A Bad Name for a King

This was the high point in Richard’s reign.  After that, he lost control of the powerful Barons, declared war on his own Parliament (and lost) and was temporarily deposed by his own uncle.  After his first wife died of the plague, he married the French King’s daughter who was only six at the time.

Upon his reinstatement at the age of 21, he went about taking revenge on all who had challenged him earlier in his reign, banishing his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, who promptly mustered an army and came back to defeat Richard in battle, depose him as King and claim the crown for himself.

Richard III (1483-1485)

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Richard III was never meant to be King.  He was supposed to be Lord Protector, acting on behalf of his nephew, 12-year-old Edward.  The chances of Richard going down in history as a benevolent uncle diminished sharply when he had Edward imprisoned in the Tower of London ‘for his own protection’ before he was even crowned.  Backed up by his huge army, Richard took the crown for himself on the day that should have seen his nephew’s coronation and then, probably, had his two nephews killed.  Horrified, many powerful nobles switched their support from Richard to a young Welshman with only a tenuous link to the throne – Henry Tudor. 

Richard was killed in the ensuing battle.  Shakespeare has him fighting on foot shouting, ‘A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse’.  If legend is to be believed, the crown was found under a hawthorn bush and then placed on Henry Tudor’s head, and Britain finally got out of the ‘Middle Ages’ and started ‘The Tudors’ to the relief of schoolchildren everywhere.

Richard’s reputation isn’t helped by the fact that history is inevitably re-written by the winners.  No doubt attempting to please Tudor Queen Elizabeth I, Shakespeare paints King Richard as an evil, child-murdering hunchback.  Well, he probably wasn’t a hunchback, but the rest is almost certainly true!

After all of that, the nearest thing to a Richard IV we’re ever likely to see is Brian Blessed in the first season of Rowan Atkinson’s classic TV comedy ‘Blackadder’.

For more little known facts about the British monarchy, try this article.