And as Henry was of the house of Lancaster,they proposed that he should marry the Princess Elizabeth,the eldest daughter of the late King,now the heiress of the house of York,and thus by uniting the rival families put an end to the fatal wars of the Red and White Roses.All being settled,a time was appointed for Henry to come over from Brittany,and for a great rising against Richard to take place in several parts of England at the same hour.On a certain day,therefore,in October,the revolt took place;but unsuccessfully.Richard was prepared,Henry was driven back at sea by a storm,his followers in England were dispersed,and the Duke of Buckingham was taken,and at once beheaded in the market-place at Salisbury.
The time of his success was a good time,Richard thought,for summoning a Parliament and getting some money.So,a Parliament was called,and it flattered and fawned upon him as much as he could possibly desire,and declared him to be the rightful King of England,and his only son Edward,then eleven years of age,the next heir to the throne.
Richard knew full well that,let the Parliament say what it would,the Princess Elizabeth was remembered by people as the heiress of the house of York;and having accurate information besides,of its being designed by the conspirators to marry her to Henry of Richmond,he felt that it would much strengthen him and weaken them,to be beforehand with them,and marry her to his son.With this view he went to the Sanctuary at Westminster,where the late King's widow and her daughter still were,and besought them to come to Court:where (he swore by anything and everything)they should be safely and honourably entertained.They came,accordingly,but had scarcely been at Court a month when his son died suddenly-or was poisoned-and his plan was crushed to pieces.
In this extremity,King Richard,always active,thought,'I must make another plan.'And he made the plan of marrying the Princess Elizabeth himself,although she was his niece.There was one difficulty in the way:his wife,the Queen Anne,was alive.But,he knew (remembering his nephews)how to remove that obstacle,and he made love to the Princess Elizabeth,telling her he felt perfectly confident that the Queen would die in February.The Princess was not a very scrupulous young lady,for,instead of rejecting the murderer of her brothers with scorn and hatred,she openly declared she loved him dearly;and,when February came and the Queen did not die,she expressed her impatient opinion that she was too long about it.However,King Richard was not so far out in his prediction,but,that she died in March-he took good care of that-and then this precious pair hoped to be married.But they were disappointed,for the idea of such a marriage was so unpopular in the country,that the King's chief counsellors,RATCLIFFE and CATESBY,would by no means undertake to propose it,and the King was even obliged to declare in public that he had never thought of such a thing.
He was,by this time,dreaded and hated by all classes of his subjects.His nobles deserted every day to Henry's side;he dared not call another Parliament,lest his crimes should be denounced there;and for want of money,he was obliged to get Benevolences from the citizens,which exasperated them all against him.It was said too,that,being stricken by his conscience,he dreamed frightful dreams,and started up in the night-time,wild with terror and remorse.Active to the last,through all this,he issued vigorous proclamations against Henry of Richmond and all his followers,when he heard that they were coming against him with a Fleet from France;and took the field as fierce and savage as a wild boar-the animal represented on his shield.
Henry of Richmond landed with six thousand men at Milford Haven,and came on against King Richard,then encamped at Leicester with an army twice as great,through North Wales.On Bosworth Field the two armies met;and Richard,looking along Henry's ranks,and seeing them crowded with the English nobles who had abandoned him,turned pale when he beheld the powerful Lord Stanley and his son (whom he had tried hard to retain)among them.But,he was as brave as he was wicked,and plunged into the thickest of the fight.
He was riding hither and thither,laying about him in all directions,when he observed the Earl of Northumberland-one of his few great allies-to stand inactive,and the main body of his troops to hesitate.At the same moment,his desperate glance caught Henry of Richmond among a little group of his knights.
Riding hard at him,and crying 'Treason!'he killed his standard-bearer,fiercely unhorsed another gentleman,and aimed a powerful stroke at Henry himself,to cut him down.But,Sir William Stanley parried it as it fell,and before Richard could raise his arm again,he was borne down in a press of numbers,unhorsed,and killed.Lord Stanley picked up the crown,all bruised and trampled,and stained with blood,and put it upon Richmond's head,amid loud and rejoicing cries of 'Long live King Henry!'
That night,a horse was led up to the church of the Grey Friars at Leicester;across whose back was tied,like some worthless sack,a naked body brought there for burial.It was the body of the last of the Plantagenet line,King Richard the Third,usurper and murderer,slain at the battle of Bosworth Field in the thirty-second year of his age,after a reign of two years.