England

Richard III

The new king rapidly lost all support, and not only for the incident with the princes. He came to power inheriting many enemies: the Beauforts, the Tudors, old Lancastrian partisans. He had made his own, most notably the entire Woodville clan, whom he despised. This opposition began to coalesce around the young Henry Tudor, who was in exile in Brittany.

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Richard III

After Richard quelled a rebellion in October 1483, a January 1484 Parliament passed over a hundred bills of attainder. This allowed Richard to confiscate a huge number of estates and send many of his enemies fleeing. But it also drove a great number of men into the camp of Henry Tudor.

Richard scarcely had time to be king. Widely regarded now as a grasping usurper, he spent most of his energies trying to secure his throne. Those efforts received a serious blow when, in April 1484, his only legitimate son died. He could still hope to have another, but matters were now very precarious; for, if he was not king to continue the York dynasty, then he had little justification for being king at all.

In March 1485, Richard's wife died. Now Richard had only one reason to be king: namely, to be king. There would be no more Yorkist monarchs, unless he should be able to remarry. But he had no time to think about such matters, for a storm was brewing across the channel.