Richard III:
The Making of a Legend

Murph, Roxane C. Richard III: The Making of a Legend. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1977, reprinted 1984. Copyright © 1977, Roxane C. Murph; used with permission. Permission to reproduce from this electronic edition in accordance with the Fair Use provisions of the Copyright Act of 1976 is hereby given, provided that no alterations are made to the text and that this notice appears as part of the reproduction. Two chapters are published on this Web site: taken together, they constitute an introductory biography of Richard III. Scanning and HTML coding by Cheryl Rothwell.

The Struggle for the Crown

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York.

Richard III I.i.

The controversy surrounding Richard III has centered on several events, namely the deaths of Edward of Lancaster, Henry VI, George of Clarence, and the princes in the Tower. Somewhat less controversial, but still the source of much disagreement, were the deaths of Richard's wife, Anne Neville, Anthony Woodville, and Lord Hastings. Many of the facts concerning these deaths are clouded in uncertainty and for this reason speculation about Richard's role in them has flourished. Before turning to an examination and comparison of the various views expounded by writers of history and fiction, a brief review of the known facts concerning the life and career of Richard III might prove useful.[1]

Richard was born on October 2, 1452, at Fotheringhay Castle. He was the twelfth of thirteen children born to Richard, Duke of York, and his wife, Cicely Neville, and the youngest of the seven who survived infancy. In this family of large, fair, healthy children the dark, undersized, sickly Richard must have seemed like a changeling. During the seven years he lived at Fotheringhay Richard had the company only of his brother George, who was three years his senior, and his sister Margaret, who was six years older than he. Edward and Edmund, the two oldest boys, lived at Ludlow Castle in the Welsh Marches, while Anne and Elizabeth, the older girls, were being trained in other noble households according to the custom of the day. The children saw their parents only rarely.[2]

Richard grew up in unstable and dangerous period in English history. The old feudal system of loyalty based on land tenure was crumbling and a new power, based on the system of "livery and maintenance," was taking its place. In return for the "good-lordship" of a powerful magnate, a retainer promised his services in peace and war. Thus, the lord had armed men when he needed them and the retainer received protection against his enemies, wages in some cases, and, all too frequently, immunity from punishment by law. It was common practice during the fifteenth century for powerful lords to threaten or bribe juries to find in their favor. It was the sworn duty of the monarch to see that justice was done, but during the reign of Henry VI this oath had little meaning. Henry had frequent periods of madness and the court was dominated by his beautiful and high-spirited wife, Margaret of Anjou. She protected her partisans and persecuted those whom she believed to be against her. She treated Richard's father, the Duke of York, as her chief enemy and so turned him into one.[3]

During the spring and summer of 1459 it was apparent that the queen intended an all-out war against the Yorkists. The Duke of York, fearing that Fotheringhay was no longer safe, moved Margaret, George, and Richard to Ludlow, a large, strongly fortified castle belonging to his family. It was there that Richard met his two oldest brothers for the first time. Edward, Earl of March was seventeen and Edmund, Earl of Rutland, was sixteen.[4]

Followers of York gathered that summer at Ludlow in preparation for the attack they felt certain would come. In October they learned that the king's army was at Coventry and was marching toward Ludlow. The Yorkists sent Henry a petition assuring him of their loyalty. He responded by promising pardon to all who would desert the Yorkist cause.[5]

The duke's armies camped on Ludford Meadows and prepared for battle. On the night of October 12 the best and most experienced of the Yorkist troops, the Calais garrison led by Andrew Trollope, deserted to the king, taking with them the Yorkist battle plans. The duke and his sons, Edward and Edmund, and the Earl of Salisbury and his son, the Earl of Warwick, fled to safety. The duchess and her two younger boys remained behind and threw themselves on the king's mercy. They reckoned without Queen Margaret's fury. After the royal army had looted the castle and pillaged the town of Ludlow as if it were enemy territory, the duchess and her sons were taken to Coventry. York, Warwick, and Salisbury were attainted by parliament and their estates declared forfeit.[6]

Meanwhile, the Duke of York and Edmund had sailed for Ireland where the Irish and Anglo-Irish rallied to their support. Indeed, the Irish were so loyal that they executed any man brave, or foolish, enough to bring a royal writ for York's arrest.[7] Warwick, Salisbury, and Edward had escaped to Calais which, fortunately for them, had remained true to its captain, Warwick.[8] Edward, concerned for the safety of his two younger brothers, wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury to ask him to look after them. As a result, the boys were taken into the Archbishop's household where they remained from early 1460 until September of that year, when they rejoined their mother.[9]

On June 26, 1460, Warwick, Edward, and Salisbury landed with two thousand troops at Sandwich and went directly to London. They were welcomed by the city magistrates who lent them one thousand pounds, whereupon they marched north to meet the king's army, which was encamped south of Northampton. The treachery of some of the king's soldiers enabled the Yorkists to capture the king, who was then conducted to London in state. Following the establishment of a new government under firm Yorkist control, the Duchess of York, accompanied by George and Richard, arrived in London but the duchess soon left to join her husband who had landed in Chester. George and Richard, however, remained in London and not a day went by without a visit from Edward. It is quite likely that this loving attention from his older brother during this unsettled period in his life can explain Richard's lifelong devotion and loyalty to Edward.[10]

On October 10, the Duke of York returned to London. He went directly to Westminster where the lords were assembled, placed his hand on the throne, and announced that he had come to claim it by hereditary right. All of the peers, including Warwick and Edward, were shocked and dismayed by this action.[11]They wanted York to reform the government, not to seize the crown. Finally, after much legal debate, King Henry agreed that if he were permitted to keep the crown for life, the Duke of York would be his heir and would be named Protector.[12] This action disinherited Queen Margaret's son, something she would not countenance.

The infuriated queen fled north where she raised an army by offering the Scots the border town of Berwick-on-Tweed in return for their aid.[13] The Yorkists, meanwhile, began to assembled their own armies and Edward went into Wales to raise men. The Duke of York and the Earl of Salisbury marched off to Yorkshire, leaving Warwick in London to run the government. On December 30, in violation of a Christmas truce agreed to by both sides, the Lancastrian army attacked the Yorkists outside Sandal Castle near Wakefield. York, his son Edmund, and Salisbury were slain and their heads were taken to York and nailed up over the Micklegate Bar. Margaret, never one to leave well enough alone, had the duke's head adorned with a paper crown.[14]

By the death of his father, Edward became the Yorkist claimant to the throne. In February 1461, at Mortimer's Cross, he defeated a large Lancastrian army but, a few days later, at the second battle of St. Albans, Warwick was routed by the queen who succeeded in rescuing her husband from Yorkist hands. The queen's forces followed the fleeing Yorkists to London, pillaging as they went.[15] The Duchess of York, fearing for the lives of her two young sons should the Lancastrian army take the city, sent them to Burgundy where they were welcomed and royally treated by Duke Philip.[16]

London, however, held out against the Lancastrians, and when Edward entered the city on March 4, he was enthusiastically proclaimed king.[17] Thereupon, Margaret and her army fled northward, pursued by the Yorkists. On March 29, Palm Sunday, in a late but fierce snowstorm, the two armies met at Towton. In a bloody battle the outnumbered Yorkists completely defeated the Lancastrian army.[18] Henry, Margaret and their son fled into Scotland.

When the news of the Yorkist victory reached Burgundy in mid-April, George and Richard were escorted to Calais by a guard of honor. From there they went to the Palace of Shene (Richmond) where their brother, King Edward IV, waited to greet them. Richard was not quite nine years old, yet in his brief lifetime he had experienced great danger and misfortune -- the loss of his father, a brother and an uncle, and virtual imprisonment and exile. Now, under the protection of his handsome, gifted brother, fortune for the first time appeared to smile on him.

On June 27 George and Richard, newly created Knights of the Bath, took part in the coronation of the new king. Edward named George as the Duke of Clarence and Richard as Duke of Gloucester, and both boys were made Knights of the Garter.

The age of nine was none too soon to begin the customary period of apprenticeship in the household of a great noble in order to learn all the knightly accomplishments. The king had decided that his brother Richard should enter the household of the richest and most powerful nobleman in England, his cousin the Earl of Warwick. Late in the year 1461 Richard went to the earl's great castle of Middleham in Wensleydale to begin his training.[19] It was there that he met Robert Percy and Francis Lovell who were also being schooled in Warwick's household. These two youngsters became Richard's closest friends and remained, to the end of their lives, his staunchest supporters.[20] The boys all lived together and received instruction in Latin, law, mathematics, music, religion, and the code of chivalric behavior and etiquette. Each day they practiced riding, hunting, and the use of arms. In the evening they were taught to sing, dance, and play musical instruments. Richard worked diligently on all of his lessons, but his greatest effort was directed toward developing skill in the use of weapons.[21]

During the next few years the king heaped honors and lands on his two brothers. At the age of twelve Richard was appointed Commissioner of Array for nine counties and charged with levying troops to clear Northumberland of Lancastrians. George, although he was three years older than Richard, was not considered sufficiently mature for this responsibility, a fact which infuriated him. This, and other incidents of this period which indicated Edward's favoritism to Richard, may have marked the beginning of the hostility which George later displayed toward both his brothers.[22]

In September 1464, Edward announced his marriage to Elizabeth Woodville, a Lancastrian widow and the mother of two young sons.[23] The marriage, which had been performed in great secrecy months before, was to have serious and far-reaching consequences. Warwick had been negotiating a French marriage for the king and felt publicly humiliated by the king's action. This caused a breach between the two strong-minded men. Warwick, who had helped his cousin Edward seize the throne, assumed he would be the power behind it. Edward, however, intended to rule in fact as well as name.

The strained relations between the king and kingmaker probably accounted for Edward's order, in the spring of 1465, that Richard be removed from Middleham.[24] Richard spent the next five years at Westminster in a court dominated by the relatives of the queen. The members of the Woodville clan were numerous, aggressive, and greedy, and it was not long before they had secured for themselves the greatest offices and the richest marriages in the kingdom.[25]The queen's sister Katherine was married to the Duke of Buckingham who was a dozen or more years her junior, while her twenty-year-old brother John captured the heart and hand of the eighty-year-old Dowager Duchess of Norfolk. It is not surprising that the queen and her family earned the enmity of the old nobility.

The resentment of Warwick, the head of the powerful Neville family, took a positive and dangerous form. He attempted to win the king's two brothers over to his side. Although Richard was no doubt flattered by the attentions showered on him, he recognized Warwick's treasonable intent and remained loyal to the King. Warwick had more success with George. In 1469, against the express command of the king, George of Clarence married Warwick's daughter, Isobel Neville, in a hurried and secret ceremony at Calais.[26] When they returned to England, Warwick gathered an army, captured the king, and executed several of the royal adherents, including the queen's father, her brother John, and the earls of Pembroke and Devon.[27]

Where was Richard during this period? Apparently the Nevilles considered him of such little ability and importance that he was not detained with his brother. When the king learned, however, that Richard and Lord Hastings had managed to raise armies to come to his rescue, he secretly summoned his Council to join him at Pontefract where he was being held prisoner. When the Council and the loyal armies appeared, Edward coolly informed his captors that these men had come to accompany him to London and he intended to go with them.[28]

This rescue caused the king to appreciate more fully the loyalty and ability of yis youngest brother. On his return to London, Edward rewarded Richard by appointing him Constable of England for life. This was an extremely powerful position and carried with it great responsibility. The Constable, as President of the Court of Chivalry and Courts Martial, could determine and punish acts of treason.[29]

Richard was also appointed Chief Justice of North Wales for life, and it was in this position that he undertook his first independent military command. He quickly suppressed a Welsh rebellion and recaptured the castles of Cardigan and Carmathen. Early in 1470 Richard became Chief Justice of South Wales, which meant he was the virtual ruler of Wales. He thus displaced Warwick who had taken these offices for himself at the time he held the king captive.[30]

Despite a show of reconciliation between Warwick and the king, the Nevilles continued to instigate rebellion. When papers captured from rebels after a skirmish proved that Warwick planned to place Clarence on the throne, Edward took immediate action. Warwick and Clarence were proclaimed traitors and John Neville, the only member of his family who had remained loyal to the king, was deprived of the earldom of Northumberland. The title of Earl of Northumberland was restored to Henry Percy, a Lancastrian sympathizer.[31] This was a rash action on Edward's part, and one for which Richard would pay dearly.

Richard, who had been in Wales when the rebellion started, set out with an army to aid his brother. Warwick and Clarence, realizing full well that they would not win against the combined armies of Richard of Gloucester and the king, gathered together their wives, Warwick's younger daughter Anne, and several hundred adherents, and fled to the protection of Louis XI of France.[32]

King Edward, who knew his brother George and cousin Warwick well, realized that they would not give up the fight so easily and he began preparations for the defense of his kingdom. He sent Richard to the Midlands to raise levies and maintain order. At the same time the king deprived the Nevilles of the Wardenship of the West Marches and conferred the office on Richard, who he felt confident could ensure the loyalty of Yorkshire.[33]

Meanwhile, Warwick had not been idle. Through the mediation of his patron, Louis of France, the "Universal Spider," Warwick had become reconciled with Margaret of Anjou. In return for Warwick's promise to restore Henry VI to the throne, Margaret had consented to the marriage of her son Edward to Warwick's daughter, Anne Neville. The marriage was not to be solemnized, however, until Warwick had fulfilled his part of the agreement.[34] Clarence, who had gained nothing by this agreement, was offered a consolation prize. He was to inherit the throne if Anne and Edward produced no heirs.

On September 13, 1470, Warwick landed in England where he was joined by his brother, the Marquis of Montagu, formerly the Earl of Northumberland. When Edward learned of Montagu's defection, he and some of his followers. including Richard, Hastings, and Rivers fled to Burgundy.[35] They took with them only the clothes on their backs and thus, for the second time in his life, Richard found himself dependent on the charity of the Duke of Burgundy. Charles the Bold, the son of Philip the Good, was the husband of Edward and Richard's sister, Margaret. Charles, a descendant of John of Gaunt, was at heart a Lancastrian. Political necessity, however, had turned him into a Yorkist. He was at war with Louis XI and he knew that a Lancastrian king of England would not lift a hand to help him. He must, therefore, give Edward the aid he needed to regain his throne.

Although Warwick had made good his promise to restore Henry to the throne, Margaret remained in France with her son and Anne Neville, until she could be sure that England was once more safely Lancastrian. Yorkist hopes had been kept alive, on the other hand, by the birth of a son to Elizabeth Woodville, who was then in sanctuary at Westminster.[36]

In March 1471 Edward returned to England. He met with no resistance as he marched toward London, possibly because he declared that he had come only to reclaim his dukedom.[37] As he neared the city, however, he dropped this pretense and many loyal Yorkists joined his ranks. Even George of Clarence, either out of pique at Warwick or a belated sense of family loyalty, came over to his brother's side with the army he had raised to fight him.[38] London welcomed Edward and supplied his army. A few days later the king marched out of London to meet the kingmaker in battle. With the Yorkist army rode the erstwhile king, Henry VI.[39]

On Easter Sunday, April 14, 1471, at the Battle of Barnet, Warwick's army was annihilated and he and his brother Montagu were slain.[40] The nineteen-year-old Richard of Gloucester commanded the right wing of his brother's victorious army. Three weeks later the royal forces, with Richard in command of the left wing, crushed the Lancastrians once and for all. On May 4, at Tewkesbury, Margaret's army was totally destroyed and her son Edward lay among the dead.[41]

On May 21 the king entered London in a triumphal procession led by his brother Richard. Accompanying the royal train were Edward's prisoner, Margaret of Anjou, and Clarence's ward, Anne Neville. That evening, according to the official version, Henry VI died in the Tower of "pure displeasure and melancholy." [42]There is no doubt that his death was a judicial murder ordered by the king. The destruction of the legitimate Lancastrian line enabled Edward IV to enjoy comparative peace for the rest of his reign.

In the months after Tewkesbury the grateful king heaped yet more honors upon his youngest brother. Richard, restored to his positions as Constable and Admiral of England, was also given Warwick's former office of Great Chamberlain and was made Steward of the Duchy of Lancaster beyond Trent. Because Richard had great affection for the north country and the king needed a man of proven military ability to deal with the constant troubles on the Scottish border, Richard fell heir to all of the estates and power in that region that had formerly belonged to Warwick. Included in the gift were the castles of Middleham and Sheriff Hutton. The Duke of Gloucester thus became the greatest magnate in the north, with authority over the Earl of Northumberland.[43]

Before leaving for the north to wage a campaign against the Scots, Richard secured the king's permission to marry Anne Neville. There had been a deep affection between the two young people since their childhood days at Middleham and since Anne's betrothed, Edward of Lancaster, was now dead, she was free to marry Richard. Upon the successful completion of the Scottish campaign he returned to London to claim his bride. Anne was in the custody of her brother-in-law Clarence who had no intention of sharing the Warwick inheritance with Richard. He therefore refused to give up his charge, despite a warning from the king not to interfere between the lovers. He claimed, when pressed, that Anne had disappeared and that he neither knew nor cared where she had gone. After weeks of diligent search Gloucester finally discovered Anne working as a kitchenmaid in the home of a retainer of the Duke of Clarence. Richard took her at once to the sanctuary of St. Martin le Grande where she would be safe from Clarence and from Richard too, if she so desired.[44]

For several months the king's two brothers engaged in a bitter dispute over the questions of the Warwick inheritance and Anne's guardianship. Richard was quite willing to accept Anne even without her inheritance and so the matter was finally settled. Richard was to keep Middleham and certain other of Warwick's Yorkshire estates and Clarence was to get the rest of the vast inheritance.[45]

As soon as the property settlement had been reached, Anne Neville came out of sanctuary. Without waiting for the papal dispensation usual in marriages within this degree of consanguinity [Richard's mother and Warwick's father were brother and sister, thus Richard and Warwick were first cousins and Richard and Anne were first cousins, once removed], Anne and Richard were married in the spring of 1472, and they returned immediately to their childhood home of Middleham.[46] There, in 1473, Anne was delivered of their only child, Edward.

Following his marriage Richard extended his protection to other members of the Neville family. His mother-in-law, stripped of her lands by her husband's attainder, came out of sanctuary at Beaulieu Abbey and went to live in a home which Richard provided for her. He helped to secure the release of George Neville who had been imprisoned for conspiracy and provided an annuity for Warwick's sister, the Countess of Oxford, despite the fact that her husband was actively working to overthrow the Yorkist king.[47]

In answer to the king's summons, Richard returned to London in the spring of 1475. Edward had decided to invade France, reconquer the territories lost by Henry VI and make good the English claim to the French throne.[48] The money for the venture was raised by benevolence, the army by indentures.[49] The Dukes of Clarence and Gloucester were each ordered to bring into the field one hundred and twenty men-at-arms and one thousand archers. So eager were the men of Yorkshire to wear Richard's badge of the White Boar that he was able to enlist at least three hundred more men than he had contracted for.[50]

The invasion was a fiasco. Edward's allies deserted him and he was forced to accept the French king's offer of peace. This decision, although favored by most of the English councillors who had been handsomely bribed by Louis, was bitterly opposed by the Duke of Gloucester. He saw the Treaty of Péquigny, under which Edward was to receive a large French annuity for life, as a humiliating defeat for England. Richard was the only member of the royal party to refuse the French king's bribe,[51] which increased his popularity in England but earned him the undying enmity of France.

Upon his return to England, Richard retired once more to Yorkshire. Early in 1477 Edward summoned him to London to discuss the crisis which had arisen with the death of Duke Charles of Burgundy. Clarence, a recent widower, suggested that he be permitted to marry Charles's heir, Mary, in order to protect the English interest in Burgundy. Edward, however, did not intend to see his shallow, ambitious brother become the ruler of the richest duchy in Europe, and so he refused to allow the marriage.[52] Clarence reacted to this snub with almost insane fury. He arrested and executed two of his late wife's servants on false charges, armed his retainers, and publicly accused the king of trying to destroy him.[53] For years Edward had endured with remarkable restraint Clarence's ambition, disloyalty, and even his treason, but this time his unstable brother had gone a step too far. In order to bolster his own claim to the throne, Clarence had spread the story that Edward was the off spring of an adulterous union between the Duchess of York and an unknown archer. If this were not enough, he cast doubt as well on the validity of Edward's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville.[54]

Richard, who had returned to Yorkshire early in the year, hastened back to London when he learned that Clarence had been arrested, charged with treason, and sent to the Tower. He pleaded with Edward to spare Clarence's life, but the Woodvilles, pressing from the other side, persuaded the king not to yield.[55]

On January 16, 1478, parliament met to try Clarence on the charge of high treason. Edward was the sole accuser and only Clarence spoke in his own defense. On February 7 the High Steward passed the death sentence but Edward vacillated until, on February 18, the Speaker of the Commons petitioned the Lords to carry out the sentence.[56] That same day Clarence was executed, by drowning, according to the story current at the time, in a butt of his favorite malmsey wine.[57] Richard did not profit from his brother's death. He merely regained the office of Great Chamberlain which he had given up to Clarence fifteen years earlier, and Richard's son Edward was given the title and dignity of Earl of Salisbury.[58]

Throughout these turbulent years Richard had spent most of his time in the north, traditionally the unruliest part of the kingdom, and he had succeeded in making himself popular by his wise and firm rule. He returned there immediately after Clarence's execution and in the next four years he visited London only twice--once in 1480 to see his sister Margaret who had come from Burgundy to visit her family, and again in 1481 to advise the king about the war with Scotland. At Middleham he led the life typical of a rich and powerful country lord. He delegated much of the judicial work connected with his two most important national offices, Constable and Admiral of England, to experienced judges, but he held many lesser offices as well. None kept him busier than the position of Warden of the West Marches, which included supervisory authority over the East and Middle Marches under the Wardenship of the Earl of Northumberland. Despite the truce with the Scots, there were frequent armed attacks from across the border and Richard spent much of his time seeing to it that the frontier fortresses were garrisoned, provisioned, and repaired. He established a standard of excellence for the Warden of the Marches which his successors found difficult to maintain.[59]

The Council for the Marches, the Warden's advisory body, acted also as a court of appeal for poor tenants who were otherwise at the mercy of powerful lords. Any man, from the lowliest peasant to the greatest lord, could ask and receive justice from the Warden and his Council. In order to maintain a harmonious relationship with Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, whose family had previously been lords of the North, Richard used him as an assistant in judicial cases and in the affairs of the City of York, as well as appointing him second-in-command in the wars against the Scots. Percy, however, was no more satisfied with second best than Clarence had been, and he never became a devoted adherent of the Duke of Gloucester.

Richard was never too busy to attend to problems brought to his attention by the citizens of York, and his concern for their welfare earned him their wholehearted devotion. He was asked to settle important questions, such as disputed elections, as well as lesser problems such as ordering the removal of the fishgarths which impeded transportation and reduced the number of fish the poor were able to catch.[60] Richard's interest in and support of the city was deeply appreciated by the citizens who remained his faithful and outspoken adherents well into the Tudor period.

In 1482, after years of unproductive and halfhearted attempts to settle the Scottish problem, the king decided on war as the final solution. Edward's health, which had deteriorated after years of dissipation and riotous living, prevented him from taking an active role in the fighting, and Richard was given complete charge of the campaign.[61] He regained Berwick-on-Tweed which had been ceded to Scotland years before by Margaret of Anjou, and he captured Edinburgh without the loss of a single man. The Scots thereupon sued for peace, and Richard returned in triumph to London in January 1483 for the opening of parliament. He was wildly acclaimed for the success of the campaign.[62]

The parliament showed its gratitude to Richard in a tangible way by granting him what was, in effect, a practically autonomous palatinate in Cumberland County and the Scots Marches. The grants included the permanent Wardenship of the West Marches and many lands, manors, and perquisites.[63]

The change which Richard found in his brother during this visit left him profoundly disturbed. Edward had grown fat and lazy and he seemed to live only for pleasure. Richard, whose outlook on life was puritanical compared to Edward's, no doubt blamed the influence of the loose-living Woodvilles and Lord Hastings for his brother's decline. He had no way of knowing when he left London to return home in February 1483 that he would never see his brother again.

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About the Author:
Roxane C. Murph is immediate past chairman of the American Branch of the Richard III Society. She is also the author of The Wars of the Roses in Fiction (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1995) and the editor of Richard and Anne: A Play in Two Acts by Maxwell Anderson (Jefferson NC and London: McFarland Publishing, 1995).


Notes

[1] For the account which follows the author has relied heavily on Richard the Third by Paul Murray Kendall (New York: Doubleday, 1956). For other good surveys of the period see also The Fifteenth Century by E. F. Jacob (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961) and Richard the Third by James Gairdner (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1898).

[2] Kendall, Richard III, p. 29.

[3] Ibid., pp. 29-31.

[4] Ibid., p. 34.

[5] Ibid., p. 36.

[6] Hearne's Fragment in Chronicles of the White Rose of York ed. by J. C. Giles(London: James Bohn, 1843), pp. 5-6.

[7] Kendall, Richard III, p. 37.

[8] Ibid., pp. 37-38.

[9] Ibid., p. 39.

[10] Ibid., pp. 39- 40.

[11] See the statements of two contemporaries, William Wyrcester andWhethamstede, as quoted in Chronicles of the White Rose of York, p. lxxx.

[12] Ibid., pp. lxxxi-lxxxii.

[13] Kendall, Richard III, p. 42.

[14] For the quote from Wyrcester, see Chronicles of the White Rose of York,p. lxxxiii.

[15] Ingulph's Chronicle of the Abbey of Croyland, ed. and transl. by Henry T. Riley(London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854), pp. 421- 422.

[16] Kendall, Richard III, p. 44.

[17] Croyland Chronicle, p. 424.

[18] Ibid., pp. 425-426.

[19] Kendall, Richard III, p. 49.

[20] Ibid., p. 51.

[21] Ibid., p. 52.

[22] Ibid., pp. 55-56.

[23] Croyland Chronicle, pp. 439-440.

[24] Kendall, Richard III, pp. 58- 59.

[25] Croyland Chronicle, p. 445.

[26] Hearne's Fragment in Chronicles of the White Rose of York, p. 23.

[27] Ibid., p. 25.

[28] Kendall, Richard III, pp. 87- 88.

[29] Ibid., p. 89.

[30] Ibid., pp. 90- 91.

[31] Ibid., pp. 94- 95.

[32] Hearne's Fragment in Chronicles of the White Rose of York, pp. 26-27.

[33] Kendall, Richard III, p. 98.

[34] "The Manner and Guiding of the Earl of Warwick at Angers" in Ellis's Original Letters, second series, Vol. 1 (London: Harding & Lepard, 1827), pp. 132-135.

[35] Croyland Chronicle, p. 462.

[36] Ibid., p. 463.

[37] Historie of the Arrivall of Edward IV. in England, and the finall recoverye of his kingdomes from Henry VI., ed. by John Bruce (London: Camden Society, 1838),p. 4.

[38] Ibid., pp. 10- 11.

[39] Ibid., p. 18.

[40] Ibid., p. 20.

[41] Ibid., p. 30.

[42] Ibid., p. 38.

[43] Kendall, Richard III, pp. 124-125.

[44] Croyland Chronicle, pp. 469-470.

[45] Ibid., p. 470.

[46] Kendall, Richard III, p. 127.

[47] Ibid., p. 130.

[48] Phillippe de Commynes, The Memoirs of Phillippe de Commynes, ed. by Samuel Kinser, transl. by Isabelle Cazeaux (2 vols., Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1969), I, p. 264.

[49] Croyland Chronicle, p. 471.

[50] Kendall, Richard III, pp. 133-134.

[51] Commynes, Memoirs, I, p. 282.

[52] Croyland Chronicle, p. 478.

[53] Kendall, Richard III, pp. 145-146.

[54] Ibid., p. 146.

[55] Ibid. , p. 147.

[56] Croyland Chronicle, pp. 479-480.

[57] Dominic Mancini, The Usurpation of Richard the Third, ed. by C. A. J.Armstrong (2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), p. 63.

[58] Kendall, Richard III, p. 149.

[59] James Gairdner, Richard the Third (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1898), p. 42.

[60] Kendall, Richard III, pp. 158-159.

[61] Croyland Chronicle, p. 481.

[62] Kendall, Richard III, p. 170.

[63] Ibid., p. 176.