to Gloucester's decision to seize control of Edward V. Gloucester had agreed to meet with the king's party so that they could ride into London together. But, when he reached Northampton, he discovered that the king had gone further towards London, stopping at Stony Stratford. Rivers had been sent back to greet Gloucester. Later that evening, they were joined by Buckingham, who stayed with Gloucester when Rivers had retired. Whether it was Gloucester's apprehensions, Hastings' advice or Buckingham's intrigue that caused it, the result of their discussion was that Rivers was taken, Edward V seized and his retinue dispersed. The Protector had wrested the initiative (and the young king) from the Queen's family. However, Gloucester's actions subsequent to the seizure of the king did not demonstrate immediate plans to go from that action to usurpation. The contemporary chronicles, particularly Mancini, concentrating on the initiatives which Gloucester took, tend to jump from the seizing of Edward V to the execution of Hastings six weeks later, without noting in detail the protectorate which operated in that period. In fact, Gloucester's actions in May and early June were not those of a man intent on taking the throne. He was careful to justify his actions at Stony Stratford and that justification appeared to satisfy the Council and the important men of London. Having taken the initiative from the Woodvilles, he had his protectorate endorsed by the Council and, with a few changes in personnel, the normal patterns of government continued. The indications were that he intended to crown Edward V around 22 June but to defy the precedents and continue the protectorate. His Chancellor, Bishop Russell, prepared a speech for the opening of Parliament, called for 25 June, which detailed the arrangements. The climax of the speech was to be Russell's speaking for the king in declaring: "Uncle, I am gladde to have yow confirmed in this place[,] you to be my protector in alle my [affairs] and besenessez." Other evidence lends credence to the suggestion that, in the weeks following the seizure of Edward V, a stable government for Edward V's minority was established. Simon Stallworth, one of Bishop Russell's men, in a letter dated as late as 9 June, indicates that the Council's intention to crown Edward V in a fortnight's time was unchanged. The Croyland continuator suggests that Hastings, "bursting with joy over this new World", argued that all that had happened was that power had passed into the proper hands without bloodshed. Gloucester appeared to be content with his position. The continuator says he "exercised this authority with the consent and goodwill of all the lords, commanding and forbidding in everything like another king". (A note on the continuation of the Croyland Chronicle. The chronicle proper was a summary, like many others, of the history of England and the history of the monastery whence it came. The continuation which concerns the late fifteenth century was a history of the period from Edward IV's succession until the early years of Henry VII. It was apparntly written in the early years of the Tudor dynasty. Internal evidence suggests that the continuator of the Croyland Chronicle was a cleric who had worked in Russell's Chacellory, and may indeed have been Russell himself. Whoever he was, he appears to have been well-informed on the events of the interregnum. While the facts that it was written by someone from Edward IV's government and in the early Tudor era may have led to an anti-Gloucester bias, this history appears largely borne out by other contemporary accounts and is far more reliable than the histories composed only a few years later by the Tudor apologist historians.) However, in the second week in June, Gloucester's actions indicate a change of plans. My view is that, having been unable to win the young king's confidence, he decided that his actions at Stony Stratford had made him vulnerable to Edward V once the latter began to rule alone, in a few years time. He would certainly have been cognisant of the fate of those who had directed the minorities of Richard II and of Henry VI, the two previous Dukes of Gloucester, when their charges had reached maturity. Buckingham might have influenced his thinking in this regard. Mancini seems to believe that this was the case, stating in his heading to "Chapter Six" that Gloucester took the realm at "the instigation of the duke of Buckingham". The first indication we have that Gloucester had altered his strategy is a letter written to the city of York on 10 June, calling for troops to support him against a Woodville plot. This was followed the next day by a letter to Lord Neville (like York, any troops he could gather would be in the north) calling for similar support. Since these troops could not arrive for at least a fortnight, around the time of the promised coronation and meeting of Parliament, it would appear that he was not planning to take immediate action. However, something caused him to change his mind and, in the next ten days, he made three decisive moves which enabled him to seize the throne. First, on Friday 13 June, he isolated Hastings and his main supporters from the rest of the Council, accused them of treason and, before they could react, had them arrested. Hastings was executed without trial and the others imprisoned. The attack must have been triggered by his suspicion that Hastings and his cronies were plotting, perhaps with the Woodvilles, to dispute Gloucester's control. It may be that Gloucester's own actions in trying to ascertain if Hastings would support a usurpation had caused Hastings to plot against him and in favour of the king. More likely, these suspicions were fed by Buckingham, who, according to Mancini, was set the task of sounding out Hastings. Buckingham's report may have been designed to stimulate just the actions which Gloucester took. These actions would appear to come out of a genuine apprehension that some sort of conspiracy existed. In the light of his letters of 10 and 11 June, he could have afforded to wait until the troops arrived if he were going to set Hastings up with a phoney treason charge. Secondly, after Hastings' execution, Gloucester convinced the Council to support a move to use force, if necessary, to remove the king's younger brother, Richard, Duke of York, from sanctuary. There has been a recent debate on the date of Hastings' execution, particularly between Alison Hanham and C T Wood. This debate gives some insight into Gloucester's motivations. Hanham argued that Hastings' arrest and execution took place after the young duke was prised out of sanctuary. If Hanham were correct, Gloucester's actions, on 16 June, in using the Archbishop of Canterbury, backed by the threat of force, to convince the Queen to release York, could still be seen as a step towards the coronation of Edward V. However, the fact that he had Hastings executed before forcing York's release (and the evidence now seems clearly to support that chronology) makes his actions look far more sinister - more like a man planning on the elimination of his rivals to the throne. |
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With both of Edward IV's children in his control, Gloucester could take his third step. His claim to throne could be asserted openly. On 22 June and on the days following, his case was preached from the pulpit and put forcefully to the lords and commons. To a large extent, the case put by the preacher Shaw and by Buckingham was an excuse for the usurpation, not its reason. The story given was that Edward IV's children by Elizabeth Woodville were illegitimate because, at the time of the marriage, Edward had a valid "pre-contract" to marry Eleanor Butler. If Gloucester were to have discovered such a story, because the cleric in the know divulged the details only in mid 1483, it might have given him the impetus he needed to set his aim for the throne. |
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Other material in the Medieval History section: A Defence of Ethelred, called "the Unready" A look at some 14th century revolting peasants |
The story is about the illegitimacy of Edward IV and Elizabeth's children and bears no relation to the Tudor invention that Gloucester had traduced his own mother with assertions of Edward IV's illegitimacy. The Butler story appears to mesh with what we know of Edward's character - that he made these sorts of promises to seduce women. The recent discussion of the claim by a modern expert in medieval marriage law, Prof. Helmholz ('The Sons of Edward IV: A Canonical Assessment of the Claim That They Were Illegitimate', in P W Hammond's Richard III: Loyalty, Lordship and Law), has lent a credence to a story that had been largely discounted after Prof. Levine's 1959 discussion of it in Speculum. The bastardisation of Edward IV's children cleared the way for Gloucester's accession and he claimed the throne on the basis of legitimacy and of the acclamation of the three estates. Gloucester's path to the throne was created by favourable circumstances arising from Edward IV's reign: the early death of the king meant that no plans for a minority had been set and the king's policy had created a core of dissatisfied nobles with a stake in a change of policy. Gloucester's own safety and security demanded his seizure of the king in late April lest a Woodville-dominated minority threaten his position. The very act of seizure set in train the events that followed. Whether it was the ease of his first success or the continued closeness of the king to the Woodvilles that inspired Gloucester, he appears eventually to have decided that, in order to consolidate the position he had achieved by the action at Stony Stratford, he needed to take the throne. Leaving aside the almost certain death of his nephews, Gloucester's usurpation cost a total of four lives (Hastings, Rivers, Grey and Vaughan). In essence it was a bloodless coup, effected by a series of swift and decisive moves, each a consequence of the first action. Gloucester seized the throne because the situation demanded that he do so and because the circumstances enabled him to do so. |
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