Richard III (1452-1485), king of England (1483-1485), of the house of York. Richard was born in Fotheringhay Castle, the third son of Richard, Duke of York and of Cecille Neville. The historical view of Richard III was for long shaped by Tudor propaganda against the last of the Yorkist kings. It was naturally the Tudor view that William Shakespere adopted; in The Life and Death of King Richard III he portrayed the King as a scheming Machiavellian, driven from crime to crime by both his own ambition to wear the crown and a hunchback's twisted jealousy of those more fortunate than himself. This interpretation is almost wholly false. Richard was not deformed. Also, in an age of political treachery he was conspicuous for his loyalty to his eldest brother, Edward IV, and unlike his brother Clarence played a leading part in restoring the Yorkist fortunes in 1470. Despite the closing scenes of Part III of Henry VI Richard did not kill Edward, Prince of Wales, at Tewkesbury - nor did he kill Henry VI in the Tower of London; their deaths were the responsibility of the whole Yorkist party and, primarily, of Edward IV himself. Richard's marriage to Anne Neville, daughter of Richard of Warwick, certainly frustrated Clarence's hopes of obtaining the Neville estates but there is nothing to implicate him in Clarence's death in 1478.

Had Edward IV not died suddenly in 1483, leaving as his heir a boy of 12, it seems very unlikely that Richard either could or would have embarked upon a course of usurpation. Edward's death was a danger to the Yorkist position and, more directly, to Richard's own. Although loyal to Edward he had never approved of his court and the Woodvilles (the Queen's family) certainly regarded Richard with suspicion. Thus his first object after his brother's death was to ensure that he controlled the boy King and the regency, as designed in Edward's last will. A Woodville regime might well have provoked a renewal of civil war, and when Richard acted against the Woodville family in the spring and early summer of 1483 he had the backing of the nation. His protectorship was welcomed, and in June 1483 he used Parliament to take the throne. From the autumn the fate of Edward V and his brother, who were both held in the Tower, was probably sealed, although how and when they were murdered remains a mystery.

Once engaged in a seizure of power Richard could hardly afford to be squeamish in those very unsqueamish times. In November 1483 the King faced the first rising centered around Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, who had recieved the Lancastrian claim. His decision to arrest and execute Lord Hastings in 1483 was probably the step that cost Richard his throne, just as it was Hasting's prevarication that broke Richard's patience and had led him to seize the throne in the first place. Another intimate of the dead King, Lord Stanley, persistently refused to declare himself for the King when Henry Tudor returned in 1485, and then, at a crucial moment in the battle of Bosworth, threw his forces into the struggle against Richard.

Richard III's failure was not that of deeply laid plans but the collapse of a series of expedients which had begun immediately on Edward's death and whose object was to secure his interests against his real and potential enemies. Richard was killed at Bosworth: after the battle his naked body was taken to Leicester and displayed in public for two days before he was buried at the Grey Friars. Henry erected a tomb to his defeated rival, but this was destroyed when the Grey Friars was dissolved and Richard's body was then flung into the river Soar.