Richard III: The Self-Made King

The English Monarchs

by Michael Hicks

An "excellent new biography" (Keith Thomas, New York Review of Books ) of the wily and formidable prince who unexpectedly became monarch—the most infamous king in British history

“An intricately detailed account of Richard’s every recorded move on his journey from younger son of the powerful Duke of York to the last of England’s mediaeval monarchs.”—Mark Jones, Albion Magazine

The reign of Richard III, the last Yorkist king and the final monarch of the Plantagenet dynasty, marked a turning point in British history. But despite his lasting legacy, Richard only ruled as king for the final two years of his life. While much attention has been given to his short reign, Michael Hicks explores the whole of Richard’s fascinating life and traces the unfolding of his character and career from his early years as the son of a duke to his violent death at the battle of Bosworth.

Hicks explores how Richard—villainized for his imprisonment and probable killing of the princes—applied his experience to overcome numerous setbacks and adversaries. Richard proves a complex, conflicted individual whose Machiavellian tact and strategic foresight won him a kingdom. He was a reformer who planned big changes, but lost the opportunity to fulfill them and to retain his crown.

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, Medieval, Audiobook, Medieval History, Historical

448 pages, Paperback

First published November 26, 2019

About the author

Michael Hicks (born 1948) is an English historian, specialising on the history of late medieval England, in particular the Wars of the Roses. Hicks studied with C. A. J. Armstrong and Charles Ross while a student at the University of Bristol. He is today Professor of Medieval History at the University of Winchester, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Librarian Note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[Colleen Browne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am not as "in awe" of this book as many reviewers are. I will say this for Hicks. The amount of research he did for the book is very impressive but..... was it really necessary to put every thing he dug up into the book? I am referring to the hundreds of names and ranks he fills the first two hundred pages of the book with. In the end, most of them played no or A very minimal role in exploring the life of Richard III. He could have reduced the size of the book by at least 100 pages if he (or his editor) had excluded many of them. Moreover, it would have strengthened the book, making it more readable and every bit as informative.

I do appreciate his analysis of the character of Richard and the main events in his life but I wish Hicks had spent more time on the Battle of Bosworth, the strengths of Tudor and Richard as leaders in the battle, although I understand that the amount of data available is very limited.

I would recommend the book but would hope that another bright historian will pick it up, get rid of the dead wood in the volume, and expand on the personal aspects of Richards life- for example, I would like to know more about his queen.

[Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not for those unfamiliar with Richard's life or unwilling to wade through a lot of minutiae. Sometimes it is fascinating minutiae, but it can be tedious as well. Still, there is a lot of information in the weeds about how Richard ran his household as both Duke of Gloucester and (briefly) King of England. Hicks underlines how impressive an administrator Richard was. Given the fact that he only had about 14 months on the throne before things went seriously south (Edward of Middleham's and Queen Anne Neville's deaths), Richard managed to endow colleges, put the royal government on a sound financial footing after the excesses of Edward IV and generally earn a reputation as a good medieval King. Unfortunately, in many ways he was the last medieval King of England, and very little of his work survived the Battle of Bosworth.

Hicks provides evidence that Richard may not have been the military whiz that devotees like to present him as because of his work in the North. He couldn't sort out the problem of Scotland, but of course no English monarch succeeded there until the accession of James VI and I after Elizabeth Tudor's death. It is true that he managed to get pretty far into Scotland, but his supply lines were stretched, and Hicks makes him sound rather like the puppy who chases a car and catches it. Now what? Ultimately Hicks is convincing that Richard was more interested in creating a strong affinity in Northern England. Thanks to the Neville inheritance of Anne, some fairly ruthless dealings with widows of Warwick supporters and Anne herself, a living totem of her father, Richard by 1483 was almost a potentate in and of himself. Edward gave him a free hand, and his youngest brother took advantage of it.

Some surprises: Richard's relationship with the Woodville family, including Queen Elizabeth, was fairly amicable. Edward had left him Lord Protector for the heir, and Hicks seems to think Richard found that acceptable. Hicks doesn't present a Richard who moved south to meet Edward V as already determined to usurp the throne.

Events moved quickly, and at some point he did. By midsummer 1483 the boy king and his younger brother (the presumed heir should Edward V die) were in comfortable custody at the Tower of London. Richard and Anne were crowned, the Dowager Queen and her daughters were in sanctuary at Westminster Abbey and a number of prominent Yorkists --- Hastings, Grey --- had either been summarily executed or were under arrest. As Hicks points out, most of those arrested made their peace with the new King. Even Elizabeth Woodville and her daughters emerged from sanctuary. Hicks also doesn't waste time fingering Richard as the murderer of the Princes, who disappeared from public view after that summer. There were previous regicides in the family history, notably Edward II and Richard II. In the immediate Yorkist past Henry VI had bought the farm. Hicks doesn't think the decision to rid himself of his predecessor, eminently practical, would have cost Richard much attention. And yet these murders, widely disseminated, may have been what cost him his throne. This was not just regicide, this was the killing of children, and many Englishmen drew the line there. Hicks thinks it made Richard a moral problem that cost him the enthusiastic support his government might have objectively deserved.

Hicks also nails a major problem for the King. He literally had no royal family aside from the surviving nieces he inherited from Edward IV, and he had delegitimized the girls by annulling his brother's marriage. His brother George was dead, leaving behind two children tainted by their father's attainder. Richard's own wife and son soon died. An abortive move to a marriage with his niece Elizabeth was resisted so fully by his own supporters that the King pulled back and was forced publicly to swear that it would never take place. This lack of a cohesive royal family made the King vulnerable to insurrection, and in due course it came through Henry Tudor. This was a new insight for me, but Hicks makes a convincing case for the position that the lack damaged the reign. And when you think about it, what is Tudor history but the determined struggle of a dynasty to establish itself? Like Richard, the Tudor monarchs failed.

Problems for me and not for Hicks: Richard is consistently presented as religious. In fact, I would argue that Hicks' Richard is not simply a conventionally religious man, but someone who truly believes in ways that affect his conduct. He was remarkably not vengeful. And yet the murder of the Princes is a pragmatic decision that sat well with him? I suppose you can make the argument that Henry VIII and Mary I also considered themselves truly religious, and neither had a problem with executions. But the infanticide of family members under cloak of night is a bit different. I'm not disputing Richard was responsible for the boys' deaths, but it doesn't jibe with the way Hicks presents him. In the end, the book is less a rounded picture of the last Plantagenet King himself than of his career. It can hardly be otherwise. We simply have no real access to anything other than actions, and the conclusions an historian makes from them. There is no extant Ricardian self-analysis, and without that we are left with administrative history and best guesses.

Hicks knows his subject, so I think when he does guess, his conclusions are currently the best we have. If a smoking gun emerges in the future (the looks on Ricardians faces when the carpark skeleton revealed a back deformity were priceless) things may change. I wouldn't hold my breath.

Highly recommend to those with an interest in the subject matter.

[Terence]

7 out of 10.

Richard III: The Self-Made King is a well written (though not well edited), thorough account of that ill-fated king’s life from the time he began to influence events in the years of his elder brother Edward’s second reign (1471-83) when he was 19 to the time he seized the throne at 31 and the disastrous events that followed. Though the Tudor propaganda so darkened Richard’s name that no subsequent monarch has ever taken it and little remains of pro-Richard (or at least not pro-Tudor) sources, Hicks manages to develop a more balanced assessment of the man and his reign by a near microscopic attention to land grants, legal proceedings, household accounts and similar documents. What emerges is a portrait of “a man of dynamic energy and foresight and a master of detail, who was always in a hurry to achieve his ends. A younger son unfettered by nostalgia, he had strategic priorities that he pursued single-mindedly, disposing of manors and lordships as well as amassing them. He shaped his total estate and career in a manner that was quite without parallel in his own day…” (108).

Hicks can’t conclusively determine, though, just when Richard took it into his head to become king. Thomas More argued it was an element in all his plans from career’s beginning. Others would see it take share after 1478 with his brother Goerge (Clarence)’s downfall. Richard himself claimed he only determined on deposing Edward’s son, another Edward, in June 1483, “[o]r was it a step-by-step process, as each stage in his accretion of power drew him forward and made it essential for him to retain control?” (235)

Richard could have gone down in history as one of England’s better kings, he certainly had many positive qualities as a ruler, but his brutal usurpation, paranoia, alienation of potential allies and inability to retain followers loyal enough to counter his enemies doomed him to a brief and troubled reign*:

There is a consistency to his character and to his whole career. He always looked and planned ahead both as duke and king and made detailed planning, organization, and discipline into substitutes for charm and charisma. He was pious and exceptionally generous to the Church. He shared the values and expectations of his age, operated by contemporary conventions, and framed his public image accordingly. He presented himself in turn as an outsider, a war hero, and an exemplar of personal morality and good governance, although he excepted himself whenever desirable from the rules. Mere capacity to rule did not, however, entitle him to the crown. (391)

Recommended. I very much enjoyed this book.

* If you’re looking for an alternate history where Richard survives Boworth, I can’t recommend enough John M. Ford’s The Dragon Waiting. Or, if you’re in a more light-hearted mood, you can watch Black Adder's first season, where Brian Blessed’s Richard manages to survive another ten years after Bosworth before Rowan Atkinson’s inept machinations bring him down.

[Kara · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent biography of Richard III, neither praising him as a saint or vilifying him as devil, Hicks digs into the details of his life, tracing his life from birth to Bosworth field, determined throughout to very much put him in context of the times he lived in, questioning all the sources, tracking down times and places, and working hard to shake off the dirt piled on Richard over the past 500 years.

[Kristina Afford · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book does exactly as intended, contributes to the wider academic research and understanding of Richard’s life and the period. The research is meticulous and highlights a level of understanding of this topic that few others could rival.
Those looking for a generalist, popular history, will be disappointed where as, I am sure this will be a text used and referenced by historians to develop and understand the period for many years to come.

[John Gribbin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the best book about Richard III that I have read, and I have read quite a few, having been introduced to the man by my mother, a member of the Richard III Society, at an early age. The strength of the book is that the author has no axe to grind, either for or against Richard, but discusses his career both as Duke and King dispassionately, with a clear presentation of the available historical facts. My mother would have been disappointed with his acceptance of the fact that there is no evidence to prove that Richard did NOT murder (or arrange the murder of) his nephews in the tower, while my biggest disappointment is the conclusion that Richard lost the Battle of Bosworth because he was a poor tactician, much better suited to the long game than to battlefield command. But what you get from the book overall is an insight into the way the society of the time worked, and how Richard worked within the system of his day. Although he may have been a poor tactician, he was a genius at strategy. As for the Princes in the Tower, my own view is that the person who had most to gain by their death was Henry Tudor -- and there is no evidence that he did not order their murder.

[Brigitte]

I’m going to need a book about Richard III who understands the science behind the analysis done on the bones in Leicester than this author does. If he can’t understand that evidence (and he clearly doesn’t) then there’s undoubtedly other evidence he misinterprets.

[Joe Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Richard III: The Self-Made King is a fairly exhaustive study of how Richard lived and worked, both as the Duke of Gloucester and later as King of England. The real focus here is on what he did and how he managed things, so it is not so much of a biography as as study of how Richard wielded power. So it is not the typical book on Richard III.

The focus on Richard's manner of governing can be a little distracting, so I would not necessarily recommend this book for someone who has not read a more narrative biography of Richard. But there are many interesting details that come out in the author's analysis of Richard, both as duke and as king. The book is more like an academic book as opposed to one meant for a broader audience; but I did appreciate the footnotes and references.

There are many insights along the way, and one that I found interesting was that one of the problems for Richard as king, was that there was very few members of the royal family and so it was not easy for him to project the power of the monarchy. This is especially true after the death of his son Edward. Of course had Richard been the victor at Bosworth, this would not have mattered.

So, I have somewhat mixed feelings about the book - it is an in-depth look at Richard's abilities to manage and overcome obstacles, and there is a lot of information here. On the other hand, there narrative is somewhat weak, and it may be somewhat confusing for readers who do not have a solid background in this area of English history.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Richard III: The Self-Made King was another recommendation from the Richard III Society and it's...well...it is not good. The author rehashes accounts that he acknowledges are biased with minimal attempt at analysis or interpretation of decisions/events outside of Tudor narratives. Some of this is likely due to the lack of documentation regarding Richard's reign (having ruled for only twenty-six months, there really wasn't time for a lot of documentation to be accumulated) as well as later Tudor propaganda (history is written by the victors and all), but doesn't change the fact that there's better analysis of historical context and parsing of propaganda in Dan Jones's The Wars of the Roses and Thomas Penn's The Brothers York. All in all, it makes for a dryly written and frankly boring account of Richard's life and reign almost useless to anyone not looking for scholarly resources. This is a book that I would not recommend, and would recommend either of the other two referenced books over this text.

[Lorna · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid biography. If you are familiar with Richard III nothing will be surprising to you, but you will learn minute details you may not have known before. At times it felt too textbook as I realized half the page was a list of names- which I admit I was often inclined to skip- but the summaries near the end of each chapter put all the details into perspective. In the bigger portrait, shall we say, Richard indeed made himself king, and he unmade himself on Bosworth field.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written in the aftermath of the discovery and subsequent reburial of the remains of Richard III, Professor Hicks’s biography is a sober, in-depth study which attempts to put Richard into the context of his times as a 15th century aristocrat who unexpectedly found himself in a position where he could become King of England and acted on it. Professor Hicks devotes the larger part of this book to Richard’s life and career as the Duke of Gloucester and provides a wealth of well researched and cited information about that time. He is less thorough about the usurpation and the reign; here he seems to rely on the work of others. Consequently, his book is flawed in 2 fundamental ways:

1) Since Professor Hicks’s area of expertise is the socio-economic study of “bastard feudalism “ and the late medieval aristocracy, he often gets lost in the thickets of land charters, deeds, and acquisitions of wealth and properties to the point where the general reader and non-specialist can become confused about the narrative. At that point, reading the book can become a slog.

2) Professor Hicks is an unabashed “traditionalist” in his overall take on the key issues of Richard’s life and career; i.e. the usurpation and the fate of the princes. Consequently, he relies heavily on More, Vergil, and other Tudor sources and , I think, gives them too much credence. Even his mentors Charles Ross and Elizabeth Hallam do not go as far as he does . Professor Hicks also expresses a subtle disdain for the “revisionists” of the Richard the Third Society, not all of whom are the “extremists and romantics” he seems to think they are. This smacks of an academic agenda that casts a pall over a lot of fine historical research.

[Devon · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a five for intense minutiae and a two for holding one’s attention. If you want all the facts and figures and expenditures and fees and rent that Richard dealt with from documents that are still extant, right here is your book. If you also want a thousand names thrown at you rapid fire in any given sentence, this is your book.

I picked up this book to see if I could change my own opinion on Richard the III, as in improving it. However, the way he carried himself has only turned me off him even more. Accused other people of sexual immorality in order to denigrate their character but then engaged in sex outside of marriage. Elevated his own bastards while declaring his relatives as bastards to hurt their claim to the throne. Downplayed his role in his brother George Plantagenet Duke of Clarence’s and Henry (VI)‘s deaths. Fans of his claim he loved his wife and it was a love match they made, meanwhile he was looking into setting her aside and marrying someone else, possibly his niece, at the time of her final illness and death. He earnestly started his search for a wife a week after she died! Happy to be married to Anne to capitalise on her inheritance and then willing to overturn it and admit it was invalid, nevermind that an invalid marriage was his argument for seizing the throne from his nephews. Intercepted his nephew en route to begin to claim his throne and almost certainly had a hand in both nephews’ deaths. I can’t fathom the love he gets from the Society except for with the realisation they wear blinkers when it comes to him. I guess the best that can be said for him is he was willing to die for his crown and threw himself headlong into battle rather than retreating or sending others forward instead.

[Norma · Rating 4 out of 5]

( Format : Audiobook )
"The most Christian prince, King Richard III."

meticulously researched, the one thing which really stood out was how little remains of what must have been vast quantities of letters, orders, legal decisions, payment records and all.of the other paraphernalia of a busy, fast moving period of change - even Richard's will is missing. Probably fortunate since Michael Hicks seemed to determined to mention every little piece he did uncover and delighted in telling how much, to the farthing the costs listed.
As a portrait of the boy to man to king, there was very little new, but it was interesting for anyone truly committed to discovering as much as possible about this remarkable man and how much he actually achieved in his brief (two year) reign

Narration was reasonable but delivery could have been smoother. Matthew Waterson had a fine voice but also an annoying habit of reading with tiny, inappropriate pauses which made listening difficult and was distracting. Initially I gave up on my listening only returning some months later to continue. It made the book hard work as a listen.

Recommended but not for beginners and probably better, where possible, as a print read.
Currently available to download for free through the Audible Plus programme.

[Joanna Hazelden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Given the author’s impressive bibliography of writing, he’s obviously an expert in the topic. What interested me was his statements about the bones found in 2012, that he is not entirely sure they are the bones of the King. I also got a better idea of Richard’s position after his brother King Edward died-the pressure from the woodvilles, his own dwindling resources. I think this is an incredibly detailed book-a feat since the amount of materials that weren’t recorded or went missing over the centuries. It’s the sort of thing I’d read in chunks, but it’s definitely not a narrative nonfiction-it tracks many sides of the story and has arguments and counter arguments together which could be frustrating if you are looking for a definitive answer. Still worth reading if you are already familiar with the topic, just to see different sides of the issue.

[Ethan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this work for its presentation of Richard's character and its argumentation.
Not being as well-versed in late-medieval history as I would like, I found the formatting a bit frustrating. Hicks writes to a knowledgeable audience and provides more thematic than chronological structures. As a result of this design, I found myself flipping back and forth a bit as well as resorting to the odd internet search in order to keep track of details.
That being said, I feel that Hicks offered a fair appraisal of Richard's life and reign.

[John Sinclair · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not much is known about Richard’s early life, and what is known is drawn from a rather limited and boring range of documents, or speculation about what might have been. A good bit of this book is a hashing and rehashing of the same information, until I thought I’d scream. Only for the last few very active and public years of his life are we treated with something more interesting. By that time I had long since stopped caring. 2 stars #books #books2020 #bookstagram #reading #readersofinstagram

[Blair Commin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Only intermittently interesting. It's a very scholarly and well researched book however it would appeal much more to scholars and genuine Richard III enthusiasts. I do have a genuine interest in history and in that period however I didn't need to know itemized details and value of everything he owned plus it was a little frustrating for the legal terms of the day used throughout the book.

[Hans Ostrom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Engaging, readable, detailed. Blows away a lot of myths about Richard III, including the ones Shakespeare promulgated. Oddly enough, we wanted to govern cooperatively, but it didn't work out. To say the least.

[Simon Harrison · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lists and lists dominate most chapters. Saved by the closing account of his reign.

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

in terms of research definitely five stars- but quite hard to push through, and non-chronological nature was confusing to me

[charlotte, · Rating 4 out of 5]

(3.5)

[Harold Hoss]

I think Richard did it.

[Mike Hill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Balanced, well written and thorough despite limited sources. Very transparent about limitations of the sources, author doesn't 'imagine bridges'.

[Edith · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good history of Richard III's life, with emphasis on his feudal relationships, how he maintained or broke them, and how those relationships affected his eventual downfall and death at Bosworth.

Like others who have reviewed this book, I would not recommend it for the Plantagenet neophyte. It is densely packed with the details of his administrative life. On the one hand, such records as have survived, which Hicks has obviously researched very diligently, are often fascinating, but en masse, as they appear here, they are intimidating. Hicks also assumes that the reader has a familiarity with the terms of feudal relationships, and does not explain them. (I have a nodding acquaintance with some of them, but had to look up quite a few. I found I could usually figure out quite a few from context after a while, and in any event, I did get the gist. Inheritance patterns in the feudal world are pretty complex.

For those who are wondering on which side of the Ricardian debate Hicks falls, my own opinion is that he is pretty objective, and while it's pretty obvious that he thinks the likelihood is that Richard did away with his nephews, the "Princes in the Tower," he is evenhanded in his picking apart of both Richard's and Henry VII's behavior, motivations, and the stream of propaganda and mudslinging from both sides, and very clear on Richard's numerous talents and abilities.

This is the first history of Richard's life that has made sense to me of the man. Hicks follows Richard's development from his teenage years when Edward IV started to make use of him as a deputy, and when his ambition, intelligence, persistence, and, occasionally, his ruthlessness were on display to the larger world. How these traits, plus his incredible focus on detail, regularity, and reform, worked out in the context of his relationships with his administrators, the nobility, and his family is laid out beautifully. It becomes clearer how Richard's unhappiness with compromise adversely affected his progress, especially after he took the crown. It had ramifications in foreign affairs, where his persistence in encouraging privateering and his hard-nosed bargaining drove Brittany, France, and Scotland into each other's arms, and behind Henry Tudor. And it had ramifications at home, where his determination to aggrandize his estate and demonstrate the power of his own position drove him virtually to destroy his family and the southern nobility.

The book has its flaws. Hicks includes a mountain of lists of people, estates, offices; this was not always done in the clearest ways. There is a good deal of backing-and-forthing which was a bit hard to follow at times, and which lead to a lot of repetition. The book could greatly have profited by the inclusion of some maps; the author assumes a lively understanding of English and Scottish geography. (I did a lot of looking up places.). A glossary of feudal terms would have been extraordinarily helpful. (There are family trees.) There seemed to be a few contradictions within the text. (Did Edward IV leave treasure? In one place, no, and in another, yes.) He makes more than one mistake in who married who. He frequently uses his own books as sources, which seems like bootstrapping. (Not that he didn't do an enormous amount of primary source research.)

What I got out of it: Richard's scoliosis was not a matter of importance in terms of his ability to function in the role of prince and or of general, although I'm sure he put up with some discomfort at times. He was an able administrator. The man seems to have been constantly in motion his whole life, moving from one area of England to another. He spent a lot of time in what I assume must have been rough conditions in travel and at war. (Although we find out he did himself extremely well. Fancy dresser, and everything nice about him. Liked good food.)

I also came to appreciate that Richard's acquisitiveness and occasional ruthlessness, which drove him to have some influence on the death of his brother George, Duke of Clarence. He broke the rules of chivalry when he felt he had the right. He might have won at Bosworth, but many small things, both in his control and out of it, defeated him. In Henry Tudor, he met the man who, Hicks says, represented the first force in his life that kept on pushing back.