Life of Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham.

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2nd Duke of Buckingham, Duke of York, Henry Stafford, House of Plantagenet, House of Stafford, King Edward III of England, King Edward V of England, King Henry VII of England, King Richard III of England, Richard Duke of York, Wars of the Roses

Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, (September 4, 1455 – November 2, 1483) was an English nobleman known as the namesake of Buckingham’s rebellion, a failed but significant collection of uprisings in England and parts of Wales against Richard III of England in October 1483. He is also one of the primary suspects in the disappearance (and presumed murder) of the Princes in the Tower.

Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham

Henry Stafford was the only son of Humphrey Stafford, Earl of Stafford, and Anne Neville (d.1480) was a daughter of Ralph Neville, 1st Earl of Westmorland, and his second wife Lady Joan Beaufort, the legitimised daughter of John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster, the third surviving son of King Edward III of England. His first wife, Blanche of Lancaster, was also his third cousin; both were great-great-grandchildren of King Henry III.

Henry Stafford became Earl of Stafford when he was three years old in 1458 upon his father’s death, and was made a ward of King Edward IV of England. He became the 2nd Duke of Buckingham at age 4 in 1460 following the death of his grandfather Humphrey Stafford, 1st Duke of Buckingham, at the Battle of Northampton.

Catherine Woodville, Duchess of Buckingham

In February 1466, at age 10, Henry was married to Catherine Woodville, the daughter of Richard Woodville, 1st Earl Rivers, and Jacquetta of Luxembourg, the eldest daughter of Peter I of Luxembourg, Count of Saint-Pol, Conversano and Brienne, and his wife Margaret of Baux. Catherine Woodville was sister of Edward IV’s queen, Elizabeth Woodville.

The Duke of Buckingham and Catherine Woodville had four children:
* Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham (February 3, 1478 – May 17, 1521)
* Elizabeth Stafford, Countess of Sussex (c. 1479 – 11 May 1532)
* Henry Stafford, 3rd Earl of Wiltshire (c. 1479 – April 6, 1523)
* Anne Stafford, Countess of Huntingdon (c. 1483 – 1544)

Upon the death of Edward IV in 1483, the Duke of Buckingham allied himself to the king’s younger brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, helping him succeed to the throne as Richard III in lieu of Edward’s living sons.

Buckingham’s rebellion of 1483

In 1483, a conspiracy arose among a number of disaffected gentry, many of whom had been supporters of Edward IV and the “whole Yorkist establishment”. The conspiracy was nominally led by Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, who was Richard III’s former ally and first cousin once removed.

Richard III, King of England, Lord of Ireland

Although it had begun as a Woodville-Beaufort conspiracy (being “well underway” by the time of the duke’s involvement). Indeed, it has suggested that it was “only the subsequent parliamentary attainder that placed Buckingham at the centre of events”, in order to blame a single disaffected magnate motivated by greed, rather than “the embarrassing truth” that those opposing Richard were actually “overwhelmingly Edwardian loyalists”.

It is possible that they planned to depose Richard III and place Edward V back on the throne, and that when rumours arose that the young King Edward V and his brother, Richard, Duke of York, were dead, Buckingham proposed that Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, should return from exile, take the throne and marry Elizabeth of York, elder sister of the Tower Princes.

However, it has also been pointed out that as this narrative stems from Richard III’s own parliament of 1484, it should probably be treated “with caution”. For his part, Buckingham raised a substantial force from his estates in Wales and the Marches. Henry, Earl of Richmond, in exile in Brittany, enjoyed the support of the Breton treasurer Pierre Landais, who hoped Buckingham’s victory would cement an alliance between Brittany and England.

Henry VII, King of England, Lord of Ireland (Formerly The Earl of Richmond)

As Richard III’s ally, the plausibility of Buckingham being a suspect in the murder of the Princes in the Tower depends on the princes having already been dead by the time the Duke of Buckingham was executed in November 1483. It has been suggested that Buckingham had several potential motives.

As a descendant of Edward III, through two of his sons, John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster and Thomas of Woodstock, 1st Duke of Gloucester on his father’s side, as well as through John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster through John Beaufort, son of John of Gaunt on his mother’s side, Buckingham may have hoped to accede to the throne himself in due course; alternatively, he may have been acting on behalf of a third party.

Some, notably Paul Murray Kendall, regard Buckingham as the likeliest suspect: his execution, after he had rebelled against Richard III in October 1483, might signify that he and the king had fallen out; Alison Weir takes this as a sign that Richard had murdered the princes without Buckingham’s knowledge and Buckingham had been shocked by it.

A contemporary Portuguese document suggests Buckingham as the guilty party, stating “…and after the passing away of King Edward V in the year of 83, another one of his brothers, the Duke of Gloucester, had in his power the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York, the young sons of the said king his brother, and turned them to the Duke of Buckingham, under whose custody the said Princes were starved to death.”

A document dated some decades after the disappearance was found within the archives of the College of Arms in London in 1980; this stated that the murder “be the vise of the Duke of Buckingham”. This led for some historians to suggest that possibly some of Richard’s prominent supporters, including Buckingham and Tyrell, murdered the princes on their own initiative without waiting for Richard’s orders.

It is noted In the document “After the King’s departure Buckingham was in effective command in the capital, and it is known that when the two men met a month later there was an unholy row between them.” This supports theory that a rift between Buckingham and Richard III after the king learned of Buckingham’s involvement in the murders of his nephews.

Buckingham is the only person to be named as responsible in a contemporary chronicle other than Richard himself. However, for two reasons he is unlikely to have acted alone. First of all, if he were guilty of acting without Richard’s orders it is extremely surprising that Richard did not lay the blame for the princes’ murder on Buckingham after Buckingham was disgraced and executed, especially as Richard could potentially have cleared his own name by doing so.

Secondly, it is likely he would have required Richard’s help to gain access to the princes, under close guard in the Tower of London, although Kendall argued as Constable of England, he might have been exempt from this ruling. As a result, although it is extremely possible that he was implicated in the decision to murder them, the hypothesis that he acted without Richard’s knowledge is not widely accepted by historians.

While Jeremy Potter suggested that Richard would have kept silent had Buckingham been guilty because nobody would have believed Richard was not party to the crime, he further notes that “Historians are agreed that Buckingham would never have dared to act without Richard’s complicity, or at least, connivance”. However, Potter also hypothesised that perhaps Buckingham was fantasising about seizing the crown himself at this point and saw the murder of the princes as a first step to achieving this goal.

For his participation in the rebellion against the King, Henry Stanford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham was executed for treason by Richard III on November 2, 1483: he was beheaded in the courtyard between the Blue Boar Inn and the Saracen’s Head Inn (both demolished in the 18th century) in Salisbury market-place. He is believed to have been buried in St Peter’s Church in Britford in Wiltshire.

After the execution of the 2nd Duke of Buckingham, his widow, Catherine Woodville, married Jasper Tudor, second son of Owen Tudor and King Henry V’s widow, Catherine of Valois. After Jasper Tudor’s death on December 21, 1495, Catherine Woodville married Sir Richard Wingfield (d. July 22, 1525). Catherine Woodville died 18 May 1497.

The Princes in the Tower

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Charles II of England, Duke of Buckingham, Henry Stafford, Henry Tudor, Lady Margaret Beaufort, Richard Duke of York, Richard III, The Princes in the Tower

This is one of the great mysteries of history. Many people know the story, even those who may not follow royalty or even history in general. It is a classic tale of tragedy. Two young boys, one the age of 12, and a King, the other 10, his brother a royal duke,  are sent to the Tower of London by their uncle who usurps the throne. Then the Princes were never heard from again. What happened to them? Were they killed? Did they get taken away to live their lives in obscurity? Nobody knows.

After Richard III took the throne in June of 1483 the two princes were seen less and less within the Tower, and by the end of the summer of they had disappeared from public view altogether. The consensus among historians is that the princes were murdered.

Here are the five major suspects:

1. King Richard III

2. Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham; friend and Ally of Richard III

3. James Tyrrell, servant of King Richard III

4. Lady Margaret Beaufort;

5. Henry Tudor,son of Lady Margaret and later King Henry VII.

When I look at the list I question some of them. Let’s take Richard III himself. Legend has it that the two princes were smothered to death with their pillows. This was first mentioned in the writings by Sir Thomas Moore. Moore has Tyrell doing the killings. I have a hard time thinking that Richard III did the dirty deed himself and it seems that other historians who are evaluating him agree on that point.

I often thought that Henry Tudor would also be a logical choice. After taking the throne from Richard III he did do away with some of the Plantagenet heirs that had a better claim to the throne than he. Most notable was Edward Plantagenet, 17th Earl of Warwick who was the a potential claimant to the English throne during the reigns of both Richard III and Henry VII.* From the time Henry VII took the throne the Earl of Warwick was also imprisoned within the Tower of London where he remained a constant threat to Henry’s claim on the throne.

In 1499 a man named Perkin Warbeck pretended to be Prince Richard, Duke of York one of the young Princes in the Tower. He conspired with the Earl of Warwick to escape from the Tower. Many historians claim that the real motive for the execution was the upcoming marriage of Henry VII’s eldest son, Arthur, Prince of Wales, who was about to marry Infanta Catherine of Aragon. It seems that her parents, King Fernando II-V and Isabel I of Spain did not want the marriage to go through while there remained a threat to Henry’s throne.

I write of this to show that there is historical precedence of Henry VII killing those who had a better blood claim to the throne that he. The problem with this theory is that it is well-known that the two princes disappeared by the end of the summer and this was a couple of years prior to Henry Tudor becoming King of England. So unless they princes were housed someplace else after being held in the Tower I do not see how Henry Tudor can be guilty of their death.

In 1674 during the reign of King Charles II of England and Scotland bones were discovered in by workmen rebuilding a stairway in the Tower. They were presumed to the the bones of the young princes and they were ceremoniously interred in Westminster Abbey, in an urn bearing the names of Edward and Richard. It has never been proven that those bones belonged to the young princes. Since DNA testing has been done to the bones of Richard III, I think now is the right time to perform DNA testing on the bones discovered in 1674.

If the bone are that of the two young princes, then the mystery of their whereabouts will be answered. If, however, they prove to not be the bones of the young princes the mystery will remain. How they were killed and who killed them will always be a mystery.