Did Richard III hide in Cumbria plotting bloody path to the crown?
Defamed as a hump-backed child killer and “capable, cunning and dangerous” usurper, supporters claim during 14 years as a Penrith-based ruler of the north he was paragon of loyalty. What is the truth?
After his death, Richard III was portrayed by his enemies as a horribly deformed child killer, a murderer, usurper and one of the most disastrous monarchs ever to occupy the throne of England.
But during his early lifetime, his opponents made an entirely different charge. They accused him of suspiciously exiling himself from the court in London and going to live in the north to plot his eventual seizure of the throne.
They argued that he lurked in the north for more than a decade because he loathed his brother Edward IV’s low-born queen, Elizabeth Woodville, and her ambitious relatives.
There, they claimed, he built a rival power base of lands, sycophants and soldiers in preparation for illegally snatching the crown by force.
According to this version of events, the wily Richard began manoeuvring in his late teens by marrying Anne Neville, heir to half her family’s vast inheritances across Cumberland, Westmorland and the north.
These holdings included the Neville family’s strategic castles at Carlisle, Penrith and Middleham in Yorkshire which Richard moved restlessly and rapidly between.
Richard then set about expanding on his wife’s property portfolio with an obsessive quest for forgotten honours in ancient charters, royal appointments and military glory against the Scots.
Between 1471 and 1483 Richard lived mostly in the north and during that time he persuaded Edward to appoint him High Sheriff of Cumberland, which made him the king’s top man in the county.
Then he gained the position as Lieutenant of the North, the regional military chief. After that he landed his most prestigious and time-consuming job, Warden of the West March, which put him in charge of defending Cumbria’s border with the rebellious Scots.
Finally, he became England’s Commander in Chief, leading an invasion across the River Tweed in 1480-82. This force reached Edinburgh and, in a triumph that delighted his brother, on the way back to York he captured Berwick castle after twenty years in Scottish hands.
So, by the time of Edward VI’s mysterious death in April 1483 Richard had elevated himself from being a lowly fourth son of a Yorkshire nobleman who was, as he put it, “nakidly destitute of possessions” to the Lord of the North, with powers resembling those of a regional monarch.
It is true that such a transformation could only have been achieved through breathtaking ambition and political skills of a high order. His supporters say Richard made himself into a powerful defender of the border with Scotland entirely out of loyalty to his brother. The anti-Richard faction see his self aggrandisement as entirely selfish and a strategy to position himself to grab power.
For a man whose posthumous reputation is so negative, it is surprising to find that during his early life Richard was a relatively popular ruler of the north. He proved himself a charismatic military leader, a meticulous organiser and he became hugely successful at winning the respect of northerners, and they queued up to work for him.
He nimbly navigated the complex and often deadly politics of the fifteenth century court which saw the trial and execution of his treacherous elder brother, Clarence, who actually did plot to replace Edward IV. During this dangerous crisis, Richard undoubtedly displayed political cunning. When necessary, Richard was able to conceal his true feelings and play the part of a naive novice to leave his enemies in the Woodville family guessing.
But the truth is that Richard received King Edward IV’s permission to marry Anne in the middle of February 1472. He also consistently supported the king, especially in contrast to Clarence, who allied with rebels against the king. Edward rewarded Richard for siding against Clarence by granting him extensive lands and authority in the north, reflecting trust in Richard’s ability to stabilise and govern a volatile region. Richard worked to maintain peace, improve administration, and ensure justice in the north. He was known for fairness, was chosen as executor in local wills, and was highly regarded by the northern gentry.
It is true that the scale of Richard’s dominance in the north was not exactly what Edward planned. Richard expanded his influence sometimes at the expense of other established families like the Percies and Stanleys. Edward IV and his council occasionally intervened to limit Richard’s power, indicating some suspicion or concern about his growing autonomy.
But does this track record of success and political savvy justify claims that Richard worked for years from a strategic plan to make himself king of England? In a meticulously-researched 2019 biography of Richard, historian Michael Hicks answered this question with an emphatic yes.
Hicks insisted Gloucester’s campaign was “formidable…vigorous, intense, egotistical, ambitious, aggressive, ruthless and uncompromising . . . capable, cunning and dangerous.”
Now, a cache of documents has been unearthed by scholars about Richard’s northern career. Does it betray signs that Gloucester was evolving into the power-crazed Machiavellian monster portrayed by Shakespeare?
Quite a few of the 20,000 histories, novels, academic papers, movies and TV programmes have been published about Richard III are shamelessly biased. They range from arguing he was either a grotesque hunchback or lauding him as the embodiment of athletic perfection. Some declare he was obviously guilty of murdering the Princes in the tower, Edward V and his younger brother Richard, Duke of York, the two sons of King Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville, who disappeared shortly after Richard had himself crowned king in July 1483. Others argue that Richard was patently innocent of the crimes but was fitted up by the scheming Tudor claque.
Shakespeare’s play was his greatest box office hit. But it is absurd history, hardly distinguishable from Tudor propaganda. One thing is clear: the diabolically clever “deformed, unfinished…scarce half made up” character the Bard created has obliterated all trace of the real Richard in the public mind.
Five centuries have passed since Richard’s tumultuous twenty-one month reign ended in defeat and death at the hands of Henry Tudor at the battle of Bosworth on 22 August 1485. The discovery of Gloucester’s slightly pathetic battle-scarred skeleton with its dramatically twisted spine under a Leicester car park has injected a dose of sentiment into the argument. Pro-Ricardians now want him to be seen less as an immoral tyrant and more as a martyred saint.
But what does the actual evidence tell us about the real early life of Richard of Gloucester?
The outstanding message revealed by the written record is that once in the north, Richard became obsessed with his own lack of status. He scrabbled relentlessly after any and all neglected offices and forgotten parcels of land lying dormant in his various inheritances that might enhance his standing.
There was a painful private reason for his unease. Astonishingly, his marriage to Anne Neville was technically invalid. The Pope had ruled secretly that the couple, who had known each other from childhood, were first cousins so he could not legitimise the wedding.
This was unfortunate since Anne’s endowments were what made Richard the dominant figure in the north. Without them he would not amount to all that much. The fact they were not legally married was not publicly known. Richard had gone ahead with the wedding anyway, gambling that nobody would notice (nobody did) and hoping he could keep hold of her estate and perhaps, in due course, get his marriage validated.
Shakespeare’s portrayal of Richard as an inveterate plotter is, frankly, undermined by the documents. If he did have a long-term strategy to make himself king he was not intending to achieve it through back-stairs intrigue or extra-legal activity. On the contrary, Richard’s plan was to make himself a big figure through success on the battlefield, fighting in the north for the honour of his brother.
Above all else Richard was his brother’s trusted general. In an age when military achievement was the jewel in the aristocratic crown, Richard wanted to give his brother good reason for pride. His rise was the reward for his careful, cultivated track record of loyalty.
To understand how Richard thought, it is essential to look back to his childhood experiences. The boys grew up in the midst of the Wars of the Roses, fought out between rival Lancaster and York branches of their Plantagenet royal family. The nineteen-year-old Edward IV became the first Yorkist king in March 1461 with the assistance of the Yorkist leader Richard Neville, the Earl of Warwick, the wealthiest lord in England.
Far from seeing the ten-year-old Richard as a rival, Edward gave him the top royal honour - making him a Knight of the Garter and shortly afterwards creating him a premier duke (of Gloucester). Edward was signalling his intention to build his brother up into his right-hand man, awarding him property that matched his status. In 1462 he gave Richard lands forfeited by the defeated Lancastrians, scattered across England and Wales. Richard was not shaping his own career, least of all agitating with hostile intent. In fact, Edward always kept the whip hand and could have stripped his brother of everything if he was displeased. In practice, the king did not exercise this power, as Richard delivered much-needed military success later in life.
The brothers hit a bump in the road in 1470. Warwick, known as “the Kingmaker”, was infuriated after learning of Edward’s secret marriage to the commoner, Woodville. This liaison undermined Warwick’s power so he changed sides and attempted to replace Edward with his treacherous brother, George, Duke of Clarence. Young Richard risked everything by going into exile in Flanders with his brother. Edward gathered an army there, reinvaded England and killed Warwick at the Battle of Barnet the following year.
During the battle Richard, then eighteen years old, expertly commanded a division. His soldiers wore his personal emblem, the white boar, supposed to symbolise Richard’s personal strength and bravery. Richard plunged into the thick the fighting and got wounded, though not too seriously. This is not the behaviour of a man trying to keep his own skin intact so he can snatch the throne.
Many historians have written that in 1483 Richard provoked adverse Woodville comment by absenting himself from Edward’s court because he had allegedly become critical of his brother’s regime. This rumour surfaced in a report written by an Italian monk called Dominic Mancini. He was in England and witnessed the events leading up to Richard being offered the crown. He wrote that Richard hated the self-seeking behaviour of the Woodvilles.
Therefore, because he “could not dissimulate so well… he came very rarely to court,” Mancini wrote. This document was probably delivered that December to the French king Louis XI, provoking gossip in the French court which no doubt leaked back to England.
But Mancini offers a distorted account of why Richard went to live in the north. He was trying to imply Richard was hostile to Edward. But the truth is he went north because Edward asked him to do the job of protecting the northern border. Also, Richard was often in London at this time. He regularly resided in Stepney and at Walbrooke in the City. He appears to have attended all seven sessions at Westminster of the parliament of 1472–5.
Edward is hardly likely to have given powerful military roles to a hermit plotting a revolt in a northern exile.
This is an extract from a forthcoming book. There are already five books in the series of Hidden Cumbrian Histories. You can buy them at The New Bookshop, Main Street, Cockermouth, Bookends in Keswick and Carlisle, along with Sam Read in Grasmere.
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