RICHARD III

HISTORY Of ENGLAND - By - H. W. DULCKEN P.H.D.

Published By - Ward Lock & Co Limited - 1903

On the 24th of June, Buckingham addressed the citizens at the Guildhall, going over the substance of Shaw's arguments. Some of the poorer citizens, incited by certain followers of the duke, were induced to shout, "Long live King Richard " and on the following day a deputation, headed by Buckingham, waited on the Protector at Baynard's Castle, on the Thames, with a formal petition that he would assume the crown. Richard yielded to solicitation the nominal reign of Edward V. closed, and the reign of Richard III, began. The next day Richard appeared publicly in Westminster Hall, and received the homage of the lords, and heard the acclamations of the people. The Sons of Edward IV. were not heard of again. The commonly received account of their death, as given by Sir Thomas More, appears to be the true one: " King Richard, during his progress, despatched an emissary, named Green, with a letter to Sir Robert Brackenbury, commanding him to put the princes to death. Bracken-bury, however, refused to stain his hands with the blood of the royal children: whereupon the king sent Sir James Tyrrel, his master of the horse, with orders to Brackenbury to deliver the keys of the Tower to Tyrrel for twenty-four hours. John Dighton and Miles Forrest, two servants of Tyrrel, were sent one night into the chamber where the young princes lay sleeping. They smothered the royal brothers with the pillows of the bed ; and after Tyrrel had viewed the corpses, the remains were buried at the foot of the stairs, under a heap of stones."

It is said that the fate of the princes was hastened by a rumour of efforts for a restoration of Edward V. Soon after their death a con-spiracy was in existence for Henry Duke of Richmond, grandson of Owen Tudor and Catherine of France. his mother was Margaret Beaufort, a great-grand-daughter of John of Gaunt. Henry had long been an exile and a fugitive, having fallen by shipwreck into the hands of the Duke of Brittany, after he had escaped from England with his uncle, Jasper Tudor. Edward IV. had at various times demanded the Richmond. surrender of the two prisoners of the Duke of Bretagne, but had received evasive replies. Morton, Bishop of Ely, who had been placed in the custody of Buckingham, persuaded the duke to invite Richmond into England. Thereupon he proceeded to summon his vassals, and at Brecknock proclaimed Henry Tudor as king the same thing was done in various parts of the kingdom by the Marquis of Dorset, the Bishop of Salisbury, and others. Henry Tudor appeared with a small fleet off the Devonshire coast; but finding no one ready to second him, sailed back to St. Malo. Buckingham, with a force of Welshmen, moved along the right bank of the Severn ; but the fords were impassable from the inundation, long afterwards remembered as "Buckingham's Flood." His Welsh troops deserted him. Betrayed by one of his own servants, named Banister, he was carried to Salisbury, where he was executed.

King Richard thereupon resolved to marry the Princess Elizabeth of York. True, he had a wife living; but the Lady Anne was in weak health, and might be expected to die soon. The king accordingly opened negotiations with the dowager queen, Elizabeth Woodville, for the hand of her daughter, his niece. The princess fell in readily with the scheme, and even in a letter to her uncle expressed indecent impatience for the expected death of Queen Anne Neville - an event which happened in a sus-piciously opportune manner a short time afterwards. But the king, when he found how much the marriage would injure him in the eyes of all classes, boldly declared that he had never had such an idea.

Charles VIII. of France was the friend of Henry Tudor, and sup-plied him with money and some three thousand troops. Second With these Henry marched to Harfleur, in the summer of 1485, awaiting an opportunity for a second embarkation for England. Richard issued a contemptuous proclamation against his rival. He had still many powerful friends in the North. Accor-dingly he set up his standard at Nottingham, that he might be in readiness to march against Henry Tudor. Henry landed at Milford Haven on the 7th of August, 1485. Richard was pre-sently joined by the Earl of Northumberland, with his northern vassals, and moved on to Leicester. John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, Brackenbury and Viscount Lovel, Ratcliffe, and Catesby, were among his adherents. The most important among the absentees was Lord Stanley. He had a difficult part to play. His wife was the mother of Richmond. His son, Lord George Strange, was in Richard's hands, and was kept as a hostage for his fidelity. But the earl managed to move on a little in advance of Richmond's army, as if retreating before him, keeping near enough to join him at any moment.

On the 22nd of August 1485, was fought near the town of Bosworth the last battle under the Plantagenet rule in England. Many defec-tions had thinned the king's ranks. The Duke of Norfolk began the battle by a spirited attack upon the van of Richmond, whose army was well posted. Norfolk was not adequately seconded by the other leaders. Stanley went over with his troops to his son-in-law. With a wild, despairing cry of "Treason !" Richard pushed forward, hoping by a final effort to cut his way to the standard of his foe. Borne down by numbers, and fighting desperately, he was slain on the field. The conflict had lasted but two hours when the forces of the king broke and fled. Richard's crown was found in a bush, and was placed on the head of the Duke of Richmond, by Lord Stanley, who saluted his victorious son-in-law by the title of King Henry the Seventh. The body of Richard, disfigured with many wounds, was found on the field, exposed to the view of all men; it was buried without pomp in the church of the Grey Friars, Leicester.

Among the dead on the king's side were the Duke of Norfolk, Sir Robert Brackenbury, Lord Ferrers, and Sir Richard Ratcliffe.
Even in the turbulence and misrule inseparable from a time of civil strife and anger, the condition of England, so far as the constitution and the position of the people and their rights with regard to the law are concerned, may compare favourably with that of other nations. Sir John Fortescue, an English lawyer long resident in France, contrasts the operation of absolute monarchy, in impoverishing and depressing the people of that kingdom, with that more free government which raised up the race of English yeomen, qualified by their intelligence, and by their independent situation, as well as spirit, to take an important part in dispensing justice as jurors, - an accession to popular power, which spread more widely over popular life than perhaps any other; and while it fostered the independence of the people, contributed by a happy peculiarity to interest their pride in duly executing the law, and taught them to place their personal importance in enforcing the ob-servance of justice. Moreover, the writer emphatically tells us that " the laws of England. in all cases, declare in favour of liberty."