A Duke of Gloucester appointed Lord Protector in April 1483 who was accepting the crown by the end of June (1483)
Crowned with his wife on 6 July 1483 at Westminster.
Monarchs · Lancaster & York
Richard III of England
1452–1485
House of York — the last Plantagenet
In office: 1483–1485
Loyal lieutenant of his brother Edward IV and ruler of the north for a decade, he was made Lord Protector in April 1483 and king by July, his nephews having been declared illegitimate. Two years of reforming legislation and mounting distrust ended at Bosworth in August 1485, where he became the last English king to die in battle and the last of the Plantagenets. His skeleton was found in Leicester in 2012 and reburied in 2015.
How to spot them
- ▸Duke of Gloucester, Lord Protector in April 1483 and king by July
- ▸Clue words: 'Titulus Regius', 'Council of the North', 'Loyaulte me lie', 'white boar', 'Bosworth'
- ▸The last English king to die in battle and the last Plantagenet
- ▸Severe scoliosis, confirmed by the 2012 skeleton — not the withered arm and hunchback of Tudor legend
- ▸Cross-reference: Bosworth and the car-park skeleton belong to the Wars of the Roses; this is the man and the reign
In the reign
A statute of 1484 setting out the title by which the crown had been taken, repealed unread and ordered destroyed the next year (1484)
Titulus Regius; Henry VII had it cancelled without being recited, but a copy survived.
A rebellion in the autumn of 1483 led by the duke who had been the new king's chief ally, broken by floods on the Severn (1483)
Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, executed at Salisbury on 2 November 1483.
The first parliament whose statutes were enrolled and published in English, granting bail to those awaiting trial (1484)
It also outlawed benevolences, the forced gifts his brother had used to raise money.
A standing council set up at York to govern the north, which survived its founder by more than 150 years (1484)
The Council of the North, abolished only in 1641.
The death of an only legitimate son at Middleham in April 1484, followed by the queen's in March 1485 as an eclipse darkened London (1484–1485)
Edward of Middleham and Anne Neville; he was left without an heir in his last year.
A skeleton with a severely curved spine reburied in Leicester Cathedral in 2015, with a poem written for the occasion by the Poet Laureate (2015)
Carol Ann Duffy's poem 'Richard' was read at the service by Benedict Cumberbatch, a distant relative.
A Tudor history that gave him a withered arm and a crooked back, and a society founded in 1924 to argue the other side (1513 / 1924)
Thomas More's unfinished History, taken up by Shakespeare; and the Richard III Society.
Quick-fire facts
- •Born at Fotheringhay Castle on 2 October 1452, the youngest surviving son of Richard, Duke of York.
- •He fought at Barnet and Tewkesbury in 1471 at eighteen, and governed the north for Edward IV from Middleham, taking Berwick from the Scots in 1482.
- •He married Anne Neville, younger daughter of Warwick the Kingmaker and widow of the Lancastrian Edward of Westminster.
- •His motto was 'Loyaulte me lie' — loyalty binds me — and his badge the white boar.
- •He had Henry VI's remains moved from Chertsey to St George's Chapel, Windsor, in 1484.
- •He was killed at Bosworth Field on 22 August 1485, deserted by the Stanleys; his body was displayed at Leicester and buried at Greyfriars.
- •His skeleton was found under a Leicester council car park in September 2012 and identified by mitochondrial DNA matched to descendants of his sister Anne of York.
- •The bones showed severe idiopathic scoliosis and about eleven wounds, including two potentially fatal blows to the skull; there was no withered arm.
- •He was the last English king to die in battle, and the last monarch of the House of Plantagenet.
- •Shakespeare's play opens with 'Now is the winter of our discontent' and ends with 'A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!'
Drill it — 9 cards
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Sources
- The Royal Household — Richard III (r. 1483–1485)
- Dan Jones — The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors