Richard had scarcely been seated three months on the throne before the Duke of Buckingham, who had been rewarded for his late services by being appointed lord high constable, was in open rebellion, and Henry, Earl of Richmond, long an exile in France, was meditating an invasion. Buckingham's conspiracy proved a failure, and he paid for his rashness with his head. The Earl of Richmond was detained in France by stress of weather, and danger from that quarter was averted at least for a time.
On Richard's return to London after putting down his enemies, he was welcomed by over 400 members of the various civic companies, who rode out to meet him in gowns of murrey.(958) His policy was one of conciliation, and he lent a ready ear to a Petition which the citizens presented to him setting forth the wrongs which they had suffered: "We be determined" said the citizens in forcible language, "rather to adventure and to commit us to the peril of our lives and jeopardy of death, than to live in such thraldom and bondage as we have lived some time heretofore, oppressed and injured by extortions and new impositions against the laws of God and man, and the liberty and laws of this realm wherein every Englishman is inherited."(959)
Richard met this appeal by summoning parliament to meet in January (1484), when various acts were passed affecting the trade and commerce of the city and the country, and among them one which forbade aliens keeping any foreign apprentices or workpeople to assist them in their occupation, and otherwise imposed great restrictions upon the merchant stranger.(960) This statute was scarcely less welcome to the citizens of London than that which declared the practice of exacting money under the guise of benevolences to be unconstitutional.(961)
In the summer he was welcomed wherever he went, yet he knew that danger threatened. Richmond was preparing for an invasion and the nobles were not to be trusted. The citizens, too, were aware of the danger, and had in the early part of the year appointed a joint committee of aldermen and commoners to survey the city's ordnance, and to supply guns and gunpowder in place of that which had recently been destroyed by a fire.(962) In August they had promised Richard a loan of £2,400, each alderman contributing £100;(963) and in the following November the mayor and aldermen rode out to Kennington to meet him and escort him to the Wardrobe, near Blackfriars.(964)