Richard III: His Life & Character Part 8

Richard, so far as appears, can have given his mother neither anxiety nor sorrow. Living happily at Middleham, married to his mother's grand-niece, and always gaining applause and approval whenever he took part in public affairs, he must have been the son from whom his mother derived most comfort. It was natural that, in this crisis of his fortunes, he should have sought counsel and support under that mother's roof, and we may fairly conclude that the subsequent proceedings, which led to Richard's a.s.sumption of the crown, had the sanction and approval of the d.u.c.h.ess of York.[7] The Duke of Gloucester had been recognised {93} as Protector of the Realm before his arrival in London,[8] and on May 13 he summoned a Parliament to meet on the 25th of the following month. When the d.u.c.h.ess of Gloucester reached London on June 5, the Duke left Baynard's Castle, where he had resided with his mother for upwards of a month, and removed to Crosby Place[9] with his wife.

[Sidenote: Bishop Stillington's revelation]

Up to this time affairs had gone smoothly. On June 5 the Protector had given detailed orders for his nephew's coronation on the 22nd, and had even caused letters of summons to be issued for the attendance of forty esquires who were to receive the knighthood of the Bath on the occasion.[10] But now there came a change. Dr. Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells, apparently on June 8, revealed to the Council the long-concealed fact that Edward IV. was contracted to the Lady Eleanor Butler, widow of a son of Lord Butler of Sudeley, and daughter of the first Earl of Shrewsbury, before he went through a secret marriage ceremony with the Lady Grey.[11]

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Dr. Stillington thus becomes a very important personage in the history of King Richard's accession; and it will be well to learn all that can be gleaned of his life. He first saw the light in an old brick manor house, which still stands on the right bank of the Ouse at Acaster Selby (then within the parish of Stillingfleet), about nine miles south of York.

The family of Stillington had long been established here, renting land from the Abbot of Selby, when two sons, Thomas and Robert, were born to Thomas Stillington and his wife Catherine, daughter of John Halthorp.

Thomas succeeded to the paternal estate, while Robert was destined for the priesthood. He was sent to Oxford, and eventually took the degree of Doctor of Law with great distinction. He was a Fellow of All Souls, and became Rector of St. Michael's, Ouse Bridge, and a Canon of York in 1448 and 1451. Stillington was ever loyal to the cause of the White Rose. At some time in or before 1463, he witnessed the marriage contract which united Edward IV. to the Lady Eleanor Butler; the King strictly charging him not to reveal it. When Edward subsequently went through the same ceremony with the Lady Grey, his mother the d.u.c.h.ess of York, who was in the secret, remonstrated, but without avail. Edward was self-willed and headstrong. The Lady Eleanor retired to a convent in Norwich, where she died on July 30, 1466, and was buried in the Church of the Carmelites.[12]

In 1466 Dr. Stillington became Bishop of Bath and Wells, and in the same year Edward IV. made him Keeper of the Privy Seal. On June 8, 1467, he was installed in the high office of Lord Chancellor, in succession to Archbishop Nevill. He delivered a very {95} eloquent and statesmanlike speech at the opening of Parliament in May 1468, which made a deep impression. After holding the office of Chancellor, with dignity and credit, for six years, he resigned, owing to ill-health, in 1473. He was afterwards employed on an emba.s.sy to Brittany.

If the Queen Dowager and her relations had any knowledge of the first marriage, Bishop Stillington would be a source of anxiety and fear to them; while they could never be certain who else might know the secret besides the King's mother. We find that the Duke of Clarence was attainted on February 7, 1478, on a series of charges, most of them frivolous and none sufficiently grave to account for his death at the hands of his own brother. There must have been something behind. Mr.

Gairdner has suggested that the execution of Clarence was due to his having discovered the secret.[13] Certainly that would satisfactorily account for it. The influence of the Woodvilles was paramount, and it would then be a necessity of their continuance in power that Clarence should cease to live. The character of Clarence made it impossible that a secret would be safe with him. His death was the only safe course for the Woodvilles. It is very significant that, at the very time of Clarence's attainder, Bishop Stillington was arrested and imprisoned[14] for 'uttering words prejudicial to the King and his State.' He was pardoned in the following June 1478. All this points clearly to the discovery of the first contract by Clarence, and to the utterance of some imprudent {96} speech by the bishop, which was expiated by imprisonment followed by renewed promises of silence.

During the years following his imprisonment, Bishop Stillington appears to have devoted himself to the duties of his diocese. He always retained feelings of affection for the family at Acaster, and for the home of his childhood on the banks of the Ouse. Towards the close of his long and honourable career he founded a collegiate chapel on his brother's land at Acaster, dedicated to St. Andrew, for a provost and fellows, and for free education in grammar, music and writing. The grant was confirmed by King Richard III. in 1483. A fine collegiate church of brick, eighty-seven feet long and twenty-one broad, rose upon the banks of the Ouse, with twenty windows filled with stained gla.s.s.

It was a memorial of the good bishop, and members of his family in later generations left in their wills that they wished to be buried at St. Andrew's college. The site is now marked by a few gra.s.sy mounds.[15]

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Dr. Stillington was a good and pious bishop, an able statesman, and a most loyal and faithful adherent of the White Rose. His one fault was that he did not ensure his own destruction by proclaiming Edward's secret before that King's death. There was no urgent obligation to do so; but when the time arrived, he was bound to come forward, and he was probably urged by the d.u.c.h.ess of York to publish the truth. Richard had hitherto been ignorant of the early intrigues of his brother. He was only eleven and a half when the widow of Sir J. Grey was taken into favour, and the Butler contract was of a still earlier date.

The announcement must have fallen on Richard and the Council like a thunder clap. It was inevitable that the matter should be thoroughly sifted. There was a prolonged sitting of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in the Council Chamber at Westminster, on June 9.[16] Bishop Stillington 'brought in instruments, authentic doctors, proctors, and notaries of the law, with depositions of divers witnesses.'[17] The majority of the Council must have seen at once that the illegitimate son of the late King could not succeed. Such a proceeding would inevitably be the precursor of innumerable troubles. The case was prepared to be laid before the Parliament which was summoned to meet on June 25.

There was, however, a small but powerful minority in the Council, led by Lord Hastings and Bishop Morton, to whom the prospect of losing the openings to their ambition offered by a minority was most distasteful.

They commenced opposition[18] and began to {98} meet apart, plotting against the Protector's government. This was soon followed by overt acts. Hitherto all orders and grants had been issued 'by the advice of our uncle, Richard Duke of Gloucester, Protector and Defender.' But on the 9th, and again on June 12, the conspirators issued orders without the Protector's name. They were preparing for open hostility.

Hastings was intriguing with his former adversaries, the Woodvilles, both at Westminster and in Yorks.h.i.+re. On June 10 the Duke of Gloucester became thoroughly alarmed. He despatched a letter to his faithful city of York, asking that troops might be sent up to protect and support him. It was delivered on the 15th. On the 11th a similar letter was sent to his cousin, Lord Nevill. Meanwhile, the Hastings faction was not idle. A _supersedeas_ was secretly issued to the towns and counties, ordering the Parliament not to a.s.semble.[19] It was received at York on June 21. This was done to delay or prevent the consideration of the question of illegitimacy, and of the evidence submitted by Bishop Stillington. Finally a plot was formed to seize the Protector and put him to death.[20]

[Sidenote: Conspirators thwarted]

The conspiracy was divulged to the Protector by Master William Catesby, who was in the confidence of Hastings. The danger was imminent. It was probably a question of hours. Richard acted with characteristic prompt.i.tude and vigour. On June 13 he proceeded in person to the Tower with a body of retainers, and arrested Lord Hastings at the council {99} table on a charge of treason. The conspirators were caught, as it were, red-handed. A proclamation was then issued, giving the details of the plot, but unfortunately no copy remains. Hastings was condemned and executed on June 20, a week after his arrest.[21] The danger over, Richard mourned for the loss of his old companion in arms.

'Undoubtedly the Protector loved him well, and was loth to have lost him.'[22] A prominent feature in Richard's character was his generosity to the relations of his political opponents. In this respect the conduct which was habitual with him was almost unprecedented in his, and indeed in later times. In the case of Hastings, he at once restored the children in blood, and granted the forfeited estates to the widow. He also liberally rewarded the brother of Hastings for past services, and granted all his requests.

The conspirators in Yorks.h.i.+re would probably have been pardoned, if they had not joined in this new treason with Hastings. But now an order was sent, through Sir Richard Ratcliffe, for a tribunal to a.s.semble at Pomfret, to try Lord Rivers and his companions. The Earl of Northumberland was president of the court. They were found guilty.

The accomplished Earl philosophically prepared for death. He had played for high stakes, had lost, and was ready to pay the penalty. He showed his confidence in the integrity and kindly feeling of the Duke of Gloucester by appointing him supervisor to the will which he made at Sheriff Hutton on June 23.[23] The trust was not misplaced. On the {100} 25th, Rivers, Grey, Haute, and Vaughan were beheaded. Those arrested in London, with Hastings, were treated with unwise leniency.

The treacherous Stanley was not only pardoned, but rewarded. Bishop Morton was merely taken into custody, and placed in charge of the Duke of Buckingham. Archbishop Rotherham, a weak tool in the hands of the others, after a brief detention, was allowed to return to his diocese.

Jane Sh.o.r.e, the mistress of Dorset, had been the medium of communication between Hastings and the Woodville faction. A penance was imposed upon her by the Church for her vicious life. But she was treated with considerate forbearance by Richard, whom she had tried to injure. He ordered her to be released, and consented, though reluctantly, to her marriage with his Solicitor-General.

The formidable coalition of the two malcontent parties was thus completely broken. The Woodvilles gave up all further resistance to the Protector's government. The Bishop of Salisbury, brother of the Queen-Dowager, and her brother-in-law, Viscount Lisle, came over to his side.[24] Elizabeth also, at the intercession of the Archbishop of Canterbury, sent her younger son Richard to join his brother Edward on June 16.[25] She herself remained in sanctuary with her daughters for a time, in order to make better terms.

[Sidenote: t.i.tle to the crown]

In spite of the _supersedeas_ which was treacherously sent out by the conspirators to prevent the meeting of Parliament,[26] the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and the Commons had a.s.sembled in London on the day {101} appointed, June 25, and formed what in later times would have been called a Convention Parliament. The proofs of the previous contract of Edward IV. with Lady Eleanor Butler were laid before this a.s.sembly by Bishop Stillington and his witnesses, and it was decided by the three Estates of the Realm that the illegitimate son could not succeed to the throne. Owing to the attainder of the Duke of Clarence, his children were not in the succession. The Duke of Gloucester was, therefore, the legal heir: and it was resolved that he should be called upon to accept the high office of King. A statement of the royal t.i.tle, styled 't.i.tulus Regius,' was prepared, in which it was set forth that the children of Edward IV. by the Lady Grey were illegitimate owing to that King's previous contract with the Lady Eleanor Butler, that in consequence of the attainder of the Duke of Clarence, his two children were incapacitated; and that Richard, Duke of Gloucester, was the only true and rightful heir to the throne.

The children of Edward IV. being illegitimate, Richard was certainly the legal heir, because the children of Clarence were disabled by law.

But their disability could be set aside at any time by a reversal of their father's attainder, or by the removal of any corruption in blood inherited in consequence of that attainder. Edward Earl of Warwick, son of George Duke of Clarence, was the rightful heir to the throne, when the children of Edward were proved to be illegitimate. He was born at Warwick Castle on February 21, 1475, and at this time his age was eight years and four months. But even if Richard had attempted to subst.i.tute this child for the son of the late King, it is very unlikely that the a.s.sembled {102} notables would have consented. They dreaded, above all things, a long minority. When his own son died prematurely, King Richard showed his sense of the strong claim of his nephew by declaring young Warwick to be his heir.

It is alleged that on Sunday, June 22, 1483, an eminent preacher named Dr. Shaw had delivered a sermon at Paul's Cross, in which he explained the royal t.i.tle to the people; and that a speech was made to the same effect, by the Duke of Buckingham, at the Guildhall on the 24th. This is not improbable.

On June 26,[27] the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and the Commons proceeded to Baynard's Castle with the _t.i.tulus Regius_, to submit their resolution and to pet.i.tion Richard to a.s.sume the crown. He consented. He was then aged thirty years and eight months. On the 27th he delivered the Great Seal to Dr. Russell, Bishop of Lincoln, a prelate celebrated for learning, piety, and wisdom.[28] On the 28th a letter was despatched to Lord Mountjoy at Calais, with instructions to acquaint the garrison of the new King's accession, and to secure their allegiance. Richard III. then organised his Council, and surrounded himself with able and upright advisers. There were only two false friends among them--the traitors Buckingham and Stanley.

[1] Bernard Andre, 23. Polydore Virgil, 530 (171, 173 Eng. trans.)

[2] Rous, 212. Croyland, 564.

[3] Rous says they had contrived the Duke's death, 213. Also the Croyland Monk, 565: 'Conspiratum est contra eos, quod ipsi contrivissent mortem ducis Protectoris Angliae.'

[4] John Alc.o.c.k was the son of a burgess of Hull, and was educated at the grammar school of Beverley. He graduated at Cambridge in 1461. He was Dean of St. Stephen's, Westminster, and one of the King's Council in 1470, and Bishop of Rochester in 1472. In 1476 he was translated to Worcester, and in 1483 was tutor to young Edward. He was at Oxford to welcome Richard III. after his coronation, and accompanied him on his progress to Warwick. In 1484 he was one of the Commissioners delegated to treat with the Scottish Amba.s.sadors. In 1486 he was translated to Ely, where he built a tower of the Bishop's palace, and a beautiful chapel for his interment. His attachment to the house of York is shown by the ornaments in the vaulting of the bas.e.m.e.nt of the tower, and in the chapel. The rebus on his name (two c.o.c.ks with their feet on a globe) occurs alternately with the '_rose en soleil_,' the badge of Edward IV. Bishop Alc.o.c.k founded Jesus College at Cambridge. He died at Wisbeach in 1500.

[5] Croyland 565. Rous, 213.

[6] Baynard's Castle was so called from Baynard, one of the companions of the Conqueror, who had license to fortify his house on Thames bank within the city. It was fortified by his descendant in 1110 A.D. In 1428 it had become the property of the crown and, having been destroyed by fire, it was rebuilt by Humphrey Duke of Gloucester. On his attainder it again reverted to the crown, and was granted to Richard Duke of York. It was long the residence of his widow, and here both Edward IV. and Richard III. accepted the crown. Baynard's Castle was gutted in the Great Fire of 1666. It had long been rented by the Earls of Pembroke, but seems to have been in a ruinous condition. It was probably pulled down during the clearance operations after the fire.

[7] One letter has been preserved from Richard III. to his mother, after his accession. It is written in most affectionate terms, and shows deference to her wishes. After her last surviving son's death at Bosworth the d.u.c.h.ess retired from the world entirely, living at her castle of Berkhampstead, under the rules of one of the monastic orders.

She died in 1493, and was buried by the side of her husband at Fotheringhay.

[8] Mr. Gairdner has pointed out that he was styled Protector in two doc.u.ments upon the Patent Rolls, dated April 21 and May 2.

[9] Crosby Place, in Bishopsgate Street, was built by Alderman Sir John Crosby, who died in 1475. The Duke of Gloucester had a lease of it from Sir John's widow. It must have been a princely residence, and the hall is still one of the finest examples of Perpendicular domestic architecture of the fifteenth century.

[10] Rymer, vol. xii. p. 186; Anstis, Obs.; Sir Harris Nicolas, _History of the Orders of Knighthood_, iii. ix.; Ellis, _Original Letters_, 2nd series.

[11] Comines says that the contract was made by the Bishop of Bath and Wells, who told Comines that he afterwards married Edward and Lady Eleanor. The King charged him strictly not to reveal it. (Phil. de Comines, ii. 157.)

[12] Weever's _Funeral Monuments_.

[13] Gairdner's _Richard III._, p. 91.

[14] Rymer, xii. 66. In the papers of the Stonor family there is a letter from Elizabeth Stonor to her husband, dated March 6, 1478, in which she said that the Bishop of Bath had been brought into the Tower since her husband departed.

[15] All was destroyed and sold in the reign of Edward VI. (1552). But a view of the ruins, and of a monument of the founder of Acaster College, with a ground plot, is mentioned in Gough's _Topography of Yorks.h.i.+re_, 1804, p. 469. Rents at the dissolution 27_l._ 13_s._ 4_d_. Worth 553_l._ 6_s._ 8_d_. Granted in 1552 to John Hulse and William Pendred.

The family of Stillington continued to flourish at Acaster and Kelfield, in the parish of Stillingfleet; greatly improving their estate by a marriage with the heiress of FitzHenry. In 1520 stained gla.s.s with the arms of Stillington impaling BiG.o.d, was placed in one of the windows of Stillingfleet church. At that time Dr. Thomas Stillington was a man of great learning, and became Professor of Divinity at the University of Louvain. The Stillingtons continued to flourish at Kelfield Hall throughout the seventeenth century. The last male of the race was young in the days of Queen Anne. There is a portrait of him as a boy, in a cla.s.sical costume, which was painted by Parmentier in 1708. It is now in the dining room at Moreby Hall. This Joseph Stillington of Kelfield died in 1742. His daughter Dorothy married William Peirse of Hutton Bonville.

[16] Stallworthe's letter to Sir W. Stonor. (_Excerpt. Hist._ p. 16.)

[17] Morton, in his account of a conversation with the Duke of Buckingham (Grafton, p. 126).

[18] Polydore Virgil, p. 540.

[19] Davies, _York Records_, p. 154. That this _supersedeas_ was issued by the conspirators and not by the Protector's Council is proved by Dr. Russell having actually prepared a speech for the opening of Parliament on June 24. This speech has been preserved. The date of the _supersedeas_ was probably before June 13.

[20] Rastell, p. 80,