This charge, no better supported than the preceding, is still more
improbable. "Of the death of this prince, Henry the Sixth," says
Fabian, "divers tales wer told. But the most common fame went, that
he was sticken with a dagger by the handes of the duke of Gloceter."
The author of the Continuation of the Chronicle of Croyland says
only, that the body of king Henry was found lifeless (exanime) in
the Tower. "Parcat Deus", adds he, "spatium poenitentiae Ei donet,
Quicunque sacrilegas manus in Christum Domini ausus est immittere.
Unde et agens tyranni, patiensque gloriosi martyris titulum
mereatur." The prayer for the murderer, that he may live to repent,
proves that the passage was written immediately after the murder was
committed. That the assassin deserved the appellation of tyrant,
evinces that the historian's suspicions went high; but as he calls
him Quicunque, and as we are uncertain whether he wrote before the
death of Edward the Fourth or between his death and that of Richard
the Third, we cannot ascertain which of the brothers he meant. In
strict construction he should mean Edward, because as he is speaking
of Henry's death, Richard, then only duke of Gloucester, could not
properly be called a tyrant. But as monks were not good grammatical
critics, I shall lay no stress on this objection. I do think he
alluded to Richard; having treated him severely in the subsequent
part of his history, and having a true monkish partiality to Edward,
whose cruelty and vices he slightly noticed, in favour to that
monarch's severity to heretics and ecclesiastic expiations. "Is
princeps, licet diebus suis cupiditatibus & luxui nimis intemperanter
indulsisse credatur, in fide tamen catholicus summ, hereticorum
severissimus hostis sapientium & doctorum hominum clericorumque
promotor amantissimus, sacramentorum ecclesiae devotissimus
venerator, peccatorumque fuorum omnium paenitentissimus fuit." That
monster Philip the Second possessed just the same virtues. Still, I
say, let the monk suspect whom he would, if Henry was found dead,
the monk was not likely to know who murdered him--and if he did, he
has not told us.
Hall says, "Poore kyng Henry the Sixte, a little before deprived of
hys realme and imperial croune, was now in the Tower of London
spoyled of his life and all wordly felicite by Richard duke of
Gloucester (as the constant fame ranne) which, to the intent that
king Edward his brother should be clere out of al secret suspicyon
of sudden invasion, murthered the said king with a dagger." Whatever
Richard was, it seems he was a most excellent and kind-hearted
brother, and scrupled not on any occasion to be the Jack Ketch of the
times. We shall see him soon (if the evidence were to be believed)
perform the same friendly office for Edward on their brother
Clarence. And we must admire that he, whose dagger was so fleshed in
murder for the service of another, should be so put to it to find
the means of making away with his nephews, whose deaths were
considerably more essential to him. But can this accusation be
allowed gravely? if Richard aspired to the crown, whose whole
conduct during Edward's reign was a scene, as we are told, of
plausibility and decorum, would he officiously and unnecessarily
have taken on himself the odium of slaying a saint-like monarch,
adored by the people? Was it his interest to save Edward's character
at the expence of his own? Did Henry stand in his way, deposed,
imprisoned, and now childless? The blind and indiscriminate zeal
with which every crime committed in that bloody age was placed to
Richard's account, makes it greatly probable, that interest of party
had more hand than truth in drawing his picture. Other cruelties,
which I shall mention, and to which we know his motives, he
certainly commanded; nor am I desirous to purge him where I find him
guilty: but mob-stories or Lancastrian forgeries ought to be
rejected from sober history; nor can they be repeated, without
exposing the writer to the imputation of weakness and vulgar
credulity.