Courtenay Rising at Exeter, October 1483
Who Fought
Peter Courtenay, Bishop of Exeter, and his brother Walter Courtenay led the rising in Devon and Cornwall; Richard III moved quickly
all rebel forces across England.
History & Significance
Buckingham's rebellion was a failed but significant uprising, or collection of uprisings, of October 1483 in England and parts of Wales against King Richard III of England.
To the extent that these local risings had a central coordination, the plot revolved around Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, who had become disaffected from Richard, and had backing from the exiled Henry Tudor (the future king Henry VII) and his mother Margaret Beaufort. Rebels took arms against the king, who had deposed Edward V in June of that year. They included many loyalists of Edward V, and others, who had been Yorkist supporters of his father Edward IV.
Seven ships from Brittany carrying over 500 Breton soldiers, Henry Tudor, and many of his supporters were to have risen simultaneously against Richard III. A gale prevented this planned landing from being successfully carried out, and in England a premature uprising in Kent forewarned Richard that Buckingham had changed sides.
When his brother King Edward IV died in April 1483, Richard of Gloucester was named Lord Protector of the realm for Edward's son and successor, the 12-year-old Edward V. As the young king travelled to London from Ludlow with a large and armed entourage, Richard intercepted the party with his own forces and escorted him to lodgings in the Tower of London, where Edward V's own brother Prince Richard of Shrewsbury joined him shortly afterwards. Arrangements were made for Edward's coronation on 22 June 1483; but, before the young king could be crowned, his father's marriage to his mother Elizabeth Woodville was declared invalid, making their children illegitimate and ineligible for the throne. Historians widely agree that Richard took the two princes into custody by force and orchestrated their illegitimacy for his own political gain.
On the 25 June, an assembly of Lords and commoners endorsed the claims. The following day, Richard III began his reign, and he was crowned on the 6 July 1483. The young princes were not seen in public after August, and accusations circulated that the boys had been murdered on Richard's orders, giving rise to the legend of the Princes in the Tower.
In late September 1483 a conspiracy arose among a number of disaffected gentry, many of whom had been supporters of Edward IV and the "whole Yorkist establishment". The conspiracy was nominally led by Richard's former ally and first cousin once removed Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, although it had begun as a Woodville-Beaufort conspiracy (being "well under way" by the time of the duke's involvement). Indeed, Davies has suggested that it was "only the subsequent parliamentary attainder that placed Buckingham at the centre of events", in order to blame a single disaffected magnate motivated by greed, rather than "the embarrassing truth" that those opposing Richard were actually "overwhelmingly Edwardian loyalists".
The ground they fought on
The site of Courtenay Rising at Exeter, October 1483 lies on Permian Rocks (Undifferentiated), bedrock that formed in the Permian. The rock here is sandstone and conglomerate, interbedded.
Peter Courtenay, Bishop of Exeter, and his younger brother Walter attempted to raise Devon and Cornwall for Henry Tudor in October 1483 as part of the co-ordinated plan for the Bishop of Exeter to lead a revolt in the south-west, before joining forces with Buckingham and then with Tudor himself. When the wider rebellion collapsed, Courtenay fled to exile at Vannes in Brittany, accompanied Henry Tudor on his eventual return to England, and was made Keeper of the Privy Seal on 8 September 1485 following the Yorkist defeat at Bosworth, a remarkable reversal of fortune for a man who had been attainted only months earlier.
- Unknown from the sources provided.
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- Buckingham's rebellion · Wikipedia
- Peter Courtenay (bishop) · Wikipedia