King Richard I of England

“ Before Richard arrived in England, however, [Pg 76] he had formed the plan, in connection with Philip, the King of France, of going on a crusade. Richard was a wild and desperate man, and he loved fighting for its own sake; and inasmuch as now, since his father was dead, and his claim to the crown of England, and to all his possessions in Normandy, was undisputed, there seemed to be nobody for him to fight at home, he conceived the design of organizing a grand expedition to go to the Holy Land and fight the Saracens. ”

“ And as it fareth with smoke, that never loseth itself till it be at the highest, he did now before his end raise his style, entitling himself no more Richard, Duke of York, but Richard IV, King of England. His council advised him by all means to make himself master of some good walled town; as well to make his men find the sweetness of rich spoils, and to allure to him all loose and lost people, by like hopes of booty as to be a sure retreat to his forces in case they should have any ill day or unlucky chance of the field. ”

“ The Beauforts came to an end, and the Tiptoft peerage lapsed, the accomplished Earl of Worcester being childless. The lay peerage, including peers temporarily under attainder, numbered fifty-four on the accession of Richard III., quite as numerous as it was before the war.
We have not, therefore, to contemplate a devastated country and a decimated peerage at the time when our last Plantagenet King ascended the throne. England was fairly prosperous, and the numbers and wealth of the nobility had not been reduced. ”

“ Richard III., the youngest son of Richard Duke of York by Cecily his wife, was born at Fotheringay Castle, in Northamptonshire, on the 2nd of October, 1452, and was created Duke of Gloucester in 1461. He married Anne, daughter of Richard Earl of Warwick (the King-Maker) , and widow of Edward Prince of Wales (son of Henry VI.) . His reign commenced on the 18th of June; he was proclaimed King on the 22nd of June; was crowned on the 7th of July, 1483, and was slain at the battle of Bosworth, on the 22nd of August, 1485, having reigned two years and two months. ”

“ France and England had been on bad terms with each other not only during the whole of Richard's reign, but through a great number of reigns preceding; and now, just before the period when this marriage was proposed, the two nations had been engaged in a long and sanguinary war. But Richard said that he was going to make peace, and that this marriage was to be the means of confirming it.
"But she is altogether too young for your majesty," said Richard's counselors. "She is a mere child."
"True," said the king; "but that is an objection which will grow less and less every year. ”

“ You stand by the tomb of Richard and Anne, united at last, and do not you think, "Oh, the pity of it," when you remember how Richard might have been strong and brave, had only he kept true to his best self? And then, do you not turn with a thrill of pride to the lofty chantry which encircles the grave of Henry V., the best loved king England ever had, the king who set a glow of patriotism alight in his realm, who rose above his failings and his faults, and gave to his people the fine example of a man who was victor over himself as well as victor over his foreign foes? ”

“ When Richard was about to leave Normandy and go on his crusade he caused John to swear at the council which he held in March that he would not enter England for the next three years without his leave, but the queen-mother persuaded the king to release him from this oath. This was a mistake, for Richard had made him so powerful that his presence in England was dangerous to the peace of the kingdom when the king was not there to overawe him. ”

“ F little and good were always identical. Richard the Second would have been a very good king, for he was a little boy of eleven years of age when the crane of circumstances hoisted him on to the throne of his grandfather. Young Richard was the only surviving son of Edward the Black Prince, and out of compliment to the juvenile monarch, his coronation in Westminster Abbey was made as gaudy as possible. ”

“ Buckingham indeed was beheaded, but the bulk of his followers were pardoned, and the overthrow of her hopes reconciled the queen-mother to the king. She quitted the sanctuary with Elizabeth, and thus broke up the league on which Henry's hopes hung. But Richard was too wary a statesman to trust for safety to mere force of arms. He resolved to enlist the nation on his side. During his brother's reign he had watched the upgrowth of public discontent as the new policy of the monarchy developed itself, and he now appealed to England as the restorer of its ancient liberties. ”

“ Richard, Duke of Gloucester, had no further obstacle in assuming the purple, and was crowned King of England with all pomp and ceremony, and known to unenviable fame as Richard III.
This account has come down to us with all the authority of historical verity, and subsequent evidences of its accuracy have been discovered. The age was characterized by inhumanity of the most barbarous kind, and this crime was in keeping with it.
The English people in this nineteenth century rejoice in a sovereign who is noble in the highest sense ”

“ The support of the nobles had been partly won by a hope hardly less fatal to the peace of the realm, the hope of a renewal of the strife with France. The peace of Richard's later years had sprung not merely from the policy of the English king, but from the madness of Charles the Sixth of France. France fell into the hands of its king's uncle, the Duke of Burgundy, and as the Duke was ruler of Flanders and peace with England was a necessity for Flemish industry, his policy went hand in hand with that of Richard. ”

“ Some of the magnates seem to have thought that jealousy and rivalry among themselves might be best appeased by setting, or at least proposing to set, over all of them a sovereign of another nationality; certain of them nominated King Richard of England. It was probably merely in opposition to this party that some others—“but they were few”—proposed Philip of France. [1242] The majority inclined to Duke Henry of Saxony, Richard’s sister’s son, who by birth was head of the most illustrious of the princely houses of Germany, and had in 1196 succeeded his father-in-law as Count Palatine. ”

“ The remaining six years of Richard's Pg 121 reign were entirely occupied in fruitless and weary border wars with the French king. It was a war of sieges and skirmishes, not of great battles. Richard held his own, in spite of the rebellions stirred up by Philip among his vassals in Aquitaine; but he did not succeed in crushing his adversary, as might have been expected from his superior military skill. In England the struggle was only felt through the heavy taxation which the king imposed on the land, to keep up his large mercenary army over-sea. ”

“ He was subjected to a mock trial, so that Henry might indulge in his hope of limited liability for murder, and was then slaughtered on November 28, 1499. A man who was capable of committing such a cowardly murder in such a way was certainly as capable of the crime of which he falsely accused King Richard.
As soon as Richard III. was dead, Edward Earl of Warwick became de jure King of England, not only as the acknowledged heir to the dead King but also as the nearest in succession, and as the last male Plantagenet. ”

“ For Edward our son, that was Prince of Wales,
Die in his youth by like untimely violence.
Thyself a queen, for me that was a queen,
Outlive thy glory, like my wretched self.
Long mayst thou live to wail thy children’s death,
And see another, as I see thee now,
Decked in thy rights, as thou art stalled in mine;
Long die thy happy days before thy death,
And, after many lengthened hours of grief,
Die neither mother, wife, nor England’s Queen.
Rivers and Dorset, you were standers-by,
And so wast thou, Lord Hastings, when my son
Was stabbed with bloody daggers. ”

“ In a gloomy prison, in a foreign land, lay Richard I, King of England. He had been with some other kings to a great war in the Holy Land, where he had won battles, and taken cities, and gained much honour. Men called him Richard Lion-heart, because he was as brave as a lion in fighting, and his soldiers loved him and would follow him into any danger. One strong city, called Acre, held out for nearly two years against the armies of the other kings, but when Richard arrived it gave way almost at once. ”

“ The value of such a check on Richard was seen by Lewis of France; and his demands for Henry's surrender into his hands drove the Duke of Britanny, who was now influenced by a minister in Richard's pay, to seek for aid from England. In June the king sent a thousand archers to Britanny; but the troubles of the Duchy had done more for Henry than Lewis could have done. The nobles rose against Duke and minister; and in the struggle that followed the young Earl was free to set sail as he would. ”

“ The trappings of the champion's horse were of white and red silk, and the armor of the knight himself was bright and glittering. As he rode forward into the area in front of the dais, he called out, in a loud voice, demanding of all present if there were any one there who [Pg 289] disputed the claim of King Richard the Third to the crown of England. ”

“ Richard I. had no children, and so he could not get up a perfect family-quarrel, though he and his brother John were enemies. He died at forty-two, and but a few years after his marriage with Berengaria of Navarre, an English queen who never was in England. When on his death-bed, Richard was advised by the Bishop of Rouen to repent, and to separate himself from his children. "I have no children," the King answered. But the good priest told him that he had children, and that they were avarice, luxury, and pride. ”

“ If the authority thus conferred upon him met with general acceptance, he would probably make an excellent ruler. If it were questioned he would strike out, and show no mercy. In those hard days every man of high position must be either hammer or anvil, and Richard was resolved that he would not be the anvil.
14. Fall of the Queen's Relations. 1483.—The young king was at Ludlow, and rode up towards London, guarded by Earl Rivers, his uncle on his mother's side, and by his half-brother, Sir Richard Grey. Another half-brother, the Marquis of Dorset, was lieutenant of the Tower. ”

“ YORK.
How long shall I be patient? Ah, how long
Shall tender duty make me suffer wrong?
Not Gloucester’s death, nor Hereford’s banishment,
Nor Gaunt’s rebukes, nor England’s private wrongs,
Nor the prevention of poor Bolingbroke
About his marriage, nor my own disgrace,
Have ever made me sour my patient cheek,
Or bend one wrinkle on my sovereign’s face.
I am the last of noble Edward’s sons,
Of whom thy father, Prince of Wales, was first.
In war was never lion raged more fierce,
In peace was never gentle lamb more mild,
Than was that young and princely gentleman. ”

“ All this divided York and Lancaster,
Divided in their dire division,
O, now let Richmond and Elizabeth,
The true succeeders of each royal house,
By God's fair ordinance conjoin together!
And let their heirs, God, if thy will be so,
Enrich the time to come with smooth-fac'd peace,
With smiling plenty, and fair prosperous days!
Abate the edge of traitors, gracious Lord,
That would reduce these bloody days again
And make poor England weep in streams of blood!
Let them not live to taste this land's increase
That would with treason wound this fair land's peace! ”

“ I am young enough myself to wait till she grows up, and, in the mean time, I can have her trained and educated to suit me exactly."
Richard opens negotiations with the King of France.
So, after a great deal of debate among the king's counselors and in Parliament, it was finally decided to send a grand embassage to [Pg 312] Paris to propose to the King of France that he should give his little daughter Isabella in marriage to Richard, King of England. ”

“ Richard III. seems to have wished to be a good and great king; but he had made his way to the throne in too evil a manner to be likely to prosper. How many people he had put to death we do not know, for when the English began to suspect the he had murdered his two nephews, they also accused him of the death of everyone who had been secretly slain ever since Edward IV. came to the throne, when he had been a mere boy. He found he must be always on the watch ”

“ A sudden impulse of the Red King drew the abbot from these quiet studies into the storms of the world. The see of Canterbury had long been left without a Primate when a dangerous illness frightened the king into the promotion of Anselm. The Abbot, who happened at the time to be in England on the business of his house, was dragged to the royal couch and the cross forced into his hands. But William had no sooner recovered from his sickness than he found himself face to face with an opponent whose meek and loving temper rose into firmness and grandeur when it fronted the tyranny of the king. ”

“ The Duke's master the Emperor of Germany, and the King of France, were equally delighted to have so troublesome a monarch in safe keeping. Friendships which are founded on a partnership in doing wrong, are never true: and the King of France was now quite as heartily King Richard's foe, as he had ever been his friend in his unnatural conduct to his father. He monstrously pretended that King Richard had designed to poison him in the East ”