My Questions About Richard III.

1. If Richard was planning to seize the throne all along why did he a) start by getting everyone in Yorkshire to swear allegiance to Edward V and b) set off south with only a modest retinue of 300 men? Given that he was in a position to raise most of the north in arms, wouldn’t it have been a good idea to do just that?
2. If we accept that Richard did not initially plan to seize the throne what made him change his mind? A) An attempted ambush by the Woodvilles/Wydevilles? B) The realisation that he ‘couldn’t work’ with Edward V? C) The discovery of the precontract? D) Or did he just wake up one morning and think ‘**** it, I’ve not got any supporters down here but I’ll take the throne anyway!’
3. Why did Elizabeth Woodville run off into sanctuary, given that the Woodvilles were (supposedly) innocent of any wrong-doing? As a woman and a Queen, no one was going to kill her, and by staying out and standing her ground, could she not have made Richard’s work a lot more difficult to achieve?
4. Why did Richard only send for his supporters when things had already kicked off and when it was actually too late for them to get to London to help him? Was he really that bad a planner or is it more likely that he was taken by surprise by some development?
5. Why did Anthony Woodville send off for an exemplification of his powers to recruit troops in Wales just at this particular time? Did he think Owain Glyndwr had come back or had he some other purpose for raising armed men?

Escape Abroad

Richard, Duke of York and Edmund, Earl of Rutland escaped to Ireland, where York was remarkably popular by the standards of English Lords Lieutenants. More about Ireland in a later post.

Meanwhile Warwick, Salisbury and Edward, Earl of March (soon to be better known as Edward IV) made their way to Calais. They did not go directly to Calais, nor did they collect their £200. No, it appears they originally planned to go to Ireland too, but somehow found their way to the Channel Islands. To what extent this was a matter of navigation as opposed to a matter of prevailing winds - given that there were no steamships back then - I cannot say. One account has them going by way of Devon, which makes a certain sense, but how exactly they got to Devon is not clear.

By 2 November Warwick was in Calais, and in command of it. This tends to get taken for granted, but when you recall that a substantial chunk of the Calais garrison had deserted him at Ludlow Warwick must have arrived there in some doubt as to his reception.

Somerset had been appointed Captain of Calais in Warwick's room, but when he arrived there he was not admitted. He did manage to capture the fortress of Guines in the Calais March, but was promptly besieged in it. Since Warwick's fleet controlled the Channel it proved impossible to reinforce or supply Somerset and eventually (August 1460) the young duke was forced to capitulate.

Warwick's command of the seas was such that in January 1460 he was able to launch a pre-emptive assault on the town of Sandwich, under the command of Sir John Dynham. A Lancastrian force was based here to discourage a Yorkist invasion but its leaders, Richard, Lord Rivers, his son Anthony Woodville, and Lord Audley were captured and taken across to Calais. Here the Woodvilles were reportedly abused by Warwick and March on account of their 'low' origins and thrown into prison. I suppose they were lucky not to have their heads cut off. Audley - this is John Touchet, Lord Audley*, son of the Audley killed at Blore Heath - may have received kinder treatment. Anyway, he decided he was now a Yorkist.

Some may question whether the Woodvilles were low-born, given that Anthony's mother, Jacquetta, Duchess of Bedford had a very impressive continental pedigree and was (under the Lancastrian dispensation) second-ranking lady after the Queen. The point is they were perceived as being low-born and jumped-up by Warwick and those who thought as he did. Richard Woodville had been born a squire and his wife's fancy foreign relations, to a 15th Century English mind, did not count for a hill of beans. Woodville had been 'made by marriage'.

The fact that Warwick, Salisbury and even York's father had been 'made by marriage' was neither here nor there. They belonged to 'good' English families you see, and their fathers had all been earls.

* Familiar to some of you as Alianore's kindly elder brother in The Adventures of Alianore Audley.