Opposition to Richard

In the meantime, the stunned shock that Richard’s usurpation caused very swiftly yielded place to revulsion and to a determination to remove him from the throne. The murder of Hastings had already robbed him of the support of the royal household, of precisely that power base that Edward IV had laboured so hard and at such expense to build up. In the provinces, Richard’s own entrenched authority in Wales and northern England had inspired tensions with families such as the Percy dukes of Northumberland and the Stafford dukes of Buckingham. Buckingham, once Richard’s closest ally, allowed to inherit Hastings’ affinity but not his lands, most of which remained to Hastings’ widow, now made common cause with the Woodvilles and with Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry Tudor. Their rebellion was swiftly crushed. Buckingham was executed. Nonetheless, from the autumn of 1483, Richard III was to have no peace and the English nothing save a pretence that the realm was safely established under his rule. Unlike any English King since Harold in 1066, Richard was left with no real function in government save to watch and to wait for an invasion that everyone knew to be approaching.