Status Updates From Richard III

An eye-witness, he adds, “You might have seen his father and mother in a state bordering almost on madness, by reason of their sudden grief.” The boy expired on 9 April, a year to the day after Edward IV, and in an age of omens it seems that many Englishmen saw his death as God’s judgement on Richard - it is quite possible the King did no himself.

The hitherto almost unknown Henry Tudor was transformed into the acknowledged Lancastrian pretender - a pretender too for those Yorkists who were horrified by the realisation that Edward V had been murdered.

At the beginning the Woodvilles were apparently unassailable and should have come to an arrangement with Gloucester without too much difficulty. Yet within three weeks they had been outwitted and destroyed and Richard was an all powerful Protector - within another seven he was king. Few seizures of power have gone off with such smooth precision.

The years 1470 and 1471 were when Richard saw most of Edward IV, fighting at his side, learning how to make and keep allies, how to outwit enemies. His brother taught him a lot.

As so often the French King had been too clever by half. The Duke of Burgundy now had no option but to support the Yorkists - the new Anglo-French alliance was too dangerous for him to do anything else.

... the King suddenly announced that he was already married, to Dame Elizabeth Grey, the young widow of a Lancastrian knight.

The traditional view of Henry VI is that he was too holy and too simple to rule, and that his Council of greedy favourites was responsible for the country’s miserable condition. Recently, however, it has been argued that the King himself must take much of the blame and was as perversely wilful as he was incompetent. Yet his subjects were reluctant to blame him...