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Richard and The Queen's Brother.

© Sandra Worth

One can only speculate how Richard felt to witness the Woodvilles in their glory days. It could not have gone easy on him. Though Clarence had caused him a great deal of travail over the years, he was still bound to his malefactor by the bond of blood and memories. For Richard who had chosen as his motto Loyalty Binds Me and who had sided with his brother Edward against his adoptive family the Nevilles and the girl he loved, grief and anger must have been overwhelming. However well he may have liked Anthony Woodville personally-and there is no proof that he did-he would have held the Queen's brother responsible, at least to some extent, for Clarence's fate. No matter what else Anthony was, he was a Woodville; and no matter what Clarence had done, he was blood.

By this period in 1477 Richard had watched the Woodville queen humiliate, and then destroy, her rivals the Nevilles, whom he had loved. He had watched her son, Dorset, take part in, and aid, Edward's drunken debauchery, staining what greatness he might have otherwise achieved. He had watched them plot, and applaud, Clarence's destruction, a destiny that found its beginning and its end with the Woodvilles, and one which surely would have been avoided had they not entered the scene. After Clarence's death, Richard absented himself from court and was heard to remark that he would one day have his revenge on the Queen. So how did Richard view Anthony? As one of the detested Woodvilles, and therefore guilty by association, or as a unique individual, distinct from his scheming relatives?

In medieval times a man was bound by social codes very different from the ones today and rarely could he distance himself from his clan and still thrive. John Neville, Marquess of Montagu, had tried, and failed. Punished for being a Neville, he was driven back to the brothers he had forsaken for his King. Richard and Anthony Woodville had shared much together: battle, exile, danger, the loss of a brother, as well as good times, festivities, high honors and many a success. They even shared some strong similarities. Both were good soldiers, hard-working, intelligent men with imagination and drive. Yet no matter how congenial a companion Anthony may have proven during these turbulent years, Richard would have found it difficult to forget that, but for the Woodvilles, there would have been no civil war or second exile in Burgundy, and he wouldn't have been shorn of one brother and distanced from the other. Further balancing any regard he might have for his brother-in-law was the knowledge that Anthony had benefited from Clarence's death by receiving incomes from his estates. Amidst the pull of these conflicting emotions in which the negative had to predominate, came Edward's death and the fateful events at Stony Stratford.

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