r that on the death of the French king only
a few months after his accession Richard seized the opportunity which the
troubles at the French court afforded him. Charles the Eighth was a minor;
and the control of power was disputed as of old between the Regent, Anne
of Beaujeu, and the Duke of Orleans. Orleans entered into correspondence
with Richard and Maximilian, whom Anne's policy was preventing from
gaining the mastery over the Low Countries, and preparations were making
for a coalition which would have again brought an English army and the
young English king on to the soil of France. It was to provide against
this danger that Anne had received Henry Tudor at the French court when
the threat of delivering him up to Richard forced him to quit Britanny
after the failure of his first expedition; and she met the new coalition
by encouraging the Earl to renew his attack. Had Richard retained his
popularity the attempt must have ended in a failure even more disastrous
than before. But the news of the royal children's murder had slowly spread
through the nation, and even the most pitiless shrank aghast before this
crowning deed of blood. The pretence of a constitutional rule too was soon
thrown off, and in the opening of 1485 a general irritation was caused by
the levy of benevolences in defiance of the statute which had just been
passed. The king felt himself safe; the consent of the queen-mother to his
contemplated marriage with her daughter Elizabeth appeared to secure him
against any danger from the discontented Yorkists; and Henry, alone and in
exile, seemed a small danger. Henry however had no sooner landed at
Milford Haven than a wide conspiracy revealed itself. Lord Stanley had as
yet stood foremost among Richard's adherents; he had supported him in the
rising of 1483 and had been rewarded with Buckingham's post of Constable.
His brother too stood high in the king's confidence. But Margaret
Beaufort, again left a widow, wedded Lord Stanley; and turned her third
marriage, as she had turned her second, to the profit of her boy. A pledge
of support from her husband explains the haste with which Henry pressed
forward to his encounter with the king. The treason however was skilfully
veiled; and though defection after defection warned Richard of his danger
as Henry moved against him, the Stanleys still remained by his side and
held command of a large body of his forces. But the armies no sooner met
on the twenty-second of A