Titans of History

Richard initially claimed he had seized the two boys for their own protection, and, on specious charges of treason, ordered the execution of those previously entrusted with their care. Just two months later, however, he had an announcement made outside St. Paul’s Cathedral declaring Edward IV’s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville illegitimate since, according to the testimony of an unnamed bishop, Edward was already secretly married at the time to his mistress, Lady Eleanor Butler. Richard forced an act through Parliament to annul the marriage posthumously, simultaneously bastardizing his nephews and clearing his own way to the throne. After quashing a brief uprising against him, he was crowned Richard III at Westminster Abbey on July 6, 1483.

To secure his position, Richard seized and brutally murdered several barons who might oppose his accession. He was acutely aware, however, that, as long as they lived, his two nephews would pose a serious threat to his rule, so it must have surprised no one when, in the summer of 1483, both boys were declared missing. By autumn, it was widely assumed they were dead and nobody doubted their uncle was responsible. According to Sir Thomas More, writing some years afterward, the two boys were smothered on the king’s orders as they slept. It was not until 1647, when the skeletons of two children were discovered under a staircase in the Tower, that they were finally buried in Westminster Abbey.

That Richard had murdered the princes was accepted as true during his reign and regarded with horror even in those brutal times. For contemporary chroniclers, deformity was sign of an evil character and Richard’s actions in 1483 evoked the image of the startlingly ugly creature they described: buck teeth, excessive body hair from birth, a crooked back, withered arm and haggard face. According to one chronicler, he was tight-lipped and fidgety, “ever with his right hand pulling out of the sheath to the middle, and putting in again, the dagger which he did always wear.” Some historians believe that the chroniclers—serving as Tudor propagandists—may have exaggerated Richard’s deformities, but it says much about his reputation that it is the nervy and sinister hunchback portrayed in William Shakespeare’s Richard III

that subsequent generations have come to know, “so lamely and unfashionable/That dogs bark at me as I halt by them.”

His chief Lancastrian rival, Henry Tudor—who later launched an organized campaign to blacken Richard’s name and present him as a monster—collected an army on the continent and invaded England in a campaign that reached a climax at the Battle of Bosworth Field on August 22, 1485. The turning point of the encounter came when Henry Percy, the earl of Northumberland, refused to throw his reserves into the battle, while Richard’s ostensible allies, Thomas Stanley, afterward the earl of Derby, and his brother, Sir William—who had been waiting to see which way the battle turned—intervened on the side of Henry. Though Richard continued to fight on bravely, hacking his way through the opposing army and very nearly reaching Henry himself, he was eventually encircled and killed by the poleaxe of a Welshman. The last Plantagenet king of England, Richard had reigned for just two years. Henry Tudor became Henry VII, his dynasty ruling until the death of Elizabeth I in 1603.

SAVONAROLA

1452–98

The first city to be renewed will be Florence … as God elected the people of Israel to be led by Moses through tribulation to felicity … so now the people of Florence have been called to a similar role led by a prophetic man, their new Moses [Savonarola himself] … In the Sabbath Age men will rejoice in the New Church and there will be one flock and one shepherd.

Girolamo Savonarola’s “Sermon on the New Age,” 1490s

The Italian Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola was a reactionary zealot and bigoted theocrat who vehemently opposed the humanism of the Florentine Renaissance. His “Bonfire of the Vanities” burned books and art he deemed immoral. Savonarola’s “Christian and religious republic” was an intolerant, sanctimonious and murderous reign of terror.