Richard’s career before his accession, his short reign, and the creation of his subsequent reputation—most of this being very nasty, with Shakespeare’s great melodrama Richard III as the major single contributor to the torrent of vilification—can be understood only in the context of an English history that springs directly from the deposition of Richard II in 1399 by his first cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, who became king as Henry IV (r. 1399-1413), and the subsequent problems that beset the realm and the person of the monarch. The deposition of 1399 was the first wrench in the ordered line of succession to the throne for several centuries, and Henry IV, who may have thought he could bring unity and harmony to a deeply troubled and divided realm, had to weather both aristocratic rebellion and general (and parliamentary) disaffection during his relatively short reign (in addition to a major uprising in Wales). His son and heir, Henry V (r. 1413-22), was a glamorous warrior-king who had the good fortune to win a great victory in France (at Agincourt in 1415), to conquer huge sections of France as he reopened the Hundred Years’ War, and then to die early—still a great hero—before the domestic problems and those of his new empire had come home to roost. Henry V married Katherine of Valois, daughter of Charles VI of France, in 1420. Henry’s death in 1422 brought his infant son Henry VI to the thrones of both England and France, the “dual monarchy,” as it had been created on paper (though hardly in reality) by the Treaty of Troyes in 1421.
At the death of Henry V, the Lancastrian dynasty, regardless of how it had come to the throne, seemed to be firmly ensconced. However, an incompetent king, a losing effort in France, and a corrupt and expensive court cut into its prestige and popularity. Opinion was divided as to whether this was simple political misfortune or a form of divine vengeance, now visited upon the realm as punishment for the coup of 1399. But regardless of how the many and various woes were interpreted and what implications about the dynasty and monarchy were drawn, there was little disputing that as the young Henry VI came of age in the late 1430s he gave every indication of being a serious failure as a ruler. He displayed little interest in, and perhaps was incapable of, waging war with vigor and resolve. Rather than assuming the martial and chivalric mantle expected of a medieval king, and as the son of a war hero of mythic proportions, he soon proved to be a feeble successor to his charismatic father. Nor was Henry VI much inclined, in the domestic sphere, to rule his realm with a firm hand, or to keep his nobles in order, or to maintain domestic tranquility and promote economic prosperity, even on the dubious assumption that he could have done so had he wished. From early on, he proved to be unduly under the influence of a few favorites from among the circles of aristocratic courtiers. His own interests focused largely on pursuing a pious lifestyle, on making protracted visits to monasteries and pilgrim shrines, and on the foundation of such worthy if costly institutions as Eton College and King’s College at Cambridge. Thus the seeds of discord, sown by the usurpation (sometimes labeled a revolution) of 1399, now seemed likely to bear bitter fruit, a long generation after the fact.
By the 1450s, as in 1399, dissatisfaction was coming to a head. In 1399, the man who emerged to speak for the realm against a king who was moving toward tyranny, and then to take the crown for himself, was Henry Boling-broke, Richard II’s first cousin. In the 1450s, the growing opposition to a general record of incompetence and failure came from another branch of the royal genealogical tree.
When Richard was born in 1452—the youngest of the eight children of his parents who survived infancy—his father, Richard, third duke of York, had already emerged as what we might call leader of the opposition. York came to this role armed with a powerful and legitimist claim to the throne, atop honorable credentials earned in the war in France. In addition, his clout was greatly enhanced by his personal position as perhaps the richest nobleman in the land and, through marriage and kinship, a key link with some of the great aristocratic networks that controlled much territory and that could summon up hosts of both officials and soldiers (especially thanks to his ties with the Nevilles and their vast northern affinity). By the 1450s Richard of York was seen by many as representing a return to the true line of royal descent, broken in 1399 to England’s sorrow and suffering, and as offering—by birth and also in terms of experience and ability—a distinct improvement on Henry VI’s feeble grasp of the royal scepter.
Richard duke of York was the father of Edward IV and, then, of Richard III; he would also be the grandfather of Henry Vll’s queen (Edward IV’s daughter Elizabeth) and therefore the great-grandfather of Henry VIII. His own claim to the throne, like that of Henry VI, was that they were both direct de-scendents of Edward III (r. 1327-77). But York’s claim came via Edward Ill’s second son, rather than by way of his third, as was the case with Henry VI (and his father and grandfather before him). Neither the fact that the claim of the House of York to the throne was transmitted from Edward III to Richard of York through two women, nor that York’s father, the earl of Cambridge, had been tried and executed for treason in 1415 (in what may have been a trumped-up case), was a serious problem, at least not for the many who thought York held the promise of a brighter day for the realm.
Though Henry VI did have a son (Edward prince of Wales, born in 1453 while his hapless father was in the throes of some sort of nervous breakdown), the mere presence of a Lancastrian heir to the throne into the next generation was not, or was no longer, sufficient by itself to quiet voices of dissent or to end speculation about the future. The hostility of baronial factions, exacerbated by Henry VI’s inability to impose himself upon the realm and then by a series of nervous and physical breakdowns, led to the outbreak of open hostilities between the aristocratic factions. What we dramatically refer to as the Wars of the Roses (the term actually not being used until some centuries later) began in earnest on May 22, 1455, with the First Battle of Saint Albans, a victory for the Yorkists. This was followed in September 1459 by a lesser skirmish at Bloore Heath, in Cheshire, and then on July 10, 1460, by a major confrontation of the baronial factions (summarized as those of York and those of Lancaster—the white rose and the red, respectively) and their forces at Northampton.
These battles were in effect battles of private armies led by aristocratic warlords, rather than a case of the king’s army (or a national army, had there been such a thing) taking the field against rebellious forces. Thus Yorkist victories tilted the balance of power at court and in the royal council. This turn of fortune’s wheel argued for some sort of political settlement that would reflect the new reality in terms of the distribution, or redistribution, of power and office. The arrangement that was hammered out was that Richard of York would succeed Henry VI when the king died, despite the presence of Henry’s son, Edward prince of Wales. Given that Henry VI was not yet 40, there was an element of demographic as well as political fantasy in this peculiar arrangement. It hardly seems likely that such a deal would ever have been implemented, unacceptable as it must have been to Henry VI’s partisans, including his queen, Margaret of Anjou. The mere fact that this odd compromise was even contemplated indicates how fractured loyalties had become, how fragile the Lancastrian grip on the throne was, and how the demand for the rule of law was sweeping the realm. The crown itself seems to have gone from being a fixed star in the firmament to being just another bargaining chip in the struggle for power, albeit the ultimate as well as the most coveted bargaining chip of all.
The situation in the autumn of 1460, which we can think of as a state of uneasy and armed stalemate, seemed to change drastically when Richard of York was killed in a skirmish or small-scale battle at Wakefield in Yorkshire (December 30, 1460). However, this proved not to be the case. There was no decisive follow-up by the Lancastrians to give them the upper hand after the death of their leading enemy (along with one of York’s sons and his brother-in-law). In fact, York’s eldest son Edward (who was Richard of Gloucester’s eldest brother) was able to claim the throne as Edward IV as early as March 4, 1461—a mere three months after his father’s death. The deposition of Henry VI and the accession of Edward IV came on the heels of impressive Yorkist victories over Lancastrian forces at Mortimer’s Cross on February 2, 1461; at Saint Albans once more, on February 17, 1461; and then in a really bloody and crushing battle at Towton in Yorkshire on March 29, 1461 (fought in a snowstorm on Palm Sunday, and with little quarter or mercy held out to the losers on the field or to those taken in flight). Edward IV would have to fight more battles over the years, deal with some sustained opposition, and even overcome a mini-coup or a short-termed deposition that drove him into exile and restored Henry VI for a short while in 1470-71 (termed “the readeption” of Henry VI). But after the uncertainty and chaos of the 1450s and early 1460s he seemed a strong hand, building a considerable amount of personal and dynastic loyalty and being able to hang on to a crown he had claimed after his father’s death through a combination of royal descent and victory on the field of battle. Though domestic enemies had to be watched and on occasion overcome in arms or by execution, Edward IV was a powerful and attractive figure. He was even able to turn some of his attention to reclaiming what he saw as England’s rightful role in Continental affairs: an alliance with Burgundy, and perhaps with Brittany, against France, better terms for English trade and merchants in the Baltic and elsewhere, and more. Maybe the Wars of the Roses really were over; the House of York seemed firmly positioned on the throne, with a royal heir (Edward V) born in 1470.
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