Gairdner J. History of the Life and Reign of Richard the Third: To which is Added the Story of Perkin Warbeck from Original Documents

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IOO LIFE OF RICHARD III. CH. IV.

supposing that he had thus secured his loyalty. Fogge

probably understood the king too well to be deceived even

at the time. He afterwards joined himself with the WoodvilleS

to Richard's enemies, and was declared a traitor.

The coronation was fixed for Sunday the 6th of July. The

Duke of Norfolk was appointed to act as lord high steward

on the occasion

. Meanwhile care was taken to dazzle the

public eye with pageants and processions, accompanied by

acts of ostentatious generosity. On the 4th, the king pro-

ceeded in state down the river to the Tower, and there

released from confinement Lord Stanley and the Archbishop

of York, the former of whom he not only restored to favour,

but appointed steward of his household. There was one state

prisoner, however, whom he did not venture to liberate.

In Morton, Bishop of Ely, he was aware that he had a

dangerous enemy. Yet he relaxed, to some extent, the rigour

of his confinement, and committed him to the custody of

Buckingham.

Next day he returned through the city in a procession of

peculiar magnificence, in which were three dukes, nine earls,

twenty-two lords, and seventy-eight knights (including the

lord mayor), besides a large number of other persons, all in

gorgeous apparel. ' But the Duke of Buckingham,' says one

writer, ' carried the splendour of that day's bravery, his habits

and caparisons of blue velvet embroidered with golden naves

of carts burning; the trappings supported by footmen habited

costly and suitable.'

The splendour of the coronation itself was in keeping with

such a prelude. The royal procession passed from

Procession

J r

, , •

at the the Tower to Westminster through the city, and

coronation.

. ,

„ . . .. .

. .

at Westminster Hall was joined by the ecclesias-

tical dignitaries, who accompanied it to the Abbey. The

Earl of Northumberland bore the pointless sword, which

Rymer, vol. xii. p. 191.

A.D.

1483. HIS CORONATION. IOI

represents the royal attribute of mercy. Lord Stanley, in

addition to recent favours, was appointed to carry the mace

as Lord High Constable. The Earl of Kent and Lord Lovel,

the Duke of Suffolk and his son the Earl of Lincoln, the Earl

of Surrey and his father the Duke of Norfolk, carried the

other insignia of royalty. The Duke of Buckingham bore

Richard's train. The queen's procession followed

The accounts of the royal wardrobe show many of the

preparations made for this great ceremony, and curious

questions have arisen respecting some of the items. One

of the entries led Horace Walpole to believe that

A stra

nge

the deposed prince, Edward V., walked, or was surmise,

intended to walk, in the procession. The thing seemed hard

to credit, and yet the inference was obvious enough from such

words as these among the details of coronation expenses : ' To

Lord Edward, son of the late King Edward IV., for his apparel

and array, that is to say;—a short gown made of two yards

and three quarters of crimson cloth of gold, lined with two

yards and three quarters of black velvet, a long gown made

of six yards and a half of crimson cloth of gold lined,' &c,

including, besides personal attire, harness and saddle housings

of blue velvet for nine horses, gilt spurs, and magnificent

apparel for his henchmen or pages

. But we have tolerably

trustworthy accounts of Richard's coronation

, and though we

have a list of the nobles that attended it, we do not find any

mention of young Edward. The truth is pretty clear that the

entries in the wardrobe account, being of a mixed character,

partly refer to the preparations for young Edward's own

coronation. Prefixed to them is an indenture dated the 27th

of June in the first year of Richard III., in which Peter

Curteys, the king's wardrober, undertakes to furnish by the

3rd of July the articles specified for the coronation of King

Excerpta Historica, 380.

Walpole's Historic Doubts, p. 146.

See Grafton's Chronicle, and Excerpta Historica, p. 379.

IO2 LIFE OF RICHARD III. CH. IV.

Richard. Those articles were both numerous and costly;

and the undertaking to provide them in so short a time is

a strong confirmation of what is stated by More, that the

preparations for Edward's coronation were made to serve the

occasion of Richard's. The apparel ordered for the king's

seven henchmen is a curious instance of this. They were to

have seven gowns made of seven half

gowns,

which half gowns

seem to have been originally destined for the henchmen of

Edward V.

By all accounts, the magnificence of Richard's coronation

was unsurpassed by that of any of his predecessors.

Ceremony * , , ,

the

The ceremony must have lasted some hours,

corona

ion.

-\yhen

he king had reached St Edward's shrine,

and was seated in his chair of state, a royal service was sung

that had been prepared for the occasion. Afterwards, the king

and queen coming down from their seats to the high altar,

there were further solemn services, during which both king

and queen put off their robes, and, standing naked from the

middle upwards

, were anointed by a bishop. They then

changed their robes for cloth of gold, and Cardinal Bourchier

crowned them both, while organs softly played. The bishop

then put upon the king St Edward's cope, and the cardinal

censed both king and queen. The king then took the cross

with the ball in his right hand, and the sceptre in his left, and

a grand Te Deum was sung by the priests and clergy. The

cardinal next sang mass, and the king and queen returned to

their chairs of state. Two bishops now came up to the king,

knelt before him, rose up again and kissed him, one after the

other, and then took their stations beside him, one on the

right hand and the other on the left. The Dukes of Buck-

ingham and Norfolk, with other leading nobles, next took up

See remarks of Dr Milles in Archaologia, vol. i. p. 368.

This was necessary for the anointing of the breasts—a ceremony which

was only discontinued in the present century. See Maskell's Monumenla

Ritualia, vol. ii. Prelim. Dissertation, pp. xxiv.-xxvi.

A.D. 1483. HIS CORONATION. 103

positions about the king, the Earl of Surrey standing before

him with a sword in his hand, which he held upright during

the whole time of mass; while, at the same time, the queen

had a bishop standing on either side of her. The Duchess

of Suffolk also sat on the queen's right hand, and the Countess

of Richmond on her left, the Duchess of Norfolk and other

ladies kneeling behind her till the mass was done. The king

and queen sat still till

the

pax was given. After kissing it they

came down and knelt at the high altar, where they received

the sacrament. The king then returned to St Edward's shrine

and offered up St Edward's crown and other relics. Then

the lords set his own crown on his head, and the whole

company began to move out of the church in grand procession.

The king again bore the cross and ball in his right hand, with

the sceptre in his left. The Duke of Norfolk bore the cap of

maintenance before him. The queen bore her sceptre in her

right hand, and the rod with the dove in her left. And so,

with great solemnity, they proceeded to Westminster Hall,

where the banquet began at the late hour of four o'clock in the

afternoon. In the middle of the second course, Sir Robert

Dymock, the king's champion, rode into the Hall upon a horse

trapped with white and crimson silk, and challenged any man

to dispute the king's title. A momentary silence followed;

and then the cry of 'King Richard! King Richard!' resounded

on every side

Whatever deficiency there might have been in Richard's

title was now remedied. He had become an anointed king.

A religious rite had invested his person with a sanctity which

it had not before, and he had spared no pains to make it

as splendid and imposing as any such rite could be.

But the grandeur and the glory of that day had its darker

aspect, which was noted at the time by a shrewd „,_

Change of

observer. ' It followed,' said Fabyan, ' anon as feeling

, . , , , ,..,,,. the Lords;

this man had taken upon him he fell in great

Excerpta Historica, pp.

381-3.

104 LIFE OF RICHARD III. CH. IV.

hatred of the more part of the nobles of his realm, insomuch

that such as before loved and praised him, and would have

jeopardied life and goods with him if he had remained still

as protector, now murmured and grudged against him, in such

wise that few or none favoured his party, except it were for

dread or for the great gifts that they received of him; by

mean whereof he won divers to follow his mind, the which

after deceived him.' Of this the king was probably aware,

even from the very first. But no open disloyalty showed

itself for about three months; and when it did, strangely

enough, the first of his former adherents who declared against

him was the very man who had been most assiduous before-

hand in clearing his way to the throne.

The revolt of the Duke of Buckingham against King

Richard took the world by surprise, as it seems to have done

the king

himself.

It is a thing almost unaccountable, even to

the historian, and gave rise at the time to a multitude of

reports and surmises which probably had very little foundation

in fact. Yet it is clear that this duke, who had been the

earliest to take counsel with Richard against the

Woodvilles; who had advocated his cause at the

Guildhall; who had borne up his train at the coro-

nation ; who had acted hitherto as if it had been

his highest privilege to advance the interests of the new-made

king,—was by no means the devoted friend of Richard his

past conduct had proclaimed him. Whether the change that

he now exhibited was owing to a change that he had

discovered in the king, or whether from the first he had

pursued a mere selfish policy, which required no further

subservience on his part, we cannot pronounce with certainty.

It may be that he thought his great services to Richard were

not appreciated as they should have been. Perhaps the

example of Warwick the King-Maker exerted too great an

influence on his imagination. It might be that, as he himself

alleged, he had been deceived by Richard, and had discovered

A.D.

1483. DISAFFECTION OF BUCKINGHAM. 105

the falsehood of the testimony on which he had been led to

support his claim to the crown. Or was it that he had been

alienated by something still more nefarious—by a perception

that Richard's dark policy of intrigue and violence was dragging

him into complicity with crime, beyond the point to which he

was prepared to go

The position he now held in the country was unique as to

influence and authority. Nor does it appear that he had

much reason to complain of the king's ingratitude. He had

precedence of all other nobles except princes of the blood.

He had been created by Richard Lord High Constable of

England'. A host of minor offices also had been liberally

showered upon him. He was constable of all the royal

•castles and lands in Shropshire and Herefordshire", chief

justice and chamberlain of South and North Wales, constable

of various castles, towns, and counties in the principality,

steward and receiver for the king of numerous Welsh lordships

and manors, and master of the hunt in all the royal forests

in that country. With these important local offices power was

expressly given him to muster and array the levies throughout

all the principality

. He had been also made steward of the

borough of Chesterfield, and of the manor of Scarsdale in

Derbyshire

. Owing to the king's liberality, he had the

whole of Wales and some parts of Derbyshire and Yorkshire

completely at his command. No subject had ever been so

great since the Earl of Warwick fell, and he himself boasted

that he had as many liveries of the Stafford knots as the

King-Maker had possessed of ragged staves

But one thing more was necessary to satisfy his ambition ;

and in this one thing he is supposed to have been disap-

pointed. The lands of his ancestor, Humphrey de Bohun,

Earl of Hereford, had been divided between the families of

Patent, 1 Richard III. p. 1, No. 30. " Ib. No. 43.

Ib. No. 29. * Ib.

Na'31.

Rous, 216.

106 LIFE OF RICHARD III. CH. IV.

his two daughters, and one moiety had gone to the crown,

having been claimed by Henry V. in right of his mother.

Buckingham was the undisputed possessor of the other; but

he ought to have been heir to the whole earldom after the

death of Henry VI., as the issue of Mary Bohun then became

extinct. He had in vain demanded of King Edward restitution

to his ancestral rights. Large possessions that had once come

to the crown were not readily given back to those who had

much territorial influence already: there was danger in allowing

any subject to become too great, after the example of Warwick

the King-Maker. The duke, however, had steadily hoped to

obtain of Richard what he had been denied by his brother,

and there can be little doubt that the hope had a material

influence on his conduct as regards the protector. Richard,

in fact, actually promised him what he desired, and soon after

his accession, redeemed his promise so far as to make him

a formal grant of the lands under his own sign manual.

It has been rather too hastily assumed by some that this

grant gave complete and valid restitution, so that disappoint-

ment in this matter could not have been the cause of

Buckingham's disaffection. But it must be remarked that

a signed bill, granted by the king, was usually no more

than a means of obtaining letters patent under the Great

Seal; and there is no appearance that such letters patent

ever were made out. The bill

itself,

as grarited by the

king, has been printed by Dugdale from the family archives

at Stafford

. It is also formally registered in the journal of

King Richard's grants

. But it is not enrolled on the

Patent Rolls, and there seems good reason for believing that

it never passed the Great Seal. For, if it had, the signed

bill would have been delivered up to the Lord Chancellor,

and therefore would not have been found among the family

archives. Between the cup and the lip there had evidently

arisen some impediment to the desired enjoyment. The sign

Dugdale's Peerage, i. 168.

Harl. MS. 433, f. 107.

A.D.

1483. DISAFFECTION OF BUCKINGHAM. 107

manual promised Buckingham a full restitution in a coming

Parliament, and gave him the profits of the lands from the

preceding Easter, 'unto the time he be thereto restored by

authority of Parliament.' The matter was therefore clearly

incomplete; and unless we conceive Buckingham to have been

influenced by motives altogether disinterested, we must

suppose that he had seen sufficient reason to doubt the

good faith of Richard, and to despair of the fulfilment of

the promises made to him.

Some other dreams appear to have mingled with his

ambition, and given a sharper edge to his resentment. He

was himself of royal blood. He was descended, indeed, in

two ways from Edward III., both from John of Gaunt, and

from his brother, Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester;

and an important family secret, which his son, at least,

undoubtedly knew, may have contributed to fire his mind

with the hope of one day mounting the throne. His descent

from John of Gaunt was derived through John Beaufort,

Gaunt's eldest son by Catherine Swynford, born before their

marriage. The Beaufort family had been legitimated by an

Act of Parliament in the time of Richard II., which was

confirmed by Henry IV., though with an express reservation

that they were not thereby made capable of inheriting the

crown. The reservation, however, was no part of the original

Act. It appears as an interlineation on the Patent Roll of

Richard II., inserted in a different hand, which was doubtless

a hand of Henry IV.'s time. The patent of Richard II.,

confirmed by Act of Parliament, had already conferred an

unqualified legitimacy on John Beaufort, Earl of Somerset,

and his descendants, and it was impossible that any act of

Henry IV. could legally interfere with the rights so created

This probably was not known to the world in general; but

the Duke of Buckingham was possessed of the original letters

patent under the Great Seal, containing an exemplification

Excerpta Historica,

153.

IO8 LIFE OF RICHARD III. CH. IV.

of the Act of Parliament of Richard II.

As a true branch

of the House of Lancaster he might therefore aspire to the

crown; but his cousin, Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond,

who was likewise descended from the Beauforts, had a prior

claim.

But the way in which his ideas took form and shape seems

to have been greatly owing to his prisoner Morton, Bishop of

Ely, who was in his custody at Brecknock, meditating how he

could best effect his liberation and perhaps be revenged upon

the king. He was a man possessed of great qualities for the

crooked times in which he lived—a thorough politician, who

could appreciate at once the strong and the weak points of

anyone he had to deal with. Buckingham sometimes con-

versed with him, and enabled him to sound the depths of

his affection to his sovereign. It was not difficult to find

the bottom.

The manner in which Morton contrived to shake his

loyalty, or rather in which he allowed him to do

versations"

> i

related by More, and is deserving of attention

with Mor-

there is every reason to suppose the information

was derived from Morton

himself.

More's account

is in substance as follows : The duke, having in conversation

with his prisoner spoken highly of King Richard and the

auspicious prospects of his reign, the bishop in reply re-

marked : ' Surely, my lord, folly it were in me to lie, for I

am sure if I were to swear to the contrary you would not

believe me. But if the world had gone as I wished, so that

On the trial of his son, the Duke of Buckingham, in Henry VIII.'s

time,

it was deposed that he had said 'he had a certain writing, sealed

with the Great Seal, containing a certain Act of Parliament, by which it

was enacted that the Duke of Somerset, one of the king's noble progenitors,

was legitimated; and further, that the said duke said to Gilbert that he

once intended to give the said writing to King Henry VII., but the duke

said that he would not have done so for 10,000/.' 'Calendar of Baga de

Secretis' in 'Third Report of Dep. Keeper of Pub. Records,' App. ii.

231.

A.D. 1483. BUCKINGHAM AND MORTON. 109

King Henry's son had had the crown and not King Edward,

then would I have been his true and faithful subject; but after

God had ordained him to lose it and Edward to reign, I was

never so mad as, for the sake of a dead man, to strive against

the living. So I was ever to King Edward a faithful chaplain,

and glad would I have been that his children should have

succeeded him; howbeit, if the secret judgment of God have

otherwise provided, I purpose not to spurn against the prick,

nor labour to set up that which God pulleth down. As for the

late protector, and now king '

He stopped abruptly, and merely added, in reply to the

duke's urging him to explain

himself,

that he had already

meddled too much with the world, and intended from that

day to confine himself to his books and beads. But the

duke's curiosity being excited to know what he was going

to have said of the king, he desired him to open his mind

to him in confidence, promising that nothing he might say

should be to his prejudice, and that perhaps it might have

better consequences than he would suppose. He moreover

informed him that he had designed to seek his counsel when

he procured his custody from Richard, who would otherwise

have conferred it upon persons not likely to have treated him

so well. The bishop thanked him and said : ' In good faith,

my lord, I love not much to talk of princes, as it is a thing

not altogether safe, even though the word be without fault,

forasmuch as it may not be taken as the party meant it, but as

it pleaseth the prince to construe it. I always think on

yEsop's tale, that when the lion had proclaimed, on pain of

death, that no horned beasts should come into the wood, one

beast, that had a bunch of flesh growing out of his head,

fled apace. The fox seeing him, asked whither he fled. " In

faith," quoth he, " I neither know nor care, so I were once

hence, because of the proclamation against horned beasts."

"What, fool!" quoth the fox, "the lion never meant it for

thee,

for that which thou hast is not a horn." "No, truly,"