Background: A Kingdom Divided
Richard was born in 1452, the youngest surviving son of Richard, duke of York, whose claim to the throne helped start the Wars of the Roses. After his father and an elder brother were killed in 1460, Richard’s eldest brother became King Edward IV in 1461. During Edward’s reign Richard grew up in the royal circle and became a trusted soldier and administrator. He was made duke of Gloucester and governed the north of England on his brother’s behalf, especially from his base at Middleham. He married Anne Neville, daughter of the earl of Warwick, and they had one son, Edward, who died young in 1484.
Edward IV died unexpectedly in April 1483, leaving a twelve-year-old son, Edward V, and a younger one, Richard of Shrewsbury, duke of York. The queen, Elizabeth Woodville, and her relatives had gained great influence at court, and many nobles resented them. That created an unstable situation, with a boy king, powerful factions and the memory of recent civil war.
From Protector to King
Richard was named Protector, a regent role. He met the new king on the road and took control of him, arresting the queen’s brother and son. Edward V was taken to the Tower of London, which at that time was also a royal residence as well as a prison, and his brother joined him there in June.
In mid-June Richard accused William Hastings, a former ally, of conspiracy and had him executed without a proper trial. Soon afterward a preacher declared that the children of Edward IV were illegitimate, on the grounds that the king had earlier been bound by a precontract of marriage to another woman. In the following weeks, Parliament or an assembly acting for it petitioned Richard to take the throne. A later statute, Titulus Regius, set out the argument. Richard was crowned on 6 July 1483.
Whether Richard planned this from the start or acted from fear is a matter on which historians do not agree. The legal case for the illegitimacy was thin, and it is hard to separate it from political convenience.
The Princes in the Tower
The two boys were last seen in public in the summer of 1483. After that, they disappeared from the record. Rumors of their deaths spread, and the question of what happened to them has never been settled.
What can be said with confidence is limited:
- They were in the Tower in 1483 and were not seen again.
- Richard never produced them to refute the rumors.
- In 1674, workers at the Tower found a box of bones under a staircase. They were thought to be the princes and were placed in Westminster Abbey. An examination in the 1930s did not prove their identity, and later requests to test them have been refused.
Several theories exist. Many writers, then and since, suspect Richard. Others point to the duke of Buckingham, who rebelled against Richard soon after, or to Henry VII, who might have had them killed after taking the throne if they were still alive. Some historians suggest they died of natural causes. None of these accounts has direct evidence behind it, so the honest statement is that nobody knows.
Rebellion, Reform and Bosworth
In October 1483 Buckingham, formerly Richard’s strong supporter, led a rising that failed. It was linked to the supporters of Henry Tudor, a distant claimant living in exile in Brittany, whose descent traced back to the Lancastrian dynasty through the Beaufort family. Richard dealt with the rebels, but many exiles joined Henry, and Richard’s hold on the south was weak.
Richard’s reign was short, but some of his administration was thoughtful. His only Parliament passed laws on bail and the protection of property against corrupt practices, and he established a council of the north. He also took interest in religious foundations. He was less successful at winning over southern landowners, and the death of his son and later his wife in 1485 left him without an heir.
In August 1485 Henry Tudor landed in Wales with a small force and marched inland. The armies met near Market Bosworth on 22 August. Richard led a charge toward Henry, but the Stanley family, whose forces had stood aside, joined the attack on Richard. He was killed in the fighting, the last English king to die in battle. Henry was proclaimed king as Henry VII and later married Edward IV’s daughter Elizabeth, uniting the two sides of the Wars of the Roses.
Reputation and the Discovery of 2012
Much of what people believe about Richard comes from writers who worked under the Tudors, such as Thomas More and Polydore Vergil, and later from Shakespeare, who portrayed him as a scheming villain with a withered arm. These sources are valuable, but they had reason to favor the new dynasty. Since the twentieth century, defenders of Richard have tried to rebalance the picture, sometimes going further than the evidence allows.
In 2012 a skeleton found under a car park in Leicester was identified as Richard on the basis of DNA, radiocarbon dating and injuries consistent with the accounts of Bosworth. It showed a curved spine, though not the severe deformity of the Tudor legend. He was reburied in Leicester Cathedral in 2015.
The fairest summary is that Richard III was an able and experienced noble who took power in a crisis in a way that many contemporaries found illegitimate. Whether he ordered the deaths of his nephews cannot be shown from the surviving evidence.