Our editor writes:

My own interest in King Richard III goes back many years when my history teacher at school recommended "The Daughter of Time" a crime novel with a difference, by Josephine Tey. Why has this king been credited with the murders of Henry VI, and his son, his brother Clarence, and the "princes in the Tower", when his contemporaries seemed to know nothing of such crimes?

Wendy Moorhen writes:

Shakespeare’s Richard III is one of the most villainous characters in English literature, a man who boasts:

‘I can smile, and murder while I smile’.

The play was the culmination of a hundred years of Tudor propaganda and it includes one of the greatest mysteries of British history, the disappearance of Richard’s nephews – ‘The Princes in the Tower’. The Tudors claimed they were murdered by their uncle but lack of evidence means that to this day their fate is unknown.

Richard’s death came towards the end of the dynastic struggle known today as the Wars of the Roses. His successor, Henry VII, had only a distant claim to the throne and, to substantiate this right by conquest at the Battle of Bosworth, he planned to subvert the reputation of the former king, and so came into being the tyrannical murderer immortalised by Shakespeare.

The reality was very different. During his lifetime Richard, Duke of Gloucester, proved himself to be a talented and innovative administrator, demonstrated prowess as a soldier and was irreproachably loyal to his brother Edward IV. During his brief reign he sponsored legislation extending the rights of the common man. In 1483 the Bishop of St David’s wrote:

‘He contents the people wher he goys best than ever did prince; for many a poor amn that hath suffred wrong many days have by relevyed and helpyd by hym … God hath sent hym to us for the wele (benefit) of us all.’

The esteem in which Richard’s subjects held him was not easily diminished and on hearing of his death the Council of the City of York recorded:

‘ … King Richard late mercifully, Reigning upon us was thrugh grete treason … piteously slane and murdred to the grete hevynesse of this Citie.’

Additional Links

Please look at the Richard III Society, the Richard III Society American Branch and Britannia.com on Richard III.