Unfortunately for Richard he was never able to simply concentrate of governing the realm; the hangover of his accession, the presence of Henry Tudor abroad – these things constantly took his attention away.

191 The Reign of Richard III

 The death of Queen Anne and rumors of a mesalliance

Richard was plagued by bad luck. In April 1484, Anne and Richard’s only son, Edward of Middleham, died. His tomb is at Sheriff Hutton, in the heartland of Neville country.

‘You might have seen the father and mother…almost out of their minds for a long time when faced with such sudden grief’

Anne clearly was not going to have another child. Richard had two bastards for sure, John and Katharine, but there was no talk of any attempt to legitimise them.  Nope, the whispering was instead about the inconvenience of Anne’s existence. But in fact Anne was ill; although she did her best to play her part at the Epiphany celebrations of 1484, on March 16th she was dead.

And then the tongues really began to wag. Had she been poisoned by Richard? The Tudor historians would have us believe he had; but even the Crowland Chronicle seemed to suggest such a thing:

“In the course of a few days after this, the Queen fell extremely sick, and her illness was supposed to have increased still more and more, because the king entirely shunned her bed, declaring that it was by the advice of his physicians that he did so.  Why enlarge?”

And the tongues continued to wag – that Richard would marry his niece, Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV and Queen Elizabeth. After all, it would unite the Yorkist lines, bolster Richard’s legitimacy, give the Henry Tudor promise top marry her a real kick. But it’s difficult to believe Richard ever genuinely contemplated such a thing – marrying his niece would surely have removed any remaining shred of credibility. But incredibly, the rumors were so strong, Richard was forced to publically deny it:

“In the presence of many of his lords and much other people showed his grief and displeasure and said it never came in his thought or mind to marry in such a manner wise.”

Really, it seemed the only thing that could wipe the account clean would be to meet and defeat his rival Henry Tudor in battle.

 

Transcript

A couple of episodes ago, we heard about the rebellion of 1483; often referred to as Buckingham’s rebellion, but to be honest it was as much Margaret Beaufort’s rebellion. But, what about the rebels, and what about the consequences of the rebellion?

Buckingham had fled for hiding when his army fell to pieces on 15^th October, with a servant Ralph Banaster. Ralph was clearly a canny lad with an accurate understanding of the difference between the buttered and unbuttered side of bread, and before you could say butter knife, he’d tipped the wink to the sheriff. Buckingham was taken to the King at Salisbury, and he begged to see the Richard, all the while bravely pouring out the names of the men who’d been accomplices in rebellion. Richard was having none of it, and would not see him. Buckingham was executed, head struck from his body, his final resting place unknown. Buckingham’s son was to say that

Margaret Beaufort was caught bang to rights, red handed, fingers in the till, exposed for the determined schemer she was. But it took the far less fastidious Tudors to introduce the practice of executing women; the medieval tradition was still very much in play, and Richard made no move to execute her – a mistake, probably, but he could do without any further outrage I suppose. Her lands were confiscated; but they were given in trust to her husband Thomas Stanley. She was placed in her husband’s custody, to be isolated with no servants. But Stanley meanwhile was the new golden boy – rewarded for his loyalty by being made Constable of England along with further grants of land and castle.

It’s an interesting situation, this marriage of Margaret and Stanley. Later in life of course Margaret was to retreat and set up her own household, though it appears that Stanley visited her. Did Stanley know what his wife was up to in 1483, or did his wife sneak out to the garden shed while he was kipping and send secret messages? And when Stanley had his army together – did he always mean to be loyal, or did he see the rebellion collapsing and make a late decision? Though it has to be said that he and Buckingham weren’t best of chumps, so Stanley may have had no great desire to see Buckingham’s power further enhanced. Anyway, when they got home and Margaret’s servants were supposedly banished, unsurprisingly the surveillance doesn’t seem to have been too tight – certainly not tight enough to stop Margaret from plotting. Anyway, all I’m saying is that I’d like to have been a fly on the wall when Tom and Margaret got home.

So, for Richard the 1483 rebellion was a bit like the curate’s egg – good in parts. There were some positives. Although the folks who had rebelled were men of substance, it’s notable that Buckingham was the only magnate involved; so that’s a tick. Richard’s core of support had held firm, and his progress through the regions had probably done some good in the midlands had held to him, and of course the north was rock solid. There’d been no sign of any wavering, for example from the Percies who were now more than ever critical to Richard’s regime. He might also feel good that he had lanced a boil – there’d been a revolt, he’d crushed it and remove or identified the baddies.

However, he might also note that few of these folks had come rushing to help either. The core of his support had come from the men he’d rewarded after his coronation – Francis Lovell, John Howard the new Duke of Norfolk and his son.

However, there were two majorly bad things – quite apart from the fact that some people disliked him enough to want to kill him, which seems like a negative thing to me.  One was that Henry was now, officially, the lead contender to the throne. Although we have kept mentioning him, and all the proper historians tend to do the same to boot, it’s really only because we know what happens. At the time, the bloke was a nobody, a loser, a smuck. But now that’s no longer true. The stew of rebellion Margaret had cooked up was smelling much better now that the spice of marriage to Elizabeth of York had been added. Not sure how much longer I should extend this metaphor. But Henry recognised that it had power, and that he could build on that. For Henry also there was a massive positive – Duke Francis had supported his bid for power rather than handing him over to Richard in chains. Also, Henry was beginning to look a lot more like a court in exile after the rebellion – he had a bunch of Woodvilles – Dorset, Edward, Richard – with him, a bunch of prelates, men with the quality of John Morton. So, at Christmas 1483, a ceremony took place in Rennes Cathedral in Brittany. There, the Woodvilles bent the knee to Henry and became their men and recognised him as the true king of England. In return, Henry promised that if he were a king, he’d marry Elizabeth of York. I have no idea what Elizabeth thought of the idea at the time. Not sure if anyone thought to ask. Maybe her Mum? Actually it’s a matter of great debate, obscured by a few tiny glimpses that some have interpreted as a great desire for marriage to Henry, or a fervent support for Richard; and like so many things the truth of Elizabeth’s feelings over the next couple of years will probably always be obscure.

The big immediate negative for Richard, though, was the people who had rebelled. They were that exact group he’d tried to court, that group he needed to administer and run the place – Edward IV’s household men. For them, the passing over of the princes was intolerable; the rumour of their death fired them. 98 rebels were attainted, and it’s been calculated that over half of them were Edward IV’s household men. Less than a third of them were then refused a pardon, but despite the conciliatory approach, Richard could not trust them enough to put them in a position of authority. And this gave him the problem of who now did he appoint?

The answer was the men from the north. Richard had been clever enough to realise the resentment this was going to cause, but equally now had no choice. Land was re-distributed from rebels to men from the north; shrievalties and offices went with them. Lands of the attainted rebels were given out quickly, and therefore often illegally without the proper legal investigations and actions; once again, just like with the Countess of Warwick and the Countess of oxford, Richard proved pretty light fingered when it came to the laws of property when they stood in his way.

This was an act of desperation. When we talked about the Gentry a while ago, we talked about the importance of their connection with their locality. About how much more important the local community was to the vast, vast majority of the lives of individuals, how far away was the king. The Community was all. The community was the lifeblood of these gentry families, and their status within it. It was here that they drew their pride in their lineage and status; groups of families, tightly knit, linked by blood and shared interests and heritage. And Crowland recorded what Richard did with the land he gained:

…all of which he distributed among his northern adherents, whom he planted in every spot throughout his dominions, to the disgrace and loudly expressed sorrow of all the people in the south, who daily longed more and more for the hoped-for return of their ancient rulers, rather than the present tyranny of these rulers.

The new men came to rule, was the point; they came and super imposed themselves on communities where everyone knew each other and their histories, and the interplay of tensions and alliances; their local custo4ms and liberties, how you did and did not behave.  Have a bored you all with a very good article I read once about Afghanistan and the job of the British forces there. Controversial I know, and in the most cowardly of ways I make no comment about the rights and wrongs of the invasion, but the article gave an example of an incredibly complicated feud, which was driven by relationships spread over several villages and families, so complicated an incomer could never hope to understand. It’s this situation that these men walked into. Even today, it feels like it took 15 years for us to earn the membership card of the village where I live – Maybe given decades the new folk would put down the right roots. But it needed time, and for the moment it simply caused outrage.

 

Last time we talked about the claims Richard has to any success in building confidence that in him there was something worth fighting for.  And certainly Richard worked very hard, very hard indeed to control the narrative of his reign. Whatever his religious feelings, Richard consistently made sure that his court had the trapping of magnificence and celebration, required of the medieval king; notably so at the Christmas of 1484 where the dancing and celebrations attracted the grim disapproval of the Crowland Chronicle. And as we know here at the history of England, if a king didn’t attract the grim disapproval of a Monk, then that king just wasn’t trying hard enough. Through his parliament, his religious endowments, his exhortations of the clergy to provide good leadership, his personal interest in justice, Richard never lost sight of the need to look and behave like a king if people were to accept him as one.

The context though was quite different to other usurpers, if I may use the phrase, or at least if we compare his situation with Henry IV and Edward IV in 1471; in three critical ways.

Firstly, both Edward and Henry had taken action against kings who had ruled for many years and to varying degrees had demonstrated their unfitness to rule, whether through tyranny or incompetence; whereas Edward V and his brother were blameless minors. I have, in the most thoughtlessly cavalier fashion possible, refused as yet to discuss the case of who killed the Princes in the Tower. For the moment it’s irrelevant; the rumour had already spread that they had indeed been killed, and many either chose to believe it, or anyway felt they should not have been put aside. Richard had a much higher hill to climb in overcoming cynicism and outrage; and Henry IV in particular had struggled to establish his legitimacy even in the face of many years of Richard II’s tyranny.

Secondly, neither of them had a queen of the previous reigning, and indeed popular reigning monarch sitting with her young defenceless family in Sanctuary, a living breathing reminder of the deep divisions. That absolutely had to be dealt with.

And thirdly, both Henry IV and Edward IV had done away with their contending candidates, neither of whom had heirs to carry on the fight. Richard now had a living breathing contender in Henry Tudor, with support from other exiles and potentially a foreign government or two. He could not just concentrate on the business of government – he had to keep looking over his shoulder, because one day he knew Henry would be there with a whacking great two handed sword.

So, on the first matter, his right to reign, he’d done pretty much all he could now, through his parliament in February 1484. Although he then also went as far as to move Henry VI’s body into St George’s Chapel at Windsor. That’s quite a radical step, but a cult had begun to grow up around the saintly Henry VI – the rule of thumb seems to be that bad kings made good saints. With the possible exception of John. Richard took the chance to both look gracious, and try and get some of the halo effect, if you’ll pardon the pun.

He turned his mind to the second problem, the Queen straight after parliament. There was more than one aspect to this; the obvious one was that it was a horribly obvious symbol of disunity. But the second was that Richard was desperate enough to start thinking of reconciling as many of the Woodvilles as possible, probably with the greater aim of reconciling Edward IV’s old household and affinity.

Upon these holy evangels of God…if the daughters of dame Elizabeth Grey…will come unto me out of sanctuary of Westminster…then I shall see that they be in surety of their lives, and also not to suffer any manner hurt by any manner person…to be done by way of ravishment or defiling contrary to their wills, nor them or any of them imprison within the Tower of London or any other prison.

This rather extraordinary oath was taken by Richard in March 1484 in front of the Mayor and Aldermen of London. Richard had apparently been sending a constant messages to Elizabeth. Now, Thomas More claimed that Elizabeth by this stage knew that her sons had been killed, or strongly suspected that they had, with graphic descriptions of her grief and feelings of guilt. But this time Elizabeth took the proffered hand of reconciliation, at least to the extent of leaving Sanctuary at last. She has attracted some flak for so doing. If she did know that her sons were indeed death, how could she countenance reconciliation with the beast that killed them? How could she put the rest of her brood in danger?

 

Well, I have to say it’s not a situation I would like to have been in, or a decision I had to make. I should throw into the mix that in a few month’s time, in the Christmas of 1484. Elizabeth would earn the further criticism of the Crowland Chronicler for allowing her daughters and especially Elizabeth of York to appear for the festivities with Richard and his Queen, wearing the same dresses and outfits with Queen Anne, taking part in the dancing and so on.

It’s a fascinating conundrum. If Elizabeth had been involved in agreeing a match between her Daughter Elizabeth of York and Henry Tudor through Margaret Beaufort; if she was convinced that her sons were dead, murdered at Richard’s hands then you have to say it’s quite a decision to make; surely she’d have sat tight and lit a candle for the success of Henry Tudor. From this all sorts of conspiracy theories spring, Hydra headed; for example, it’s been suggested that Richard had secretly spirited the Princes abroad, and Elizabeth knew this. Or it’s been taken as evidence that Elizabeth didn’t know her sons were dead. Or, probably more than anything, it’s been used as a stick to beat up Elizabeth as a good time girl who just wanted back into the party and a nice life.

But, but….what a decision to make! Think of her daughters! What kind of life could they expect, sat in Sanctuary?  Richard also promised at the same time to set her daughters up with good husbands, to quote:

Put them in honest places of good name and fame and them honestly and courteously shall see to be found and entreated, and to have all things requisite and necessary for their exhibition and findings as my kinswomen; and that I shall marry such of them as now be marriageable to gentlemen born

Now, there’s an element of mealy mouthedness going on here; note Richard called Elizabeth ‘Dame Elizabeth Grey’ for example; and we are talking ‘gentlemen’ here as potential husbands, whereas once they could have expected to marry the highest in the land or indeed Christendom. But in those days, better than no marriage at all. Elizabeth surely owed that much to her daughters.

And finally she would have calculated the risks involved. Firstly, there was no surety that sanctuary would be safe – the Duke of Exeter had discovered that to his cost when he was dragged out. And Richard just could not afford another scandal – and indeed he absolutely did start negotiations to get the girls married off.

So whatever; it’s impossible to judge really isn’t it? Elizabeth made the decision she made. She disappears from the record for the rest of the year, and we’re not sure where her girls went either – just possibly to Sheriff Hutton in Yorkshire.

But it also has to be said that despite the relative success of Richard’s initial tour through the country, and of his parliament, England during the reign was full of the signs of mistrust, rumour and suspicion. Richard was doing his absolute best to demonstrate he was a credible king; to do that he not only had to show he could govern, he had to wipe out the hangover of the events of 1483; and he had to do it in the context of the threat from Henry Tudor over the water. There is some evidence that he was courting Dorset, now over in Brittany with Henry. Think about that – courting Dorset, who he’d chased from the country, who’s half brothers he had executed, whose mother he’d chased into sanctuary and generally bad mouthed. Trying to get at least some of the Woodvilles back on side is surely a sign of the desperation he felt.

Rumours of dissent, treachery and danger kept raising their heads; in the west country, two rebels were dealt with for sending money to Henry. In October 1484, John de Vere, the die hard Lancastrian escaped from the castle of Hammes near Calais where he’d been imprisoned, returned to the castle to relieve the garrison, bringing a bunch of soldiers over to Henry’s side. As Richard prepared for possible invasion, his preparations betray a certain amount of distrust; the gentry were commanded to report directly to the Magnates Howard and Stanley, and obey no other. That might just seem like sensible organisation and preparation. But there’s a message of distrust in there too – and implication that Richard did not entirely trust the normal leaders of the shires to raise their men in times of trouble and come to support Richard. And of course none of this was helped by the groans of communities in the south seeing their natural leaders replaced by the plantation of northerners.

Richard did what he could. He was ruthless in challenging and taking action where his new narrative of credible kingship, his desire to work for what was called then the common weal, was challenged- he did not let things pass; and his ruthlessness in so doing speaks of his desperate need. By way of example let us speak of William Collingbourne.

Collingbourne was a member of the Wiltshire gentry. He’d been a loyal servant of Edward IV, serving as sheriff of 3 counties in the 1470’s, and as it happened, it was Cecily Neville that controlled the post. Then in 1484, Richard wanted to distribute some patronage and asked his mother, Cecily Neville if his new Chamberlain, Francis Lovell could have the job. Ok, fine – annoying for Collingbourne without doubt.

But on 18^th July 1484 a bill appeared on the door of St Pauls and places throughout the city which read:

The Catt, the Ratt and Lovell our Dog

Rule England under a hog

This famous piece of doggerel referred to Richard’s most trusted and rewarded servants – William Catesby the Cat, Richard Ratcliffe the Rat, and of course Francis Lovell; and the Hog was Richard, referring to his symbol the White Boar.

Well, Richard was not having this message freely distributed. He had the perpetrator hunted down – and it turned out to be William Collingbourne. It appears to have also transpired that Collingbourne had spent £8, a not inconsiderable amount of money when a labourer earned something like £1 to £2 a year, to send someone to Henry Tudor in Brittany urging him to lead a rebellion against Richard.

Richard threw the book at him. Collingbourne was tried for treason, with Francis Lovell himself at the helm. He was unsurprisingly convicted. And he was hanged drawn and quartered.  Now corresponding with Henry was bad enough; but I suspect what worried Richard just as much was the tenor of the satire; he had to build a sense of positive progress, and this sort of thing did not help.

As an aside, there were three main reasons for me telling you this story. One was the main one – Richard and control of the narrative of his reign. The second was that the doggerel’s really well know, it was be remiss of me not to tell you and so on and so forth. But the real reason is that there’s a gag in there that deserves to be re-told, a tale of Medieval English sang froid. Collingbourne was hanged first; and if they liked you, they’d give you a good drop so your neck broke. But if they didn’t, they did the job as it ought; you waved about on the end of a rope for a while kicking your legs desperately, and they cut you down still alive. Then they cut off your privates, drew out your entrails and burnt them on the fire in front of you. Normally by this time you were long gone, but if it was done really well and quickly it could be that when they reached for your heart you were still alive. And so it was in Collingbourne’s case. As the executioner reached to cut our Collingbourne’s heart he look up and said ‘O Lord, yet more trouble’.

Now for sang froid, I dare you to find a better example.

But put all this together, add his slightly unusual demand for an oath to his heir, Edward of Middleham, the constant rumours about the Princes and the threat of invasion, the recent memory of the rebellion; and you can see that Richard’s throne in 1484 and 1485 was floating on a sea of uncertainty and distrust.

Richard’s public proclamations against rebels, traitors and Henry were his attempt to discredit them of course, undermine their support. But their tone is way over the top, absolutely cranked up to 11 in their vituperation. Listen to these for example. Firstly in 1483, against Dorset, after Buckingham’s rebellion. Dorset he said:

‘Has many and sundry maids widows and wives damnably and without shame devoured, deflowered and befouled’

Or this is April 1485

‘divers seditious and evil persons in London and elsewhere enforce themselves daily to sow seeds of noise and slander against our person…to abuse the multitude of our subjects and alter their minds from us, some by setting up bill, some by spreading false rumour’

In December 1484 and again in June 1485, in the face of invasion, Richard really pushed the boat out, with a general proclamation. The results of a Henry Tudor victory were spelt out in less than positive terms; for example

every man his life, livelihood, and goods would be taken into his hands, and there would ensue disinheriting and destruction of all the noble and worshipful blood of this Realm for ever

or maybe try

if they do take power, to carry out the most cruel murders, slaughtering, robberies, and disinheriting that was ever seen in any Christian realm

So, in summary the general message then was that Richard’s advice was that Henry Tudor was, on balance, when all’s said and done, looking at it from all angles – a bad thing.

None of this could have helped reduce the temperature; none of this can have helped put Richard in the light of a man in control of his future. You have to wonder if the tone was in the end counter-productive. It speaks of desperation and a man in something of a panic. When you read these, you can quote understand the sense of relief Richard is reported to have felt when Tudor did finally invade, and does a lot to explain Richard’s action in the final showdown. It sounds as though Richard was finding living under this particular sword of Damocles something of a trial.

It didn’t help that Richard appeared to lack that most vital of attributes – luck. The relationship between Richard his wife, Anne Neville, and indeed Anne Neville’s life is something of a mystery. On the one hand, there’s the dering do of her rescue by Richard from Clarence; but on the other hand there is more than a suspicion of a helpless pawn in the politics of power. At very, very least, Anne Neville had a very hard life. And it was to get significantly worse. In April 1484, Anne at Richard were at Nottingham, in the midlands. And there a messenger arrived in haste from Middleham with dire news –their young and only son Edward had died. The Crowland Chronicler was probably an eyewitness when the news arrived. He wrote:

‘You might have seen the father and mother…almost out of their minds for a long time when faced with such sudden grief’

The horror of such an events reaches down to us with such words.  Richard at the time was travelling north to prosecute war on Scotland- but the news stopped everything, and for a month Anne and Richard stayed at Nottingham in the midst of their pain. Medieval England being what medieval England was, it was quickly pointed out, by Crowland and I have no doubt many others, that this looked horribly like the judgment of God. And no one failed to notice that this was also a brutal blow to Richard’s dynastic ambitions – in the sense of not having a dynasty anymore. Richard did not have time before the end of his reign to formally appoint a successor; but there seemed no prospect of Anne producing an heir.

None the less, at Christmas 1484, Richard did his very best to portray again the splendour of his court. Though in poor health, Anne entertaining the Woodville girls, swapping clothes with Elizabeth of York. Crowland darkly muttered that, quote, ‘far too much attention was given to dancing and gaity’ and these, quote, ‘vain exchanges of clothing’, but hey, monks weren’t traditionally noted for their love of a good party, and Crowland surely misses the point. Richard had to behave like a king. And he wanted to demonstrate to Edward Iv’s old supporters and to the Woodvilles across the water that all was well again between Plantagenet and Woodville.

Richard’s reign is festooned with rumour and innuendo and extraordinary events. Even at the epiphany there were remarkable whispers doing the rounds. Look, poor Anne was clearly not well, clearly unlikely to have another child. If anything happened to her – Richard could remarry. And look at, Elizabeth of York – she’s a looker and make no mistake, just 18, her mother could hardly look at a bloke without getting pregnant – and I know it sounds daft, but if Richard married Elizabeth of York, his dynasty would have a cast iron legitimacy once more…Edward IV’s line and Richard’s combined. That’d really cut Henry Tudor’s legs off to boot.

Well what a remarkable idea. Seriously?  Marry his niece? Quite clearly an utterly scurrilous idea, cooked up later by the Tudor historians such as Vergil. Anyway, Richard had a queen. Let’s go back to a more reliable observer, Crowland:

In the course of a few days after this, the Queen fell extremely sick, and her illness was supposed to have increased still more and more, because the king entirely shunned her bed, declaring that it was by the advice of his physicians that he did so.  Why enlarge?’

That ‘why enlarge?’ are right up there in the most irritating lines in any chronicle in history. Someone at the time should have shouted ‘because 600 years later David Crowther would like to know whether Richard killed his wife or not!!’.

The rumour mill was spinning like a mad thing. The rumours apparently reached across the channel, and Vergil claimed that Tudor was, quote, ‘pinched to the stomach’ at the thought of losing a substantial pillar in his claims to legitimacy.

On March 16^th 1485, Anne died, and the rumours grew that Richard had poisoned her to allow him to marry Elizabeth. That he’d whined around court about Anne sterility, that he showed no sign of affection to Anne. And in fact that Richard actively went to his closest supporters and floated the idea.

I simply cannot believe it. The Tudor version of events goes that Richard was knocked back by the likes of Catesby – only to receive a horrified and furious response that he’d lose even the support of his northerners if he did so; he’d lose all credibility, everyone would believe he’d usurped the throne for his own gain and murdered anyone in his way to do so. But I just cannot believe Richard would be such a fool. It’s sounds trivial, but if I was planning to murder my wife and marry my niece – which, just for the avoidance of doubt, I’m not by the way – the last thing I’d do is go and telegraph it by treating my wife like a pariah. Richard would have had to be a blithering idiot to suppose that his remaining shards of his tottering, fragile credibility would survive marrying his niece for crying out loud,

marrying his niece in contravention of canon law and every kind of public opinion, papal dispensation or no papal dispensation.

Nope, I’m having none of it. But in the Mercers Company records of London there is this record of 30^th March 1485 that Richard, quote:

In the presence of many of his lords and much other people showed his grief and displeasure and said it never came in his thought or mind to marry in such a manner wise

And on 11^th April letters were sent to many towns ordering their corporations to also work to scotch the rumours.

Well, words fail me. Seriously, I could spend as many episodes as you like on Richard III and still never drain the swamp of controversy and opinion and guesswork. The elaborate work of historians and commentators and blokes in shed, studying shards of evidence that maybe Elizabeth herself carried a torch for her uncle, or that Richard was clearly innocent because he had started negotiations with Portugal to marry her off – none of them allow us to know anything for sure.

The one thing we can though hold onto with absolute confidence was that the fact that a king was forced to stand up in public and swear to the world that he wasn’t planning to marry his niece, is absolutely extraordinary. Nothing could display with more clarity the suspicion, distrust and lack of credibility Richard faced. I don’t like to labour the point, but seriously can you imagine how low his public reputation must have sunk to have to do such a thing? An anointed monarch, appointed by God.

There was just one thing that would put an end to all this – to meet the only viable alternative for the throne, and demonstrate God’s purpose by slaughtering him on the field of battle. Scarcely can any man have ever wanted an invasion more than Richard III in April 1485.