King Richard the Third was up betimes
in the morning, and went to Westminster Hall.
In the Hall was a marble seat, upon which he sat
himself down between two great noblemen, and told the
people that he began the new reign in that place,
because the first duty of a sovereign was to administer
the laws equally to all, and to maintain justice.
He then mounted his horse and rode back to the City,
where he was received by the clergy and the crowd
as if he really had a right to the throne, and really
were a just man. The clergy and the crowd must
have been rather ashamed of themselves in secret,
I think, for being such poor-spirited knaves.
The new King and his Queen were soon
crowned with a great deal of show and noise, which
the people liked very much; and then the King set forth
on a royal progress through his dominions. He
was crowned a second time at York, in order that the
people might have show and noise enough; and wherever
he went was received with shouts of rejoicing from
a good many people of strong lungs, who were paid
to strain their throats in crying, ‘God save
King Richard!’ The plan was so successful that
I am told it has been imitated since, by other usurpers,
in other progresses through other dominions.
While he was on this journey, King
Richard stayed a week at Warwick. And from Warwick
he sent instructions home for one of the wickedest
murders that ever was done the murder of
the two young princes, his nephews, who were shut
up in the Tower of London.
Sir Robert Brackenbury was at that
time Governor of the Tower. To him, by the hands
of a messenger named JOHN GREEN, did King Richard send
a letter, ordering him by some means to put the two
young princes to death. But Sir Robert I
hope because he had children of his own, and loved
them sent John Green back again, riding
and spurring along the dusty roads, with the answer
that he could not do so horrible a piece of work.
The King, having frowningly considered a little, called
to him SIR JAMES TYRREL, his master of the horse,
and to him gave authority to take command of the Tower,
whenever he would, for twenty-four hours, and to keep
all the keys of the Tower during that space of time.
Tyrrel, well knowing what was wanted, looked about
him for two hardened ruffians, and chose JOHN DIGHTON,
one of his own grooms, and MILES FOREST, who was a
murderer by trade. Having secured these two assistants,
he went, upon a day in August, to the Tower, showed
his authority from the King, took the command for
four-and-twenty hours, and obtained possession of the
keys. And when the black night came he went creeping,
creeping, like a guilty villain as he was, up the
dark, stone winding stairs, and along the dark stone
passages, until he came to the door of the room where
the two young princes, having said their prayers,
lay fast asleep, clasped in each other’s arms.
And while he watched and listened at the door, he
sent in those evil demons, John Dighton and Miles
Forest, who smothered the two princes with the bed
and pillows, and carried their bodies down the stairs,
and buried them under a great heap of stones at the
staircase foot. And when the day came, he gave
up the command of the Tower, and restored the keys,
and hurried away without once looking behind him; and
Sir Robert Brackenbury went with fear and sadness to
the princes’ room, and found the princes gone
for ever.
You know, through all this history,
how true it is that traitors are never true, and you
will not be surprised to learn that the Duke of Buckingham
soon turned against King Richard, and joined a great
conspiracy that was formed to dethrone him, and to
place the crown upon its rightful owner’s head.
Richard had meant to keep the murder secret; but
when he heard through his spies that this conspiracy
existed, and that many lords and gentlemen drank in
secret to the healths of the two young princes in
the Tower, he made it known that they were dead.
The conspirators, though thwarted for a moment, soon
resolved to set up for the crown against the murderous
Richard, HENRY Earl of Richmond, grandson of Catherine:
that widow of Henry the Fifth who married Owen Tudor.
And as Henry was of the house of Lancaster, they
proposed that he should marry the Princess Elizabeth,
the eldest daughter of the late King, now the heiress
of the house of York, and thus by uniting the rival
families put an end to the fatal wars of the Red and
White Roses. All being settled, a time was appointed
for Henry to come over from Brittany, and for a great
rising against Richard to take place in several parts
of England at the same hour. On a certain day,
therefore, in October, the revolt took place; but
unsuccessfully. Richard was prepared, Henry was
driven back at sea by a storm, his followers in England
were dispersed, and the Duke of Buckingham was taken,
and at once beheaded in the market-place at Salisbury.
The time of his success was a good
time, Richard thought, for summoning a Parliament
and getting some money. So, a Parliament was
called, and it flattered and fawned upon him as much
as he could possibly desire, and declared him to be
the rightful King of England, and his only son Edward,
then eleven years of age, the next heir to the throne.
Richard knew full well that, let the
Parliament say what it would, the Princess Elizabeth
was remembered by people as the heiress of the house
of York; and having accurate information besides, of
its being designed by the conspirators to marry her
to Henry of Richmond, he felt that it would much strengthen
him and weaken them, to be beforehand with them, and
marry her to his son. With this view he went
to the Sanctuary at Westminster, where the late King’s
widow and her daughter still were, and besought them
to come to Court: where (he swore by anything
and everything) they should be safely and honourably
entertained. They came, accordingly, but had
scarcely been at Court a month when his son died suddenly or
was poisoned and his plan was crushed to
pieces.
In this extremity, King Richard, always
active, thought, ’I must make another plan.’
And he made the plan of marrying the Princess Elizabeth
himself, although she was his niece. There was
one difficulty in the way: his wife, the Queen
Anne, was alive. But, he knew (remembering his
nephews) how to remove that obstacle, and he made love
to the Princess Elizabeth, telling her he felt perfectly
confident that the Queen would die in February.
The Princess was not a very scrupulous young lady,
for, instead of rejecting the murderer of her brothers
with scorn and hatred, she openly declared she loved
him dearly; and, when February came and the Queen
did not die, she expressed her impatient opinion that
she was too long about it. However, King Richard
was not so far out in his prediction, but, that she
died in March he took good care of that and
then this precious pair hoped to be married.
But they were disappointed, for the idea of such a
marriage was so unpopular in the country, that the
King’s chief counsellors, RATCLIFFE and CATESBY,
would by no means undertake to propose it, and the
King was even obliged to declare in public that he
had never thought of such a thing.
He was, by this time, dreaded and
hated by all classes of his subjects. His nobles
deserted every day to Henry’s side; he dared
not call another Parliament, lest his crimes should
be denounced there; and for want of money, he was
obliged to get Benevolences from the citizens, which
exasperated them all against him. It was said
too, that, being stricken by his conscience, he dreamed
frightful dreams, and started up in the night-time,
wild with terror and remorse. Active to the last,
through all this, he issued vigorous proclamations
against Henry of Richmond and all his followers, when
he heard that they were coming against him with a
Fleet from France; and took the field as fierce and
savage as a wild boar the animal represented
on his shield.
Henry of Richmond landed with six
thousand men at Milford Haven, and came on against
King Richard, then encamped at Leicester with an army
twice as great, through North Wales. On Bosworth
Field the two armies met; and Richard, looking along
Henry’s ranks, and seeing them crowded with the
English nobles who had abandoned him, turned pale when
he beheld the powerful Lord Stanley and his son (whom
he had tried hard to retain) among them. But,
he was as brave as he was wicked, and plunged into
the thickest of the fight. He was riding hither
and thither, laying about him in all directions, when
he observed the Earl of Northumberland one
of his few great allies to stand inactive,
and the main body of his troops to hesitate.
At the same moment, his desperate glance caught Henry
of Richmond among a little group of his knights.
Riding hard at him, and crying ‘Treason!’
he killed his standard-bearer, fiercely unhorsed another
gentleman, and aimed a powerful stroke at Henry himself,
to cut him down. But, Sir William Stanley parried
it as it fell, and before Richard could raise his
arm again, he was borne down in a press of numbers,
unhorsed, and killed. Lord Stanley picked up
the crown, all bruised and trampled, and stained with
blood, and put it upon Richmond’s head, amid
loud and rejoicing cries of ‘Long live King Henry!’
That night, a horse was led up to
the church of the Grey Friars at Leicester; across
whose back was tied, like some worthless sack, a naked
body brought there for burial. It was the body
of the last of the Plantagenet line, King Richard
the Third, usurper and murderer, slain at the battle
of Bosworth Field in the thirty-second year of his
age, after a reign of two years.