FAQs
Richard III & Elizabeth of York
Was there a romance between Richard III and his niece?
Early 1485 was a very dark time in Richard’s life. After losing his son, his wife Queen Anne was terminally ill and they were urged to abstain from intimate contact. He was still only 32 and it would be his duty as a widower to remarry and produce heirs. A king was expected to seal an advantageous international alliance, and suitable candidates existed in the royal houses of Austria, Portugal and Spain. As is the way with diplomacy, any official approach on such a delicate matter would be preceded by discreet testing of the waters. It has been suggested that Richard’s famous portrait resplendent in cloth-of-gold may have been copied from a painting made at this time as an aid to marriage negotiations.
Few records have survived the centuries, but official embassies to Portugal on this subject are documented the first having been appointed by Richard, on the advice of his council, on 22nd March 1485 (Anne breathed her last on the 16th of that month). The proposed Portuguese bride was King John II’s sister, the Holy Princess Joana, who, reportedly, was prepared to look favourably on Richard after refusing other suitors. In fact, the Portuguese offer was a double royal marriage, with their young Duke of Beja being proposed as husband for Richard’s 19-year-old niece, Elizabeth of York.1
From these circumstances there arose an extraordinary rumour that Richard III planned to marry his niece. We can look for its source in the campaign to disparage Richard which had already been set in motion on the part of the malcontent Henry Tudor who was being sponsored by France to challenge England’s throne. On 30th March Richard hastened to make a public denial in the presence of London’s leading citizens. Unfortunately this was too early for Richard to counter the gossip by revealing his plans to marry a European princess. Elizabeth, however, certainly knew because her own future husband was under discussion.
But the rumour, with its frisson of forbidden sex, caught men’s imaginations; and it has now become a recurring theme in romantic fiction. This does not make it true.
Of those historians who have troubled to inform themselves of Richard III’s actual marriage plans, few have given house-room to the idea of a sexual liaison with his niece. Such a scandalous match between uncle and bastard niece would have amounted to political suicide. Richard would have had to legitimise Elizabeth, which would automatically legitimise her brothers, the so called ‘Princes in the Tower’ and thus invalidate the very grounds upon which Richard accepted the crown. But the waters were muddied in the 17th century by a certain George Buck: no historian, but a plagiarizer of those who were. He introduced the idea that it was Elizabeth who desired marriage with Richard. Buck’s book (regrettably still quoted today) was an inferior cut-down version of a stolen manuscript written by Sir George Buc, a distant relative and eminent scholar, who had seen a letter penned by Elizabeth during Queen Anne’s last illness. Sir George Buc’s authentic book has now been published in a new edition by Dr Arthur Kincaid, who maintains that Sir George’s original is far less certain about what the letter says than his plagiarizer Mr Buck made out.2 There is reason to believe the letter may have referred to the proposed Portuguese marriages.
Since the letter has not survived, it does not constitute evidence either way whereas the records of the Portuguese Council of State do exist, and express eagerness to progress the two marriages for Richard III and Elizabeth of York, lest King Richard might opt instead for marriage with the Spanish Infanta Isabella.3
References
1. Domingos Mauricio Gomes dos Santos, O Mosteiro de Jesus de Aveiro, Lisbon, 1963, pp 92ff
2. Sir George Buc, The History of King Richard the Third (1619), ed Kincaid (London, 2023) p. 333
3. A J Salgado, Alvaro Lopes de Chaves, Livro de Apontamentos (1438-1489), Codice 443 da Coleccao Pombalina da B.N.L. Lisboa 1983, p. 255.