The Religious Life of Richard III: Piety and Prayer in the North of England

No one has attempted to investigate closely Richard III's religion and to consider the way it related to the usurpation of the throne and his crimes. In this controversial new study, Hughes argues that although Richard was indeed guilty of, or implicated in, most, if not all of the crimes of which he has been accused, this ruthless, inscrutable man was also very religious, an austere practitioner of a chivalric code of ethics, a public benefactor and protector of the Church, a founder of charities, one who in his public pronouncements upheld a strict, puritanical code of sexual morality in marked contrast to many of his fellow courtiers. In his private life he can be considered a man of piety, a practitioner of the mixed life to rank with his mother, Cicely Neville and his sister, Margaret, Duchess of York and Burgundy. Richard III emerges from this book in part a conventional figure of his time but in part a very unusual, little understood man, every bit as compelling and even more complex than Shakespeare's mythical anti-hero.