Richard III, King of England

b. 1452; d. 1485

Son of Richard, 3rd Duke of York and a younger brother of Edward IV. When Edward died in 1483, he left the young King, Edward V, and the kingdom in Richard's charge. Richard set about the overthrow of the Woodville faction, the relative of Edward IV's wife, Elizabeth Woodville, and having succeeded in this rapidly became dissatisfied with simply being regent. By the end of June 1483, he was king and Edward V and his brother were in the Tower. (They had been declared illegitimate on the grounds that their parents marriage was invalid because of a pre-contract between Edward IV and Eleanor Butler ).

The offer of the crown to Richard by an incomplete parliament gave a legal cloak to his seizure of power. Trouble began almost at once with a revolt led by the Duke of Buckingham. This was suppressed and Buckingham executed but Richard had few supporters among the nobility and the common people were disturbed by ugly rumours about what had happened to the Princes in the Tower. It is unlikely that the truth about the fate of these boys will ever be known. Richard did his best to re-establish his reputation by ruling efficiently and energetically but nevertheless, when Henry of Richmond (Henry VII), the sole remaining Lancastrian claimant to the throne, invaded the country in 1485 he gained widespread support. Richard met him in battle at Bosworth, was defeated and killed.

Richard's character is still something of an enigma to the historian. For generations, largely as a result of Shakespeare's play, he has been the arch villain of English history, deformed in mind as in body. The chroniclers' accounts are disjointed and conflicting and it would obviously have been in the interests of the Tudor monarchs and historians to vilify his memory as much as possible. The suspicious circumstances of his accession dogged him: personally intelligent and brave, a lover of books and a patron of the arts, popular on his northern estates, Richard appears as a particularly ruthless man in a ruthless age. He seems to have been overwhelmed by his own ambition, to have lacked the time to establish himself on the throne, and the political skill which in the past had made similar seizures of power a success.

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