Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third Part 4

Richard liveth yit, but the last of all Was Ursula, to him whom G.o.d list call.

(52) The author I am going to quote, gives us the order in which the d.u.c.h.ess Cecily's children were horn thus; Ann d.u.c.h.ess of Exeter, Henry, Edward the Fourth Edmund earl of Rutland, Elizabeth d.u.c.h.ess of Suffolk, Margaret d.u.c.h.ess of Burgundy, William, John, George duke of Clarence, Thomas, Richard the Third, and Ursula. c.o.x, Im his History of Ireland, says, that Clarence was born in 1451. Buck computed Richard the Third to have fallen at the age of thirty four or five; but, by c.o.x's account, he could not be more than thirty two. Still this makes it provable, that their mother bore them and their intervening brother Thomas as soon as she well could one after another.

(53) See Vincent's Errors in Brooks's Heraldry, p. 623.

Be it as it will, this foolish tale, with the circ.u.mstances of his being born with hair and teeth, was coined to intimate how careful Providence was, when it formed a tyrant, to give due warning of what was to be expected. And yet these portents were far from prognosticating a tyrant; for this plain reason, that all other tyrants have been born without these prognostics. Does it require more time to ripen a foetus, that is, to prove a destroyer, than it takes to form an Aristides? Are there outward and visible signs of a b.l.o.o.d.y nature? Who was handsomer than Alexander, Augustus, or Louis the Fourteenth? and yet who ever commanded the spilling of more human blood.

Having mentioned John Rous, it is necessary I should say something more of him, as he lived in Richard's time, and even wrote his reign; and yet I have omitted him in the list of contemporary writers. The truth is, he was pointed out to me after the preceding sheets were finished; and upon inspection I found him too despicable and lying an author, even among monkish authors, to venture to quote him, but for two facts; for the one of which as he was an eye-witness, and for the other, as it was of publick notoriety, he is competent authority.

The first is his description of the person of Richard; the second, relating to the young earl of Warwick, I have recorded in its place.

This John Rous, so early as in the reign of Edward the Fourth, had retired to the hermitage of Guy's Cliff, where he was a chantry priest, and where he spent the remaining part of his life in what he called studying and writing antiquities. Amongst other works, most of which are not unfortunately lost, he composed a history of the kings of England. It Begins with the creation, and is compiled indiscriminately from the Bible and from monastic writers. Moses, he tells us, does not mention all the cities founded before the deluge, but Barnard de Breydenback, dean of Mayence, does. With the same taste he acquaints us, that, though the book of Genesis says nothing of the matter, Giraldus Cambrensis writes, that Caphera or Cesara, Noah's niece, being apprehensive of the deluge, set out for Ireland, where, with three men and fifty women, she arrived safe with one s.h.i.+p, the rest peris.h.i.+ng in the general destruction.

A history, so happily begun, never falls off: prophecies, omens, judgements, and religious foundations compose the bulk of the book.

The lives and actions of our monarchs, and the great events of their reigns, seemed to the author to deserve little place in a history of England. The lives of Henry the Sixth and Edward the Fourth, though the author lived under both, take up but two pages in octavo, and that of Richard the Third, three. We may judge how qualified such an author was to clear up a period so obscure, or what secrets could come to his knowledge at Guy's Cliff: accordingly he retails all the vulgar reports of the times; as that Richard poisoned his wife, and put his nephews to death, though he owns few knew in what manner; but as he lays the scene of their deaths before Richard's a.s.sumption of the crown, it is plain he was the worst informed of all. To Richard he ascribes the death of Henry the Sixth; and adds, that many persons believed he executed the murder with his own hands: but he records another circ.u.mstance that alone must weaken all suspicion of Richard's guilt in that transaction. Richard not only caused the body to be removed from Chertsey, and solemnly interred at Windsor, but it was publickly exposed, and, if we will believe the monk, was found almost entire, and emitted a gracious perfume, though no care had been taken to embalm it. Is it credible that Richard, if the murderer, would have exhibited this unnecessary mummery, only to revive the memory of his own guilt? Was it not rather intended to recall the cruelty of his brother Edward, whose children he had set aside, and whom by the comparison of this act of piety, he hoped to depreciate(53) in the eyes of the people? The very example had been pointed out to him by Henry the Fifth, who bestowed a pompous funeral on Richard the Second, murdered by order of his father.

(54) This is not a mere random conjecture, but combated by another instance of like address. He deforested a large circuit, which Edward had annexed to the forest of Whichwoode, to the great annoyance of the subject. This we are told by Rous himself, p. 316,

Indeed the devotion of Rous to that Lancastrian saint, Henry the Sixth, seems chiefly to engross his attention, and yet it draws him into a contradiction; for having said that the murder of Henry the Sixth had made Richard detested by all nations who heard of it, he adds, two pages afterwards, that an emba.s.sy arrived at Warwick (while Richard kept his court there) from the king of Spain,(55) to propose a marriage between their children. Of this emba.s.sy Rous is a proper witness: Guy's Cliff, I think, is but four miles from Warwick; and he is too circ.u.mstancial on what pa.s.sed there not to have been on the spot. In other respects he seems inclined to be impartial, recording several good and generous acts of Richard.

(55) Drake says, that an amba.s.sador from the queen of Spain was present at Richard's coronation at York. Rous> himself owns, that, amidst a great concourse of n.o.bility that attended the king at York, was the duke of Albany, brother of the king of Scotland. Richard therefore appears not to hav been abhorred by either the courts of Spain or Scotland.

But there is one circ.u.mstance, which, besides the weakness and credulity of the man, renders his testimony exceedingly suspicious.

After having said, that, if he may speak truth in Richard's favour,(56) he must own that, though small in stature and strength, Richard was a n.o.ble knight, and defended himself to the last 'breath with eminent valour, the monk suddenly turns, and apostrophizes Henry the Seventh, to whom be had dedicated his work, and whom he flatters to the best of his poor abilities; but, above all things, for having bestowed the name of Arthur on his eldest son, who, this injudicious and over-hasty prophet forsees, will restore the glory of his great ancestor of the same name. Had Henry christened his second 'son Merlin, I do not doubt but poor Rous would have had still more divine visions about Henry the Eighth, though born to shake half the pillars of credulity.

(56) Attamen si ad ejus honorem veritatem dicam, p. 218.

In short, no reliance can be had on an author of such a frame of mind, so removed from the scene of action, and so devoted to the Welsh intruder on the throne. Superadded to this incapacity and defects, he had prejudices or attachments of a private nature: he had singular affection for the Beauchamps, earls of Warwick, zealous Lancastrians, and had written their lives. One capital crime that he imputes to Richard is the imprisonment of his mother-in-law, Ann Beauchamp countess of Warwick, mother of his queen. It does seem that this great lady was very hardly treated; but I have shown from the Chronicle of Croyland, that it was Edward the Fourth, not Richard, that stripped her of her possessions. She was widow too of that turbulent Warwick the King-maker; and Henry the Seventh bore witness that she was faithfully loyal to Henry the Sixth. Still it seems extraordinary that the queen did not or could not obtain the enlargement of her mother. When Henry the Seventh 'attained the crown, she recovered her liberty 'and vast estates: yet young as his majesty was both in years and avarice, for this munificence took place in his third year, still he gave evidence of the falshood and rapacity of his nature; for though by act of parliament he cancelled the former act that had deprived her, as against all reason, conscience, and course of nature, and contrary to the laws of G.o.d and man,(57) and restored her possessions to her, this was but a farce, and like his wonted hypocrisy; for the very same year he obliged her to convey the whole estate to him, leaving her nothing but the manor of Sutton for her maintenance. Richard had married her daughter; but what claim had Henry to her inheritance? This attachment of Rous to the house of Beauchamp, and the dedication of his work to Henry, Would make his testimony most suspicious, even if he had guarded his work within the rules of probability, and not rendered it a contemptible legend.

(57) Vide Dugdale's Warcks.h.i.+re in Beauchamp.

Every part of Richard's story is involved in obscurity: we neither known what natural children he had, nor what became of them.

Stanford says, he had a daughter called Katherine, whom William Herbert earl of Huntingdon covenanted to marry, and to make her a fair and sufficient estate of certain of his manors to the yearly value of 200 pounds over and above all charges. As this lord received a confirmation of his t.i.tle from Henry the Seventh, no doubt the poor young lady would have been sacrificed to that interest. But Dugdale seems to think she died before the nuptuals were consummated "whether this marriage took effect or not I cannot say; for sure it is that she died in her tender years."(58) Drake(59) affirms, that Richard knighted at York a natural son called Richard of Gloucester, and supposes it to be the same person of whom Peck has preserved so extraordinary an account.(60) But never was a supposition worse grounded. The relation given by the latter of himself, was, that he never saw the king till the night before the battle of Bosworth: and that the king had not then acknowledged, but intended to acknowledge him, if victorious. The deep privacy in which this person had lived, demonstrates how severely the persecution had raged against all that were connected with Richard, and how little truth was to be expected from the writers on the other side. Nor could Peck's Richard Plantagenet be the same person with Richard of Gloucester, for the former was never known till he discovered himself to Sir Thomas More; and Hall says king Richard's natural son was in the hands of Henry the Seventh. Buck says, that Richard made his son Richard of Gloucester, captain of Calais; but it appears from Rymer's Foedera, that Richard's natural son, who was captain of Calais, was called John. None of these accounts accord with Peck's; nor, for want of knowing his mother, can we guess why king Richard was more secret on the birth of this son (if Peck's Richard Plantagenet was truly so) than on those of his other natural children. Perhaps the truest remark that can be made on this whole story is, that the avidity with which our historians swallowed one gross ill-concocted legend, prevented them from desiring or daring to sift a single part of it. If crumbs of truth are mingled with it, at least they are now undistinguishable in such a ma.s.s of error and improbability.

(58) Baronage, p. 258.

(58) In his History of York.

(59) See his Desiderata Curiosae.

It is evident from the conduct of Shakespeare, that the house of Tudor retained all their Lancastrian prejudices, even in the reign of queen Elizabeth. In his play of Richard the Third, he seems to deduce the woes of the house of York from the curses which queen Margaret had vented against them; and he could not give that weight to her curses, without supposing a right in her to utter them. This, indeed is the authority which I do not pretend to combat.

Shakespeare's immortal scenes will exist, when such poor arguments as mine are forgotten. Richard at least will be tried and executed on the stage, when his defence remains on some obscure shelf of a library. But while these pages may excite the curiosity of a day, it may not be unentertaining to observe, that there is another of Shakespeare's plays, that may be ranked among the historic, though not one of his numerous critics and commentators have discovered the drift of it; I mean The Winter Evening's Tale, which was certainly intended (in compliment to queen Elizabeth) as an indirect apology for her mother Anne Boleyn. The address of the poet appears no where to more advantage. The subject was too delicate to be exhibited on the stage without a veil; and it was too recent, and touched the queen too nearly, for the bard to have ventured so home an allusion on any other ground than compliment. The unreasonable jealousy of Leontes, and his violent conduct in consequence, form a true portrait of Henry the Eighth, who generally made the law the engine of his boisterous pa.s.sions. Not only the general plan of the story is most applicable but several pa.s.sages are so marked, that they touch the real history nearer than the fable. Hermione on her trial says,

. . . . . For honour, 'Tis a derivative from me to mine, And only that I stand for.

This seems to be taken from the very letter of Anne Boyleyn to the king before her execution, where she pleads for the infant princess his daughter. Mamillius, the young prince, an unnecessary character, dies in his infancy; but it confirms the allusion, as queen Anne, before Elizabeth, bore a still-born son. But the most striking pa.s.sage,' and which had nothing to do in the Tragedy, but as it pictured Elizabeth, is, where Paulina, describing the new-born princess, and her likeness to her father, says, she has the very trick of his frown. There is one sentence indeed so applicable, both to Elizabeth and her father, that I should suspect the poet inserted it after her death. Paulina, speaking of the child, tells the king,

. . . . . . 'Tis yours; And might we lay the old proverb to your charge, So like you, 'tis the worse.

The Winter Evening's Tale was therefore in reality a second part of Henry the Eighth.

With regard to Jane Sh.o.r.e, I have already shown that it was her connection with the marquis Dorset, not with lord Hastings, which drew on her the resentment of Richard. When an event is thus wrested to serve the purpose of a party, we ought to be very cautious how we trust an historian, who is capable of employing truth only as cement in a fabric of fiction. Sir Thomas More tells us, that Richard pretended Jane "was of councell with the lord Hastings to destroy him; and in conclusion, when no colour could fasten upon these matters, then he layd seriously to her charge what she could not deny, namely her adultry; and for this cause, as a G.o.dly continent prince, cleane and faultlesse of himself, sent out of heaven into this vicious world for the amendment of mens manners, he caused the bishop of London to put her to open penance."

This sarcasm on Richards morals would have had more weight, if the author had before confined himself to deliver nothing but the precise truth. He does not seem to be more exact in what relates to the penance itself. Richard, by his proclamation, taxed mistress Sh.o.r.e with plotting treason in confederacy with the marquis Dorset.

Consequently, it was not from defect of proof of her being accomplice with lord Hastings that she was put to open penance. If Richard had any hand in that sentence, it was, because he had proof of her plotting with the marquis. But I doubt, and with some reason, whether her penance was inflicted by Richard. We have seen that he acknowledged at least two natural children; and Sir Thomas More hints that Richard was far from being remarkable for his chast.i.ty.

Is it therefore probable, that he acted so silly a farce as to make his brother's mistress do penance? Most of the charges on Richard are so idle, that instead of being an able and artful usurper, as his antagonists allow, he must have been a weaker hypocrite than ever attempted to wrest a sceptre out of the hands of a legal possessor.

It is more likely that the churchmen were the authors of Jane's penance; and that Richard, interested to manage that body, and provoked by her connection with so capital an enemy as Dorset, might give her up, and permit the clergy (who probably had burned incense to her in her prosperity) to revenge his quarrel. My reason for this opinion is grounded on a letter of Richard extant in the Museum, by which it appears that the fair, unfortunate, and aimable Jane (for her virtues far outweighed her frailty) being a prisoner, by Richard's order, in Ludgate, had captivated the king's solicitor, who contracted to marry her. Here follows the letter:

Harl. MSS, No. 2378.

By the KING.

"Right reverend fadre in G.o.d, &c. Signifying unto you, that it is shewed unto us, that our servaunt and solicitor, Thomas Lynom, merveillously blinded and abused with the late wife of William Sh.o.r.e, now being in Ludgate by oure commandment, hath made contract of matrymony with hir (as it is said) and entendith, to our full grete merveile, to precede to th' effect of the same. We for many causes wold be sory that hee soo shulde be disposed. Pray you therefore to send for him, and in that ye goodly may, exhorte and sture hym to the contrarye. And if ye finde him utterly set for to marye hur, and noen otherwise will be advertised, then (if it may stand with the lawe of the churche.) We be content (the tyme of marriage deferred to our comyng next to London,) that upon sufficient suerite founde of hure good abering, ye doo send for hure keeper, and discharge him of our said commandment by warrant of these, committing hur to the rule and guiding of hure fadre, or any othre by your discretion in the mene season. Yeven, &c.

To the right reverend fadre in G.o.d, &c. the bishop of Lincoln, our chauncellour."

It appears from this letter, that Richard thought it indecent for his sollicitor to mary a woman who had suffered public punishment for adultery, and who was confined by his command--but where is the tyrant to be found in this paper? Or, what prince ever spoke of such a scandal, and what is stronger, of such contempt of his authority, with so much lenity and temper? He enjoins his chancellor to dissuade the sollicitor from the match--but should he persist--a tyrant would have ordered the sollicitor to prison too--but Richard --Richard, if his servant will not be dissuaded, allows the match; and in the mean time commits Jane--to whose custody?--Her own father's. I cannot help thinking that some holy person had been her persecutor, and not so patient and gentle a king. And I believe so, because of the salvo for the church: "Let them be married," says Richard, "if it may stand with the lawe of the churche."

From the proposed marriage, one should at first conclude that Sh.o.r.e, the former husband of Jane, was dead; but by the king's query, Whether the marriage would be lawful? and by her being called in the letter the late wife of William Sh.o.r.e, not of the late William Sh.o.r.e, I should suppose that her husband was living, and that the penance itself was the consequence of a suit preferred by him to the ecclesiastic court for divorce. If the injured husband ventured, on the death of Edward the Fourth, to pet.i.tion to be separated from his wife, it was natural enough for the church to proceed farther, and enjoin her to perform penance, especially when they fell in with the king's resentment to her.

Richard's proclamation and the letter above-recited seem to point out this account of Jane's misfortunes; the letter implying, that Richard doubted whether her divorce was so complete as to leave her at liberty to take another husband. As we hear no more of the marriage, and as Jane to her death retained the name of Sh.o.r.e, my solution is corroborated; the chancellor-bishop, no doubt, going more roundly to work than the king had done. Nor, however Sir Thomas More reviles Richard for his cruel usage of mistress Sh.o.r.e, did either of the succeeding kings redress her wrongs, though she lived to the eighteenth year of Henry the Eighth, She had sown her good deeds, her good offices, her alms her charities, in a court. Not one took root; nor did the ungrateful soil repay her a grain of relief in her penury and comfortless old age.

I have thus gone through the several accusations against Richard; and have shown that they rest on the slightest and most suspicious ground, if they rest on any at all. I have proved that they ought to be reduced to the sole authorities of Sir Thomas More and Henry the Seventh; the latter interested to blacken and misrepresent every action of Richard; and perhaps driven to father on him even his own crimes. I have proved that More's account cannot be true. I have shown that the writers, contemporary with Richard, either do not accuse him, or give their accusations as mere vague and uncertain reports: and what is as strong, the writers next in date, and who wrote the earliest after the events are said to have happened, a.s.sert little or nothing from their own information, but adopt the very words of Sir Thomas More, who was absolutely mistaken or misinformed.

For the sake of those who have a mind to canva.s.s this subject, I will recapitulate the most material arguments that tend to disprove what has been a.s.serted; but as I attempt not to affirm what did happen in a period that will still remain very obscure, I flatter myself that I shall not be thought either fantastic or paradoxical, for not blindly adopting an improbable tale, which our historians have never given themselves the trouble to examine.

What mistakes I may have made myself, I shall be willing to acknowledge; what weak reasoning, to give up: but I shall not think that a long chain of arguments, of proofs and probabilities, is confuted at once, because some single fact may be found erroneous.

Much less shall I be disposed to take notice of detached or trifling cavils. The work itself is but an inquiry into a short portion of our annals. I shall be content, if I have informed or amused my readers, or thrown any light on so clouded a scene; but I cannot be of opinion that a period thus distant deserves to take up more time than I have already bestowed upon it.

It seems then to me to appear,

That Fabian and the authors of the Chronicle of Croyland, who were contemporaries with Richard, charge him directly with none of the crimes, since imputed to him, and disculpate him of others.

That John Rous, the third contemporary, could know the facts he alledges but by hearsay, confounds the dates of them, dedicated his work to Henry the Seventh, and is an author to whom no credit is due, from the lies and fables with which his work is stuffed.

That we have no authors who lived near the time, but Lancastrian authors, who wrote to flatter Henry the Seventh, or who spread the tales which he invented.

That the murder of prince Edward, son of Henry the Sixth, was committed by king Edward's servants, and is imputed to Richard by no contemporary.

That Henry the Sixth was found dead in the Tower; that it was not known how he came by his death; and that it was against Richard's interest to murder him.

That the duke of Clarence was defended by Richard; that the parliament pet.i.tioned for his execution; that no author of the time is so absurd as to charge Richard with being the executioner; and that king Edward took the deed wholly on himself.

That Richard's stay at York on his brother's death had no appearance of a design to make himself king.

That the ambition of the queen, who attempted to usurp the government, contrary to the then established custom of the realm, gave the first provocation to Richard and the princes of the blood to a.s.sert their rights; and that Richard was solicited by the duke of Buckingham to vindicate those rights.

That the preparation of an armed force under earl Rivers, the seizure of the Tower and treasure, and the equipment of a fleet, by the marquis Dorset, gave occasion to the princes to imprison the relations of the queen; and that, though they were put to death without trial (the only cruelty which is proved on Richard) it was consonant to the manners of that barbarous and turbulent age, and not till after the queen's party had taken up arms.

That the execution of lord Hastings, who had first engaged with Richard against the queen, and whom Sir Thomas More confesses Richard was lothe to lose, can be accounted for by nothing but absolute necessity, and the law of self-defence.