Crimes alleged by Shakespeare

by Matthew Lewis

William Shakespeare’s play The Tragedy of Richard the Third is a masterpiece in the study of an anti-hero, though it differs from his other plays by giving the main character no development whatsoever. There is a strong possibility that the play was a comment on contemporary politics in the late Elizabethan age disguised as a history play. Robert Cecil, one of Elizabeth I’s closest advisors had kyphosis, the forward curvature of the spine Shakespeare gives his villain. Shakespeare was not trying to write history as we would understand it, and his Richard III has become an accidental villain, imprinted on the popular consciousness. So, what do we really know about the murderous crimes Shakespeare accuses Richard of?

The Duke of Somerset (1406-1455)

‘Sword, hold thy temper, heart be wrathful still:
Priests pray for enemies, but princes kill.’
Henry VI, Part II, Act V, Scene II

Richard appears in Henry VI, Part II and takes part in the First Battle of St Albans on 22nd May 1455. He fights alongside his father and brothers and, towards the end of the battle, has an on-stage duel with Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset. Richard kills Somerset before referring to a contemporary story that Somerset had heard a fortune teller warn he would die beneath the castle. Having always believed it meant Windsor Castle, Somerset had avoided that place, but he was killed beneath the sign of The Castle Inn in St Albans.

Somerset did indeed die at the First Battle of St Albans, which was essentially a fight between the Dukes of York and Somerset for control of the government of the weak Henry VI. The subplot to the battle was the feud between the Neville and Percy families that saw Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland also killed. There is no record of who killed Somerset, and the evidence suggests he was cornered and killed by a group. One thing is certain: Richard did not do it. Richard was born on 2nd October 1452, making him two and a half years old at the time of the First Battle of St Albans. It is utterly impossible that he was there or that he killed Somerset. The scene is about Shakespeare paving the way for the villain to come.

Edward, Prince of Wales (1453-1471)

‘Sprawl’st thou? take that, to end thy agony.’
Henry VI, Part III, Act V, Scene V

In Henry VI, Part III, Richard, now Duke of Gloucester and named Gloucester in the play, remains an active character. At the Battle of Tewkesbury on 4th May 1471, the Yorkists are victorious against a Lancastrian army, led by Henry VI’s only son and heir, Edward, Prince of Wales. The Prince is captured and stabbed to death in front of his mother. King Edward IV delivers the first blow, Richard the second, with the words above, and their other brother George, Duke of Clarence the third. On seeing her son killed, Queen Margaret cries ‘O, kill me too!’, to which Richard replies ‘Marry, and shall.’, offering to kill her too, only for King Edward to stop him.

Richard was at the Battle of Tewkesbury, aged eighteen. It was his second taste of battle after Barnet on 14th April 1471. He led the right flank of his brother’s army and was engaged in fighting Edmund Beaufort, 4th Duke of Somerset, the son of the Duke killed at St Albans. Prince Edward was killed at Tewkesbury, aged just seventeen. Hollinshed’s Chronicle, first published in 1577 and used as a source by Shakespeare, claims Richard struck the first blow. Shakespeare alters this to the second for some reason. Polydore Virgil wrote earlier in the century that George, Richard, and Lord Hastings captured and killed the Prince. The Arrivall, a Yorkist source written at the time of the battle but heavily partisan, claims Prince Edward was ‘slain in the field’.

Warksworth, a London merchant who kept a chronicle during this period, wrote that Prince Edward was captured by George, who ignores the young man’s cries for mercy and has him executed on a makeshift block. The Crowland Chronicle, compiled in 1486, asserted that ‘…there were slain on the Queen’s side, either in the field of after the battle, by the avenging hands of certain persons, Prince Edward, the only son of King Henry’, before listing the other casualties. The claim that George may have been directly involved is interesting because George and the prince were brothers-in-law. The initial plan of Warwick’s rebellion had been to put George on the throne, but this has been amended to gain Lancastrian and French support. Henry VI was reinstated, but George was made heir to the throne if Prince Edward should die without a son. George, then, perhaps had most reason to seek out Prince Edward on the field and kill him if he wasn’t just a sad casualty of a battlefield.

King Henry VI (1421-1471)

‘If any spark of life be yet remaining,
Down, down to hell: and say I sent thee thither:’
Henry VI, Part III, Act V, Scene VI

King Henry VI cuts a sorry figure in late medieval England. On the throne from the age of nine months, he grows into a man disinterested in the wars in France or the increasingly factional politics at his court. Deposed in 1461 by Edward IV, he is restored briefly by Warwick in 1470, only to be removed again in 1471 by Edward’s return. After the Battle of Tewkesbury, the news was released on the day the victorious Yorkists returned to London that the forty-nine-year-old king had died. The Arrivall, the partisan Yorkist record, states that Henry died of ‘pure displeasure and melancholy’ at the news of the death of his son and the complete loss of his cause. This claim is often dismissed as propaganda, but that is to ignore Henry’s poor health and lengthy imprisonment. However, it does seem more likely he was put to death.

Richard has long been accused of this murder, even of striking the blow himself. Shakespeare shows him relishing the violent act. In the early sixteenth century, Robert Fabyan noted that ‘the most common fame went, that he was struck with a dagger in the hands of the Duke of Gloucester.’ Polydore Virgil wrote around the same time that ‘the continual report is, that Richard Duke of Gloucester killed him with a sword’. It is worth noting that both men are clear that they can only report rumours on the matter: ‘the most common fame’ and ‘the continual report’.

The evidence for Richard’s involvement is so thin that it rests of one single sentence in Warkworth’s account. He recorded that King Henry died between 11 o’clock and midnight on 21st May 1471, ‘being then in the Tower the Duke of Gloucester, brother to King Edward, and many other’. It is  from this vague note that Richard has been found guilty of personally stabbing King Henry VI. It is possible that Richard was involved in Henry’s death. As Constable of England, he was responsible for delivering the king’s justice, and if Edward wanted Henry done away with, he would have to find someone he trusted to ensure it was done. Richard would fit that bill, but one thing is certain. Henry VI died on the direct orders of Edward IV, so if Richard was involved in arranging, or even completing, the deed, it was under instruction from the King. Even so, there remains no objective evidence that Richard was involved at all.

George, Duke of Clarence (1449-1478)

‘Simple, plain Clarence! I do love thee so,
That I will shortly send thy soul to heaven,’
Richard III, Act I, Scene I

At the beginning of Shakespeare’s Richard III, Richard (still called Gloucester) meets his older brother George, who has been arrested by their brother King Edward IV on a charge of treason. It centres around a prophesy that ‘after E., G. shall reign’. The G is taken to mean George when, as the audience will soon realise, they miss the obvious connection to Richard as Gloucester. Richard promises to try to help his brother, but after he is gone, he explains that he plans instead to ensure Clarence’s death. He lies to Edward to make sure that the king delivers a death sentence. Shakespeare’s villain is clearing his path to the throne.

George, Duke of Clarence is a fascinating person. For the first decade of Edward IV’s reign, he was the heir to the throne. After the birth of Edward IV’s first son and namesake in 1471, he lost that position. Even before then, in the late 1460s, George was seduced into rebellion alongside his father-in-law, the Earl of Warwick. The original plan was to replace Edward with George, but as we have seen, that was altered to allow for a Lancastrian return. George defected back to his brother’s side, only to discover that Edward now had a son, so his position was still lost. George perhaps never got over losing something he was not meant to hold for long. In 1477, he reacted violently to his wife’s death, lurched towards treason, and found the forgiveness of his brother, the King, all spent. George was arrested, tried in parliament by Edward IV himself, and sentenced to death. He was executed privately on 18th February 1478. Though a rumour has persisted that he was drowned in a vat of malmsey wine, no record of the method of his execution survives.

The Crowland Chronicle reflected that Edward ordered the execution reluctantly and regretted it immediately. Dominic Mancini, writing in 1483, wrote that he had heard rumours Richard was intensely displeased some said he ‘was so overcome with grief for his brother…that he was heard to say he would one day avenge his brother’s death’. Whether this is true or not is hard to say since Mancini’s sources were unreliable, but it is certain that the death of George, Duke of Clarence had nothing at all to do with Richard, Duke of Gloucester.

Executions of Rivers, Grey, and other Woodville supporters

‘Dispatch; the limit of your lives is out.’
Richard III, Act II, Scene III

These words are spoken by Ratcliffe, one of Richard’s associates, both in real life and in Shakespeare’s play. He is delivering the sentence of death to Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers, the Queen’s brother and uncle to the Princes in the Tower. With Rivers is her son by a previous marriage, Sir Richard Grey. The condemned men are sent to their deaths at Pontefract Castle in northern England. These deaths form another part of Gloucester’s efforts to clear his way to the throne in the play.

The historical position was that in April 1483, Rivers and his men were escorting the young Edward V from Ludlow to London after his father’s death. Rivers met with Richard on his arrival at Northampton, though the king had moved further ahead to Stony Stratford. Sir Richard Grey’s part in the events that unfurled is unclear. He was not usually part of Prince Edward’s household in Ludlow but may have moved there recently or else come out of London to meet them. The latter seems likely and may have added to Richard’s suspicion of Woodville manoeuvring. It appears that Lord Hastings had warned Richard the Woodville family of the Queen were plotting a coup and threatening him. If Richard was already on edge, something tipped him into believing the plot was true. Rivers, Grey, and Vaughan were arrested and sent north to different castles, although not everyone arrested would be tried or executed. Historian Annette Carson has suggested that the failure to execute them immediately might suggest Richard meant to use them as leverage to stop whatever the Queen might have been planning.

As events radically altered course in London in late June, they were brought together at Pontefract. John Rous records that the Earl of Northumberland acted as their judge, strongly suggesting that they had a trial, which later sources claim was denied to them. They were sentenced to death and executed for treason. This was undoubtedly done on Richard’s orders, though whether it qualifies as murder depends upon examining the evidence for their guilt and a subjective judgement of Richard’s motives by late June 1483.

William, Lord Hastings (1431-1483)

‘Tellest thou me of ‘ifs’? Thou art a traitor:
Off with his head! Now, by Saint Paul I swear,
I will not dine until I see the same.’
Richard III, Act II, Scene IV

During a scene at the Tower, Shakespeare has Richard rail against treason and plotters. He bears a withered arm that he claims is the result of the queen’s witchcraft, picking up on Thomas More’s version of the event. He then asks Hastings what should be done about those who plot his death. Hastings answers that they deserve death, at which Richard springs his trap. He accuses Hastings of treason and orders his immediate execution, adding that he will not eat until he has seen it done.

The events in this part of the play are based on a meeting at the Tower of London on 13th June 1483. Lord Hastings, the Archbishop of York, and the Bishop of Ely were accused of treasonous plotting during the meeting. Historian Mike Ingram has noted that these three men were still in receipt of a pension from the French crown and that France was attacking the English south coast., so it is possible they were accused of collusion with the French. The Archbishop and Bishop were arrested but protected from a sentence of death by their holy orders. Hastings was taken outside and executed.

It is usually claimed that this was an illegal murder because Hastings was denied a trial. Historians Annette Carson, Anne Sutton and others have made the case that this is unsustainable. Richard was Constable of England, a post he had held since 1469. This office gave him the power to convene an ad hoc Constable’s Court, co-opt a suitable tribunal and try treason cases based on plain evidence of the crime. This Court could pass sentence with no right of appeal, and this is what took place on 13th June 1483. It may seem like a draconian course of action now, but it was legal, and it was the very reason the powers had been created. Further, chronicles recorded that evidence was offered in London to explain the execution and accepted by all those that saw it. They believed Hastings was a traitor guilty of treason.

Edward V and Richard, Duke of York

‘Come to me, Tyrrel, soon at after supper,
And thou shalt tell the process of their death.’
Richard III, Act IV, Scene III

Despite the widespread belief in Shakespeare’s account of their murders in 1483, there has hitherto been no credible evidence that the so-called ‘Princes in the Tower’ were killed (by anyone, including Richard III). However, their ruthless murder is a high point in Shakespeare’s portrayal of he villainous Richard, who orders Sir James Tyrell to see to it that the deposed Edward V and his younger brother Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York are put to death and buried secretly. Tyrell returns to tell the king that the deed is done. Even Shakespeare shied away from showing the murders on stage.

Although many believe Richard III is guilty of the murders of his two nephews, there is no evidence that any murders took place at all. The boys were seen in the grounds of the Tower of London until late summer 1483. After that, no one records seeing them again. Their disappearance has been hastily transformed into murder on the basis that Richard could not tolerate the potential threat to his throne the boys might represent. This explanation ignores Richard’s silence on the matter of their fate. If he killed them to end any danger they might pose, he needed everyone to know they were dead and could not be used against him. By remaining silent, he failed to remove the threat. This was something Henry VII would soon discover when a new King Edward was crowned in Dublin and amassed an army to give battle for his crown at Stoke Field; and later, in the 1490s, another young challenger would surface to claim the identity of the young Prince, Richard of York, garnering strong support. See here for new evidence recently published concerning the ‘Princes in the Tower’.

It is impossible to state that Richard did not order the murders of his two nephews. It is equally impossible to say that he did. In this writer’s opinion, the remains currently enclosed within an urn in Westminster Abbey are unlikely to be those of the Princes. In the absence of new evidence either way, it remains a mystery and a case of disappearance rather than murder.

Queen Anne (1456-1485)

‘Rumour it abroad
That Anne, my wife, is sick and like to die:
I will take order for her keeping close.’
Richard III, Act IV, Scene II

Shakespeare’s Richard implies, though, unlike his other crimes, does not explicitly confess, that he means to murder his wife Queen Anne Neville to allow him to marry his own niece, Elizabeth of York, the eldest daughter of his brother Edward IV. It is another callous act by a man who has ordered the deaths of his young nephews to now allude to the murder of his own wife so that he can take a new one.

Anne Neville was married to Richard in 1472. The daughter of Warwick the Kingmaker, she brought the northern Neville family powerbase to Richard. Their marriage was extremely successful and seems to have been a happy one. There is no record of Richard keeping a mistress or Anne being unhappy, and politically, they were very effective. It is impossible to comment on whether they loved each other without speculation, but the Crowland Chronicle states that when their son died in 1484, they comforted each other in their grief. Anne died on 16th March 1485, probably from tuberculosis, and there is no evidence to suggest that Richard caused her death. One account states that he shunned her bed when she became ill as if that were an act of cruelty, but tuberculosis is highly contagious, and Anne would have been effectively in quarantine once it became clear how poorly she was.

The story that Richard planned to marry his niece Elizabeth was current in 1485, and Richard was forced to deny it publicly. He was trying to arrange a marriage to Joanna of Portugal, a princess with Lancastrian blood. As part of the negotiations, a match was also planned between Elizabeth of York and Manuel, Duke of Beja (later King Manuel I of Portugal), It seems likely that Richard’s enemies twisted this plan to accuse him of seeking to marry his own niece. The story points to opposition to Richard by early 1485, and his public denial was embarrassing, but he did deny it.

Conclusion

Each of the deaths above is presented by Shakespeare as a murder committed by Richard in a relentless and ruthless bid to position himself to take the throne. Richard was definitely not involved in the deaths of Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset, or George, Duke of Clarence. The death of Edward, Prince of Wales was most likely during a battle, or if not, George was considered by contemporaries the most likely killer. Claims that Richard was involved in the death of Henry VI fail in the face of sources that indicate he had left London by 24th May, the date it was recorded. If it resulted from a deliberate act, this would have been the responsibility of King Edward IV.

History has accused Richard of the murders without trial of opponents including Rivers, Grey, and Hastings. However, it can be demonstrated that all these men had a trial, and it is likely that their objections to Richard’s protectorate led them to engage in treasonous conspiracies, for which the penalty was death.

Shakespeare’s tale of Richard ordering the deaths of the ‘Princes in the Tower’ has endured longer than any of his alleged crimes, despite the absence of any evidence that such deaths ever occurred. As indicated above, this is now being reassessed in the light of new evidence which can be examined here.

The accusation that he murdered his wife may be the one that would hurt Richard the most. But there is no evidence that he did anything to harm her and circumstantial support for the idea that their marriage was happy and successful.

Shakespeare’s Richard III was designed as a piece of theatre. It was entertainment, historical fiction, perhaps even a scathing political commentary that has lost its meaning over the intervening centuries. If he knew that people had come to rely on his telling as an accurate account of the events of Richard’s life, the Bard might well have been horrified, if also a little pleased.