Was Richard III a villain or a good king who was wrongly accused by kings and authors who came after him?

Answer 1

It is not clear that he was a particularly bad king by the standards of the late fifteenth century - a grim period when said standards were not especially high - but he certainly wasn't a very successful one. Following the death of his brother, Edward IV, in April 1483, Richard "discovered" a technical flaw in Edward's marriage, which rendered the children illegitimate. On the strength of this, he assumed the throne as Richard III. Edward's two sons, the deposed King Edward V (age 12) and his brother Richard (10) were held in the Tower of London, and never seen or heard from again after the Summer of 1483. Rumours soon began spreading that the "Princes in the Tower" had been murdered, with the new king as the principal suspect. At Christmas 1483 the Lancastrian pretender, Henry Tudor, made a solemn pledge in Rennes Cathedral to marry their sister, Elizabeth of York. This was a move to broaden his support by attracting Yorkists as well as Lancastrians, but made no political sense if the Princes were still alive, since while they lived Elizabeth was not her father's heiress. So Henry's action was pointless unless not only he, but more importantly the Yorkists he was courting, now believed the Princes to be dead. Richard could have broken this alliance at any time, simply by producing the Princes alive, but made no attempt to do so. His only answer to the problem was apparently to ignore it and hope that it would go away. It didn't. The first revolt against Richard broke out in late 1483, and to widespread amazement the Duke of Buckingham, hitherto Richard's closest ally, joined it. However, exceptionally bad weather stopped the rebel armies from making any progress, and the revolt collapsed. Buckingham was duly beheaded. Henry Tudor set sail to join it, but his ships were scattered by a storm, and on reaching the English coast he learned of its failure and returned to Brittany. The Duchess of Buckingham disguised her five year old son as a girl, and went into hiding in Herefordshire, not to surface until after Richard's death. In 1484, Richard suffered a major blow with the death of his young son, Prince Edward. This led to reports that he would divorce (or even murder) his now barren wife, Anne Neville, and remarry to his niece, Elizabeth of York. The truth or otherwise of this cannot be determined, but in late 1484 the former Queen, Elizabeth Woodville, wrote to her son the earl of Dorset (EoY's half-brother, then in exile with Henry Tudor) advising him to return to England and make his peace with Richard. Dorset tried to do so but was recaptured. This strongly suggests that a reconciliation between Richard and the Woodville family was in the wind. Also, at about this time Henry put out feelers for a possible marriage to Katherine Herbert, daughter of his former guardian the Yorkist Earl of Pembroke. This would have strengthened Henry's support in Wales, where he intended to land, but was a poor substitute for the other match, and would never have been entertained unless he had reason to fear that Elizabeth of York was beyond his reach. So something was clearly going on. Whatever the truth of the matter, the rumours continued and increased after Queen Anne's death (of natural causes as far as we know) in March 1485. Richard then proclaimed to an assembly of Lords and clergy that he had never intended to marry his niece. According to the Croyland Chronicle, he was dissuaded by his close allies, Lords Catesby and Ratcliffe, who feared for their futures if the Woodvilles returned to power, and argued that his followers in the north (mostly Neville retainers, and Richard's staunchest allies) would turn against him if they felt he had "slighted" the late Queen. From here on, political solutions were exhausted, and Richard's only option was to kill or capture Henry. He sought the latter's extradition from Brittany, but Henry was warned and escaped to France. Shortly after, he sailed to Wales with a small group of supporters and mercenaries, landing at Milford Haven on August 7. Advancing through Wales and the Midlands, Henry gathered modest support but most English barons remained on the sidelines, and when the two armies met at Bosworth (or "Redemore") somewhere west of Leicester, on August 22, his forces were still apparently outnumbered. However, several armies of uncertain loyalty were also present, notably those of Lord Stanley, his brother Sir William, and Henry Percy Earl of Northumberland. In the event, Lord Stanley and Northumberland remained passive, but Sir William (who was almost certainly secretly committed to Henry Tudor) intervened at a crucial moment and gave Henry the victory. Richard, fighting valiantly to the end, perished in the midst of his foes. Henry Tudor then became King Henry VII. The question of Richard's guilt or innocence of killing his nephews remains to this day a passionate subject for debate. He was certainly the one in the best position to do the deed, but an anonymous London chronicle states that it was done "by vyse (advice? device?) of the Duke of Bokinghame", which has led to the suggestion that Buckingham may have been the guilty party. If so, of course, one must wonder why Richard never accused him of the crime. Far less credible is the suggestion that the Princes were still alive in the Tower in August 1485, and were killed by Henry VII. Evidence for this is somewhere between negligible and zero, since if the Princes were alive, Richard would have had every reason to divide his enemies by making this known, and indeed to conceal the fact amounted to suicide. Guilty or innocent, Richard totally failed either to break up the opposition to his rule, or rally adequate support against it. For a man who chose the motto "Loyauté Me Lye" (Loyalty Binds Me) he was singularly unsuccessful at attracting such loyalty from others, with the result that, justly or unjustly, his enemies got to write the history books.