Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 53.djvu/455

 May 1465, he was elected to the order of the Garter nine years later. In 1478 he pronounced sentence as high steward of England upon Edward's unhappy brother Clarence (Rot. Parl. vi. 195). Soon afterwards he was one of the negotiators with France. But he did not become a prominent political personage until the death of Edward IV and the accession of his boy successor. Though married to a Woodville, Buckingham was almost as much distrusted by the queen's party as Richard of Gloucester himself. His pretensions as the greatest of the old nobility were quite irreconcilable with the ambition of the upstart relatives of Queen Elizabeth. He hastened to Northampton to meet Gloucester, who had been in Yorkshire when the king died, and it was with his help that Richard arrested (30 April 1483) Lords Rivers and Grey, and got possession of the young king, whom they were conducting from Ludlow to London (Cont. Croyland Chron. p. 565;, p. 174). Richard was prepared to do almost anything to make sure of the continued support of his powerful partisan. As Protector he invested him (15 May) with extraordinary powers in Wales and five English counties; there were also conferred upon him the offices of chief justice and chamberlain of the Principality of Wales and of constable and steward of all the royal castles there, and in the marches as well as those of Shropshire, Herefordshire, Somerset, Dorset, and Wiltshire, with the right of levying forces. Richard entrusted Bishop Morton to his keeping at Brecon. It was Buckingham who suggested the Tower as a place of residence for the young king. He was present with Richard at Dr. Shaw's sermon from Paul's Cross, assailing the legitimacy of Edward IV's children (22 June), and two days later he harangued the citizens at the Guildhall to the same effect, and suggested that they should call upon the Protector to assume the crown (see art. ). His eloquence extorted admiration, for ‘he was neither unlearned and of nature marvellously well spoken’ (MORE), but he could not rouse enthusiasm for the cause he advocated. In Richard's coronation procession (6 July) Buckingham outshone all in magnificence; the trappings of his horse flamed with his badge of the burning cart-wheel, and he emulated Warwick the king-maker in the number of his retainers, who all bore his livery of the Stafford knot (, pp. 375, 382;, p. 216). At the ceremony itself he officiated as great chamberlain and bore the king's train (Excerpta Historica, p. 380). A week later he was given the stewardship of the honour of Tutbury and other Duchy of Lancaster estates in Staffordshire, and recognised (13 July) as sole heir of the old Bohun family. Richard gave him a promise under his sign manual to restore to him in the next parliament that moiety of the Bohun estates which had come to the crown by Henry IV's marriage with Mary de Bohun; he was acknowledged (15 July) as lord high constable of England, the ancient hereditary office of the Bohuns (, i. 168; Complete Peerage, ii. 64). The powers in Wales and the west conferred upon him in the previous May were in part confirmed, but without the power apparently of levying troops outside Wales. Yet a month or two later, and without any apparent provocation, to the utter surprise of his contemporaries he was in open revolt. At first sight this sudden change of front seems inexplicable. It may be that he had taken alarm at the strength of the movement which at once began on behalf of the deposed young king, and shrank from the extreme measures which he knew Richard would not hesitate to take. He himself alleged that his support had been secured for the deposition by testimony which he had found to be false. But there are indications that personal ambition had something to do with his rapid volte-face. He may have had reason to doubt whether Richard would carry out his promise to restore the Bohun estates; he had won so great a position that perhaps he rebelled against the limits which Richard's character must necessarily put to its further extension. It is even possible that he had come to the conclusion that he had better claims to the throne than Richard. There is some reason to think it probable that he knew that Henry IV's attempt to exclude from the throne the descendants of John of Gaunt and Catherine Swynford, of whom he was one, had no legal weight (, p. 139). How far his plans were formed when he left Richard at Gloucester on his northward progress about the beginning of August, and retired to his castle at Brecon, we have no means of deciding. He is said to have spent two days at Tewkesbury brooding over his claim to the crown, but to have been reminded that the eldest representative of the Beaufort claim was his cousin Henry of Richmond, by an accidental meeting with his mother, Lady Stanley, between Worcester and Bridgnorth (, p. 388). If he was still wavering when he reached Brecon, the skilful representations of his prisoner, Bishop Morton, and the rumour of the murder of the princes in the Tower soon put