The Probert Encyclopaedia of People

RICHARD III

Richard III was the last Yorkist King of England from 1483 to 1485. Before he claimed the crown in 1483 from his nephew Edward V - who was just a child - to prevent his scheming sister-in-law from gaining power, Richard had a strong power base in the north, and his popularity with the ordinary people and dislike of war was to cause much resentment among the barons who relied upon wars to raise money for themselves. A firm pacifist, Richard concluded a truce with Scotland and attempted genuine reconciliation by showing consideration to Lancastrians purged from office by Edward IV, and moved Henry VI's body to St George's Chapel at Windsor.

A champion of the people, Richard changed the law so that court proceedings were conducted in English, rather than Latin. In 1484, Richard's only son, Edward, died. Resentment against Richard from the Barons grew and eventually, after a failed coup, on the 7th of August 1485, Henry Tudor (a direct descendant through his mother Margaret Beaufort, of John of Gaunt, one of Edward III's younger sons) landed at Milford Haven in Wales to claim the throne for the barons. On the 22nd of August in a two-hour battle at Bosworth, Henry's forces (assisted by Lord Stanley's private army of around 7,000 which was deliberately posted so that he could join the winning side) defeated Richard's larger army and Richard was killed. Buried without a monument in Leicester, Richard's bones were scattered during the English Reformation. Richard was subsequently much aligned, the powerful barons and Shakespeare spreading propaganda about him, and a portrait of Richard - the first realistic royal portrait - was altered to show Richard as a hunchback, which he wasn't.
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