This was the world in which Richard of Gloucester, born in Fotheringhay on October 2, 1452, grew up, serving his apprenticeship in arms and in government under Richard Neville earl of Warwick and, then, by the mid - or late 1460s, with his brother Edward IV at court or wherever he was posted (often to the Welsh or Scottish border). Richard’s life, until he moved to make himself King Richard III in 1483, was largely tied up with family and dynastic politics, baronial factions and aristocratic networks (and marriages), battles of Englishman against Englishman (or York versus Lancaster), and the search for Continental allies. We can think of Richard’s years of service under his brother in the later 1460s as a high-level apprenticeship, much of it under fire of one sort or another.
The record indicates that for much of Edward’s reign Richard had supported him with few doubts or misgivings, as best we can judge; he was clearly a loyal lieutenant and pretty much the king’s alter ego in the north. Though Edward’s close-knit and pushy in-laws, the Woodville family, were Richard’s main rivals in the endless quest for royal affection and the distribution of prizes, Richard seemed able to hold his own. As long as Edward was there to dictate relationships and to control how the prizes were doled out, Richard and the Wood-villes had coexisted in reasonable harmony. This was in contrast to Richard’s fierce quarrel with his own brother George duke of Clarence, a quarrel arising from their different views of what they were entitled to as their shares of the Neville inheritance (their wives being sisters and the co-heiresses to the extensive Neville holdings after their father’s death in 1471). It is not clear to what extent this quarrel between royal brothers was a factor in Clarence’s execution in 1478; his turncoat policies by themselves would have given his brother Edward sufficient cause. One reason Richard did not clash with the Wood-villes was that many of his duties and offices were on the borders of the realm, where a strong royal presence as his brother’s stand-in was of inestimable value. His own prestige and the resources at his command took a great leap forward when, in 1472, he married Anne Neville, Warwick’s (other) daughter and formerly the fiancee (or perhaps actually the widow) of Henry VI’s son, Prince Edward, who had died fighting the Yorkists (or who may have been murdered after the battle) at Tewkesbury in May 1471. Warwick, known as “the kingmaker,” had been the foremost English nobleman of the day until he eventually turned against Edward IV and was killed fighting for Henry VI’s queen, Margaret, and the Lancastrians at the battle of Barnet April 14, 1471.
These many turnabouts and reversals seem to have been less confusing to hard-nosed men and women at the time than they appear to us, and for every diehard loyalist there were many highborn pragmatists. Richard of Gloucester and his wife Anne Neville were popular figures in the north, where they held many estates and castles and where Richard used his offices and abundant energy to build a following, one whose loyalty seems out of joint with the image of Richard painted by his enemies after his death. He brought many families from the vast Neville network into his own affinity, giving him regional sway and a body of experienced followers. There is no way to judge how much of Richard’s apprenticeship was in dutiful service to his brother and how much may have been a hedge against the day when he might have to strike to protect his own interests. But we can say that when Edward IV died, his only surviving brother was an experienced, wealthy, and capable figure, one who could count on strong regional as well as partisan backing. How he would use his very appreciable resources, as well as his exalted personal position, remained an unknown and untested issue in the early spring of 1483.
World History
