Two equally remarkable, much-alike, and unenviable-in-conduct, personages, are now presented to us, who had both risen to the highest positions in their native land, the one to supreme authority as king; the other his faithful, and almost unscrupulous lieutenant, henchman, and catspaw, possessing a rivalling royal descent, but little removed in directness from his own, to be from this service the most important and influential of that king's subjects. A very dangerous and crazy alliance between men of such kindred character and aspirations, and destined assuredly not to last long.
Life never stands still,—in the very nature of things it cannot,—nor remain long on an even, which means literally a dead level: it must progress or recede. This is true generally of all life, but specially so of one animated by ambitious longings. A spirit so prompted must continue to ascend if there be any altitude to win, but if this be denied, and the unstable path it follows at last begins to sink rather than to rise beneath the advancing step, and points to the dread bourne of obscurity and neglect; or, if the powerful antagonism of rival claims and influence jostle it on one side and precede it; or, the cold shadow of preference, joined with indifference and crushed hopes paralyze its future efforts, there is neither anchorage nor haven for the beaten bark, then the bitter promptings of envy and shattered pride but too often occupy the heart instead, give demon wings to its future course, urging it fatally onward to end in the blind and reckless shipwreck of all.
Gloucester was proclaimed King on 22 June, and on 4 July went to the Tower by water, accompanied by his Queen. On that day among the titles of honour distributed, was that "Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, was made Constable of England for term of life, but he claimed the office by inheritance."[20] He had previously been elected a Knight of the Garter.
The next day Richard rode in state from the Tower through the City to Westminster, and a large cavalcade of the nobility and the great officers of state. "But the Duke of Buckingham carried the splendour of that day's bravery, his habit and caparisons of blue velvet, embroidered with Golden naves of carts, burning, the trappings supported by footmen habited costly and suitable."
On the day following, 6 July, the coronation of Richard and his Queen took place, when "all the prelates mitred in their pontificalibus" received the King in Westminster Hall, and in the grand procession, after the great Officers of State carrying the royal insignia, came the "King in a surcoat and robe of purple, the canopy borne by the Barons of the Five Ports, the King between the Bishops of Bath and Durham, the Duke of Buckingham bearing up his train, and served with a White Staff for Seneschal, or High Steward of England," an office he appears to have held for that day only; while in the Queen's procession "the Earl of Surrey was Constable (pro illa vice tantum)."[21]
Richard, instead of summoning a Parliament, held a conference with some of the principal nobles, and after charging them to preserve the peace and put down all crime and disorder, set off for a progress through the midland counties, the end of the journey to be York, where a second coronation was performed by Archbishop Rotherham, and Richard created his son Prince of Wales.
From Windsor the King passed through his manor of Woodstock to Oxford, and it being fine summer weather, the people kept high holiday on the route of the royal progress. At the University he appears to have been particularly well received, and acceded to their petition to release Morton, the Bishop of Ely, from his durance in the Tower, as that prelate was a special favourite with them, and having done so, consigned him to the gentler and freer espionage of his friend the Duke of Buckingham, who sent the Bishop down to his Castle of Brecknock in South Wales.
This transfer of the Bishop from the Tower to Wales, was the first step in the prelude whose dénouement was to be at Bosworth. There was no man whose ability Richard more disliked and feared than Morton's, and that prelate had an equally intense hostility toward the King. But one thing was manifest by his thus committing the Bishop to Buckingham's custody, he could not at the time have had any doubt of the Duke's continued fealty toward him.
The progress continued to Gloucester, the King "making small stay anywhere." Here at this ominously-named city, from which he derived his title, two circumstances occurred whose issues eventually wrested the Crown from his brow, which he was hastening to York,—as if to make assurance doubly sure,—thereon to have it set with all ceremony for the second time. The first of these incidents was his parting from Buckingham, as it turned out, for ever,—although he appeared to be still "constantly disposed and affected toward him in all outward appearance." The other was that from here the first message is said to have been sped—to be afterward repeated with more deadly effect from Warwick—for the murder of the young Princes in the Tower, a crime that for wanton cruelty and hideousness completely dwarfed the legion of others he had previously committed. At last Richard's daring had reckoned without its host, no such enormity had ever occurred in England before, he had "miscalculated the national sentiment, there was a fierce reaction, his popularity went in a day."
Richard is said to have dismissed Buckingham at Gloucester, "with rich gifts and extraordinary marks of favour and affection." Whatever these may have been, he had previously given him an enormous number of appointments and offices in Wales, which had constituted him almost a little king in the Principality. While Protector, he