Richard 3 biography. King Richard III had scoliosis, but he was not a hunchback

Birth: October 2
Fotheringhay, Northamptonshire Death: August 22
Battle of Bosworth Buried: Gray Freirs Abbey, later thrown into the River Suar Dynasty: Yorkie Father: Richard, Duke of York Mother: Cecilia Neville Spouse: Anna Neville Children: son: Edward

Richard was a member of the York dynasty - one of two dynasties fighting for survival. In addition, he was an outstanding warrior and spent long hours perfecting the science of swordsmanship. As a result, the muscles of his right arm were unusually developed. Paving his way to the throne, he left a bloody trail with his characteristic inflexibility. He was distinguished by great courage and strategic abilities.

When Edward IV was proclaimed king (1461), the 9-year-old Richard was given the title Duke of Gloucester. Having matured, he faithfully served Edward IV, took part in battles, and fled to Holland with him in 1470-71. He received many titles and possessions from the king. Richard was suspected of murdering his elder brother, Duke of Clarence (1478). On 12 June 1482 he was appointed commander of the army that Edward IV sent to Scotland.

When Edward IV died (April 9), Richard stood with an army on the Scottish border. The queen's relatives proclaimed the deceased king's eldest son, Edward V, a twelve-year-old boy, king, so that the regency would belong to his mother, Elizabeth. Her party met strong opponents in the form of the influential feudal magnates Lord Hastings and the Duke of Buckingham, who offered Richard the regency.

Queen Elizabeth took refuge in Westminster Abbey. Richard took an oath of allegiance to Edward V and ordered the minting of coins with his image, and he himself began to execute the queen’s relatives. He and his associates took possession of the boy and placed him in the Tower. The Privy Council in early May 1483 proclaimed Richard Protector of England and guardian of the king. Hastings, who sided with Elizabeth, was accused of treason and executed.

Having surrounded Westminster with troops on June 16, Richard convinced Elizabeth to give him her youngest son, Richard, Duke of York, and moved both princes to the Tower.

On the day appointed for the coronation of Edward V (June 22), Preacher Shaw at St. Paul gave a speech where he argued that Elizabeth's sons were the illegitimate children of Edward IV, who himself had no right to the throne, since he was not the son of the Duke of York. The city mayor soon supported these accusations. At a meeting of the lords in Westminster, he presented evidence that before his marriage to Elizabeth Woodville, Edward IV was secretly married to Eleanor Butler, so that his marriage to the queen was not legally valid, and the children from heirs to the throne turned into bastards. Parliament passes the "Act of Succession", according to which the throne passed to Richard as the only legitimate heir (the son of George, Duke of Clarence, the middle brother of Edward and Richard, was excluded from the line of succession due to his father's crimes).

After feigned refusals, Richard agreed to become king (June 26). On July 6, he was solemnly crowned and ordered the release of all prisoners from prison.

Reign of Richard III

Immediately after his coronation, Richard convened parliament and announced that he intended to tour his state: people everywhere greeted him with declarations of devotion. In York, Richard was crowned for the second time.

But Edward's sons continued to embarrass Richard even after this. He left London, giving, as many believe, the order to strangle both princes in their beds at night and bury their bodies under the stairs. This atrocity did not add new supporters to Richard, but it alienated many old ones. However, according to another version, the story of the murder of the princes was concocted by a man named John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury, who was an implacable opponent of the Yorks. According to this version, the princes were killed by a man named James Tyrrell on the orders of Henry VII Tudor. In 1674, during excavation work in the Tower, human bones were discovered under the foundation of one of the stairs. It was announced that the remains belonged to the once missing princes. They were buried with honors in Westminster Abbey. In 1933, the grave was opened for scientific examination, which confirmed that the bones indeed belonged to two children, most likely boys 12-15 years old, who were closely related. This indirectly testifies against Henry VII, since if Richard had committed the crime, then the murdered children should have been 10-12 years old.

The Duke of Buckingham withdrew from the king and began to make plans for his overthrow. A plan was drawn up to marry Edward IV's eldest daughter, Elizabeth, to the young Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, who was also related to the Dukes of Lancaster. In October 1483, the king's enemies simultaneously rebelled in several counties. Richard was at first very alarmed, but then with quick and energetic measures he tried to restore calm. He placed a large reward on the heads of the rebels. Buckingham's soldiers fled before the battle began. He himself was captured and beheaded on November 12 in Salisbury. Other rebel leaders and the Earl of Richmond himself took refuge abroad. But even after this, Richard’s position remained precarious. And the more he executed his opponents, the more adherents young Tudor gained.

In the same year, Richard's wife, Anna, died suddenly. The king was suspected of murdering his wife in order to marry Edward IV's eldest daughter, Elizabeth. Richard publicly denied rumors of this in a speech addressed to the magistrates of London. In 1485, a proposal for a dynastic marriage between Richard and Joan of Portugal was sent to Portugal, but negotiations dragged on until the Battle of Bosworth.

Battle of Bosworth, 1485

Henry landed in Wales with a French detachment of three thousand, the number of his supporters grew (August 1). Many of Richard's followers went over to him. Henry himself had no military experience, but as soon as he announced his intention to oppose Richard, he received assurances of loyalty from his countrymen in Wales. In addition, he was supported by the King of France. When he approached Bosworth Field, the size of his army doubled and reached 6 thousand people. But this did not guarantee success. Richard may have had few friends, but he led a powerful army of more than 10,000 battle-hardened warriors.

Richard met Henry's army on August 22 at a battle near the town of Bosworth. Henry had fewer troops, but managed to take a more advantageous position. The Battle of Bosworth was decided not by weapons, but by betrayal. The betrayal of Lord Stanley, Henry's stepfather, who sided with the rebels at the very last moment, made Richard's defeat inevitable. During the battle, Henry, not entirely confident in his abilities, decided to personally turn to his stepfather. Richard saw Tudor's standard heading towards Lord Stanley's position. There was a gap in the ranks of the fighting that allowed him to overtake the enemy, Richard knew that if he could get to Henry, victory would be his. Having given the order, Richard, in armor adorned with three lions, surrounded by eight hundred horsemen of the royal guard, crashed into the ranks of Henry's bodyguards. Paralyzed with fear, Henry watched as Richard fought his way towards him with his sword. With one blow, Richard cut down the standard bearer and was already within inches of Henry when he was driven back by the unexpected intervention of Lord Stanley, who threw more than two thousand knights against Richard. The king was surrounded, but refused to surrender, shouting: “Treason, treason... Today I will win or die like a king...”. Almost all of his knights fell, Richard fought back with his sword alone. Finally, a terrible blow silenced him. In an instant, Henry's soldiers attacked the king. They knew no mercy.

Richard III was the last English king to fall in battle. He may not have been the greatest of English kings, but he was a brave warrior and did not deserve to be betrayed so cruelly. With the death of Richard III, the War of the Roses ended and the male line of the Plantagenet dynasty, which ruled England for more than three centuries, ended. Lord Stanley personally placed the crown taken from Richard's dead head on his adopted son's head. He was proclaimed king and became the founder of the new Tudor dynasty. Richard's naked body was paraded through the streets of Blaster. His remains were later removed from the grave and thrown into the Soir River.

An energetic administrator, Richard III expanded trade, reorganized the army, made improvements in legal proceedings, and was a patron of the arts, especially music and architecture. During his reign, he carried out a number of popular reforms, in particular, Richard streamlined legal proceedings, prohibited violent exactions (the so-called “voluntary donations” or “benevolences”), and pursued a policy of protectionism, thereby strengthening the country’s economy.

Based on the works of Richard III’s opponent, John Morton, Thomas More wrote the book “The History of Richard III.” The famous play "Richard III", written by the famous English playwright Shakespeare, is largely based on the work of Morton-More. It is thanks to her that we know Richard as a traitor and a villain, although in fact this king became famous for his honesty (it was not for nothing that his motto was: “Loyaulte me lic”, that is, “Loyalty makes me steadfast”).

Literature

• Mor T. Epigrams. History of Richard III. - M.: 1973.
• Kendall P. M. Richard the Third. - London: 1955, 1975.
• Buck, sir George The History of king Richard III. - Gloucester a. Sutton: 1979, 1982.
• Ross C. Richard III. - London: 1983.
• Steward D. Richard III. - London: 1983.

Links

• R3.org - Richard III Society.
• http://kamsha.ru/york/ - Club "Richard III"

Kings of England

Alfred the Great | Edward the Elder | Æthelstan | Edmund I | Edred | Edwin | Edgar | Edward Martyr | Ethelred II | Sven Forkbeard *† | Edmund II | Canute the Great *† | Harold I | Hardeknud * | Edward the Confessor |

RICHARD III - HERO OF SHAKESPEARE'S CHRONICLES

Even those who have forgotten the pages of historical textbooks that they once read about the War of the Roses remember well the gloomy figure of the lame Richard III, an insidious and sinister killer who eliminated one after another the relatives who stood in his way to the throne.

This is how he appears in Shakespeare’s dramatic chronicles “Henry VI” (Part III) and especially “Richard III”, which secured his gloomy, blood-stained fame for centuries. It was believed that it was at Richard’s instigation that Henry VI was killed in the Tower, his son Prince Edward, who was captured, was executed, and that on the orders of Gloucester, his brother George, Duke of Clarence, was killed (according to rumors, the killers drowned him in a barrel of wine). This hunchbacked, ugly man walked to the throne, not stopping at any crimes.

First of all, Richard hastened to deal with the queen's relatives - the Woodvilles, who could challenge his influence on Edward V. The queen's brother Anthony Woodville (Earl Rivers), her son from her first marriage, Lord Gray, and other nobles were captured and handed over to the executioner. Even before this, Gloucester married Anne Warwick, the daughter of the Earl of Warwick, who was killed by him or with his participation, and the bride (in Shakespeare, the wife) of Prince Edward, the son of Henry VI. The scene of Gloucester's seduction of Anne at the tomb of King Henry VI is one of the most famous places in the tragedies of the brilliant playwright. In it, Shakespeare managed to show the full power of the boundless treachery and feline resourcefulness of the Duke of Gloucester, who managed to win over to his side a woman who passionately hated him for the persecution and murder of her loved ones. Richard appears in this scene not just as a villain, but as a man of outstanding intelligence and enormous abilities that serve him to do evil. All his cruel deeds, Richard says, he committed out of love for her, Lady Anne, seeking her hand. With passionate speeches he entangles his victim, with references to his boundless love he disarms the outbursts of her hatred and despair and achieves consent to marriage. At the same time, Richard does not love Anna at all: marrying her is another step in a complex political game. After Anna leaves, Richard himself stops in amazement at his art:

How! I, who killed my husband and father,

I took possession of her in an hour of bitter anger,

When here, choking on curses,

She wept over the bloody plaintiff!

God was against me, and the court, and conscience,

And there were no friends to help me.

Only the devil and a feigned appearance.

Richard III, Act I, Scene 2

Some critics reproached Shakespeare for the psychological implausibility of this scene, but the whole point is that Anna really agreed to become Richard's wife! True, she soon died under rather suspicious circumstances. It should be added that by this time Richard not only did not need her, but simply interfered with the implementation of his further plans...

Having strengthened his position by reprisals against the queen's relatives, Richard of Gloucester decided to take the next step. At his instigation, Edward IV's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville was declared illegal, since Edward had previously been engaged to two brides, including the daughter of Louis XI. Edward V, as an "illegitimate" son, was deprived of the throne and, together with his younger brother Richard, was imprisoned in the Tower. Both boys were seen only a few times after this, and for a long time nothing was known about their further fate. However, even then there were rumors, later confirmed, about the killing of the princes. The murder of children was considered a particularly serious crime even in those harsh times. In Shakespeare's chronicle, when Richard proposes to carry out this murder to the Duke of Buckingham, even this faithful henchman of the bloody king recoils in horror. True, the executioner was soon found - Richard was introduced to Sir James Tyrell, who, in the hope of the monarch's mercy, agreed to carry out his black plan. Tirel's servants Layton and Forrest, in the words of their master, “two bastards, two bloodthirsty dogs,” strangled the princes, but they were also shocked by what they had done. And their master Tirel exclaims:

A bloody crime has been committed,

A terrible and pathetic murder,

What sin has our region not yet committed!

Act IV, scene 1

(Shakespearean tragedy is also inspired by Delharosh’s famous painting “The Sons of Edward,” kept in the Louvre: two boys in rich outfits sit on a bed in a dungeon and look with horror at the doors of their cell, from where death will come...)

But Richard, although embarrassed by the crime, fearing the vengeance of heaven, stubbornly goes towards his goal. He decides to marry the daughter of Queen Elizabeth (the same Elizabeth whom he recently declared the mistress of Edward IV) - to marry the sister of the princes he killed in order to strengthen his position. And the main thing is to prevent the princess from marrying Henry Tudor, a contender for the throne from the Lancastrian party, who was preparing in France for landing on English soil and trying to win over to his side all those dissatisfied with Richard from the ranks of the York party. Shakespeare here follows an even more stunning scene of negotiations between Elizabeth and Richard, who convinces her to give her daughter to him, the murderer of her sons and brother. But the hour of vengeance is already close, fate is inexorable...

Richard's agents tried to keep Henry Tudor's every move under surveillance. They made more than once attempts to kidnap and take him to England. However, moving from place to place across the territory of Brittany and other regions of France, Henry not only skillfully avoided traps, but also organized his own secret service, which successfully competed with the intelligence of the former Duke of Gloucester. Henry's agents crossed the strait many times, weaving networks of new conspiracies and organizing uprisings. They managed to come into contact with those dissatisfied with Richard in the York party itself, including Queen Elizabeth. Henry's first attempt to land in England in the fall of 1483 ended in failure. The uprising against Richard ended in complete failure. Henry's fleet was scattered by a storm, and he himself barely reached Brittany.

In August 1485, Henry Tudor again landed with his supporters in his homeland of Wales and marched towards the hastily assembled royal army. On August 22, at the Battle of Bosworth, Richard was completely defeated and killed. The battle was won mainly thanks to the efforts of secret Lancastrian agents who managed to come to an agreement with one of Richard's main military leaders - Sir William Stanley - and his brother Thomas, married to Henry Tudor's mother. Three thousand heavily armed horsemen who made up Stanley's detachment unexpectedly went over to the enemy's side at the height of the battle, which decided the outcome of the Battle of Bosworth.

This, in brief, is the history of the final stage of the War of the Roses, in the presentation of which we mainly followed Shakespeare's drama Richard III. The main outline of the events described in it corresponds to reality. Another question is the assessment of Richard himself, clarifying the responsibility he bears for the crimes attributed to him.

Shakespeare wrote more than a century after the events depicted in the historical drama Richard III. During all this time, the throne was in the hands of Richard's winner, Henry Tudor, crowned Henry VII, and his descendants. At the time the drama was written, the granddaughter of Henry VII, Queen Elizabeth I, was on the throne, and this to a certain extent predetermined the attitude of any writer of this era towards the figure of Richard III, from whom England was “saved” by the founder of the new Tudor dynasty.

The main thing, however, is that all the sources that young Shakespeare could have at his disposal when writing his drama also came from the same scheme - the gloomy murderer Richard III and the “savior” of the country from his tyranny, the angelic Henry Tudor. We know these sources: Holingshend's chronicle, which Shakespeare used and which in turn went back to the work of Hall (mid-16th century) in covering the last period of the War of the Roses, and especially the biography of Richard III, written by the author of the famous "Utopia" Thomas More. More wrote this biography in 1513 and was largely based on the stories of John Morton, an active participant in the War of the Roses. Morton's biography does not give reason to consider him a beyond doubt witness. Originally a supporter of the Lancastrian party, he defected to Edward IV and became an insider for the Woodville clan. He was part of their attempt to seize power after the death of Edward IV. When power passed into the hands of Richard III, Morton fled to Henry Tudor, during whose reign he became Lord Chancellor, Archbishop of Canterbury and, finally, at the request of the king, was elevated to the rank of cardinal by Pope Alexander VI Borgia. Among his contemporaries, Morton earned a reputation as a greedy man and completely careless with his means. Undoubtedly, Morton painted Richard in the darkest colors. Thomas More, having reproduced the bishop's version in his "History of Richard III", clearly pursued, among other things, his own goal - to expose royal arbitrariness, cruelty and despotism, which could only be done on the example of such a monarch as Richard III, recognized even by the authorities themselves as a villain . Other Tudor historians who wrote about the Wars of the Roses, especially Henry VII's invited humanist Polydore Virgil, the king's official historiographer, are equally biased in their coverage of Richard III. (Polydore Virgil's History of England, begun in 1506, was published in 1534.)

The entire background of the struggle for the crown in the last years of the life of Edward IV and in the first months after his death can be looked at from the other side - the opponents of Henry VII.

To restore the true picture, scientists had to turn first of all to documents dating back to the reign of Edward IV and especially Richard III himself, laws issued under Richard, royal orders and other few materials that were not destroyed by the victorious Tudors, to reports of diplomats. It was necessary, if possible, to verify all reports of historians writing in the Tudor era. And in documents dating back to the time before the Battle of Bosworth, there is no mention even of the physical disabilities of the “hunchback” Richard, which in the Tudor age were passed off as an outward manifestation of the devilish nature of the last king of the York dynasty! They portray Richard as a capable administrator who remained loyal to Edward IV even when the king's other brother, the Duke of Clarence, betrayed him. Richard was either not at all involved in the murders allegedly committed on his orders, or shared responsibility for them along with Edward IV. All his actions reveal neither a special passion for intrigue nor cruelty that would distinguish him from other main participants in the War of the Roses.

In May 1464, at twenty-two, Edward IV married Elizabeth Gray (née Woodville), who was five years his senior. Her first husband, a Lancastrian adherent, died in one of the battles. According to medieval English ideas, the monarch's bride had to be of royal descent and, in any case, marry for the first time, and not be a widow with two children. Some contemporaries attributed Elizabeth's charms to the fact that she was a witch, others believed that, by law, she remained only the king's mistress - this was a widely held opinion (which was shared by the mother of Edward IV, the Duchess of York), and the queen herself was well aware of it.

She lived with Edward for nineteen years, maintaining her influence on her husband with feigned humility and gentleness. And the queen’s two sons from her first marriage and one of her brothers acted as frequent companions of Edward, who indulged in the most unbridled debauchery. But the Woodville family - the queen's sons, five brothers and six sisters - managed to seize huge land holdings through marriages and wasteful royal grants. Already in the year of the queen's coronation, her twenty-year-old younger brother married the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, who was eighteen years old.

It is clear that for the queen and her family, especially in the first six years after her marriage, when she did not yet have children from the king, the brothers of Edward IV posed a great danger, and above all George, Duke of Clarence, who was then heir to the throne and even enjoyed the famous popularity. And most importantly, perhaps Clarence knew a dangerous secret - about Edward's betrothal to Lady Eleanor Butler, daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury, before marrying Elizabeth (probably for political reasons at the height of the War of the Roses). Philippe Commines, a famous French statesman and memoirist, a contemporary of the events, reports that the keeper of the royal seal, Robert Stilington, who drew up the marriage contract and was present at the betrothal, claimed that he later married the king and Eleanor Butler. (It is worth noting that for the time being Stilington remained silent, and in 1466, the year of the death of Lady Eleanor, who had entered the monastery, he was elevated to the rank of Bishop of Bath and Wales, and the following year he became Lord Chancellor). Even if we consider Stilington's testimony about the king's wedding to be untrue, one betrothal, according to the legal norms of that time, invalidated Edward's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville. The Duchess of York knew about the betrothal, and from her, perhaps, her son, the Duke of Clarence, whom his mother, not by chance, considered as the legitimate heir to the throne even after the birth of the children of Edward IV. In 1478 Clarence was executed. And after his murder, Stillington was imprisoned in the Tower “for words prejudicial to the king and his state.” However, the bishop apparently managed to convince Edward that he would keep his mouth shut, and three months later he was released.

Probably, shortly before his death, Edward IV freed himself from the influence of the Woodville family. At least in his will he appointed Richard of Gloucester as protector of the kingdom and sole guardian of his children. For the Woodvilles, the stakes were high - if they defeated Richard, they could count on many years of uncontrolled rule on behalf of Edward V, who was only 12 years old. The young heir to the throne himself at that time was with his mother and, therefore, under the control of the Woodvilles, in the city of Ludlow. The Queen's son, the Marquess of Dorset, was in charge of the Tower. As evidenced by the Cryland Chronicle, written on the fresh trail of events, Elizabeth's brother Lord Rivers and the Marquess of Dorset entered into a conspiracy to kill Richard. Although Richard was named Protector of the Realm in one official document on 21 April 1483, in the following days Rivers and Dorset issued privy council orders in their own names without mentioning Richard. The Duke of Gloucester responded with a quick counterattack: he intercepted Edward V on the road, whom the Woodville supporters were trying to take to London. Rivers and the other conspirators were arrested and executed.

Special efforts were made by researchers to clarify the question of the main crime charged with Richard - the murder of his nephews. The execution of opponents at the beginning of his reign in those days was a common measure resorted to by both Richard's predecessors and successors on the throne of English kings.

"TUDOR MYTH"

Some researchers call the question of the murder of princes the most famous detective story in the history of England. Surprisingly, the version of Richard’s murder of his nephews, told by Shakespeare, accepted as truth by millions of viewers and readers of his dramatic chronicles, repeated over the centuries in hundreds of historical books, is based on such a shaky basis as the confession of the defendant, and it could well may also be a forced self-incrimination, if... it took place at all. This confession has no documentary evidence. Of course, the participants in the secret crime, caring for their own interests, and not for the convenience of future historians, according to the very logic of things, should not have left such traces that could be considered undoubted evidence. It is difficult to imagine that Richard gave written orders to his spies to kill his nephews, and that they submitted loyal, also written, reports on the crime committed. And if there were such documents that dated back to the time of the murder and to its direct participants, then they had very little chance of settling in public and private archives and being preserved until the time when researchers began to look for traces of the past tragedy.

However, with all this, it is impossible to consider the completely understandable absence of unconditional evidence as a circumstance not worthy of attention, and at the same time completely trust rumors coming from people who could not, in all likelihood, know the truth first-hand. It is a fact that after 1484 no one saw the sons of Edward IV, imprisoned in the Tower in the summer of 1483. According to rumors, they were killed the previous fall, although this has not been proven by anyone. And Richard’s ban on allowing anyone to see the princes may not have been given at all in order to quietly kill his nephews. He probably feared that among the former servants of Edward V there could be agents of his enemies - the Woodvilles, who were trying to snatch the prisoners from the hands of the new king. If the princes were indeed dead by this time, then they could only be killed by order of one or two persons (or jointly), namely: Richard III and his closest adviser Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham. If, however, they died later, the riddle allows for other solutions...

The news of the death of the princes is conveyed by a contemporary, the Italian Mancini, who left England in the summer of 1483 and compiled his notes in December of the same year. However, he stipulates that this is just a rumor and that he does not know how Edward V and his brother were killed if they really died in the Tower. As noted in the “Great Chronicle” compiled approximately two decades later, the death of the princes became widely known in the spring of 1484. These rumors may have had some basis, but they could have spread regardless of whether the princes were alive or dead. The fact is that the overthrow of a king from the throne was almost always accompanied by a subsequent murder. Such was the fate of Edward II and Richard I (XIV century), Henry VI, a number of royals who could become rivals of the monarch and were executed by order of Edward IV, and subsequently the Tudors - Henry VII and his son Henry VIII.

In January 1484, at a meeting of the French Estates General in Tours, French Chancellor Guillaume le Rochefort announced the murder of the princes. Nothing is known about the sources on which he based his statement. However, this can be guessed at. Through the efforts of researchers, it has been proven that the chancellor was connected with Mancini. He probably spoke from his words, especially since the relations of the French court with Richard III were very tense and it was beneficial for Rochefort to repeat the news that denigrated the English king. The chronicles written in the early years of the reign of Henry VII add nothing to what is already known, although John Russell, Chancellor in Richard's government, was involved in the compilation of one of them. This latter only emphasizes that the rumor about the murder of the princes was deliberately spread by supporters of the Duke of Buckingham shortly before the start of the rebellion. And only in authors writing at the beginning of the 15th century, in particular in the court historiographer Polydore Virgil and especially in Thomas More in his biography of Richard III, do we find a detailed account of the murder of the sons of Edward IV. There we also learn about the role played by Sir James Tyrell, his servants Forrest and Dighton, that the bodies of the murdered princes were first hidden under stones, and then, since Richard considered this place unworthy for the burial of people of royal blood, they were secretly buried by the priest of the Tower , who was the only one who knew the burial place.

There is much that is implausible in this story, even if we ignore those “literally” transmitted conversations between Richard and Tirel, which More clearly could not have known and which he inserted into his work, following the tradition coming from ancient historians.

The very story that Richard was looking for a person capable of murder, that Tirel was introduced to him, is incorrect. Tirel had previously been Richard's confidant for more than ten years, who used him for particularly difficult assignments. Tirel held important administrative positions.

More relates that before Tyrell, Richard approached the Governor of the Tower, Sir Robert Brackenbury, but he boldly refused to participate in the murder. Meanwhile, Robert Brackenbury willingly, on the orders of Richard, who allegedly wrote him two letters (never discovered), handed over the keys to the Tower into the hands of Tirel. Giving such an order, and a written one at that, to a man who did not approve of the murder would have been stupid, and no one considered Richard an idiot. Moreover, as is clear from documentary evidence, the “noble” Brackenbury, despite this episode, did not lose the favor of the king, who granted him a number of high awards and entrusted him with responsible posts. At the decisive hour, in August 1485, Brackenbury died fighting for Richard. Maybe this saved him from execution and from confessions like Tirel’s “confession.” These facts make the story of Brackenbury’s “refusal” to participate in the crime very dubious. On the contrary, it could have arisen to somehow explain the position of the commandant of the Tower, who generally enjoyed a good reputation among his contemporaries. Brackenbury's behavior becomes understandable if we assume that the “terrible and pathetic murder” was not committed while he was commandant of the Tower.

Another point becomes unclear in More's story: Tirel, not trusting the jailers, decided to carry out the matter with the help of his own servants. But where the guards and warders of the Tower were on that fateful night is still unknown. Nothing is said at all about Tirel's servants who participated in the murder. All attempts by researchers to find persons with these names in documents from the period of Richard’s reign ended in failure: the namesakes clearly did not resemble Dighton and Forrest from More’s story. Of course, this may be a simple coincidence, but it also has a certain significance, given the obvious discrepancies in the story about the behavior of the main characters. But this does not mean that More's version is fundamentally untrue. Its source is the confession of Tirel himself, made by him, as already noted, almost two decades after the events, in 1502. The circumstances under which the testimony was given deserve special attention, but first of all we must turn to Tirel's career after 1483 - 1484, when he, according to his confession, became the murderer of the sons of Edward IV.

One of the newest biographers of Richard III, P. M. Kendal, emphasizes this significant fact. Sir James Tirel was perhaps the only close confidant of Richard who held important positions under King Henry VII. (We are, of course, not talking about large feudal lords like Stanley, who came into Henry’s favor at the cost of treason, but about people from Richard’s immediate circle.) Tirel did not participate in the Battle of Bosworth. At that time, he served as commandant of Guiné, a fortress covering the French city of Calais, which had been in the hands of the British for more than a hundred years. Henry stripped Tirel of two important positions that had been given to him by Richard. But the new king did not charge Tirel with high treason through parliament, as was done in relation to other supporters of the York party. It can be assumed that Henry, still feeling very precarious on the throne, did not want to completely break with Tirel, in whose hands there was a strong fortress. Less explainable is that the suspicious Heinrich soon completely changed his anger to mercy - Tirel began to quickly make a career again. In February 1486, just six months after the Battle of Bosworth, Tirel was confirmed for life in positions that had previously been taken away from him, he began to be given important diplomatic assignments, Henry in documents called Tirel his faithful adviser. During the first decade and a half of Henry's reign, as we will see below, Tirel had more than enough opportunities to go into the service of Tudor's enemies. However, he did not take the risk very soon, when in 1501 the representative of the overthrown dynasty, the Earl of Suffolk, became the head of the York party. Henry's intelligence quickly discovered the treason. But by this time Tirel had so firmly established himself in the confidence of the king that one of the spies reported the fear expressed by Sir Richard Nanfan, assistant commandant of Calais, whether in London the news of Tirel’s betrayal would be perceived as slander by his enemies, in particular Nenfan.

At the beginning of 1502, the garrison of Calais besieged the fortress of Gine, where Tirel had taken refuge. Apparently, they decided to lure him out for negotiations with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Thomas Lavel, by sending for this purpose a document sealed with the state seal in which Commandant Gine was guaranteed safety. Tirel fell into a trap. Then, under threat of death, he was ordered to call his son Thomas from the fortress of Gine. When this succeeded, James and Thomas Tyrell were taken under guard to London and thrown into the Tower. On May 2, 1502, Tirel, along with several Yorkists, was brought to court, immediately sentenced to death and beheaded on Tower Hill on May 6. However, it is important to note that Thomas Tyrel, convicted the day after his father, was not executed. Moreover, in 1503 - 1504 he achieved the reversal of the sentence against himself and his deceased father (this mercy was, however, also granted to a number of other convicted Yorkists).

James Tyrell's confession was clearly made shortly before his execution, at least after his imprisonment in the Tower. Henry VII needed such recognition. Throughout his reign, attempts continued to overthrow the first Tudor from the throne with the help of impostors who took the names of the sons of Edward IV. And in 1502, the heir to the throne, Prince Arthur, died, and now the preservation of the Tudor dynasty on the throne depended on the life of one teenager - the youngest son of King Henry, which should, of course, revive the hopes of supporters of the York party (Arthur died in April, a month before the execution of James Tirela).

Getting Tirel to confess to the murder was very important for Henry. But for this confession to gain weight, it had to be in the then usual form - like the dying statement of a condemned person, already on the scaffold, a minute before the criminal’s head fell under the executioner’s axe. It - who wants and plans to lie a minute before execution, burdening the soul with a new mortal sin - was considered an undeniable truth. And the Tudors, as we will see more than once, usually achieved the necessary repentance in one way or another, even if it was a deliberate lie...

In this case, no such recognition was made; at least all modern sources are silent about this. Only after the beheading of the commandant of the fortress Guine - it is unclear when exactly - Henry allowed rumors to spread about Tirel's confession. It is curious that in this story, dating back to Henry VII and his entourage, such an episode appears as the interrogation of Tirel's servant, the Liar Dighton, a participant in the murder. It was added that Dayton, who most contributed to the dissemination of the familiar version of the murder, was released after interrogation. Thomas More and Polydore Virgil present this version, however, not from the words of John Dighton. Neither author ever hints that they ever met Dighton. Mor in one place, by the way, notes that he is based on the testimony of Tirel, in another - that he conveys what he heard from well-informed people. Apparently, rumors of Tyrell's confession were either too scanty or too contradictory for Mor to formulate a more accurate account of events. More, with his usual scrupulousness, adds that “some still doubt whether they died in his time or not.”

Thomas More and Polydore Virgil were friends and wrote the history of the reign of Richard III almost simultaneously, probably becoming familiar with each other's work during their preparation. It is all the more interesting that Polydore Virgil, talking about the death of the princes, disagrees with Mor in a number of significant details, and does not mention the servants of Tirel. And, most importantly, he also makes an unexpected statement that it is unknown how exactly Edward’s sons were killed, i.e. does not know the very dramatic scene that More conveys and which Shakespeare reproduces with such artistic power in his tragedy. The "Great Chronicle", also compiled after Tirel's execution, reports that the murderer was either Tirel or another, unnamed confidant of Richard. This chronicle further indicates that the princes were either strangled, or drowned, or killed with a poisoned dagger, i.e., in other words, it only lists possible methods of murder, obviously without information about how things really stood. Bernard Andre, the official biographer of Henry VII, who completed the biography of the monarch around 1503, i.e. also after Tyrell’s “confession”, limits himself to a simple indication that Richard III secretly ordered his nephews to be stabbed to death with a sword. Subsequent Tudor historians did not have any additional sources of information, they only retold Polylor Virgil and Thomas More, sometimes adding their own, unfounded speculation.

Thus, there is much to suggest that James Tyrel may not have made his confession at all, which was so skillfully used by Henry VII to denigrate the memory of his defeated enemy. But Henry VII, of course, could not dream that, thanks to the genius of Shakespeare, this testimony of Tyrell would provide Richard with such gloomy fame among posterity. And if Tirel made the confession attributed to him, then the veracity of such a confession, wrested from a person condemned to execution, contrary to the opinion of his contemporaries, is very doubtful: there are and will be given many examples of this in the further presentation.

The doubt as to whether Tirel's confession existed at all does not resolve the question of whether he was the murderer of the princes. There is no evidence that Tirel was one of Richard's special confidants, although he rose in his service and by 1485 was commandant of the fortress of Guine. Tirel was retained in this important post after the Battle of Bosworth, which indicates great confidence in the former supporter of the York dynasty. Where could such trust come from? Probably Tirel, who considered himself insufficiently rewarded for his faithful service to Richard, entered into secret relations with Henry while he was still an exile in France. What particularly important information could Henry have received from Tirel? Of course, these could only be assurances that the princes were dead and that he himself personally participated in their murder. Nothing in the character of Henry VII leads us to suppose that he would, on moral grounds, reject Tyrell's offer to come over to his side. Commandant Guinet could even claim that the murder of the princes was carried out in favor of Henry, although he acted at the instigation of Richard III. If Henry had not had such information, there was clearly no point in rushing into an armed action against Richard, which could have gone to their advantage if the princes had been alive. How could Henry move with his army north of London, not being sure that in London, having learned about the defeat of the usurper, they would not try to return the “rightful king” Edward V from the Tower to the throne?

However, was it in the interests of Henry VII to attribute the murder of the princes to Tyrell if he was innocent of this crime? It was known that for more than a decade and a half he had secretly enjoyed the favor and favor of Henry VII. This naturally made one think that he had sided with the Lancastrians even before the Battle of Bosworth. But in this case, the favors and distinctions that Tirel received from Henry VII suggested that the king at least approved of the crime and rewarded the murderer, if not directly incited him to this daring deed. Therefore, it was reasonable on Henry’s part to only briefly announce Tirel’s confession, without setting out its details and without giving food for gossip that could only damage the reputation of the still unpopular king.

We do not know Tirel’s motives that prompted him to confess, nor the true content of his testimony, if any, but it is permissible to make fairly plausible guesses about this. The confession was made to save the soul, which was common in the behavior of a person of that time in anticipation of imminent and inevitable death. (We should not forget about the pardon of Tirel’s son, which could have been payment for his father’s statement of participation in the murder of the princes, which was beneficial to the government.) But at the same time, since the confession could not lie without risking the salvation of the soul, it may have included such inconvenient moments, such as the story of Tirel's secret connections with Henry VII, dating back to the time of the murder of the princes. All this could only indicate that in fact Tirel notified Henry about the fate of the princes, and did not at all carry out his orders when Richard III was still sitting on the throne.

This chain of conjectures finds indirect confirmation in the fact that in 1502 it was not only about the guilt of Sir False Tyrell. As it turns out, the commandant of the Tower until July 17, 1483 was not Robert Brackenbury, to whom Richard allegedly offered to kill the princes and, after whose refusal, turned to the services of Tirel. In fact, until July 17 (the time when the princes were probably killed), the Commandant of the Tower was Richard III's close friend John Howard, who was granted the title by Richard just a few days after he left the post of Commandant of the Tower, on July 28, 1483 Duke of Norfolk. Meanwhile, the youngest of the murdered princes, Richard, along with his other titles, bore the title of Duke of Norfolk since he was “married” to Anne Mowbray, the infant daughter and heiress of the late Duke of Norfolk. Anne Mowbray died at nine years of age, and Prince Richard inherited her father's title and vast fortune. After the murder of Prince Richard, John Howard - the newly-minted Duke of Norfolk - was supposed to receive this fortune along with the title. But he died fighting bravely for Richard at Bosworth, probably without having previously entered into relations with Henry VII. His son Thomas Howard, who also fought on the side of Richard III, was kept in prison for more than three years after Bosworth, but then Henry considered it possible to entrust him with command of the army that suppressed the rebellion of the king’s opponents in Yorkshire. In 1513, Thomas Howard inflicted a crushing defeat on the Scots at the Battle of Flodden, for which he was given the title of Duke of Norfolk, which his father had held. After the death of Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, his title passed to his son, also Thomas, about whom much more will have to be said in subsequent pages.

What prompted Henry VII to forgive his son Howard and even show him his favor? Many contemporaries, unlike historians, could know who was the commandant of the Tower at the moment when, by all accounts, the princes were killed. They probably considered the favors shown to Thomas Norfolk as evidence that Henry approved of the crime and favored those involved. All this could have prompted the king, just by mentioning Tirel’s confession, not to order any investigation and hasten to “close the case.” The History of Richard III was written by More ten years later, first published three decades later, when the question of this recognition had lost political significance.

However, why did More's work drop the mention of John Howard as Commandant of the Tower and focus on Robert Brackenbury? It must be taken into account that More knew John Howard’s son, Thomas, and at one time became close friends with his grandson Thomas Jr., and they were extremely interested in hiding the role of their grandfather and father in the murder of the princes. The legality of the hereditary possessions of this powerful ducal family was at stake. They may well have provided More with deliberately incorrect information about who was the commandant of the Tower in July 1483. But More's reproduction of incorrect information in this part of his story does not refute everything else that is narrated in the History of Richard III. If the princes were really killed, as is believed, somewhere between the summer of 1483 and the spring of 1484, and none of Richard's close associates privy to the secret survived the Battle of Bosworth, then it is likely that Henry VII had no opportunity to establish the truth at all . Does all this mean that there are no ways to get closer to solving the murder mystery?

At one time it seemed that the solution had been found. Almost two centuries after the end of the War of the Roses, in 1674, during the renovation of one of the rooms of the White Tower (a building inside the fortress), two skeletons were discovered under the stairs, which were mistaken for the remains of Edward V and his brother. However, research methods at the end of the 17th century. were, according to our concepts, very primitive, to say the least. The remains were placed in a marble urn and buried in Westminster Abbey, the burial place of many English kings.

In 1933, the urn containing the ashes was removed and the skeletons were subjected to medical examination. The conclusion was that the bones belonged to teenagers, one of whom was 12-13 years old, and the other 10. This is quite consistent with the ages of the princes in 1483-1484 (Edward was born in November 1470, his brother Richard in August 1473) , and Henry VII returned to England only in 1485. However, the statement of the doctors who carried out the analysis that traces of violent death from suffocation were found was disputed by other scientists as unprovable on the basis of the surviving parts of the skeletons. Some experts have suggested that the eldest of the teenagers was younger than Edward V, in the autumn of 1483 or the spring of the following year. There was even doubt expressed about the possibility of proving that the remains belonged to male children. The examination did not establish one very important point - to what time the bones subjected to examination belonged to. (This, however, will not be easy to determine even now, with more advanced dating methods, if a new study is carried out.) We can only agree with the commission’s conclusions on one thing: if the skeletons being studied are the remains of Edward V and his brother, then the princes were really killed in the summer - autumn of 1483 or a few months after that. But this “if” greatly depreciates the evidentiary value of the conclusion drawn. But it is apparently not possible to establish whether we are really talking about the remains of Edward V and his brother.

On the other hand, the reports of the skeletons found after their discovery in 1674 were so vague that they did not allow any precise determination of the burial site. Researchers have long noticed a very implausible detail in More's story. According to him, Richard III expressed dissatisfaction that the burial place of the murdered princes, which was hastily found by Tirel's servants, was unworthy of people of royal blood. After this, the corpses were dug up and buried again by the priest, but where exactly is unknown. How else can this persistently repeated version be explained, if not by the fact that Tirel did not know the burial place and could not report it to the authorities, that the grave was never found (or was not looked for at all)?

It is interesting to note that about 30 years before the discovery of the skeletons, human bones were found under the stairs in the Tower, walled up in the wall of the room next to the casemate where the princes were kept. These could also be their remains (especially since, according to one rumor that circulated at the end of the 15th century, the princes were locked in their room and starved to death). But something else is also possible: over the 900 years of the White Tower’s existence as a prison for state criminals, many executions were carried out there. Only a few of them are reported by historical chronicles. In addition, the Tower was not only a prison, but also a royal palace; burials of a wide variety of people, including palace servants, are possible there. Incidentally, the bones found under the stairs - in accordance with Tirel's confession - speak rather against the assumption that these are the remains of the murdered sons of Edward IV, otherwise they would probably have been found during the search undertaken on the orders of Henry VII. It is even more difficult to solve another mystery based on the study of skeletons - who is the killer.

Already in the mid-60s of the XX century. one discovery was made, which they are also trying to use to solve the mystery. During construction work in Stepney, in the east part of London (East End), on the territory where a monastery was located in the 15th century, a lead coffin was found, the inscription on which indicated that it contained the body of the nine-year-old “wife” of the youngest of the princes, Richard , who died in 1481 (such early “marriages”, concluded for political reasons, were not uncommon in the Middle Ages). When examining the corpse, some English scientists suggested that the girl was killed on the orders of Richard of Gloucester. However, it is again not possible to confirm this. It is even difficult to prove that such a murder, which should have been carried out during the life of Edward IV, was so consistent with the interests of his brother that he would decide to take such a dangerous step.

Sometimes in the literature it was suggested that the rumor about the killing of the princes was started by Richard himself. Not daring to admit to this atrocity, he nevertheless wanted to benefit from it by convincing the population that possible contenders for the throne - the deposed Edward V and his brother - were dead and that, therefore, Richard was now, beyond any dispute, the only representative of the York dynasty entitled to the throne. However, such argumentation is not convincing. The rumor could harm Richard no less than a direct statement about the death of the princes. At the same time, he could not prevent the spread of rumors that the princes were alive and that they must be wrested from the hands of the usurper. Richard's enemies could therefore use both rumors against Richard: on the one hand, turning their supporters against the murderer of princes, and on the other, giving hope that the sons of Edward IV were still alive. This is obviously what actually happened.

It is possible that Richard, on the eve of the Battle of Bosworth, could have sent the princes to some secluded place or abroad, so that in any case they would not fall into the hands of the hated Henry Tudor and could not be used in the future by the York party in the struggle for the throne.

Probably, in weighing the pros and cons, Richard's interests as a whole required the physical removal of the princes, although a number of considerations spoke in favor of leaving them alive. However, recognizing the profitability of murder for Richard does not explain the essence of the matter. There could be persons for whom this murder was equally or even more profitable and who had the opportunity to commit this crime.

Is there any indirect evidence that Richard did not order the murder of his brother's children? An order from Richard, dated March 9, 1485, was discovered to deliver some items to the “Lord Illegitimate Son.” It may have been about the illegitimate son of Richard III, John, who was appointed captain of the Calais fortress. But he was not a "lord" and could only be so called out of respect for being a king's son. On the other hand, "Lord Edward", "illegitimate son Edward" were the usual names under which the dethroned Edward V appeared in official documents.

The contemporary Royal Chronicle states that two of Richard's close associates - Chancellor of the Exchequer William Catesby and Sir Richard Ratcliffe - objected to Richard's plan to marry his own niece, as they feared that, having become queen, she would try to take revenge on them for their participation in her execution relatives: uncle, Earl Rivers, and half-brother, Lord Richard Grey. The chronicle does not mention, however, that the princess would have taken revenge for her brothers, Edward and Richard, who were killed in the Tower. However, in our opinion, one should not attach much importance to this truly strange default of the chronicler. Perhaps Catesby and Ratcliffe, for some reason unclear to us, could think that the princess would consider them only accomplices in the execution of Rivers and Gray, and not in the murder of their brothers.

Of course, the most surprising thing is the behavior of Queen Elizabeth, which even Shakespeare was unlikely to be able to interpret on the basis of known facts. In September 1483, the widow of Edward IV secretly agreed to give her daughter as a wife to Henry Tudor, and at the end of the year he swore an oath of his intention to marry the princess. By this time, the queen must have known about the death of her sons, otherwise she would hardly have agreed to her daughter’s marriage to Henry, the meaning of which was precisely to strengthen his rights and increase his chances of taking the throne. This marriage would further reduce the possibility for Edward to take the throne, and Elizabeth could only give consent if she was sure of the death of both princes, imprisoned by Richard III in the Tower.

However, six months later, in March 1484, the queen’s position undergoes a radical change: in exchange for Richard III’s promise to adequately support her and her daughters, she leaves a safe refuge and places herself in the hands of the king. With her capitulation, Elizabeth dealt a serious blow to the plans of Henry Tudor, and, consequently, to her daughter. She was losing hope of seeing her descendants on the throne of English kings. Moreover, Elizabeth wrote a letter to the Marquess of Dorset asking him to return to England, and he even tried to fulfill this instruction from his mother. The Marquis attempted to return secretly, but was detained by Henry's scouts, who, by force or cunning, induced Dorset to abandon his intention to side with Richard III.

How could Richard influence Elizabeth so much? By proposing to marry her eldest daughter, which, according to rumors, he later tried to do? But this rumor is not confirmed: after all, by marrying Princess Elizabeth, Richard himself would have refuted his own assertion about the “illegality” of Edward IV’s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville, her mother, and, consequently, about the illegitimacy of the origins of Edward V and his younger brother. In other words, by marrying Elizabeth, Richard would have recognized himself as a usurper of the throne. It is difficult to believe that such a smart politician as Richard III would decide on such a ridiculous course of action. What was Elizabeth Woodville's motivation? Perhaps she was simply broken by the disasters that befell her and capitulated in the hope of regaining a share of her former power and influence. The historian P. M. Kendal mentioned above believes that Richard could influence Elizabeth only by the fact that her sons were alive and in his power. It is very difficult to believe that Elizabeth made a deal with Richard, convinced that she was entering into an agreement with the murderer of princes. There could, of course, be another explanation - Richard presented her with irrefutable evidence that he was not the murderer, if both princes were already dead by this time. At this time (more precisely, until October 1483), besides the king, only the Duke of Buckingham could be a murderer.

Was this royal favorite, however, interested in murder? The answer will undoubtedly be positive. On the one hand, Buckingham could believe that it would greatly strengthen Richard's confidence in him. On the other hand, having decided to betray Richard and go over to Henry’s side, the treacherous Duke could not help but understand that the news of the murder of the princes would be doubly pleasant for the Lancastrian party: firstly, possible rivals of Henry Tudor (and Buckingham himself, if he intended to seek the throne) would be eliminated ), secondly, the death of the princes could be blamed on Richard, which would direct the hatred of influential supporters of the dowager queen against him and upset the ranks of the York party. Already in the chronicles of that time one can find hints that Richard killed the princes at the instigation of Buckingham. Of course, this kind of statement proves nothing except how much the death of the princes was in Buckingham's interests. This rumor is reproduced by some foreign contemporaries - the French chronicler Molinet, the famous writer and politician Philippe Commines. It is possible to establish a possible time when the Duke committed the murder, namely: in mid-July 1483, when he stayed for several days in London after Richard's departure, in order to then catch up with the king in Gloucester, and from there go to Wales to lead the rebellion. The murder of the princes during this period should have been especially beneficial to the duke, since it turned all the queen's supporters against Richard and created the possibility of support for the rebellion by most of the York party. And as the Grand Constable of England, Buckingham had free access to the Tower.

During the rebellion, Richard III could show the princes to the people, even if they were still alive, in order to weaken Henry Tudor’s “rights” to the throne and their support among the Yorkists from among Richard’s opponents. However, at the same time, Richard would have weakened his own position, since in the eyes of some York supporters, Edward V would have become the legitimate king. The riddle allows for two solutions.

There is one very unclear place in the stories of More and Virgil. Both sources claim that Richard gave the order to kill the princes a few days after parting with Buckingham. Then it is not clear how the supporters of Queen Elizabeth and Henry Tudor learned about such a carefully guarded secret? The answer is simple: only from Buckingham, and he could know about this if the crime occurred before his last meeting with the king, since it is unlikely that Richard would risk sending information about the murder to Buckingham in Wales. Finally, even if Richard had decided to do this, then probably Bishop Morton, a supporter of Henry VII, who was with Buckingham at that time, would not have subsequently remained silent about such important evidence against Richard, or at least would have told More about it when gave him information about the last period of the War of the Roses. However, the matter changes if the princes were killed by Buckingham and Richard learned about the already accomplished fact. In this case, Morton had good reason to remain silent about the circumstance that exonerated Richard III.

With the assumption that the princes were killed by Buckingham, the behavior of the queen becomes more understandable, who, having become convinced of this, could have angrily broken off relations with the Duke’s ally Henry Tudor, for whose sake he committed his atrocity. If Buckingham was the killer, the behavior of the commandant of the Tower of Brackenbury, which remains mysterious in other versions, becomes more understandable. It is interesting to note that after the rebellion was suppressed, the captured duke desperately begged for a meeting with the king. Perhaps this was caused by the hope of somehow influencing Richard with his requests and promises. However, it is most likely that among the merits that the Duke would refer to when asking for mercy could be a reminder that he destroyed his soul by committing the murder of the young princes in the interests of Richard.

True, there is one mysterious circumstance if we stick to the version of Buckingham’s guilt. Why, after the suppression of the rebellion, did Richard not accuse the traitorous duke of such a crime as the murder of princes? Obviously, there are reasons for this: it was generally unprofitable for Richard to attract the attention of the people to the princes whom he overthrew from the throne and imprisoned in the Tower. No evidence could convince the incredulous that the king was not trying to absolve himself of blame for the crime by placing the responsibility on his former closest adviser, and now the defeated rebel Buckingham.

But the assumption that Buckingham was responsible for the murder agrees well with the behavior of Henry Tudor, who, in his accusations brought against Richard in 1484 and 1485, never directly blamed him for the deaths of the princes, but only spoke in a dull tone when listing other crimes "shedding of children's blood." Was it because Henry VII had no evidence of this, or because he knew well the name of the real murderer - Buckingham? Or, finally, due to the fact that Henry knew something else - the princes were still alive and still imprisoned in the Tower? All the more reason could there be for silence if Henry was aware that the princes were alive and beyond his reach. Is this why Henry did not order solemn church services in memory of the murdered princes - this would have been so beneficial for him, but would have been considered blasphemy if the sons of Edward IV were alive.

The last assumption also does not contradict the known facts, explaining Richard’s behavior, Buckingham’s actions, and, most importantly, the position of Henry VII. When he went to England, he may not have known about the fate of the princes. This was not significant, since Richard could in no case use them against his enemy. It would be another matter if they were still alive when Henry took possession of London. In this case, their disappearance became a political necessity for Henry, who sat so precariously on the conquered throne. The Tudors dealt harshly even after many decades with the relatives of the overthrown Yorks, who were much less dangerous to them. The illegitimate son of Richard III, as well as the son of the Duke of Clarence, Edward, Earl of Warwick, was thrown into prison (probably killed in custody), later, in 1499, beheaded by order of Henry VII. Half a century later, in 1541, the executioner literally chopped into pieces the seventy-year-old Countess of Salisbury only for her relationship with the York dynasty. But they clearly had less chance of becoming serious contenders for the throne than Edward V and his brother.

Moreover, after the Battle of Bosworth, Henry VII himself had to strengthen the rights of the princes by ordering the burning of all documents (and copies taken from them) in which the sons of Edward IV were declared “illegitimate”. This step became necessary because Henry, in order to strengthen his victory, decided to marry Edward V’s sister Elizabeth, the daughter of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville (as Richard III was going to do before him). This marriage once again demonstrated the legitimacy of the children of Edward IV and, therefore, their right to the throne. Moreover, Henry VII needed the death of Edward V and his brother, if, of course, they were still alive.

The English historian K. Markham, in his biography of Richard III, written in extremely apologetic tones, hypothesizes that the princes were killed by Tirel on the orders of Henry VII in 1486. The basis for this assumption is a curious fact: Tirel twice received a petition from Henry VII - once in June, the other in July 1486. But this case, although rare, is still not isolated; a variety of explanations can be found for it. If the murder was committed by order of Henry, then both his desire to attribute the crime to Richard and his fear of doing this openly and directly become clear, since this could unexpectedly reveal the full picture of events. Only 17 years later, in 1502, when none of Richard III's close associates were alive, Henry decided - and then with reference to the (possibly imaginary) confession of Tirel - to disseminate the version that still prevails in historical works. Tirel by this time remained the only one who could be turned into a scapegoat. Another, according to this version, accomplice to the murder - John Dighton - got off lightly: he was ordered to live in Calais. Probably for this mercy, Dighton was charged with the duty of disseminating information about the killing of the princes on the orders of the villain Richard. The rest of Tirel's accomplices - Mils Forrest and Bill Slaughter (slaughter - in English "to kill") - have already died. And how many times before 1502 did Henry have serious motives to try to comprehensively clarify the picture of the murder and make it known to the whole people, because then the opportunity to expose new impostors who called themselves Edward V and his brother would have disappeared.

Finally, the assumption that Henry is even more responsible than Buckingham’s makes the queen’s behavior understandable. And not only the mysterious reconciliation with Richard, but also subsequent actions, after Henry’s accession to the throne and marriage to her daughter. Initially, the Queen Dowager and her son, the Marquess of Dorset, were given an honorable position at court. But at the end of 1486, when Henry learned of the appearance of the first impostor, calling himself the son of Edward IV, everything changed. The queen was deprived of her possessions and imprisoned in a monastery, where she ended her days, and Dorset was even arrested with a mocking explanation that if he was a true friend of Henry, he had nothing to be offended by this precaution taken by the king. What was the point of Elizabeth Woodville supporting the York party, which had fielded an impostor and was led by the son of Richard III's sister, the Earl of Lincoln, who had been appointed heir to the throne after the death of Richard's infant son in April 1484? Another possible contender could be Clarence's son. The Duke was Elizabeth's enemy, and she undoubtedly had no less a hand in killing him (by order of Edward IV) than Richard of Gloucester. Indeed, if the Yorkists were successful, Elizabeth’s daughter would be deprived of the crown, and her newly born (in September 1486) grandson Arthur would be deprived of the right to inherit the throne. What explains the behavior of this hot-tempered, determined woman? Some people believe that she hates the man who directly or indirectly participated in the murder of her sons. No, others object, Elizabeth was by this time a grumpy intriguer who did not get along very well with Henry VII’s mother, Margaret Beaufort. The measures Henry took against his wife's mother showed that he considered her an enemy, probably because, in the king's opinion, she had learned who the murderer of the princes was.

Already in the 17th century. There were voices against the traditional interpretation of the image of Richard III, which was reproduced by Shakespeare. Thus, W. Winstanley in 1684, in his book “English Celebrities,” considered it slander against the “worthy sovereign.” Direct doubts about the fidelity of the Tudor version were expressed by the famous writer Horace Walpole in the book “Historical Doubts Concerning the Life and Character of Richard III” (1768). He argued that the traditional assessment of Richard's character "is created by bias and fiction. Many of the crimes attributed to Richard seem implausible and, more importantly, contrary to his interests." Already K. Halstead's book about Richard, published in the middle of the last century, gave an extremely idealized portrait of the king, as well as the biography written by S. Markham, in which the role of the villain was assigned to Henry VII. Some recent English historians, including Kendal Lamb, do not go so far in everything, but in the excitement of the struggle against the “Tudor myth” they still go too far. In England there is the "Richard III Society", numbering approximately 2,500 people. In 1980, when Parliament adopted a law allowing one to seek protection in court if a false image of a deceased person is presented in films and television programs, a special amendment had to be made to it, namely: such claims for restoration of a good name can only be taken against persons who died relatively recently. The purpose of this clarification, called the “Richard III Amendment,” was to get rid of the threat of prosecution of supporters of the “Tudor lie” that tarnished the honor of the last king of the House of York...

The discussion of the "Tudor myth" continues. In 1970 and 1980, the Richard III Society lobbied for Westminster Abbey to apply for Royal Assent to re-open graves containing skeletons discovered in 1674. Modern means make it possible to determine the age at which children were killed, as well as their gender. It is possible that these were the skeletons of children who, by August 1485, that is, at the time of the death of Richard III, were younger than both princes should have been. Opinions about the advisability of re-opening the urns with the ashes of murdered children were divided, and permission to conduct a new examination was not forthcoming. These were the remains of teenagers belonging to a noble family; the remains of clothing that had not completely decayed were preserved; it was made of corduroy, a very expensive fabric in the 15th century, exported from Italy.

In 1984, British television broadcast the program “The Trial of Richard III”, the scientists participating in it tended to reach a verdict of his innocence in the murder of his nephews.

The historian E. Ware, in his book “Princes in the Tower” (New York, 1994), tried to summarize the results of the debates of recent years. For example, it turns out that the first revisionist attempt was made at the beginning of the 17th century, that is, a century and a half before the debate about Richard's guilt began. In 1617, W. Cornwallis, in his book “A Panegyric to Richard III,” rejected the accusations against this monarch. Two years later, in 1619, the work of George Buck, a descendant of the court's chief accused, appeared, The History of Richard III, in which, based on a study of manuscripts kept in the Tower, More's book was criticized. (Francis Bacon's History of Henry VII, published in 1622, also draws on documents that have not survived to this day.)

The legend that Richard III was a hunchback arose late, in 1534, that is, half a century after his death. It is possible that it had some basis in the deficiency that existed in the figure of the king. Forrest and Slaughter, who killed the princes, were, contrary to the doubts of the revisionists, really jailers in the Tower. But the hypothesis that Buckingham organized the murder is refuted by the fact that he did not have access to the Tower.

It is noteworthy that Richard did not pursue anyone who would be declared the murderers of the sons of Edward IV, because they, although declared illegitimate, remained his nephews. Contemporaries considered Richard a murderer even before the “Tudor myth” was formed, and after his death they stopped hiding their opinion. What is certain is that Henry VII - a clever and merciless politician, a cold calculator, accustomed to weighing well the consequences of any step on the scales of “state interest” - far surpassed his enemy defeated at Bosworth in the art of intrigue and was capable of a crime that was officially attributed to Richard III.

Was Richard III a villain?

As a historical figure, the English king Richard III, whose reign lasted no more than two years, does not occupy a very important place in the history of England. However, thanks to the talent of Thomas More and the genius of William Shakespeare, Richard III became the embodiment of demonic villainy, although he was no worse than most other kings, and other “outstanding figures” who probably had more cruelty and treachery.

Let's start with Thomas More. More wrote a biography of Richard III (1452-1485), the last of the York dynasty, in 1513, based on the stories of his friend and mentor, Archbishop of Canterbury John Morton, an active participant in the War of the Roses. It is impossible to say that Morton was an impartial historiographer. A supporter of the Lancastrian party, he then went over to the side of Edward IV, and after his death he was part of the Woodville clan's attempt to seize power. When Richard III became king, Morton fled to his rival and contender for the crown, Henry Tudor, under whom he received the post of Lord Chancellor and the post of Archbishop of Canterbury, and at the end of his career, at the request of Henry, he was elevated to the rank of cardinal by Pope Alexander VI Borgia.

Undoubtedly, Morton portrayed Richard in the darkest colors, as Thomas More reproduced him in his chronicle “The History of Richard III.” True, More also pursued his own goal; it was important for him to condemn royal arbitrariness, cruelty and despotism, which could be done using the example of Richard III, who was recognized by the authorities as a villain.

Other Tudor historians who wrote about the Wars of the Roses, especially Henry VII's commissioned humanist Polydore Virgil, the king's official historiographer, were equally biased in their treatment of the story of Richard III (Polydore Virgil's History of England, begun in 1506, was published in 1534).

According to the playwright's description, the gloomy figure of the lame Richard appears as an insidious and sinister killer who eliminated one after another relatives who stood in the way of the throne. It was believed that it was at Richard’s instigation that Henry VI was killed in the Tower, his son Prince Edward, who was captured, was executed, and that on the orders of Gloucester, his brother George, Duke of Clarence, was killed (according to rumors, the killers drowned him in a barrel of wine). This hunchbacked, ugly man walked to the throne, not stopping at any crimes.

First of all, Richard hastened to deal with the queen's relatives - the Woodvilles, who could challenge his influence on Edward V. The queen's brother Anthony Woodville (Earl Rivers), her son from her first marriage, Lord Gray, and other nobles were captured and handed over to the executioner. Even before this, Gloucester married Anne Warwick, the daughter of the Earl of Warwick, who was killed by him or with his participation, and the bride (in Shakespeare, the wife) of Prince Edward, the son of Henry VI. The scene of Gloucester's seduction of Anne at the tomb of King Henry VI is one of the most famous places in the tragedies of the brilliant playwright. In it, Shakespeare managed to show the full power of the boundless treachery and feline resourcefulness of the Duke of Gloucester, who managed to win over to his side a woman who passionately hated him for the persecution and murder of her loved ones. Richard appears in this scene not just as a villain, but as a man of outstanding intelligence and enormous abilities that serve him to do evil.

Of course, Richard knew well that the late Edward IV, having fathered two sons from his legal wife Elizabeth Woodville, was engaged to two more brides before this marriage, one of whom was the daughter of Louis XI. Therefore, he had every reason to consider Edward’s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville illegal, which was done in July 1483, after at a meeting of the Royal Council the Bishop of Bath declared the late king a bigamist, and his two sons, including the heir Edward V, - bastards, that is, illegitimate. Edward V was deprived of the throne and, together with his younger brother Richard, was imprisoned in the Tower. After this, the boys were seen only a few times, and for a long time nothing was known about their further fate. However, even then there were rumors, later confirmed, about the killing of the princes. The murder of children was considered a particularly serious crime even in those harsh times. In Shakespeare's chronicle, when Richard proposes to carry it out to the Duke of Buckingham, even this loyal supporter of the bloody king recoils in horror. True, the executioner was soon found - Richard was introduced to Sir James Tyrell, who, in the hope of the monarch's mercy, agreed to carry out his black plan. Tirel's servants, Dayton and Forrest, in the words of their master, “two bastards, two bloodthirsty dogs,” strangled the princes.

Richard, although embarrassed by what he had done, still stubbornly pursues his goal. The main thing for him was not to allow Henry Tudor to the throne, who was preparing in France to land on English soil, trying to win over to his side all those dissatisfied with Richard’s rule on the part of representatives of the York party. Henry's first attempt to land in England in the fall of 1483 ended in failure. And the uprising against Richard was a complete failure. Henry's fleet was scattered by a storm, and the king had difficulty reaching Brittany. In August 1485, Henry landed again with his supporters in his homeland of Wales and marched towards the hastily assembled royal army.

The Battle of Bosworth was short lived. Having placed the crown on top of his helmet, Richard III personally rushed into the fray. The horse under him was killed by an iron arrow from a crossbow (it was on the basis of this episode that the famous Shakespearean line in the tragedy “Richard III” was born - “A horse! A horse! Half a kingdom for a horse!”). Obsessed with the desire to enter into a knightly duel with Henry, Richard lost caution, broke away from his own and found himself surrounded by enemies. One of Tudor's squires struck him from behind and from the left with a terrible blow to the shoulder with a battle ax. He turned out to be so strong that King Richard was cut almost to the saddle, his helmet was crushed into a cake, and his golden crown flew off into the bushes.

Having picked up a symbol of power, Henry Tudor immediately crowned himself amidst cheers. And the naked body of Richard III was thrown over the back of a horse. The long hair of the former king swept away the dust of the road. In this form the corpse was transported to London. The York dynasty has ceased to exist!

This is the general picture of the drama as it seemed to Shakespeare based on the above sources. Its historical background can be considered reliable. Another question is the assessment of Richard III himself and the degree of responsibility for the crimes attributed to him. It is important to note here that after the events described by the playwright, for more than a hundred years the throne was in the hands of the victor Richard Henry Tudor (later King Henry VII) and his descendants. At the time the tragedy was written, the granddaughter of Henry VII, Queen Elizabeth I, reigned on the throne. And this circumstance undoubtedly predetermined the attitude of any writer of that era towards the figure of Richard III, from whom England was “saved” by the founder of the new Tudor dynasty.

But it was from the era of Elizabeth I that historians began to appear who called themselves “the defenders of the most maligned king”, in every possible way challenging the testimony of the chroniclers of the Hudor dynasty as to whether Richard was really such a terrible tyrant as Shakespeare portrays him. In particular, the fact of Richard's murder in May 1483 of his own nephews, the young princes Edward V and Richard, was questioned. In the course of the investigations undertaken by historians, it was never possible to definitively establish the guilt or innocence of Richard, but there is no doubt that both the character of the king himself and the other crimes attributed to him in the play represent a vivid artistic dramatization of Tudor distortions and fabrications. Contrary to Shakespeare, Richard was not a “hunchbacked reptile”, withered and lame. He was an attractive, albeit rather frail, prince who was considered the leading commander in the kingdom, so that he can be called the most successful warrior in Europe of that era, after his brother Edward IV. During the reign of Edward IV, he did not at all indulge in atrocities and conspiracies, but was a faithful and unfailingly devoted assistant to his brother in all his affairs. During the years of defeats and victories (1469-1471), when Edward finally managed to crush the coalition of York and Lancaster, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, constable and admiral of England, Lord of the North, was his brother's main support. It is worth noting his successes in governing the north of England and the victories won over the Scots (1480-1482).

In order to restore the true picture of those dramatic events, scientists have repeatedly turned to documents dating back to the reign of Edward IV and especially Richard III himself, laws issued under Richard, royal orders, reports of diplomats and other few materials that were not destroyed by the victorious Tudors . In particular, in documents dating back to the time preceding the Battle of Bosworth, there is no mention of the physical defects of the “hunchback” Richard, which in the Tudor age were passed off as an outward manifestation of the devilish nature of the last king of the York dynasty! They portray Richard as a capable administrator who remained loyal to Edward IV even when the king's other brother, the Duke of Clarence, betrayed him. All his actions do not reveal any special predilection for intrigue, nor cruelty, which would distinguish him from other main participants in the War of the Scarlet and White Roses.

As for the killing of princes, some researchers call this legend the most famous detective in the history of England. Surprising as it may seem, the version of Richard's murder of his nephews, told by Shakespeare, accepted as truth by millions of spectators and readers of his dramatic chronicles, and repeated over the centuries in hundreds of history books, is based on a very shaky foundation. Of course, the participants in the secret crime, caring for their own interests, and not for the convenience of future historians, according to the very logic of things, should not have left such traces that could be considered as undoubted evidence of the Duke of Gloucester’s guilt. It is difficult to imagine that he gave written orders to his spies to kill his nephews, and that they submitted loyal, also written, reports on the crime committed. And if there were such documents that dated back to the time of the murder and to its direct participants, then they had very little chance of settling in public and private archives and surviving until the days when researchers began to look for traces of the past tragedy.

Another interesting fact is also interesting. In 1674, while renovating one of the rooms of the White Tower (a building inside the fortress), workers found two skeletons under the stairs, which could presumably be the remains of Edward V and his brother. They were buried in Westminster Abbey, which had long served as the tomb of English kings.

In 1933, the remains were recovered and subjected to serious medical examination. The conclusion was that the bones belonged to teenagers, one of whom was 12-13 years old, and the other 10. The princes were approximately the same age in 1483-1484. But the doctors’ claim that traces of violent death from suffocation were found was disputed as unprovable - on the basis of the surviving part of the skeletons. Some experts have suggested that the eldest of the teenagers was younger than Edward V. There was even doubt expressed that the skeletons belonged to male children. Be that as it may, the examination did not establish the main thing - the age of these remains (this, by the way, is difficult to determine even now). In one thing we can agree with the conclusions of the commission - if the two skeletons found are the children of Edward IV, then they were indeed killed in the spring of 1483, that is, at the beginning of the reign of Richard III or a few months later. But this “if” negates the evidentiary value of the conclusion.

This is the main version of the riddle of Richard III, on the basis of which Shakespeare wrote his work. It is difficult to say how true it is, because, as we see, there are many inaccuracies, which indicates one thing: until it is established that the found remains definitely belong to the princes, it is impossible to make a final conclusion. Only time can show what is hidden behind the “mystery” of Richard III’s personality and whether it can be solved at all.

Most likely, neither we nor our descendants will ever know the truth, despite the truth of the old English proverb that says: “Truth is the daughter of time.” But something else is known - some legends are amazingly tenacious, and it is not so easy to eradicate them from human memory, no matter what evidence appears in the course of further historical research into the fate of one of the most mysterious English rulers.

June 26, 1483 - August 22, 1485 Coronation July 6, 1483 Predecessor Edward V Successor Henry VII

	Lord Protector of England
April 9, 1483 - June 26, 1483

Religion Catholicism Birth 2 October(1452-10-02 )
Fotheringhay Castle, Northamptonshire Death August 22(1485-08-22 ) (32 years)
died at the Battle of Bosworth Burial place Gray Friars Abbey, subsequently destroyed Genus Yorkie Father Richard, Duke of York Mother Cecilia Neville Spouse Anna Neville Children Autograph

Richard III at Wikimedia Commons

Until 1459, Richard lived in Fotheringhay in the company of one of his older brothers, George, and one of his sisters, Margaret. Finally, the Duke of York ordered him to be brought to Ludlow, where the seven-year-old boy first saw his older brothers, Edward and Edmund. On 30 December 1460 his father was killed at the Battle of Wakefield.

Richard was a representative of the York dynasty - one of two dynasties that fought for the English throne during the Wars of the Roses. In addition, he was an outstanding warrior and spent long hours perfecting the science of swordsmanship. As a result, the muscles of his right arm were unusually developed. He was distinguished by great courage and strategic abilities.

When Edward IV was proclaimed king (1461), 9-year-old Richard received the title Duke of Gloucester. Having matured, he faithfully served Edward IV, took part in battles, and fled to Holland with him in 1470-1471. He received many titles and possessions from the king. Richard was suspected of murdering his elder brother, Duke of Clarence (1478). On 12 June 1482 he was appointed commander of the army that Edward IV sent to Scotland.

When Edward IV died (April 9, 1483), Richard was with an army on the Scottish border. The queen's relatives proclaimed the deceased king's eldest son, Edward V, a twelve-year-old boy, king - so that the regency belonged to his mother, Elizabeth. Her party met strong opponents in the form of the influential feudal magnates Lord Hastings and the Duke of Buckingham, who offered Richard the regency in accordance with the will of Edward IV.

Queen Elizabeth took refuge in Westminster Abbey. Richard swore an oath of allegiance to Edward V and ordered coins to be minted with his image.

However, after Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath, informed the Privy Council that he had personally married Edward IV to Lady Eleanor Butler, daughter of the first Earl of Shrewsbury, and this marriage had not been dissolved by the time of Edward's wedding to Elizabeth Woodville, Parliament passed the "Act about succession to the throne,” according to which the throne passed to Richard as the only legitimate heir (the son of George, Duke of Clarence, the middle brother of Edward and Richard, was excluded from the line of succession due to his father’s crimes). Hastings, who sided with Elizabeth and took part in the conspiracy against Richard, was accused of treason and executed.

On June 26, Richard agreed to become king. On July 6, 1483, he was solemnly crowned and ordered the release of all prisoners from prison.

Reign of Richard III

Immediately after the coronation, Richard convened parliament and announced that he intended to travel around his state: people everywhere greeted him with expressions of devotion.

In 1674, during excavation work in the Tower, human bones were discovered under the foundation of one of the stairs. It was announced that the remains belonged to the once missing princes. They were buried with honors in Westminster Abbey. In 1933, the grave was opened for scientific examination, which confirmed that the bones indeed belonged to two children, most likely boys 12-15 years old, who were closely related. This indirectly testifies against Henry VII, since if Richard had committed the crime, then the murdered children should have been 10-12 years old. In recent years, archival accounts were discovered, from which it was clear that money for clothing and food for the princes was allocated by the treasury. The last such record found was dated March 9, 1485.

The Duke of Buckingham withdrew from the king and began to make plans for his overthrow. A plan was drawn up to marry Edward IV's eldest daughter, Elizabeth, to the young Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, who was also a relative of the Dukes of Lancaster. In October 1483, the king's enemies simultaneously rebelled in several counties. Richard was at first very alarmed, but then with quick and energetic measures he tried to restore calm. He placed a large reward on the heads of the rebels. Buckingham's soldiers fled before the battle began. He himself was captured and beheaded in Salisbury on 12 November. Other rebel leaders and the Earl of Richmond himself took refuge abroad. But even after this, Richard’s position remained precarious. And the more he executed his opponents (although he resorted to this only in extreme cases, preferring to release the conspirators on parole and the responsibility of one of his relatives), the more adherents young Tudor gained.

An energetic administrator, Richard III expanded trade, reorganized the army, made improvements in legal proceedings, and was a patron of the arts, especially music and architecture. During his reign, he carried out a number of popular reforms, in particular, Richard streamlined legal proceedings, prohibited violent exactions (the so-called “voluntary donations” or “benevolences”), and pursued a policy of protectionism, thereby strengthening the country’s economy.

In 1485, Richard's wife Anna died suddenly. The king was suspected of murdering his wife in order to marry Edward IV's eldest daughter, Elizabeth. Richard publicly denied rumors of this in a speech addressed to the magistrates of London. In 1485, a proposal for a dynastic marriage between Richard and Joan of Portugal was sent to Portugal, but negotiations dragged on until the Battle of Bosworth.

Death

Burial of Richard III

For more than five centuries, there was a legend that his remains were later removed from the grave and thrown into the Soir River. However, the results of archaeological excavations in Leicester in the fall of 2012 suggested that his grave had survived. The skeleton of a man with signs of severe scoliosis, who died from injuries apparently received in battle, was discovered on the site where Greyfriars Abbey Church had previously stood. In February 2013, it was announced that, according to genetic testing, the remains found at the site of a car park in Leicester were indeed those of Richard III. Richard III was found to have Y-chromosomal haplogroup G2 and mitochondrial haplogroup J1c2c. Traces of eleven wounds were found on the bones, nine of them on the skull; this suggested that the king had lost his helmet in the battle.

English experts on bone remains reconstructed the appearance of the king. Five days of mourning and burial took place in Leicester and the county for the farewell and burial of Richard III. The oak coffin for the king was made by the king's 17th generation descendant, Michael Ibsen, and actor Benedict Cumberbatch read a poem during the ceremony. The remains of Richard III were reburied in Leicester Cathedral on 26 March 2015, despite the fact that 9 descendants demanded that the king be buried in York.

Image in literature

• Richard the Hunchback appears as a young man in R. L. Stevenson's novel The Black Arrow.
• A chronicle play by W. Shakespeare “Richard III” was written about Richard.
• According to George Martin, author of the epic A Song of Ice and Fire, Tyrion Lannister was based on Richard III; in addition, as the author admitted, this image is partly autobiographical.
• Richard III is the central character in Simone Vilar's Anna Neville series of novels, in which the author follows the Shakespearean tradition in his portrayal of King Richard.
• Young Richard, Duke of Gloucester, appears as the main character in the novel “The Innocent Widow” by the English writer Anne O'Brien. The action of the novel covers 1462 to 1472 and tells us the love story of the young Duke of Gloucester and Lady Anne Neville.
• Richard III is one of the main characters in the historical novel The White Boar by English writer Marian Palmer, in which the author is sympathetic to Richard and his supporters.
• Richard III and Anne Neville are the main characters in the historical novel by the English writer Jean Plaidy (Victoria Holt) Doomed to the Crown. Richard also appears in other novels by the writer (“The Scarlet Rose of Anjou” and “The Jeweler’s Daughter”).
• Richard III was depicted as one of the characters by the English writer Cynthia Harrod-Eagles in the historical cycle “Dynasty” - in the first book “The Foundling”, covering the events of the Wars of the Roses.
• Richard III is the main character in the historical novel Richard III by Russian writer Svetlana Kuznetsova, in which the author is sympathetic to Richard and his supporters.
• In the novel "Time's Daughter" by Josephine Tay, the main character - Scotland Yard inspector Alan Grant - lying in the hospital, with the help of friends, out of boredom, begins an investigation into the circumstances of the murder of Richard's nephews and comes to the conclusion that Henry VII ordered the princes to be killed.
• Richard III is the prototype of Alexander Tagare, one of the main characters in the fantasy cycle “Chronicles of Arcia” by the Russian writer Vera Kamshi.
• Richard III is one of the main characters in the War of the Roses series by the English writer Philippa Gregory.
• Richard III is one of the main characters in the popular science books of the English historian and writer

For four centuries, the English king Richard III has served as the personification of cruelty and deceit - this is how he is portrayed in Shakespeare’s brilliant play. But modern historians believe that the real appearance of this monarch was far from so clear. By denigrating him, the playwright fulfilled the “social order” of the Tudor dynasty, which deprived Richard of the crown, and at the same time his life.

On August 22, 1485, the village of Bosworth, lost in the center of England, went down in history. Next to her, the armies of two contenders for the throne—King Richard III and Henry Tudor—came into mortal combat. Two hours of bloodshed did not bring success to either side. Then Richard decided to turn the tide: with a handful of knights, he descended from Embion Hill and, at full gallop, crashed into the ranks of the enemies, trying to kill their leader. It seemed that victory was close, but suddenly Richard’s horse tripped over a bump and threw his master off. Immediately the Welsh Tudor archers attacked the monarch and literally tore him to pieces. He was not wearing a crown, but it was found in his saddle bag, and Earl Stanley immediately put it on Henry who arrived in time. The king is dead - long live the king!

Shakespeare portrays this whole story somewhat differently. In his play, Richard rushes confusedly across the battlefield, exclaiming: “Horse, horse! My crown is for the horse!” (hereinafter the quotes are given in translation by Anna Radlova). In the end, the Earl of Richmond - this was the title of Henry Tudor - personally kills him in a duel, exclaiming over the corpse: “Victory is ours, the bloody dog ​​is dead!” And the audience is inclined to agree with him: after all, Richard shed a sea of ​​blood before their eyes. On his orders, his wife Lady Anne, brother Duke of Clarence and two young nephews - King Edward V and Duke Richard of York, were killed, not to mention many noble lords. In addition, Richard's murder of the previous king, Henry VI, and his son Edward, is mentioned.

Richard commits all these atrocities for a reason, but with obvious pleasure. This is a sophisticated villain, quoting the classics and making long speeches in his defense. In the very first monologue that opens the play, he directly declares: “I decided to become a scoundrel.” The reason is simple - no one likes Richard. His life is miserable because he is a freak - a small, lopsided hunchback with an unpleasant face. As he hobbles down the street, people laugh and dogs bark. Richard yearns for love and family happiness, but is sure that it is impossible to love him. Power is the only joy, and he will achieve it, even if at the same time his soul becomes as disgusting as his appearance. If other people's lives stand between him and the throne, he must take them away, “clearing the way with a bloody ax.”

The play "Richard III" is part of Shakespeare's historical chronicles, but is noticeably different from these multifaceted works with many characters. This is a performance of one main character, or rather, an anti-hero. Richard is a masterful hypocrite, hypnotizing those around him who do not want to recognize him as their executioner. The closer he is to the next crime, the sweeter his smiles and warmer hugs. The unlucky Duke of Clarence, imprisoned in the Tower at the behest of his brother, hopes to the last for Richard’s intercession, and he orders him to be drowned in a barrel of wine. The usurper favors Lord Hastings, appoints him chairman of the royal council - and immediately orders his execution. Having forced Lady Anna, the wife of Prince Edward, whom he destroyed, to marry himself, Richard soon kills her too in order to marry his own niece Elizabeth and strengthen his rights to the throne. The list of atrocities is so long that it raises suspicions: is the real Richard guilty of the sins that the playwright charged him with? And the closer we get to know historical facts, the more these doubts become.

“Kill or be killed!”

It is not easy for the modern reader to understand the dynastic intricacies. However, you need to know that Richard, born in October 1452, was the youngest son of Duke Richard of York, who died in the famous War of the Roses. After the extinction of the Plantagenet dynasty in 1399, two branches of its descendants began to fight for the throne - the Lancasters and the Yorks. Richard of York's coat of arms featured a white rose, while King Henry VI's had a scarlet rose. The fighting began in 1455 and continued with varying success until 1461, when the Lancastrians were finally defeated, giving way to the Yorks.

A thirty-year series of battles and military campaigns caused noticeable devastation in the ranks of the British aristocracy - especially those close to the throne. For the rest of England, this war was almost invisible. As one historian put it, it left only “small scratches” on the surface of everyday life. If you add up the time of fighting for all thirty years, then it will not even be three months, and the number of knightly armies rarely exceeded several thousand. At the same time, the battles were extremely fierce, and even outside the battlefield, the warring parties exterminated each other in every possible way. Richard was the son of this cruel age and fully adhered to its main principle: “Kill or be killed!”

So was his brother Edward IV, whom Shakespeare, without any particular reason, portrays as a weak but good monarch. In fact, he played a decisive role in the removal from power and then the murder of King Henry VI - the last of the Lancasters. Edward first came to power in 1461 at the age of 18 and immediately came into conflict with the most powerful supporter of the Yorks - Earl Richard of Warwick, who was nicknamed the “kingmaker”. While he was wooing a Spanish princess to the new monarch, Edward hastily married the widow of a simple English nobleman, Gray, who was 11 years older than him. Warwick's mission failed, and the proud feudal lord felt insulted. Relations between him and the king deteriorated more and more, and in 1470 Warwick defected to the Lancastrian side and restored the deposed Henry VI to the throne. Edward fled to Holland with Richard, who was 17 years old.

It was during that period that the future king first appeared on the pages of history. Neither then nor later did sources report anything about his particular cruelty or physical deformity, which Shakespeare depicted. In the play, Richard himself says about himself: “ugly, distorted and before my time, I was sent to the world of people.” But in the chronicles written during Richard’s lifetime, there is not a word about the king’s notorious hump; it only says that one shoulder is higher than the other. In the few surviving portraits, Richard also does not have any hump, and in general he seems to be a rather pleasant young man. Yes, precisely young - after all, he lived only 32 years.

Richard, contrary to Shakespeare, did not take part in the early battles of the War of the Roses. But already at the age of 17, he actively helped his brother Edward organize an invasion of England. Having recruited mercenary soldiers from the Netherlands, the Yorks crossed the English Channel in April 1471 and defeated Warwick at the Battle of Barnet. After which for four days the crowd saw the naked corpse of the “kingmaker” stretched out on the porch of London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral. In May, 16-year-old Lancastrian heir Prince Edward was killed at Tewkesbury. And on the night of May 21, the life of his father Henry VI was cut short in the Tower.

It is unlikely that Richard Gloucester was more involved in these deaths than his brother. Throughout the reign of King Edward IV, Gloucester appears as his faithful servant. He successfully filled important military and government positions, demonstrating his loyalty and ability to be useful. For his brother, he was obviously a person who could be relied upon in the most difficult and important matters. Gloucester received control of the northern regions of England, which suffered from attacks by supporters of Lancaster and the Scots. At the head of an army sent north, he won an important victory that ensured peace on the Scottish border for almost half a century.

In those years, the prince rarely appeared at court. The reason is the ill will of Queen Elizabeth and her numerous energetic relatives. As is known from Shakespeare, Duke Richard of Gloucester married Lady Anne Neville, the youngest daughter of the Earl of Warwick and the widow of Prince Edward of Lancaster. The merits of the bride are evidenced by the fact that the Duke of Clarence, who was married to Warwick’s eldest daughter, unsuccessfully opposed this marriage. The “Kingmaker” left a huge inheritance, and Clarence, who was not at all a harmless simpleton, did not want to give his brother half of it. He tried tirelessly to turn the king against Gloucester, and it would not be surprising if Richard eventually decided to repay him in kind. And yet, one can only blame him for Clarence’s death with caution: when he was imprisoned in the Tower in 1478, Richard remained in the north, away from the court. Moreover, the drowning of the Duke in a barrel of malvasia is nothing more than a legend. Most likely, he was secretly strangled and, probably, on the orders of the king himself, who had long been tired of the tireless intriguer.

Richard appeared in the capital only in April 1483 after the death of Edward IV. His heirs were two young sons - 12-year-old Edward and 10-year-old Richard. The question of the king's will still remains open. We do not know who was appointed regent of the kingdom until the heir came of age. Queen Dowager Elizabeth and her relatives wanted to keep the regency in their own hands. They didn't even inform Richard about his brother's death. But influential magnates - Lord Hastings and the Duke of Buckingham - invited Richard to London and spoke in favor of his election as regent. Most likely, they were afraid of the queen’s greedy relatives, who were quite capable of encroaching on their possessions. With their support, Richard and his troops marched on London. After an unsuccessful attempt to organize military resistance, the queen and her relatives took refuge in Westminster Abbey, and the Duke of Gloucester became regent.

On May 4, both princes entered London and preparations began for the coronation of Edward V, scheduled for June 22. However, already on June 13, Lord Hastings, who allegedly prepared the conspiracy, was arrested and executed. Shakespeare considered this conspiracy only a pretext, but it is possible that it really happened. The first steps of the new regent showed his determination and independence from other people's opinions. Such a ruler was not needed either by the lords or by the party of the Queen Mother, who hoped to rule the country under the young Edward. Richard understood well that he would save life and freedom only in one case if he himself became king.

Times and manners

On June 22, 1483, the London preacher James Shaw gave a speech in front of St. Paul's Cathedral in which the queen's children from Edward and the late king himself were declared illegitimate. These accusations were not inspired by the summer heat: residents of the capital had been whispering about them for a long time. The royal court was not distinguished by strict morality. When the Duke of Clarence tried to become king instead of his brother Edward IV, their mother Cecilia Neville took his side, publicly admitting that she gave birth to Edward not from the Duke of York, but from a completely different man. And when Edward wanted to marry the widow Gray, she made a new scandalous statement: her son was already married to a certain Elizabeth Lucy.

The young king was indeed a great ladies' man. When he came across a girl of strict rules, who was not inclined to give in to his advances, he immediately promised to marry her. Apparently, this is what happened to Elizabeth, a beauty from a good and pious family. Edward cynically referred to her as “the most pious whore in the whole kingdom, who cannot be dragged out of the church anywhere except his bed.” When Elizabeth was about to give birth to a child from him, the king urgently married the widow Gray, who had many children. Nevertheless, Elizabeth Lucy acted nobly: without listening to anyone’s advice, she swore before the bishops that she and King Edward were not related by marriage. After which the king also continued to have an affair with Lucy, as a result of which another illegitimate child was born. His other wife before the wedding was Eleanor Butler, daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury. You may not believe the Bishop of Bath, who confirmed that he married King Edward to Lady Eleanor, but this marriage is mentioned in the documents of the English Parliament. Thus, Richard received a good excuse to exclude his nephews from inheriting the throne. According to the customs of that time, children of bigamists were deprived of the right to their father's inheritance. Therefore, preparations for the coronation of Edward V were slowly curtailed. Both princes were placed in the Tower, and after Richard's coronation no one heard anything about them.

Where have the children gone? Rumors of their death spread very quickly, but after the accession of Henry Tudor to the throne, the fate of King Edward's children was never announced. Later it was rumored that they were alive, and even several impostors appeared, claiming the throne under the names of Edward or Richard. An incident helped clarify the situation. The fact is that a certain James Tyrrell, the commandant of the fort that covered the important fortress of Calais, joined the conspiracy of the Earl of Suffolk against Henry VII. In March 1502, the fort was besieged by royal troops and, after a short resistance, surrendered. Tyrrell faced the death penalty, before which, in his dying confession, he confessed to the murder of the children of King Edward IV. According to the commandant of the fort, he and his henchmen, having killed the children, buried their bodies there in the Tower, under the stairs, and piled a pile of stones on top. The king gave the order for the murder. All that remains is to find out - which one? Richard III or did the order come from Henry VII? Little Yorkies, if they remained alive under Uncle Richard, should have been an unpleasant surprise for Tudor - they had to be quickly gotten rid of.

In 1674, during excavation work in the Tower, human bones were discovered under the foundations of the stairs. At first, no significance was attached to the find, and for two years the bones lay in a box in the corner. But, in the end, they became interested in them, the matter reached the king, and it was announced that the remains belonged to the once missing princes. They were buried in Westminster Abbey. In 1933, the grave was opened for scientific examination, which confirmed that the bones indeed belonged to two children, most likely boys 12-15 years old, who were closely related.

Soon, historians came to the conclusion that this find indirectly testifies against Henry VII. For reasons that will be discussed below, Tudor was more interested in discrediting Richard III than anyone else, and did a lot to achieve this. By accusing him of murdering the princes, he not only ruined the reputation of his rival, but also concealed his own crime. The fact is that if Richard committed the crime, the murdered children should have been 10-12 years old. The later age of the remains found indicates that the murder was committed at a different time: just after the Tudors came to power. Moreover, if Tyrrell was Richard's faithful servant, he could hardly succeed under the new reign and occupy a fairly important military post. Was the position of commandant a payment for a secret service rendered to the king? No one will know about this anymore - Henry Tudor was famous for his secrecy.

Poor York

Thanks to the efforts of the Tudors, very little is known about the short reign of Richard III. We know that the king patronized trade and increased the tax on imported goods, protecting English merchants from competition. He loved to read, which was not so common for monarchs of that time. Through his efforts, a library and a small orchestra appeared in the royal palace, delighting the king and his guests with the sounds of flutes and viols. He lived with his wife Anna Neville much longer than Shakespeare portrays - as much as 13 years. She died shortly before Richard's death for an unclear reason, and there is no doubt that it was not his fault. Most likely, the queen could not bear the death of her only son, Edward, who barely lived to be ten years old. Children died often at that time, even royal ones.

Of course, Richard was no angel - he executed a dozen lords guilty of real or imaginary conspiracies. At the same time, he was much more humane than Henry Tudor, who replaced him, who sent his opponents to the chopping block with entire families. In Richard’s time there was nothing like this, which, in fact, cost him his life. In October 1483, Richard suppressed the rebellion of his former supporter Henry Stafford, the same Duke of Buckingham. The purpose of this speech was the elevation to the English throne of Henry Tudor, then still the Earl of Richmond. The treacherous Buckingham ended his life on the chopping block, but other active participants in the conspiracy were allowed to flee to France. The Stanley family involved in the case also escaped reprisals. Lord William Stanley was the second husband of Richmond's mother Margaret, who openly schemed in favor of her son. However, neither she nor her husband suffered due to their relationship with the rebel.

On 7–8 August 1485, Henry landed at Milford Haven in south Wales with an army of five thousand, mostly consisting of experienced French mercenaries. The rest of it included squads of feudal lords offended by Richard and Welsh archers loyal to their fellow countryman Tudor. Richard had more than 10 thousand soldiers, but their training and organization left much to be desired. While going around the posts on the eve of the decisive battle, Henry saw one of the sentries sleeping and immediately stabbed him with the words: “You are sleeping - so sleep forever!” Richard's army did not post sentries at all. Lord Stanley, who commanded the reserve, was not prevented from exchanging letters with his stepson Tudor.

Having received promises of rank and honor, Stanley betrayed his master on the fateful day of the Battle of Bosworth. The Earl of Northumberland also avoided participating in the battle. The deceived king had only one thing left - to rush into a last desperate attack and die fighting. His mutilated body was exhibited in Leicester for three days for the amusement of the mob, and then buried without honor in the remote monastery of the Gray Brothers. His misadventures did not end there: during the destruction of the monasteries under Henry VIII, Richard’s bones were thrown from the grave into the River Soar.

The Battle of Bosworth brought a new Tudor dynasty to the English throne. In fact, it was believed that Richmond opposed the Yorks as the leader of the Lancastrians. His mother Margaret was the great-granddaughter of the founder of this dynasty, although she was only a second cousin to King Henry VI - the seventh water on the jelly. If it were not for the long rivalry between the Lancasters and Yorks, which pretty much cleared out the ranks of contenders for the throne, no one would have seriously considered the rights to the crown of Henry Tudor. On his father's side, he was descended from the Welsh, who were despised in England and considered savages. York occupied the throne with an immeasurably greater basis, so that the winner under Bosworth looked like a formal usurper. The intensification of passions around the person of Richard III was a response to the weakness of the dynastic claims of the Tudors. First of all, Henry declared invalid the act of parliament that once substantiated the dynastic rights of the Yorks, and ordered the destruction of all existing copies of this document, as if he was afraid of the resurrection of one of the Yorks.

Most likely, Richard left a good memory of himself, and in comparison with Henry Tudor he clearly won. True, the new king continued the policy of supporting merchants and artisans, but he carried it out using methods that Richard never decided on. Taxes under Henry rose almost every year, townspeople were forcibly resettled to new places, and peasants were driven off the land. Crowds of beggars wandered along the roads, against whom severe measures were taken, including the gallows. The thrifty Tudor stopped issuing bread to his subjects in times of famine and did not exempt those who suffered from crop failure from taxes. All this led to an increase in the popularity of the overthrown dynasty. Therefore, many remembered the Yorks with nostalgia.

It is no coincidence that the Tudor court writers raised one slander after another against Richard III. When people who knew the late king went to their graves, dirt poured out in a torrent. They began to portray him as a real fiend of hell, ugly in soul and body. Shakespeare claims that he was born premature. According to another version, his mother paid for his birth with a long, painful pregnancy, and Richard was born feet first, with all his teeth and shoulder-length hair. Judging by these expressive descriptions, the little gnarled monster resembled an evil elf and was lame, like the devil himself: according to Christian legend, Lucifer broke his leg when God threw him from heaven.

Humanists-mythmakers

The image turned out to be very impressive. It remained to find and describe the place of Richard III in the history and events of that era, that is, to associate all the high-profile murders with his name. And the demonic Richard III, created by his enemies, eventually turned into proof of his guilt. Each chronicler, who did not want to quarrel with the king, hurried to make his contribution. By the beginning of the 16th century, all that was missing was a talented pen capable of bringing everything that had been lied into one complete picture.

The final formulation of the myth was undertaken by the great English humanist Thomas More, who wrote “The History of Richard III” in 1513. One can remember about Thomas More that he coined the word “utopia”, and at the same time Utopia itself - a fictional country with an ideal social system. We use the word in a slightly different sense, meaning by utopia unrealizable dreams and empty fantasies. The humanism of More's time was also different from what is meant by the meaning of this word today. Humanists were called figures of the Renaissance who tried to bring back the achievements of ancient science and art into European everyday life.

Of course, such a person was not a corrupt scribbler who, at the dictation of the powers that be, composed libels against their enemies. For a humanist, the task of trashing King Richard was attractive as an opportunity to take a step towards the triumph of true values. Richard could have been sacrificed in order to expose public ills, showing the essence of tyrants, and to do this with the full connivance of the ruling monarch, who would only rejoice at the exposure of his enemy. There was also a personal reason for More’s dislike for Richard: his educator and mentor was Cardinal John Morton, who was sharply hostile towards the late king (in Shakespeare’s play he is named Bishop of Ely).

With all this, More is in no hurry to consider all the rumors about Richard true. In his “History” he admits that in everything that happened under the last York there is much that is dark and hidden. That people say a lot of things out of spite and pass off suspicions and guesses as facts. He writes: “In those days everything was done secretly, one thing was said, another was implied, so there was nothing clear and openly proven.” But still, Richard’s verdict is unequivocal: under More’s pen, he turns into a physical and moral monster.

Ironically, the humanist faced the same fate as the monarch he had slandered - violent death and posthumous disgrace. In 1535, he was executed on the orders of Tudor's son, the despot king Henry VIII. This prevented the dissemination of the History under his own name, which remained banned for a long time. But the work itself, without mentioning its disgraced author, was rewritten every now and then in English historical works of the 16th century. In particular, More's "History" was included in the chronicle of Raphael Holinshed, published in 1577. In writing many of his plays, including Richard III, Shakespeare used it in the second edition, published 10 years later.

The great playwright was not a historian. He was not at all interested in Richard's true face - besides, it was unsafe to reveal this face during the Tudor reign. Like More, he was interested in something else - the true face of power, its impact on the human soul. In his play, Richard turned from a capable but rather mediocre ruler into a real genius - but only a genius of evil. He easily manipulates the insignificant people around him, one by one removing them from his path. He rejects moral standards, openly declaring: “The fist is our conscience, and the law is our sword!” But in Shakespeare's world, crime inevitably follows punishment. Fate itself acts against Richard in the form of the spirits of the people he killed, and Henry Tudor can only complete his defeat with his sword. The play is played, the lesson is taught. And it’s not Shakespeare’s fault that this time the ill-fated king, who deserved a better fate in the eyes of his descendants, found himself in the role of a visual aid.