Richard’s brother Edward secured the Yorkist throne as Edward IV and proved a capable, if sometimes dissolute, king. Richard served him loyally, demonstrating military competence at the Battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury in 1471 and leading a successful Scottish campaign in 1482 that regained Berwick for England. Edward made him Duke of Gloucester and the effective ruler of the north of England, where he earned a reputation as a fair-handed administrator.
Edward IV died suddenly in April 1483, leaving two sons as heirs: twelve-year-old Edward V and his younger brother Richard, Duke of York. Richard of Gloucester was named Protector of the realm. He placed both boys in the Tower of London — which was at the time a royal residence as well as a fortress — and within weeks had them declared illegitimate on the basis of a claim that Edward IV had been precontracted to another woman before his marriage to their mother, Elizabeth Woodville. Parliament accepted the argument. Richard was crowned on July 6, 1483.
The two princes in the Tower were never seen again. What happened to them has never been established with certainty, and the question remains one of medieval history’s most debated and unresolved mysteries. Richard was widely blamed for their deaths in his own time and has been blamed ever since, though no contemporary source provides direct evidence of how or when they died, or who ordered it.
In late 1483, a rebellion led by the Duke of Buckingham — an early ally — failed, and Buckingham was executed. Richard’s son died in April 1484. His wife Anne died in March 1485. When Henry Tudor landed in Wales with a small army in August 1485, the king who rode out to face him was a man who had lost most of his family and alienated many of his former supporters within two years of taking the throne.