Free The Life and Times of Richard III by Anthony Cheetham

Duke would be given due honour and the royal authority greater security.... If the government were committed to one man he might easily usurp the sovereignty.’ Mancini also reminds us of the Woodvilles’ motives when he adds that ‘all who favoured the Queen’s family voted for this proposal, as they were afraid that if Richard took the crown, or even governed alone, they who bore the blame of Clarence’s death would suffer death or at least be ejected from their high estate’.
    To give legal and military sanction to their coup the Woodvilles further proposed to bring the young King to Westminster for his coronation as soon as possible with as many armed men as Earl Rivers could summon on the road from Ludlow. Under the dire precedent of Henry VI’s reign, Edward’s minority would end with his crowning and the boy would be free to choose his own advisers. But the thought of Edward arriving with a Woodville army at his back alarmed even the Queen’s supporters. The majority bowed to Lord Hastings’s threat to retire like Warwick to Calais, of which he was Governor. The size of Edward’s escort was fixed at two thousand men.
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    St George’s Chapel, Windsor
    The magnificent Perpendicular Chapel dedicated to St George in Windsor Castle was begun by Edward IV, and work progressed constantly up to Richard III’s death. On Edward’s death in April 1483, his body was taken first to Westminster Abbey for the funeral service. It was then buried at Windsor. Richard erected a two-storeyed chantry chapel to his brother in the north choir aisle. The chapel remains very much a monument to Edward, as it is full of his personal badges on the stonework and carved in wood.
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    Richard was kept fully informed of these developments by couriers from Lord Hastings, who urged the Protector to put himself at the head of an army and race to London before Rivers arrived from Ludlow. But Richard was unwilling to risk a head-on collision with the Woodvilles. For the moment he contented himself with a polite but firm letter to the Council, stressing his devotion to his nephews and warning them not to enact anything contrary to his brother’s will.
    He then proceeded to York, according to the Croyland Chronicler, ‘with a becoming retinue, each person being arrayed in mourning’. Here, ‘he performed a solemn funeral service for the King, the same being accompanied with plenteous tears. Constraining all the nobility of these parts to take the oath of fealty to the late King’s son, he himself was the first to take the oath.’ Richard’s letter made a favourable impression in London, and won over a number of waverers to his cause. Nevertheless the Council fixed the coronation date for 4 May, and instructed Rivers to make sure that the King arrived not later than 1 May. Overriding all objections with calculated arrogance, the Marquess of Dorset is said to have told Lord Hastings and his supporters, ‘We are so important that even without the King’s uncle we can make and enforce these decisions.’
    Shortly after Edward IV had been laid to rest in St George’s Chapel at Windsor on 20 April, Richard left York for Northampton with a retinue of about six hundred men. At Northampton he was to join Rivers and the King for the final stage of their progress to London. Clearly neither party expected violence from the other, since Richard arrived with a retinue he knew to be outnumbered, and Rivers was under no compulsion to consent to the meeting in the first place. When Richard arrived on 29 April, as arranged, he learned that the King’s escort had already passed through the town and were now quartered twelve miles closer to London at Stony Stratford. Shortly before supper Earl Rivers rode back to Northampton with a small following and presented Edward’s greetings to his uncle. He explained the King’s removal to Stony Stratford by pointing out that Northampton was too small for both their retinues. Richard politely invited the