Richard III (2 October 1452 – 22 August 1485) was King of England for two years, from 1483 until his death in 1485 during the Battle of Bosworth Field. He was the last king of the House of York and the last of the Plantagenet dynasty. His defeat at the Battle of Bosworth Field was the decisive battle of the Wars of the Roses and is sometimes regarded as the end of the Middle Ages in England. He is the subject of the eponymous play Richard III by William Shakespeare.

When his brother Edward IV died in April 1483, Richard was named Lord Protector of the realm for Edward's son and successor, the 12-year-old King Edward V. As the new king travelled to London from Ludlow, Richard met and escorted him to London, where he was lodged in the Tower of London. Edward V's brother Richard later joined him there. Arrangements began to be made for Edward's coronation on 22 June.

However, before the young king could be crowned, Edward IV's marriage to the boys' mother Elizabeth Woodville was publicly declared to be invalid, making their children illegitimate and ineligible for the throne. On 25 June an assembly of lords and commoners endorsed these claims. The following day, Richard III officially began his reign. He was crowned on 6 July. The two young princes were not seen in public after August and there arose subsequently a number of accusations that the boys had been murdered by Richard, giving rise to the legend of thePrinces in the Tower.

There were two major rebellions against Richard. The first, in October 1483, was led by staunch allies of Edward IV and most notably by Richard's former ally, Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham. The revolt collapsed and Stafford was executed at Salisbury near the Bull's Head Inn. In August 1485 there was another rebellion against Richard, headed by Henry Tudor, 2nd Earl of Richmond (later King Henry VII), and his uncle Jasper. Henry Tudor landed in Pembrokeshire, his birthplace, with a small contingent of French troops, and marched through Wales recruiting foot soldiers and skilled archers. Richard died during the Battle of Bosworth Field, the last English king to die in battle (and the only English king to do so on English soil sinceHarold II at the Battle of Hastings in 1066).

In 2013, after an archaeological dig on a City Council car park on the site of Greyfriars, Leicester, the University of Leicester confirmed that a skeleton discovered in 2012 was, beyond reasonable doubt, that of Richard III, based on DNA tests and confirmation with contemporary reports of Richard's appearance.

 

 

Childhood

Richard was born at Fotheringhay Castle, the eighth and youngest child of Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York (who was a strong claimant to the throne of King Henry VI), and Cecily Neville. Richard spent several years of his childhood at Middleham Castle in Wensleydale under the tutelage of his cousin Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick (later known as the "Kingmaker" because of his role in the Wars of the Roses). While Richard was at Warwick's estate, he developed a close friendship with Francis Lovell, which would remain strong for the rest of his life. Another child in the household was Warwick's daughter Anne Neville, whom Richard would later marry.

At the time of the death of his father and older brother Edmund, Earl of Rutland, at the Battle of Wakefield in 1460, Richard, who was eight years old, was sent by his mother, the Duchess of York to the Low Countries, accompanied by his elder brother George (later Duke of Clarence). They returned to England following the defeat of the Lancastrians at the Battle of Towton and participated in the coronation of Richard's eldest brother as King Edward IV in 1461. At this time Richard was named Duke of Gloucester as well as being made a Knight of the Garter and a Knight of the Bath. Richard was then sent to Warwick's estate at Middleham for his knightly training. With some interruptions, Richard stayed at Middleham until early 1465, when he was twelve.

Richard became involved in the rough politics of the Wars of the Roses at an early age. Edward appointed him the sole Commissioner of Array for the Western Counties in 1464, when he was eleven. By the age of seventeen, he had an independent command.

For a second time in his youth, Richard was forced to seek refuge in the Low Countries, which were then part of the realm of the Duchy of Burgundy. His sister Margaret had become the wife of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy in 1468. Richard, along with his brother the King, fled to Burgundy in October 1470 after Warwick defected to the side of Margaret of Anjou. Only 18 years old, Richard played crucial roles in the battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury that resulted in Edward's restoration to the throne in spring 1471.

 

 

Marriage and family relationships

Contemporary illumination (Rous Roll) of Richard III, his queen Anne Neville whom he married at York in 1472, and their son Edward the Prince of Wales

Following the decisive Yorkist victory over the Lancastrians at the Battle of Tewkesbury, Richard had married the younger daughter of the Earl of Warwick, Anne Neville, on 12 July 1472. Anne's first husband had been Edward of Westminster, son of Henry VI, who died at Tewkesbury. Richard and Anne had first met when he was taken into her father’s household at Middleham Castle on the death of his own father in 1460. Richard’s marriage plans brought him into conflict with his brother Clarence: John Paston’s letter of 17 February 1472 makes it clear that Clarence was not happy about the marriage but grudgingly accepted it on the basis that “he may well have my Lady his sister-in-law, but they shall part no livelihood”. The reason for this comment was the inheritance Anne shared with her elder sister Isabel, whom Clarence had married in 1469. It was not only the earldom that was at stake; Richard Neville had inherited this as a result of his marriage to Anne de Beauchamp, who was still alive (and would eventually outlive both her daughters) and was technically the owner of the substantial Beauchamp estates, her own father having left no male heirs.

The Croyland Chronicle records that Richard agreed to a pre-nuptial contract, in the following terms: “the marriage of the Duke of Gloucester with Anne before-named was to take place, and he was to have such and so much of the earl's lands as should be agreed upon between them through the mediation of arbitrators; while all the rest were to remain in the possession of the Duke of Clarence...”

The date of Paston’s letter suggests that the marriage was still being negotiated in February 1472, and the requisite Papal dispensation was not obtained until 22 April. It has been suggested that the terms of the dispensation knowingly understated the actual degrees of consanguinity between the couple, and that the marriage was therefore illegal.

In June 1473, Richard persuaded his mother-in-law to leave sanctuary and come to live under his protection at Middleham. Later in the year, under the terms of the 1473 Act of Resumption, Clarence lost some of the property he held under royal grant, and made no secret of his displeasure. John Paston’s letter of November 1473 says that the king planned to put both his younger brothers in their place by acting as “a stifler between them”.

Early in 1474, Parliament assembled and King Edward attempted to reconcile his brothers by stating that both men, and their wives, would enjoy the Warwick inheritance just as if the Countess of Warwick “was naturally dead”, but at the same time it was specified that, in the event of a divorce, Richard would continue to own Anne’s property. In the following year, Richard was rewarded with all the Neville lands in the north of England, at the expense of Anne's cousin,George Neville.[9] From this point onwards, Clarence seems to have fallen steadily in King Edward’s favour, his discontent coming to a head in 1477 when, following Isabel’s death, he was denied the opportunity to marry Mary of Burgundy, the stepdaughter of his sister Margaret, even though Margaret approved the proposed match. There is no evidence of Richard’s involvement in Clarence’s subsequent conviction and execution on a charge of treason.

 

 

Estates and titles

He was granted the Duchy of Gloucester on 1 November 1461, and on 12 August the next year was awarded large estates in northern England including the Lordship of Richmond, Yorkshire, and that of Pembroke, Wales. He also gained the forfeited lands of the Lancastrian de Vere, earl of Oxford, in East Anglia. In 1462, on his birthday, he was also made Constable of Gloucester and Corfe castles[10] and appointed Governor of the North, becoming the richest and most powerful noble in England. On 17 October 1469, he was made Constable of England. In November he replaced William Hastings, 1st Baron Hastings, as Chief Justice of North Wales. The following year, he was appointed Chief Steward and Chamberlain of Wales. On 18 May 1471, Richard was named Great Chamberlain and Lord High Admiral of England. Other positions followed: High Sheriff of Cumberland for life, Lieutenant of the North and Commander-in Chief against the Scots and hereditary Warden of the West Marches. Two months later, on 14 July, he gained the Lordships of the strongholds Sheriff Hutton and Middleham in Yorkshire and Penrith in Cumberland, which had previously belonged to Warwick the Kingmaker.

 

 

Exile and return

During the latter half of the reign of Edward IV, Richard demonstrated his loyalty and skill as a military commander. Following the earl of Warwick's rebellion of 1470, in which he made peace with Margaret of Anjou and promised the restoration of Henry VI to the English throne, Gloucester, along with William, Lord Hastings, Earl Rivers, and Anthony Woodville escaped from a near capture at Olney by Warwick's brother, Lord Montagu. On 2 October they sailed from King's Lynn in two ships; Edward landed at Marsdiep and Gloucester at Zeeland. It is said that, having left England in such haste as to possess almost nothing, Edward was forced to pay their passage with his fur cloak; certainly Gloucester borrowed three pounds from Zeeland's town-bailiff. They were attainted by Warwick's only Parliament on 26 November. They resided in Bruges with Louis de Gruthuse, who had been the Burgundian Ambassador to Edward's court; however, it was not until Louis XI of France declared war on Burgundy that Charles, duke of Burgundy, materially assisted their return, providing thirty-six ships and 1200 men. They departed Flushing for England on 11 March 1471. High storms prevented them from landing in Yorkist-sympathetic East Anglia and eventually (14 March) they ran ashore at Holderness. The town of Hull refused him entry, and Edward gained entry to York by using the same claim as Henry of Bolingbroke had prior to deposing Richard II in 1399; viz, that he was merely reclaiming his Dukedom of York rather than the Crown.

 

 

Death at the Battle of Bosworth Field

 

On 22 August 1485, Richard met the outnumbered forces of Henry Tudor at the Battle of Bosworth Field. Richard was riding a white courser. The size of Richard's army has been estimated at 8,000, Henry's at 5,000, but exact numbers cannot be known. The traditional view of the cause of the King's famous cries of "Treason!" before falling has been that during the battle Richard was abandoned by Baron Stanley (made Earl of Derby in October), Sir William Stanley, and Henry Percy, 4th Earl of Northumberland. However, the role of Northumberland is not clear; his position was with the reserve — behind the King's line — and could therefore not easily have moved forward without a general royal advance, which did not take place. Despite his apparent affiliation with Richard, Baron Stanley's wife, Lady Margaret Beaufort, was Henry Tudor's mother. The switching of sides by the Stanleys severely depleted the strength of Richard's army and had a material effect on the outcome of the battle. Also the death of John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, his close companion, appears to have had a demoralising effect on Richard and his men. Perhaps in realisation of the implications of this, Richard then appears to have led an impromptu cavalry charge deep into the enemy ranks in an attempt to end the battle quickly by striking at Henry Tudor himself. Accounts note that Richard fought bravely and ably during this manoeuvre, unhorsing Sir John Cheney, a well-known jousting champion, killing Henry's standard bearer Sir William Brandon and coming within a sword's length of Henry himself before being finally surrounded by Sir William Stanley's men and killed. The Burgundian chronicler Jean Molinet, says that a Welshman struck the death-blow with a halberd while Richard's horse was stuck in the marshy ground. It was said that the blows were so violent that the king's helmet was driven into his skull. The contemporary Welsh poet Guto'r Glyn implies that the leading Welsh Lancastrian Rhys ap Thomas, or one of his men, killed the king, writing that he "killed the boar, shaved his head". Richard III was the last English king to be killed in battle.

Polydore Vergil, Henry Tudor's official historian, would later record that "King Richard, alone, was killed fighting manfully in the thickest press of his enemies". Richard's naked body was then exposed, possibly in the collegiate foundation of the Annunciation of Our Lady, before being buried at Greyfriars Church, Leicester. In 1495 Henry VII paid £50 for a marble and alabaster monument. According to a now discredited tradition, during the Dissolution of the Monasteries his body was thrown into the nearby River Soar, although other evidence suggests that a memorial stone was visible in 1612, in a garden built on the site of Greyfriars. The exact location was then lost, owing to more than 500 years of subsequent development, until the archaeological investigations of 2012 (see the Archaeological investigation section) revealed the site of the garden and of Greyfriars church. There is currently a memorial ledger stone in the choir of the Cathedral, as well as a stone plaque on the bridge where tradition had suggested his remains were thrown into the Soar.

According to another tradition, Richard consulted a seer in the city of Leicester before the battle who foretold that "where your spur should strike on the ride into battle, your head shall be broken on the return." On the ride into battle his spur struck the bridge stone of the Bow Bridge; legend has it that, as his corpse was being carried from the battle over the back of a horse, his head struck the same stone and was broken open.

Henry Tudor succeeded Richard to become Henry VII and sought to cement the succession by marrying the Yorkist heiress Elizabeth of York, Edward IV's daughter and Richard III's niece.

In 2013 it was confirmed that Richard's skeleton had been found with wounds to his spine and face.

 

Succession

Richard and Anne had one son, born in 1473, Edward of Middleham, who died (April 1484) not long after being created Prince of Wales. Richard also had two acknowledged illegitimate children: John of Gloucester, also known as "John of Pontefract", and a daughter Katherine who married William Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke in 1484. Michael Hicks and Josephine Wilkinson have suggested that Katharine's mother may have been Katherine Haute, on the basis of the grant of an annual payment of 100 shillings made to her in 1477. The Haute family was related to the Woodvilles through the marriage of Elizabeth Woodville's aunt, Joan Woodville to Sir William Haute. One of their children was Richard Haute, Controller of the Prince's Household. Their daughter, Alice, married Sir John Fogge; they were ancestors to queen consort Catherine Parr, sixth wife of King Henry VIII.[46] They also suggest that John's mother may have been Alice Burgh. Richard visited Pontefract from 1471, in April and October 1473, and in early March 1474 for a week. On 1 March 1474 he granted Alice Burgh £20 a year for life "for certain special causes and considerations". She later received another allowance, apparently for being engaged as nurse for Clarence's son, Edward of Warwick. Richard continued her annuity when he became king.

Both of Richard's illegitimate children survived him, but they seem to have died without issue. Katharine was almost certainly arrested at Raglan Castle immediately after the Battle of Stoke Field in June 1487 and John was executed in 1491, both on the orders of Henry VII. Katharine apparently died before her cousin Elizabeth of York's coronation on 25 November 1487. The mysterious Richard Plantagenet is also a possible illegitimate child of Richard III and is sometimes referred to as "Richard the Master-Builder". He died in 1550.

At the time of his last stand against the Lancastrians, Richard was a widower without a legitimate son. After his son's death, he had initially named his nephew Edward, Earl of Warwick, Clarence's young son and the nephew of Queen Anne Neville, as his heir. After Anne's death, however, Richard named another nephew, John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, the son of his older sister Elizabeth. However, he was also negotiating with John II of Portugal to marry his sister,Joanna, a pious young woman who had already turned down several suitors because of her preference for the religious life.

 

 

Legacy

Richard's death at Bosworth resulted in the end of the Plantagenet dynasty, which had ruled England since the succession of Henry II in 1154. The last male Plantagenet, Edward, Earl of Warwick (son of Richard III's brother Clarence), was executed by Henry VII in 1499.

Richard's Council of the North, derived from his ducal council, greatly improved conditions for Northern England, as commoners of that region were formerly without any substantial economic activity independent of London. Its descendant position was Secretary of State for the Northern Department.

In December 1483 Richard instituted what later became known as the Court of Requests, a court to which poor people who could not afford legal representation could apply for their grievances to be heard. He also introduced bail in January 1484 to protect suspected felons from imprisonment before trial and to protect their property from seizure during that time. He founded the College of Arms in 1484, he banned restrictions on the printing and sale of books, and he ordered the translation of the written Laws and Statutes from the traditional French into English.

 

 

Titles, styles and honours

On 1 November 1461, Richard gained the title of Duke of Gloucester; in late 1461, he was invested as a Knight of the Garter. Following the death of King Edward IV, he was made Lord Protector of England. Richard held this office from 30 April 1483 to 26 June 1483 when he made himself king of the realm. As King of England, Richard was styled Dei Gratia Rex Angliae et Franciae et Dominus Hiberniae (by the Grace of God, King of England and France and Lord of Ireland).

Informally, he may have been known as "Dickon", according to a sixteenth-century legend of a note, warning of treachery, that was sent to the Duke of Norfolk on the eve of Bosworth: "Jack of Norffolke be not to bolde,/For Dyckon thy maister is bought and solde".

 

 

Arms

As Duke of Gloucester, Richard used the Royal Arms of England quartered with the Royal Arms of France, differenced by a label argent of three points ermine, on each point a canton gules. As sovereign, he used the arms of the kingdom undifferenced. His motto was Loyaulte me lie, "Loyalty binds me"; and his personal device was a white boar.

Shield as Duke of Gloucester   Coat of arms as King Richard III