Henry Stafford was born on 4 September 1454, the only son of Humphrey Stafford, Earl of Stafford and Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Stafford, (a cousin of Margaret Beaufort, Henry Tudor’s mother). When his father died of the injuries he sustained fighting for the House of Lancaster at the First Battle of St Albans in 1458, the four year old Henry became the Earl of Stafford and the Yorkist King Edward IV of England snatched little Henry up and made the child his ward.

The little boy then became the Duke of Buckingham in 1460 following the death of his grandfather, Humphrey Stafford, 1st Duke of Buckingham, in the Battle of Northampton, where the elderly duke was slaughtered while defending King Henry VI with his life. Henry Stafford was now an incredibly valuable ward for the king. He was also a significant bargaining chip, vis-à-vis his future marriage. Many noblemen wished to eventually wed their well-dowered daughters to Henry, and thus ally themselves with some of the greatest peerages in the land.

But then Edward married Elizabeth Woodville, the widow of John Grey of Groby, in a secret ceremony on 1 May 1464, and Buckingham was taken off the marriage mart not long thereafter.

Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville were sincerely in love, but their union was completely asinine from a political standpoint. Edward and his bride then further alienated almost every one of the king’s allies by advancing the entire Woodville/Grey family at the expense of men he should have been lavishly rewarding. One of the things that irked Edward’s courtiers was that the king married Henry Stafford, now eleven years old, to Queen Elizabeth’s six year old sister, Catherine Woodville, in a clandestine ceremony sometime before the queen’s coronation in May 1465. The king had, from their point of view, “thrown away” a duke to make that strumpet he married happy. Edward’s bad decisions were blamed on the Woodville family, especially the beautiful new bride, who was suspected of literally ‘bewitching’ the king to make him marry her.

Dissatisfaction with the king’s behavior lost him the crown in 1470, during the Readeption of Henry VI, but Edward he won his throne back in 1471 and made it quite clear that his wife was not going to be separated from him.

Buckingham, in spite of rumors, doesn’t seem to have minded his marriage to Catherine Woodville. There is no indication that he and Catherine were more or less happy in marriage than any other Medieval couple. They had four surviving children, two boys and two girls, and never had a major falling out. Additionally, the duke remained a steadfast supporter of the Yorks, even though they had killed his father and grandfather, never showing any dissatisfaction regarding their choice of his bride or the decisions they made for him when younger.

Buckingham was particularly devoted to the king’s younger brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester. Richard was born on 2 October 1452, so he was only two years older than Buckingham and they would have been raised together practically as brothers in Edward’s court. When Edward IV died in 1483, Buckingham stood Richard’s side as the Duke of Gloucester ‘liberated’ the under-age King Edward V from his Woodville kin and imprisoned the king’s maternal uncles, Anthony Woodville, 2nd Earl Rivers and Richard Grey. When the Privy Council seemed leery of giving Richard the promised protectorate after the unjust arrest of Anthony Woodville and Richard Grey, it was Buckingham who most voraciously defended Richard’s intentions and argued the strongest that Richard was the best man to serve as his nephew’s protector.

Again, Buckingham backed Richard to the hilt when Richard arrested and murdered the young king’s strongest supporter on the Privy Council, King Edward IV’s former lord chamberlain, William Hastings, 1st Baron Hastings, on 13 June 1483. Hasting’s beheading was shocking, but if Richard said the man had been plotting against him, then Buckingham believed him.

Buckingham also appears to have whole-heartedly believed Richard when the duke told him that there was evidence that Edward’s sons were, in fact, illegitimate due to a precontract between their father and Eleanor Talbot Butler. When Richard made his move for the crown on 24 June, Buckingham was one of the highest-ranking peers to urge “the citizens at the Guildhall to take Richard as king.” Buckingham also sweet-talked the mayor and the most important men in London on behalf of Richard, as well as exhorting a pseudo-Parliament to declare Richard the rightful king in the place of his nephew. London chroniclers would later maintain that “it was Buckingham’s golden oratory that persuaded the citizens of London to offer Richard the crown.”

Richard clearly valued Buckingham and considered him one of his closest friends, as well as a trusted ally. It was Buckingham who carried Richard’s train in the coronation procession on 6 July, and it was Buckingham who and led the lords in homage to their new king. In return for his loyalty and devotion, Richard made Buckingham the Constable of England, as well as Chief Justice and Lord Chamberlain of Wales. He also gave Buckingham the stewardship of more than four dozen castles in Wales and the Welsh Marches.

So why, just a few weeks after Richard was crowned, did Buckingham join a conspiracy to dethrone Richard in favor of Henry Tudor?

An Italian who was in London during Richard’s rise to power named Dominic Mancini claimed that Buckingham turned on Richard due to the fact he “resented” that he had been forced to wed Katherine Woodville (in The Usurpation of Richard III, edited by C.A.J. Armstrong, 2nd edition, 1969). This, however, is weak cheese since Richard would have had nothing to do with their union, being only thirteen years old himself at the time. Various writers have theorized that Buckingham, “hoped to win yet more power and perhaps the crown itself” or that he was repulsed by “the rumour that Richard had had the Princes done away with” or that his prisoner, John Morton, Bishop of Ely, talked him into it.

Personally, I think it is because he found out Richard III had ordered the murder of his nephews, the Princes in the Tower.

People were already plotting to rescue the princes and give the throne back to the rightful king, Edward V, by the end of July. The Croyland Chronicles claim that, “In order to release them [the princes] from such captivity, the people from the South and the West of the Kingdom began to murmur greatly and to form assemblies and confederacies, many of which worked in secret, others openly, and with this aim.” There was an attempt to free the boys in July, but it failed. The princes were seen less and less, until they eventually disappeared altogether.

Before Buckingham joined the rebellion (although it is called Buckingham’s rebellion, the revolt was well underway and being orchestrated principally by Elizabeth Woodville, Margaret Beaufort, Bishop Morton and Reginald Bray), the object of the insurrection was to restore Edward V to the throne. Margaret Beaufort wanted nothing more than to secure her son’s inheritance as an earl, as was already being discussed during Edward IV’s lifetime. After Buckingham became involved, the goal post shifted to crowning Henry Tudor. According to “Richard’s own parliament of 1484”, it was Buckingham who wrote to Henry Tudor on 24 September to propose that Tudor “should return from exile, take the throne and marry Elizabeth of York, elder sister of the Tower Princes.” There would have been no reason to seek an alternative king to Edward V unless both he and his little brother, Richard of Shrewsbury, were dead.

By September, the rumor that the boys had been murdered was spreading like wildfire, stirring up the populace against King Richard. The king did not reveal the boys to anyone to refute the claims, not even after the revolt against him in October. Why not show the world his political enemies were liars, making him out to be a monster? The continued absence of the princes is why I think they were already dead by the time of Buckingham’s rebellion.

Some people suggest that Buckingham himself participated in or ordered the murder of the princes. “According to a manuscript discovered in the early 1980s in the College of Arms collection, the Princes were murdered “be [by] the vise” of the Duke of Buckingham. There is some debate over whether “vise” is meant as “advice” or “devise”. The motive may have been to either assist Richard (in that case, why rebel?) or to get to the throne himself, since he had a better claim to it than Henry Tudor. But then why was he the one that supposedly changed the aim of the rebellion from rescuing the princes to giving the throne to the exiled Tudor? Why not declare that Richard had killed them, and point out that he [Buckingham] was the closest available person to topple Richard. Why bring up Henry Tudor, especially since Buckingham’s decent from Edward III was technically more valid than Tudor’s? What, other than disgust that Richard had murdered his nephews, could have made Buckingham turn on the king that had given him so much, and now support a Welshman with an inferior claim to the throne than his own?

At any rate, Buckingham’s rebellion in October 1483 was a bust.

Buckingham raised a substantial force from his estates in Wales and the Marches … [but] Henry Tudor’s ships ran into a storm and were forced to return … Buckingham’s army was troubled by the same storm and deserted when Richard’s forces came against them. Buckingham tried to escape in disguise, but was either turned in by a retainer for the bounty Richard had put on his head, or was discovered in hiding with him. He was convicted of treason and beheaded in Salisbury, near the Bull’s Head Inn, on 2 November.

With Buckingham dead, King Richard III’s throne was no more secure. Accusations that he killed the princes continued, so that Henry Tudor was greeted by rebellious nobles in support when he invaded England in 1485.

After Richard’s defeat at the Battle of Bosworth Field on 22 August 1485, the new monarch, King Henry VII, made Buckingham’s seven year old son Edward the 3rd Duke of Buckingham. He also made the little boy a Knight of the Order of the Bath and participated in Henry’s coronation. Buckingham’s widow, Catherine Woodville, married Jasper Tudor, the king’s uncle. Both Edward and his little brother, Henry Stafford, were made wards of the King’s mother, Margaret Beaufort, and were given distinguished places at court.