Protest At The Tower

By David Butterworth

Would you right a King of England whom history has wronged?

Joe Saunders, a literature and history enthusiast, is a man with a mission, but he is faced with a problem, how to determine the truth, the innocence of a wronged king.
Since his college and university days, Joe has always accepted the negative version of Richard III’s historical reputation until a close friend persuades him to think otherwise.

After delving into a minefield of compelling evidence about Richard III, Joe stumbles on an idea.
He decides to stage a protest with a couple of sheets – right inside the Tower of London.

What will happen when Joe gets into the ancient building – a setting with a bloody past...Will he get thrown out?

If you like action-packed historical drama, a modern-day setting, down-to-earth characters, suspense, slang, layman’s dialogue and strong language, then you’ll love this standalone novel by David Butterworth.

Preorder ‘Protest at the Tower: Was Richard III Wronged?’ today, and it will set you on your historical quest!

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Butterworth
• Release date: Jul 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463877692

David Butterworth

David Butterworth was born in London and brought up in Newcastle upon Tyne in the north-east of England. He attended the University of Northumbria where he graduated with a (BA Hons) in Historical and English Literary Studies. Unsure of his vocation, he completed the TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) course and left the United Kingdom to teach English. Since 2001 he has been teaching in Japan and now in China where he has been resident for several years.As well as in Britain, he has hiked in Japan and traveled widely in China and in parts of South-East Asia. He enjoys swimming, jogging, reading, music and watching dated movies.He has been writing short stories, travel essays, journals and intends to write some novels - suspense and one based on his working class upbringing in Northern England. He's currently working on one, a suspense novel concerning Richard III

Book preview

Protest At The Tower

Was Richard III Wronged?

A Novel

By

David Butterworth

Copyright © 2018 David Butterworth

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. This e-book is licensed for your own enjoyment. No part of this e-book may be copied, re-sold or given away. If you would like to share this book with other people, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and didn’t purchase it, or it was not purchase for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This book is work of fiction. Any resemblance to characters alive or dead is purely coincidental and not the intention of the author.

Any anachronisms: expletives, strong language and vitriolic tone used in the opening historical situations and those used sparingly in present-day dialogue, are deliberately adopted for stylistic narrative effect and are typically used in a sociological context.

Richard vigorously translated the idiom of his character into the language of kingship. In the course of a mere 18 months, crowded with cares and problems, he laid down a coherent programme of legal enactments, maintained an orderly society and actively promoted the wellbeing of his subjects. Comparable periods in the reigns of his predecessor and his successor show no such accomplishment.

Richard the Third Paul Murray Kendall

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Shakespeare’s Influence

Chapter Two

More and Morton

Chapter Three

A Thirty-Year Feud

Chapter Four

Coup d’états

Chapter Five

The Hastings Drama

Chapter Six

Bigamy

Chapter Seven

Yorkist Incursions

Chapter Eight

Sir Will

Chapter Nine

A Tower Read-Up

Chapter Ten

A Brainwave

Chapter Eleven

Inside the Tower

Chapter Twelve

The Demo

Chapter Thirteen

A Chat

Chapter Fourteen

A Journalist Calls

Chapter Fifteen

A Post-Demo Lull

Chapter Sixteen

It’s in the Papers!

Chapter Seventeen

Newspaper Boy

Chapter Eighteen

A Pub Brawl

Chapter Nineteen

A Natter

Chapter Twenty

A Recommendation

Epilogue

Author’s Note

About the Author

Prologue

Bosworth, August 22nd, 1485

The king couldn’t believe his eyes. A perfect opportunity had opened up before him. He stood looking across from his position on the crest of Sutton Cheney; his left hand was handling the reins of his light-grey armoured-covered stallion. The horse shook its head and neighed as bits of its exposed mane swished slightly in the late morning breeze. The king’s cavalry was waiting expectantly for him – waiting for his orders – but he only needed a force of two hundred men and horses. It couldn’t be a difficult job. And now this.

What rich pickings, almost like plucking cherries, he thought, as he tried to scan his opponent whom he couldn’t quite make out, mounted with the banner of the Welsh Red Dragon behind a vanguard, some distance away to the right beyond some marshland formed by a depression called Redmore Plain. It didn’t occur to him that he might or could be riding headlong into a trap or an ambush.

And what of the other vanguard? His eyes travelled to the left, further beyond the Welshman’s position, until they settled on a contingent of forces that seemed strangely inactive, immobile. Was it some indecision why it hadn’t been engaging in hand-to-hand combat? Manned by the magnate, William Stanley, the king couldn’t make out the tactics of the nobleman, nor could Stanley make out the manoeuvres of the monarch’s royal cavalry at the crest. But in any event, the Welshman’s vanguard appeared severed, cut off from the strength of its much smaller army, like a broken reed.

Stanley and his older brother Thomas, the Welshman’s stepfather, had manned their vanguard to ostensibly back the king, but they had turned traitors. Before the battle, the king had demanded, as penance for his treachery, that the older brother join him or he would execute his son, Lord Strange. Stanley replied that, as he had other sons, it was a no deal. The king relented, opting to keep Lord Strange under close arrest.

Traitorous curs, the king thought and bit his lip, as he contemplated his decision.

Squire, the king turned around and signalled to a servant clad in armour.

The servant, dressed from head to toe in steel, clasping his horse’s reins, curtly replied. Yes, Sire?

Bring me my colours.

Yes, your Majesty. The squire immediately released the straps and strode over to an engraved chest. He pulled out a silver flap above a largely engraved insignia on the front, a white boar, the king’s emblem, and lifted the lid. His armoured hands took out a neatly folded garment – a vest affair bearing the royal standard. He took it over to where the king was standing, knelt on one knee, crossed his chest and fisted its left side. The king signalled the servant to rise. After he’d handed over the cloth, the king unfolded it and put it over his head until it loosely covered the upper part of his armour. The four-square pattern – the two bright red behind three sleekly designed golden lions, and the dark blue behind three fleur de-lice – looked emblazoned over the monarch’s body.

Bring me my battle crown.

The squire-cum-soldier immediately turned around and strode over to where the king kept his supply of armour and weaponry and picked up a gleaming steel helmet with a gold headband firmly attached. He repeated the kneeling procedure before handing over the clutched steel head-covering. The finely cut gold encircling the upper half of the helmet flashed from the sunlight as the king’s armoured-covered hands placed the housing firmly over the helmet. He proceeded to rally and parade before his troops. He then stood in front of them for some minutes and thought it’s now or never. It’s the Welshman or me. Either I die this day, or he.

William Catesby, a lawyer and the king’s prominent councillor, rode up. Sire, you must leave the field at once while there is still time, before the Stanleys advance.

No! The king’s answer was brusque, and he shook his head. Either I live as King of England, or I die as King of England. I will not go down as some spurious retreated coward. Catesby bowed his head, turned his horse’s reins and retreated.

It was a fateful decision, some might call it a gamble, to charge head-on into combat; one he hadn’t taken lightly, but it was something he believed in at all costs. The vanguard where the Welshman had stationed himself was some distance away, but the king wasn’t one to shirk a battlefield. He’d fought for his own house, the house of York and its cause, with his brother, the previous king, at Barnet to regain his throne; then at Tewkesbury to help him keep it. Keeping the Plantagenet dynasty alive, for the sake of England and his crown, no less a nature of kingship he had established, he thought, was a matter of life or death. He’d already said as much riding back and forth parading in front of his troops, before his cavalry edged to this spot. Then there was the chivalric code to consider; something dear to his heart. It was a quality in which he had been trained to respect. He dismissed the doubts from his mind and said: Yea! I’m going to win! The lily-livered cur’s got no stomach for this!

. Yea! I’m going to win! The lily-livered cur’s got no stomach for this!

He mounted the horse, settled himself on the saddle, pulled down his visor, and with his right hand grasped his battle-axe. He swung it several times before grasping the horse’s reins with his left hand then shouted to his two hundred mounted soldiers:

We go to seek Henry Tudor!

The cavalry moved slowly at first to remove the army’s wing, stationed towards the north. Suddenly, the king shouted, Charge!!

He galloped down the incline with half of the mounted cavalry, swinging and brandishing his axe. The Welshman and his retinue were almost caught napping by the thunderous hooves, the surprise attack. The speed with which it was advancing threw Tudor’s mind into terror and his contingent into turmoil. Oxford, Tudor’s ally, quickly commanded a small band of skilled French pikemen the exile had brought over from France, to defend him, but most of Tudor’s vanguard was on horseback. The king brandished and swung his axe as it cut through the vanguard. The clash had horses bucking and neighing against each other as the royal force edged closer to Tudor’s standard, but the pikemen held out.

Bastards! The king shouted. These French traitors are the cause of our realm’s ruin!

The Welshman’s retinue had become weaker, but he didn’t fight, although he dismounted to keep up an unflinching appearance. He didn’t have the guts, but wondered in his anguished, fate-ridden mind, how long he’d have to wait before his stepfather’s brother rallied to his cause. He was getting desperate. The king had already cut down his standard bearer, William Brandon. A robust, heavily-built knight, Sir John Cheney, attempted to block the king’s advance, but he was unhorsed and flung aside like a jacket.

Although the pikemen continued to block the king’s onslaught by wedging in the Welshman, Sir William, Lord Stanley, made a snap decision to release his men. His strong vanguard of 3,000 soldiers galloped, his standard flying with the wind, thundered forward, until they finally arrived – and in what they admitted was the nick of time. Tudor vented a sigh of relief and relaxed his flinch-ridden, though fear-hidden, expression. They cut down the king’s standard-bearer and sliced off his legs. Blood spurted from the stumps as he went down. The king fought on and on, staving off his Tudor enemies, and shouted Bastards!! Treason!! Treason!!

Sir William’s men were enough to drive the king further away from his brother’s stepson. Before the king tried to turn around to call for more troops, his horse fell from under him and sank into the marsh and died throwing the monarch to the ground.

Quick Sire! a panic-stricken knight yelled from a distance. All is lost! Flee the field while there is still time. I can call for another horse.

The king refused to listen as his foes closed in. They were like a lynch mob. He had enough time barely to upright himself before they came in for the kill. One soldier used a Rondel dagger and cut into his chin, cutting off his helmet straps. He flung the metal housing away like a wet piece of rag leaving the king’s head exposed and vulnerable to receive blow after blow. Another stabbed, pierced and pressed a Rondel dagger into his skull. A Welshman, Rhys ap Thomas, whom Tudor promised a knighthood and a hefty reward if he’d turncoat and finish the job, finally got the better of the king in hand-to-hand combat, but it was the pressure the king was facing – that he had lost his helmet – which gave the Welshman the advantage. He used a halberd to shave the bone leaving the skull exposed.

Treason! Treason! The king shouted again but had no time to look and duck his head before Thomas reached for the back of the head slicing the halberd through the skull leaving the brain open. A sword was plunged through the area, and then blood jetted from the wound as the king’s lifeless body collapsed and lay sprawled on the ground.

Sir William immediately strode over to where the relieved Welshman was standing and announced: Greetings sire. Tis all over. He went over to retrieve the cut-away helmet, to where it had been flung or hidden, from underneath a thorn bush. The knight hurriedly hacked the golden headband away from the battered steel. He strode back to where Henry Tudor had dismounted and had gone down on one knee before placing the crown carefully on his head.

Before a throng of standing troops, Sir William shouted:

The King is dead!! Long live the King!!

The troops stamped their great lances up and down and repeated loudly:

The King is dead!! Long live the King!!

Chapter One

Shakespeare’s Influence

Joe Saunders’s mind was playing tricks. It was in a tug of war. He was resting in the lounge of his apartment in London’s Kensington and Chelsea, lying on the sofa facing outwards as he propped the right side of his head with the palm of his hand; his right elbow rested on the right arm fold. He began to think, to let his mind wander: with a hint of disgust, he flung the book he'd just read with his other hand which landed snugly on the furthest cushion between the side of his sock-covered heels and the backrest. It was about Richard III, the last English king since Harold Godwinson to die in battle – a brutal and bloody send-off – an event that depicted Richard’s own violence mingled with the violence of his times. He grunted, yawned, stretched up his arms, hung them limp and began to ponder. Finishing the book sped him into a daydream, distractive gunges of doubts, surmises; they pulled at his mind; one way, then the other; between the certainty, the prejudice, and the unsure.

History is bunk.

The famous quote was in the book. It flitted through his mind like a swallow. It interrupted the crowd of other thoughts. It added fuel to a feeling of unfairness that coursed through his heart as he’d finished off the final pages of The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey, an investigation into the present-day conundrum of Richard, the last Plantagenet king and the disappearance of the ‘Princes in the Tower.’ It unleashed him on a racetrack of fact versus fiction, genuine and false, cause and contradiction. He hadn't flung the book because he thought it was rubbish – far from it – he'd tossed it because of its impressive detail. The way its contents wove in and out of a controversial, unproven subject. It laid it bare for all to read as something gradual, like spoon feeding a baby which finally drove the last nail into a convincing coffin.

Joe sat up, moved to the middle cushion and crossed his long legs and rolled his brown eyes towards the ceiling until they stared at the opposite wall. He ran the fingers of his right hand through his thick dark wavy hair and rubbed his thinly stubble-covered jaws with his left thumb and index finger. Tey, Joe concluded, was a good writer; there was no doubt about that, good at writing classic detective yarns.

The Daughter of Time, in a series of Inspector Alan Grant detective mysteries, has Grant laid up in a hospital ward recuperating from a back and leg injury. Needing something investigative to do, he starts using pictures and sources, with the help of an assistant, to piece together evidence which acquits Richard III, who reigned for a short time during the late fifteenth century, from murdering his two nephews, the Princes. Not only that, Grant puts together an entirely different picture of Richard characteristically as well as physically, an otherwise notoriously distorted historical figure.

Depicting Richard by John Rous, a Warwickshire priest, a contemporary and a turncoat, as a hunchback with a limp and a withered arm, who spent two years in the womb and bore a complete set of front teeth with a full shock of hair when he was born and had grown down to his shoulders, is the stuff of nonsense. No conceived child could remain unborn for that excessive length of time; the mother wouldn't survive as well as the baby. It needed to be seen to be believable. One thing the description does reveal is how people let their minds wander off into some warped tandem five or so hundred years ago. It was, according to testimony given by his mother, a difficult birth by all accounts. But difficult births, whether they result in a breach or a caesarian – which may well have been the case with Richard's – were nothing unusual.

They must've been that crippled by superstition, Joe wondered. Did people think like this? What an eye-opener!

Joe's mind continued to wander. That incredulous physical description of Richard as some monster seemed more attuned to some dressed up grotesque mythological troll figure slobbering at the mouth, spitting saliva from uneven gap teeth, from J.R.R. Tolkien's saga ‘Lord of the Rings,' from the Peter Jackson movies based on the books. He'd recently seen ‘The Hobbit’ series; how overdone the effects were, almost unsuitable for a traditionally simple fairy story. Tolkien, having based most of his works on traditional literary and linguistic folklore, wrote the books which were quite out of kilter with the movies. Likewise, the last Plantagenet monarch was an unfortunate victim of an untrue, overdosed, biased and distorted propaganda machine. It was consistently added to and screeched on by the succeeding dynasty – the usurping Tudors – to trash him. Richard's awkward birth was just another in a succession of convenient ways.

The novel had jerked Joe’s conscience; it had upset his train of thinking about Richard, the way he and numerous other school kids throughout Britain had been brought up to believe he was a murderous monster; the child-killer of historical child-killers, a serial killer of serial killers. That belief was all too powerful. However well-woven he found Tey's novel, nothing would drive away the myth built in his mind, nothing completely. For instance, the dramatic, stressful events in the spring and summer of 1483 which Richard partly steered were, to a limited extent, soaked in blood. But he couldn't have foreseen how they would propel him to the throne unless he actually was bent on usurping the English Crown.

***

The Richard III caper had started a week ago when Joe was in a mood to listen or watch something Shakespearian, and it tugged at his mind from time to time. It was like some bolt from the blue, an interest in one of The Bard's plays – a performance from the BBC TV series or a movie. The inclination stemmed from his college and university days when, during an Elizabethan literature course, he'd had to study several of the playwright's works.

Shakespeare portrayed Richard III as a hunchbacked villain and a wicked uncle who murdered his way to get the coveted crown placed on his scheming head. The crown, nevertheless, was a hot potato, desired by several key ambitious nobles who'd likely stop at nothing to push out any rival, to have it placed on their power-driven heads which for several years had been the object of dynastic wars between the Houses of York and Lancaster. If it wasn’t the crown, then it was the power that lay behind it. It was a bitter struggle that had taken root in Henry Bolingbroke's usurpation of Richard II, a full-blooded Plantagenet and a rightful king of England. Bolingbroke, being the son of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, Edward III's third son, was Richard II's cousin and became Henry IV. The dynastic conflict, a Pandora's box, didn't start until a generation later when the Yorkist faction – headed by Richard Duke of York, Richard III's father – made a bid for the crown due to Henry VI, Henry IV's grandson, being a weak and insane king. The Lancastrian side had lost credibility.

The fortunes of the baronetcy, another cause of the wars, had got out of hand. Its power and wealth, matching, if not exceeding, the king's, partly explains the turmoil and unrest that was characteristic of the period. A ‘what's in it for me?' syndrome threw the country into political turmoil which was why Richard, during the summer of 1483, in line with his right and his blood-status, and the wishes of his brother, acted in the way that he did. But because of the climate of treachery, rebellion, self-interest and disloyalty, it was difficult for any monarch to retain the throne, especially in Richard’s case; he was left without an heir to secure the line of succession.

It was the 1955 movie based on Shakespeare's play ‘Richard the Third,' now reconditioned, starring Laurence Olivier in the title role, that did the trick, that triggered Joe's Shakespearean mood, a taste for the dramatic. Joe had already studied the play while doing an English Literature ‘A' level course at sixth form college and had touched on it while doing his degree.

He sauntered into the kitchen, opened the fridge, and dragged out a quarter consumed eight-pack of Foster's lager before putting his black oblong TV on the opposite wall from the sofa into DVD mode and switching on the connected player. He pulled off a beer can from the plastic seal and was just about to peel off the metal ring holder and slouch back and outstretch his legs to watch the opening when the door buzzer buzzed.

Who can that be?

He impatiently paused the video button, pressed his palms into the sunken cushion, got up and peered through the front-door spy hole.

Ah! It's Eddy.

A guy of medium height and build stood on the landing with his hands in his pockets. He wore a loose-fitting bright red checked shirt and light blue jeans with frayed bottoms that straddled past shiny black pointy lace-up shoes that angled outwards. His face was unshaven beneath a shock of wavy blonde hair.

Joe unfastened the door catch and undid the lock. He looked into the piercing light blue eyes of his friend, and they both smiled. Hey, Ed. What's up?

Thought you'd be in the mood for a couple down at the local, Eddy said, turning his statement into a question as he unconsciously put a hand through his shock of wavy blonde hair.

He only lived two streets away, and as it was the weekend, he was feeling bored and in need of some company. He worked for a haulage firm, a shipping company on the River Thames.

Look, mate. I'm just about to watch a movie and down a few cans. You’re welcome to join me?

What's the movie?

It's an oldie. Do you like movies that get largely overlooked or forgotten?

Some of em. Depends on what they are. It sounds interesting, though. What's the movie?

'Richard III,' a nineteen fifty-five classic version of Shakespeare's play.

Eddy paused for a few moments. Er…it isn't my thing.

Why not?

It paints an entirely fabricated tale to do Richard in.

‘Do him in?' Whatever do you mean?

Pin the blame on him instead of the succeeding dynasty, The Tudors, for the disappearance of the Princes in the Tower; to blacken his character, his name, his reputation; that he was the biggest usurping mongrel ever to have sat on the English Throne. It was The Tudors who were the real usurping mutts, and spin-doctoring ones at that.

But Laurence Olivier plays Richard, Joe argued. There's a host of great actors who did a lot of Shakespeare on stage before acting the plays in movies. So, you know about this, then?

"Yeah, I do know. I have seen it before. Acting high drama is one thing, but doing it at the expense of the truth is another."

Only if it would create some impact; do some damage.

That's exactly my point…It did.

You could try it and see how you like the Avant-guard performers if you haven't seen it in a while. Come in.

Eddy stepped into the landing and wiped his feet on the inside doormat.

I've just paused the start, so you're just in time. Take a seat.

Eddy dropped into an empty armchair. He crossed his right shin over his left thigh. His skeletal remains were recently discovered and unearthed from under a car park in Leicester; Richard, I'm talking about. He fixed his almond-shaped eyes on Joe.

"Yeah, it was an exciting discovery by all accounts, although DNA from two descendants was needed to match that of Richard's to prove the bones are his, examined from one of Richard's relatives. One of his older sister’s, Anne's, I believe, was traced to a cabinet maker here in London, a seventeenth-generation nephew. There were other facts about Richard, such as his physiognomy.

Yeah, and they've silenced a lot more distorted rubbish bandied about that over the centuries; that Richard was a crouch back.

Oh, you mean you don’t believe he had some deformity as the bones testify? You don't believe he was humpbacked?

It's not that I don't believe he had some skeletal deformity, but the way it was exaggerated and is still put across like that, and that it's intertwined with a twisted animalist character. The movie, no doubt, throws more light on it. There was a large interment ceremony in Leicester Cathedral. Did you watch the Channel 4 coverage?

Sure, it was quite a spectacle. Thousands lined up to pay their respects, and it was attended by members of the Royals, and an actor was invited to read a poem.

"He's