York Guides

Ruler of the North

Controversy has raged round Richard of Gloucester. To Tudor historians, from whom Shakespeare took his material, he was the hunchback villain with a string of misdeeds to his discredit, who met a well-deserved fate at the hands of Henry Tudor. This is very far from the facts - even his deformity is in doubt. Two portraits by unknown artists show no trace, and it is never mentioned in contemporary accounts. He was small and spare, like his father, with a keen thin face and searching eyes. He is known to have had some serious illness in childhood and it has been suggested that this was polio, which left him with some slight physical defect. Another theory is that, being small and frail, and having a deep admiration for his tall strong warrior-brother Edward, he tried to compensate by constant practice in the use of arms, so that his right arm and shoulder were more developed than his left.

The mainspring of his life was devotion to Edward. "Loyaulte me lie" - loyalty binds me - appears on his coat of arms. Edward returned his trust and thrust honours and responsibilities on him. He was active and hardworking, a good soldier and a good organiser, austere in his personal tastes, probably lacking Edward's easy charm and Clarence's glib tongue. One biographer calls him " A Man of the North". Certainly he disliked the jealousies and intrigues of the Court, with the constant hostility of the Woodvilles. He and his wife Anne, to whom he was deeply attached, looked on Middleham as their home. There their son was born, and there they sheltered Anne's mother, the Kingmaker's widow, whom Clarence had driven from her lands.

In the North, he was faced with a daunting challenge. The Scots were threatening the Border. The Percies had been reinstated but not reconciled; the Lancastrians were still capable of making trouble. The countryside had suffered from the disorders and the drain of fighting men. His first task was to effect a good understanding with the Percies. The earl of Northumberland was Warden of the East March. Richard appointed Lord Dacre, an old Lancastrian, as deputy Warden of the West March, and exercised a general authority over both. The North was a reservoir of hardy fighting men, but it was poor in 1478, the six northern counties were exempted from taxation on condition of supplying men for service against the Scots. War against the hereditary enemy was popular and there was never any difficulty in raising men. Even York, which had kept aloof from party strife, was foremost in supplying contingents. The Scots were pushed back, the Border castles retaken, and Scotland raided as far as Edinburgh. The work was crowned by the recapture of Berwick, which had been sold to the Scots by Queen Margaret.

In 1482 the king established a series of posting stations on the main highway between London and the Border, where horses were kept in readiness for the royal messengers. Richard maintained the arrangements, and used Skipton as a base for providing horses. The site of his stables is perpetuated in the name of the Black Horse Hotel. Private persons were later allowed to use the posting stations, and from this our postal system has descended.

Richard's relations with York were close and cordial. His visits were marked by ceremonial welcomes and gifts of fine bread, fish, game and wine. In 1477 he and Anne were admitted as members of the Guild of Corpus Christi, and walked in glittering procession from the Priory of Holy Trinity to the Minster, and were present at the performance of a "syght" or play. He was appealed to as arbiter of disputes, and his approval was sought in the choice of a lord mayor.

In 1474, the work of pacifying the North was interrupted. Edward projected an invasion of France. Richard contributed a force of 120 mounted men and a thousand archers. The invasion was bought off by King Louis, who promised a pension of 50,000 crowns a year to Edward, and smaller sums to other leaders. Richard disapproved - he had come to fight -and would accept nothing.

Another summons raised a more personal issue. In 1478, the king turned on Clarence, whom he had reason to think was plotting against him. Richard attended the Council and pleaded for his brother's life, but Clarence was sent to the Tower, where he was murdered. Shakespeare's attribution of the crime to Richard is unwarranted, and his only advantage was the reversion of Richmond and Barnard Castles, Neville property which had been held by Clarence. He may have felt some compunction at his brother's death, for just at this time he founded two colleges of chantry priests, one at Middleham and the other at Barnard Castle, to pray for the king, himself, his wife, and the souls of all their family. His device, the White Boar, can be seen over the oriel window of the Great Chamber at Barnard Castle.

As virtual ruler of the North, Richard had his council of advisers, modelled on that of the king. It met at Sheriff Hutton, the second of the great Neville strongholds. One of its functions was to administer justice to humble folk, tenants of powerful landowners who could not get justice elsewhere or who had suffered in the disorders of the times. Its members were drawn from influential Yorkshire gentry, many of them old Lan¬castrians - Lord Scrope of Bolton and his brother-in-law Sir Richard Radcliffe, Lord Dacre, Sir James Metcalfe - with Richard's lifelong friends, Lord Lovell and Sir Francis Percy, who had been brought up with him at Middleham. The council became the body responsible for the administration and defence of the North, and was eventually moved to York, where, as the Council of the North, it continued until it was abolished in 1641.

Sheriff Hutton's strong walls sheltered two lads whose presence would not have been welcomed by the Woodville court in London. One was the earl of Lincoln, son of Richard's sister, the Duchess of Suffolk, the other the earl of Warwick, the son of Clarence. There were rumours that Edward's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville had not been legal. In that case, the next heir was young Warwick, whose life would certainly have been in danger if Richard had not taken him into safe-keeping.

The East Riding had always been most stubbornly Lancastrian. The alliance with the Percies ensured its quies¬cence, but Richard relied on more direct contacts. He bought Helmsley Castle from the ruined but unreconciled Lord Roos. To Lady Clifford and her son Henry Clifford, living obscurely at Londesborough, he made small grants. He made use of Scarborough as a sea base in his campaign against the Scots. The harbour was guarded by its castle, but he may have used the so-called "King Richard III' house" down by the quay. This gable-end is obviously part of a much larger building. The grotesque figure by the door represents a Victorian version of the mis-shapen villain of Tudor legend. It is interest¬ing to find the tradition of Richard's association with the town still persists.

It was an amazing achievement - the reconciliation of the North to Yorkist rule. Richard succeeded in rousing the feeling of personal loyalty, always strong in north-country relation¬ships, and combined it with efficient administration. Like his brother the king, Richard drew many of his officials from the rising class of educated gentry, often trained lawyers, thus freeing the administration from the influence of the "over-mighty subject".

Typical of this new kind of official family were the Metcalfes of Nappa, tenants of the Scropes of Castle Bolton. James Metcalfe followed Lord Scrope to Agincourt and fought so bravely that he was rewarded by land at Nappa on which stood an old pele tower. His son Thomas turned it into a home that combined security and comfort. The old kitchens at the bottom of the tower were retained, and the upper floors were used as family apartments. A high roofed "hall" was built on, with "screens" at the far end leading to a porch, and to a secondary tower, containing a wine cellar and more family apartments. This domestic range overlooked a large paved courtyard surrounded by barns and stables and entered by a high arched gateway. The house stands today almost unaltered, a fine example of the home of a fifteenth century gentleman.

The Metcalfes shrewdly and steadily made their way up. Thomas became chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster under Henry VI and received a knighthood. The next generation of four sons went over wholeheartedly to Richard. Two brothers served in his personal bodyguard. Miles was a lawyer and Recorder of York. They were keen sportsmen, with the great forest of Wensleydale, the hunting-ground of the Lords of Middleham, at their doors. The place where they kept their hunting dogs is shown in the grounds of Nappa Hall. They were famous for their breed of white horses - probably "greys" - and they may have given an impetus to the horse-breeding industry, started by the monks of Jervaulx, for which the area round Middleham was, and still is, famous.

It was not a period which saw much new building - the times were too unsettled. York Minster was officially con¬secrated in 1472, but the structural work was already complete. Echoes of the war can be seen in details of the interior. In Henry VFs reign, William Hyndley, the great master-carver, began work on the screen or pulpitum separating the choir from the nave. It took him and his twelve assistants over twenty years to complete. On either side of the choir door are niches containing effigies of the fourteen kings who had ruled England since the Conquest. Except for the Lancastrians, there is no attempt at realism. The last, the figure of Henry VI, is modern. The original was removed on the orders of King Edward IV, and was not replaced for nearly five hundred years.

A little later, probably in Edward IV's reign, the "clock" in the south transept was installed. There is no "face" with hour or minute hands - that would have been too much for Medieval mechanism - but the quarter hours are struck by figures in armour . . . armour which would have been worn by the ordinary men who followed the banners of their Lords. They are almost exactly contemporary with the sower and the reaper and other figures in the courtyard of St. William's College representing the months of the year. In Medieval tradition it is the ordinary man who represents the unbroken passage of the hours and months and years.