Richard III - A Ruler and His Reputation

 

Bloomsbury first edition - 2015

Richard III: A Ruler and his Reputation by David Horspool

Bloomsbury, 2015, hardback, 322pp, ISBN 978-1-4279-0299-3, £20.00.                                                    Also available as an e-book ePDF: 978-1-4729-0301-3, ePub: 978-1-4729-0300-6.

David Horspool’s book is a model of balanced judgement with a commendable facility of style. One can almost refer to it as an intelligent person’s guide to the enigma that is Richard Duke of Gloucester, later King Richard III. He eschews equally the ‘Black Legend’ and the ‘Maligned Monarch’ that has bedevilled so much of our thinking. With 28 pages of Notes, 9½ pages of Bibliography and a 10 page Index, Horspool, who is the History Editor of the Times Literary Supplement, has produced an important addition to any Ricardian’s shelves.

Horspool states that his book aims at ‘neutrality’ (p.5), but I would argue that is too anaemic a word. Rather, his account is a pleasingly objective one – a rarity in the historiography of Richard III. He rightly points out that ‘part of the fascination of Richard is that he has become a myth, a model of evil or of wronged righteousness, depending on the storyteller.’ (p.6) Horspool is not afraid to highlight the wilder comments of other historians: dismissing Paul Murray Kendall’s view that Richard and Anne had known each other well in childhood as ‘fantasy’ (p.50); caustically taking Michael Hicks to task at least twice – ‘It is tendentious to argue, as one reputable historian has done, that “the man who maltreated the frail old Countess of Oxford was potentially capable of murdering the Princes in the Tower”’ (p.103), and ‘Richard as a “serial incestor” turns out to be an ingenious modern version of the bottled spider, the duke whose every move conceals a dastardly motive, with as much basis in reality.’ (p.107) Surely, Horspool is correct when he avers that too many read back the drama in Richard’s brief reign into the life that preceded it. Contemporary or near contemporary sources are also summarily dealt with: the Crowland Chronicler writes from a position of ‘settled hostility’ (p.215) with a ‘suspect light’ (p.219) and ‘personal distaste’ (p.257) on most issues; while the blessèd Sir Thomas More is simply biased.

Part of Horspool’s strength in argument is the stylistically deft touch he applies: ‘The Duke of York’s power was one with an expiry date.’ (p.27); ‘In the absence of the Duke of Somerset, the king [Henry VI] did not become his own man, he merely attracted a new puppet master.’ (p.29); ‘…but added to constant movement in the case of the York children was near constant apprehension.’ (p.40) – with occasional shafts of humour: on Richard’s finding of his future wife: ‘It seems more likely that if the subterfuge really did take place, the discovery of Anne was more a case of retrieving a concealed asset than a lost love’ (p.105); ‘Subscriptions to a Duke of Buckingham society, would not, one suspects, raise enough for a dinner, let alone an excavation.’ (p.196)

Accepting that ‘for a king who spent just over two years on the throne, [Richard] has received an extraordinary, perhaps even an unsustainable, level of attention and range of opinion’, Horspool concludes that ‘reconstructing Richard is often an exercise in admitting our ignorance…and deciding on the balance of probabilities” (p.3). Research is not helped by the fact he had a near invisible childhood and even in his ‘formative years’ as the Duke of Gloucester, ‘he is frequently missing from the record.’ (p.3) Whilst the imprint that Richard left on his time was impersonal, ‘the personality that lay behind those acts is thus ripe for speculation’ (p.4), Horspool argues that many of the contradictions in Richard’s personality can become more explicable if one sticks closely to chronology. Richard seems to have been able to adapt to change in an often changeable world, and one of this biographer’s main themes is the role that chance played in his life: ‘the sense that nine times out of ten, events would have taken a different course, is perhaps the main element in the “mystery” of Richard III. As much as disputes over facts or interpretations of motive, it is chance that makes his life so inexhaustibly interesting.’ (p.16)

In particular, (and a hot potato within present Ricardian debate), this is argued in Horspool’s approach to Richard’s relationship with the North. He suggests that it was a pragmatic rather than an emotional connection. That Richard became a magnate whose power base was in the north is incontrovertible. That he came to rely on that affinity after he seized the throne is also true. He spent a lot of time in the north, ‘but as a boy and as a young man it was not his choice to go…as a king he spent about 60 per cent of his time south of Nottingham…the north remained important, but not to an overwhelming degree…he was not a “northern king” except by force of circumstance.’ (p.50) Horspool points out that Richard could as easily have been a “Welsh king” if he had become Edward’s long term representative in Wales. After Warwick’s/Clarence’s first rebellion, Edward IV’s rewards to Richard included establishing a genuine sphere of influence for his brother in Wales (Chief Justice of North Wales and in February 1470, Chief Justice of South Wales).” As with so much in Richard’s career, a series of unpredictable incidents had given him a role – he might have been known for a special affinity with Wales not the North. ‘Neither region was, in truth, any more “natural” a base for him than anywhere else.’ (p.66) Richard’s guiding principle was to extend his influence, mostly in the north, but elsewhere as well. Much of his activity may have been in response to changing circumstances (deaths of rivals, unpredictability of war), but Horspool uses the historian Seeley’s well-known comment on the British Empire being acquired ‘in a fit of absence of mind’ to contrast it with Richard’s ‘sustained bout of presence of mind’ in assembling his ‘empire’.

Horspool also emphasises Richard’s ruthlessness, pointing to the undoubted influence of Warwick: ‘Richard’s formative years were spent in the orbit of a supreme practiser [sic] of late-medieval realpolitik.’ (p.47). He  refers to an example in March 1471, when the eighteen year-old argued, unsuccessfully, that Martin de la Mere (who had clashed with Edward IV at York) should be killed. Horspool’s Richard is a figure who achieves his goal by a mixture of luck and ruthlessness. Richard’s ‘first public act as an adult prepared him for a professional life of violence and the use of law as an instrument of implacable, though sometimes very personal, royal will.’ (p.60) In January 1469, he had presided over a commission of oyer and terminer at Salisbury, which had led to Thomas Hungerford and Henry Courtenay being hanged, drawn and quartered. ‘[Richard] was born into, and died in, a time of violence, uncertainty and strife.’ (p.24)

Richard had experienced at first hand the consequences of allowing a deposed king to live and the lessons of 1471 were clear. Horspool clears him of involvement in Prince Edward’s death and argues that it is surely beyond doubt that it was Edward who ordered Henry’s demise: ‘…not only is there no proof of (Richard’s) guilt: it is untenable that he could have committed the crime unless his brother the king meant him to.’ (p.92) So, did Richard order his nephews’ deaths? ‘The short answer is that we don’t know. All the ingenious theorizing and posthumous mudslinging that have made the fate of the “Princes in the Tower” a historical cause célèbre depend on the lack of concrete evidence.’ (p.180) However, Ricardians may well take issue with Horspool’s summary: ‘The conclusion seems difficult to avoid, that Richard didn’t show that the princes were alive, because they weren’t…the balance of probabilities is very firmly for the princes’ premature death… (p.182) The fate of Edward V and Richard of York mattered to contemporaries very much, and if we want to understand Richard and his time, it should therefore matter to us (p.165)…Richard’s short reign was dominated by a struggle to prove his legitimacy. If it was a crisis of legitimacy that eventually brought his downfall, its origins surely lie in the alleged murder of Edward V aged twelve, and his brother Richard of York, aged nine.’ (p.186)

Although Horspool reiterates the contemporary view that a strong king made for a strong country (‘the pre-condition for over-mighty subjects is an “under-mighty ruler”’), he does charge Richard with one grave crime:  the killing without trial of Lord Hastings – ‘any competent prosecutor could secure a conviction against Richard for murder’, (p.158). By then, he had made too many enemies to turn back – ‘the throne was the only seat in the country that could offer him some protection’. (p.160)

Horspool’s Richard is a man with an acute sense of honour and personal dignity but not the ‘light touch that served subtler rulers’, such as Edward IV and Louis XI. ‘By a combination of bad luck, bad timing and bad judgement, Richard eventually faced a formidable coalition of foreign powers gathered against him. Although domestic opposition would remain important, it was Richard’s unsuccessful handling of foreign policy – his inability to inhabit the role of European as well as English monarch effectively – that turned out to be the most serious failure in his short reign’. (p.191) Other mistakes included the appointment of his nephew, the Earl of Lincoln, to the presidency of the Council of the North in July 1484, rather than his old rival, the Earl of Northumberland. Richard ‘did have a choice to make, and he probably made the wrong one’ (p.223) Moreover, in the aftermath of the so-called Buckingham Rebellion, there was ‘if not a vacuum in local government, then a significant void.’(p.202); the plantation of outsiders was bound to cause resentment. All Richard’s actions can be seen through the prism of wanting to attract support and his time simply ran out.

‘It was not misrule that threatened Richard. It was a challenge to his right to rule, and a credible challenger to make such a claim.’ (p.230) If Richard could defeat Henry Tudor in battle (Towton and Tewkesbury must surely have come to his mind), then time and security would be gained. However, (at Bosworth) ‘it may be a tactical miscalculation rather than a failure of moral leadership that really let Richard down.’ (pp.246-7) – the marsh that hemmed Northumberland in from attacking Oxford’s flank as the latter moved against the king’s right wing.

Horspool’s Richard between 1483-1485 is a tragic figure: on Edward IV’s death, Richard might ‘have been envisaged as the ideal figure to steer the young king through his early years…being a powerful, experienced and trustworthy figure on the model of William Marshal’. (p.143) Why did he risk everything for a tilt at the crown? Horspool carefully puts forward an understandable case for the defence: Richard’s prestigious appointments could be taken away by new king or his advisers. His Neville properties were not wholly secure – George Neville died as Richard entered London, which left the latter with no legitimate heritable claim to a swathe of his northern estates. His finances were shaky: the campaign against Scotland and the acquiring and retaining of estates had drained his resources. Richard simply realised that he had to remove Woodville influence or his own power, sooner or later, would be eclipsed. When that proved impossible as Protector, he decided to aim higher.

Horspool’s verdict on Richard’s rule is sympathetic but damning for all that. ‘It had taken Henry VI around twenty years of incompetence and eventually incapability to lose the support of a significant proportion of the nobility…Richard did it in just two years…not because he was incompetent, nor because his rule was so tyrannical as to be intolerable. It was because he never established his legitimacy to the satisfaction of enough of his subjects, particularly the most powerful…[his] failure meant that he had no chance to redeem his kingship…his record of failure cannot be overturned.’ (p.266)… ‘In the end, of the two mottoes associated with Richard, it was not “Loyauté me lie” that proved to be his undoing. It was “Tant le desirée” (I have longed for it – for glory, for the rewards of chivalry – so much) that led him to death.’ (p.249)… ‘Richard was ambitious, ruthless and occasionally impulsive. He was also a pious man of destiny, who retained a faith in the code of chivalry. He may at least…have convinced himself of the rightness of his cause…Richard III believed in his own publicity. Very likely he also died believing in it.’ (p.250)