Guilty or Not Guilty? Did Richard III kills his two nephews?

[cali]

Most Historians of the period think he did.

But the truth they bring us to is, inevitably, incomplete, and does nothing whatsoever to vindicate the romantic heroism, battle wounds aside, that the Richard avatars have projected on the remains. “I’m sorry,” said Philippa Langley, the driving force of the Richard III Society, which paid for the excavations and DNA analysis, on beholding the reconstructed face of the king, “but he just doesn’t look like a tyrant.” Just what she imagines an authentic despot to look like she didn’t say. The Ricardians insist that their hero has been twice killed by the Tudors: once at Bosworth Field and many times thereafter by their hired pens. The Machiavellian monster of egotism—“I am for myself alone”—brought to life by Shakespeare’s brilliant pen, was actually a champion of the poor; the impartial and honest dispenser of royal justice in the north of England and a paragon of Christian piety. In fact, just because the Ricardians—like groupies clinging to the jeans of a long-dead sexily wicked rock star—yearn for him to be wicked good, doesn’t mean to say there isn’t evidence to suggest that Richard did not have some of these qualities. But it’s also likely that they went along with a streak of absolute ruthlessness, a willingness to do whatever it took to get the crown, including usurpation, proxy murder, and summary arrests and executions without even a gesture of judicial process. All this was in fact fair game in the Machiavellian playbook. The Prince was not written until 28 years after Richard’s death, but attitudes to what needed to be done to establish oneself in unchallenged power—the benefit to oneself and to the commonwealth being the same thing—had not changed all that much. Describing Cesare Borgia, Machiavelli writes admiringly of his will “to protect himself from his enemies, to win allies, to conquer either by force or deceit, to make himself loved and feared by the people, to be followed and revered by his soldiers, to wipe out those who can do him harm.” All of which makes Richard III neither antichrist nor paragon, but just a prince of his time.


<snip>

Richard, though, was not a relic of an obsolete political culture. It was precisely under the reign of his older brother Edward IV that the financial bureaucracy began to be professionalized. Governing the traditionally wild and woolly north of England, where the big boys of the aristocracy were very big indeed, Richard recruited and made use of upwardly aspirational gentry, many of them down on their fortunes but razor-sharp in their acumen, as well as the minor toffs who wouldn’t swagger their way into conspiracies. It was this grasp of the future that paradoxically alienated the nobility who finally turned against him, including the Stanley family who betrayed him on Bosworth Field. (His last words were not anything to do with horses but, with absurd disingenuousness, “Treason! Treason!”)

<snip>

Richard had been a conscientious if estate-grabbing governor of the north for his brother for 12 years when, unexpectedly, Edward IV died in 1483, leaving yet another boy-king, 12 years old, as his successor. Uncle Richard had been named Protector. And the Machiavellian Question now asserted itself. Would England, which had endured decades of civil war, be allowed to collapse back into it, the child monarch the prey of the ambitious? Or, should a strong man do whatever it took to ensure this wouldn’t happen? Was what followed all for Richard, or all for England? Who would make the distinction? Not him!

But the means he used to create this rock-solid center of power and loyalty undid the end. The fear-love calculus is always a finely balanced thing—just ask any American politician, or Tony Soprano—and perhaps because of all the mayhem and massacre he had lived through, Richard erred on the side of terror. To his nephews he was the kind of Protector you needed protection from. A campaign was orchestrated to broadcast the news that they were in fact illegitimate, which would make Edward V, the uncrowned king of three months, unfit for coronation. Into the Tower they went, were seen by one witness playing in the yard, and were never heard from again, although the skeletons of two boys matching their ages were found near a staircase on the precincts in the late 17th century. Then came the chopping list of all who might get in the way of his kingship (Shakespeare was more or less accurate about this): the lords surrounding the boy’s mother, Elizabeth; then one of his own supporters, Hastings, whom he suspected of going soft on the queen mother’s party. All of them were bundled off to the scaffold without even a pretense of judicial process. Richard’s own consigliere, Buckingham, was driven to a botched rebellion.

<snip>

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2013/02/11/the-return-of-ruthless-richard-iii.html

[JNelson6563]

1. Characteristically, Henry VII is a better candidate.

Richard was incredibly loyal to his brother and served him very well. There was at one point talk of Margaret of York marrying him. I doubt Elizabeth Woodville would have participated in negotiations on this issue with the murderer of her sons.

Henry was one who was very thorough about eliminating all potential claimants to the throne and was a rather clever agent of propaganda. Very clever indeed.

Once he was crowned he back dated his reign to the day before Bosworth so that all who fought on Richard's side were declared traitor and their property confiscated. He was very wiley.

Julie

[cali]

2. I don't think of Henry VII as a better candidate

And being loyal to his brother during his brother's reign (when it benefited him to do so, certainly doesn't preclude his murdering his nephews to achieve his own ambitions).

Richard was also very thorough about eliminating his enemies. That, after all, was the tenor of the times.

[JNelson6563]

3. Then we'll have to agree to disagree then.

Mind you I'm not wed to the notion of either or, since we can never know for sure.

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. Margaret of York was Richard III's (and Edward IV's) sister

So I don't know who the 'he' you think she might have married is.

Richard was loyal to his brother; but, the moment he died, he moved to capture his sons, and declare them illegitimate (and he claimed that about his brother too, for good measure). To take the throne, he had another uncle of Edward V (on his mother's side), his half-brother, and 2 nobles executed without trial. He was ruthless, there's no doubt.

Elizabeth Woodville's actions are some of the best circumstantial evidence that Richard did kill the princes. She had to seek sanctuary from Richard, and then agreed with Margaret Beaufort, Henry VII's mother, to have Henry marry her daughter Elizabeth, as long as he deposed Richard. When Henry did this, she went through with this happily, and never joined any rebellion against him. It seems clear that she put her trust in Henry, not Richard. The 'negotiations' she participated in were whether he'd allow her out of sanctuary without arresting her. That she was, at the same time, conspiring to have him deposed shows she did not accept him.

[Sheldon Cooper]

4. I believe that he did.

Although history is indeed written by the victor, that doesn't mean that Richard III didn't have the Princes killed. He may not have issued any direct order for it, but he could have made it quite clear that he wished to be rid of them. Whoever took it upon themselves to kill the boys must have been very certain that it was what Richard wanted - you don't just kill the presumed king and the spare without being very sure that someone more powerful than them wanted it.

As an aside - does Phiippa Langley really think that he didn't 'look like a tyrant'? Does she expect to be taken seriously regarding anything after making a statement like that? It's laughable, and does nothing to advance her cause.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. Langley is in love with Richard III

Truly, it's an obsession. She's not a historian, just a slightly strange woman who has somehow got emotionally invested in this whole question. Her behaviour in the documentary they made about this was a bit worrying, and pitiable.

[Sheldon Cooper]

7. I did not know that. I assumed she was an historian or academic of some sort.

Pitiful, really.

[Chiyo-chichi]

8. If anyone is interested enough to watch 90 minutes of 16-year old C-Span video...

here's a link to a mock trial of Richard III for this crime with William Rehnquist presiding.

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/76271-1

[union_maid]

9. Oh, I expect he did it

or it was done on his behalf. That doesn't mean there weren't good points to his governance. But the fact that he got them declared illegitimate, no matter how sincere his concern about boy kings might have been, does indicate that their best interests might not have aligned with his. After all, a different political environment might find them legitimate again. There was a lot of back and forth about that sort of thing and the illegitimacy was based on a technicality. It's not like they weren't Edward's sons. Eliminating anyone with a competing claim on a throne seems to have been job one for a monarch in those days. It's all very fascinating, anyway, isn't it?

[treestar]

10. If he did it, he must have gotten the country to think someone else did it

Don't see how else he could get himself crowned. Framing someone else would have made sense. Then the attempt to illegitimate them wouldn't have been necessary. There would be a motive to avoid boy kings at that point. Though at to the power, Richard could have ruled as Protector and had all that power, but temporarily, giving him some motive to take over as King.

It's hard to understand why Elizabeth would let her younger son out of sanctuary. The poor woman lost 3 of her 4 living sons in one year - she had two named Richard, and the older one, but her first husband, was killed too.

I've been watching The White Queen, which I know is not accurate, but had me thinking about this stuff again.