of before 1495, when duke Richard would have been Twenty-one.
Margaret of York, duchess dowager of Burgundy, and sister of Edward
the Fourth, is said by lord Bacon to have been the Juno who
persecuted the pious Aeneas, Henry, and set up this phantom against
him. She it was, say the historians, and says Lord Bacon, p, 115,
"who informed Perkin of all the circumstances and particulars that
concerned the person of Richard duke of York, which he was to act,
describing unto him the personages, lineaments, and features of the
king and queen, his pretended parents, and of his brother and
sisters, and divers others that were nearest him in his childhood;
together with all passages, some secret, some common that were fit
for a child's memory, until the death of king Edward. Then she added
the particulars of the time, from the king's death; until he and his
brother were committed to the Tower, as well during the time he was
abroad, as while he was in sanctuary. As for the times while he was
in the Tower, and the manner of his brother's death, and his own
escape, she knew they were things that were few could controle: and
therefore she taught him only to tell a smooth and likely tale of
those matters, warning him not to vary from it." Indeed! Margaret
must in truth have been a Juno, a divine power, if she could give
all these instructions to purpose. This passage is, so very
important, the whole story depends so much upon it, that if I can
show the utter impossibility of its being true, Perkin will remain
the true duke of York for any thing we can prove to the contrary;
and for Henry, Sir Thomas More, lord Bacon, and their copyists, it
will be impossible to give any longer credit to their narratives.
I have said that duke Richard was born in 1474. Unfortunately his
aunt Margaret was married out of England in 1467, seven years before
he was born, and never returned thither. Was not she singularly
capable of describing to Perkin, her nephew, whom she had never
seen? How well informed was she of the times of his childhood, and
of all passages relating to his brother and sisters! Oh! but she had
English refugees about her. She must have had many, and those of
most intimate connection with the court, if she and they together
could compose a tolerable story for Perkin, that was to take in the
most minute passages of so many years.(38) Who informed Margaret,
that she might inform Perkin, of what passed in sanctuary? Ay; and
who told her what passed in the Tower? Let the warmest asserter of
the imposture answer that question, and I will give up all I have
said in this work; yes, all. Forest was dead, and the supposed
priest; Sir James Tirrel, and Dighton, were in Henry's hands. Had
they trumpeted about the story of their own guilt and infamy, till
Henry, after Perkin's appearance, found it necessary to publish it?
Sir James Tirrel and Dighton had certainly never gone to the court
of Burgundy to make a merit with Margaret of having murdered her
nephews. How came she to know accurately and authentically a tale
which no mortal else knew? Did Perkin or did he not correspond in
his narrative with Tirrel and Dighton? If he did how was it possible
for him to know it? If he did not, is it morally credible that
Henry would not have made those variations public? If Edward the
Fifth was murdered, and the duke of York saved, Perkin could know it
but by being the latter. If he did not know it, what was so obvious
as his detection? We must allow Perkin to be the true duke of York,
or give up the whole story of Tirrel and Dighton. When Henry had
Perkin, Tirrel, and Dighton, in his power, he had nothing to do but
to confront them, and the imposture was detected. It would not have
been sufficient that Margaret had enjoined him to tell a smooth and
likely tale of those matters, A man does not tell a likely tale, nor
was a likely tale enough, of matters of which he is totally
ignorant.
(38) It would have required half the court of Edward the Fourth to
frame a consistent legend Let us state this in a manner that must
strike our apprehension. The late princess royal was married out of
England, before any of the children of the late prince of Wales were
born. She lived no farther than the Hague; and yet who thinks that
she could have instructed a Dutch lad in so many passages of the
courts of her father and brother, that he would not have been
detected in an hour's time. Twenty-seven years at least had elapsed
since Margaret had been in the court of England. The marquis of
Dorset, the earl of Richmond himself, and most of the fugitives had
taken refuge in Bretagne, not with Margaret; and yet was she so
informed of every trifling story, even those of the nursery, that
she was able to pose Henry himself, and reduce him to invent a tale
that had not a shadow of probability in it. Why did he not convict
Perkin out of his own mouth? Was it ever pretended that Perkin
failed in his part? That was the surest and best proof of his being
an impostor. Could not the whole court, the whole kingdom of
England, so cross-examine this Flemish youth, as to catch him in one
lie? So; lord Bacon's Juno had inspired him with full knowledge of
all that had passed in the last twenty years. If Margaret was Juno,
he who shall answer these questions satisfactorily, "erit mihi
magnus Apollo."
Still farther: why was Perkin never confronted with the queen
dowager, with Henry's own queen, and with the princesses, her
sisters? Why were they never asked, is this your son? Is this your
brother? Was Henry afraid to trust to their natural emotions?--Yet
"he himself," says lord Bacon, p. 186, "saw him sometimes out of a
window, or in passage." This implies that the queens and princesses
never did see him; and yet they surely were the persons who could
best detect the counterfeit, if he had been one. Had the young man
made a voluntary, coherent, and credible confession, no other
evidence of his imposture would be wanted; but failing that, we
cannot help asking, Why the obvious means of detection were not
employed? Those means having been omitted, our suspicions remain in
full force.
Henry, who thus neglected every means of confounding the impostor,
took every step he would have done, if convinced that Perkin was the
true duke of York. His utmost industry was exerted in sifting to the
bottom of the plot, in learning who was engaged in the conspiracy,
and in detaching the chief supporters. It is said, though not
affirmatively that to procure confidence to his spies, he caused
them to be solemnly cursed at Paul's cross. Certain it is, that, by
their information, he came to the knowledge, not of the imposture,
but of what rather tended to prove that Perkin was a genuine
Plantagenet: I mean, such a list of great men actually in his court
and in trust about his person, that no wonder he was seriously
alarmed. Sir Robert Clifford,(39) who had fled to Margaret, wrote to
England, that he was positive that the claimant was the very
identical duke of York, son of Edward the Fourth, whom he had so
often seen, and was perfectly acquainted with. This man, Clifford,
was bribed back to Henry's service; and what was the consequence? He
accused Sir William Stanley, lord Chamberlain, the very man who had
set the crown on Henry's head in Bosworth field, and own brother to
earl of Derby, the then actual husband of Henry's mother, of being
in the conspiracy? This was indeed essential to Henry to know; but
what did it proclaim to the nation? What could stagger the
allegiance of such trust and such connexions, but the firm
persuation that Perkin was the true duke of York? A spirit of
faction and disgust has even in later times hurried men into
treasonable combinations; but however Sir William Stanley might be
dissatisfied, as not thinking himself adequately rewarded, yet is it
credible that he should risk such favour, such riches, as lord Bacon
allows he possessed, on the wild bottom of a Flemish counterfeit?
The lord Fitzwalter and the other great men suffered in the same
cause; and which is remarkable, the first was executed at Calais
--another presumption that Henry would not venture to have his
evidence made public. And the strongest presumption of all is, that
not one of the sufferers is pretended to have recanted; they all
died then in the persuasion that they had engaged in a righteous
cause. When peers, knights of the garter, privy councellors, suffer
death, from conviction of a matter of which they were proper judges,
(for which of them but must know their late master's son?) it would
be rash indeed in us to affirm that they laid down their lives for
an imposture, and died with a lie in their mouths.
(39) A gentleman of fame and family, says lord Bacon.
What can be said against king James of Scotland, who bestowed a lady
of his own blood in marriage on Perkin? At war with Henry, James
would naturally support his rival, whether genuine or suppositious.
He and Charles the Eighth both gave him aid and both gave him up, as
the wind of their interest shifted about. Recent instances of such
conduct have been seen; but what prince has gone so far as to stake
his belief in a doubtful cause, by sacrificing a princess of his own
blood in confirmation of it?
But it is needless to multiply presumptions. Henry's conduct and the
narrative (40) he published, are sufficient to stagger every
impartial reader. Lord Bacon confesses the king did himself no good
by the publication of that narrative, and that mankind was
astonished to find no mention in it of the duchess Margaret's
machinations. But how could lord Bacon stop there? Why did he not
conjecture that there was no proof of that tale? What interest had
Henry to manage a widow of Burgundy? He had applied to the archduke
Philip to banish Perkin: Philip replied, he had no power over the
lands of the duchess's dowry. It is therefore most credible that the
duchess has supported Perkin, on the persuasion he was her nephew;
and Henry not being able to prove the reports he had spread of her
having trained up an impostor, chose to drop all mention of
Margaret, because nothing was so natural as her supporting the heir
of her house. On the contrary, in Perkin's confession, as it was
called, and which though preserved by Grafton, was suppressed by
lord Bacon, not only as repugnant to his lordship's account, but to
common sense, Perkin affirms, that "having sailed to Lisbon in a
ship with the lady Brampton, who, lord Bacon says, was sent by
Margaret to conduct him thither, and from thence have resorted to
Ireland, it was at Cork that they of the town first threaped upon
him that he was son of the duke of Clarence; and others afterwards,
that he was the duke of York." But the contradictions both in lord
Bacon's account, and in Henry's narrative, are irreconcileable and
unsurmountable: the former solves the likeness,(41) which is
allowing the likeness of Perkin to Edward the Fourth, by supposing
that the king had an intrigue with his mother, of which he gives
this silly relation: that Perkin Warbeck, whose surname it seems was
Peter Osbeck, was son of a Flemish converted Jew (of which Hebrew
extraction,(42) Perkin says not a word in his confession) who with
his wife Katherine de Faro come to London on business; and she
producing a son, king Edward, in consideration of the conversion, or
intrigue, stood godfather to the child and gave him the name of
Peter, Can one help laughing at being told that a king called Edward
gave the name of Peter to his godson? But of this transfretation and
christening Perkin, in his supposed confession, says not a word, nor
pretends to have ever set foot in England, till he landed there in
pursuit of the crown; and yet an English birth and some stay, though
in his very childhood, was a better way of accounting for the purity
of his accent, than either of the preposterous tales produced by
lord Bacon or by Henry. The former says, that Perkin, roving up and
down between Antwerp and Tournay and other towns, and living much in
English company, had the English tongue perfect. Henry was so afraid
of not ascertaining a good foundation of Perkin's English accent,
that he makes him learn the language twice over.(43) "Being sent
with a merchant of Turney, called Berlo, to the mart of Antwerp, the
said Berlo set me," says Perkin, "to borde in a skinner's house,
that dwelled beside the house of the English nation. And after this
the said Berlo set me with a merchant of Middleborough to service
for to learne the language,(44) with whom I dwelled from Christmas
to Easter, and then, I went into Portugale." One does not learn any
language very perfectly and with a good, nay, undistinguishable
accent, between Christmas and Easter; but here let us pause. If this
account was true, the other relating to the duchess Margaret was
false; and then how came Perkin by so accurate a knowledge of the
English court, that he did not faulter, nor could be detected in his
tale? If the confession was not true, it remains that it was trumped
up by Henry, and then Perkin must be allowed the true duke of York.
(40) To what degree arbitrary power dares to trifle with the common
sense of mankind has been seen in Portuguese and Russian manifestos.
(41) As this solution of the likeness is not authorized by the
youth's supposed narrative, the likeness remains uncontrovertable,
and consequently another argument for his being king Edward's son.
(42) On the contrary, Perkins calls his grandfather Diryck Osbeck;
Diryck every body knows is Theodoric, and Theodoric is certainly no
Jewish appellation. Perkin too mentions several of his relations and
their employments at Tournay, without any hint of a Hebrew
connection.
(43) Grafton's Chronicle, p 930.
(44) I take this to mean the English language, for these reasons; he
had just before named the English nation, and the name of his master
was John Strewe, which seems to be an English appellation: but there
is a stronger reason for believing it means the English language,
which is, that a Flemish lad is not set to learn his own language;
though even this absurdity is advanced in this same pretended
confession, Perkin, affirming that his mother, after he had dwelled
some time in Tournay, sent him to Antwerp to learn Flemish. If I am
told by a very improbable supposition, that French was his native
language at Tournay, that he learned Flemish at Antwerp, and Dutch
at Middleburg, I will desire the objector to cast his eye on the
map, and consider the small distance between Tournay, Middleburg,
and Antwerp, and to reflect that the present United Provinces were
not then divided from the rest of Flanders; and then to decide
whether the dialects spoken at Tournay, Antwerp, and Middleburg were
so different in that age, that it was necessary to be set to learn
them all separately. If this cannot be answered satisfactorily, it
will remain, that Perkin learned Flemish or English twice over. I am
indifferent which, for still there will remain a contradiction in
the confession. And if English is not meant in the passage above, it
will only produce a greater difficulty, which is, that Perkin, at
the age of twenty learned to speak English in Ireland with so good
an accent, that all England could not discover the cheat. I must be
answered too, why lord Bacon rejects the youth's own confession and
substitutes another in its place, which makes Perkin born in
England, though in his pretended confession Perkin affirms the
contrary. Lord Bacon too confirms my interpretation of the passage
in question, by saying that Perkin roved up and down between Antwerp
and other towns in Flanders, living much in English company, and
having the English tongue perfect, p. 115.
But the gross contradiction of all follows: "It was in Ireland,"
says Perkin, in this very narrative and confession, "that against my
will they made me to learne English, and taught me what I should do
and say." Amazing! what forced him to learn English, after, as he
says himself in the very same page, he had learnt it at Antwerp!
What an impudence was there in royal power to dare to obtrude such
stuff on the world! Yet this confession, as it is called, was the
poor young man forced to read at his execution--no doubt in dread of
worse torture. Mr. Hume, though he questions it, owns that it was
believed by torture to have been drawn from him. What matters how it
was obtained, or whether ever obtained; it could not be true: and as
Henry could put together no more plausible account, coommiseration
will shed a tear over a hapless youth, sacrificed to the fury and
jealousy of an usurper, and in all probability the victim of a
tyrant, who has made the world believe that the duke of York,
executed by his own orders, had been previously murdered by his
predecessor.(45)
(45) Mr. Hume, to whose doubts all respect is due, tells me he
thinks no mention being made of Perkin's title in the Cornish
rebellion under the lord Audeley, is a strong presumption that the
nation was not persuaded of his being the true duke of York. This
argument, which at most is negative, seems to me to lose its weight,
when it is remembered, that this was an insurrection occasioned by a
poll-tax: that the rage of the people was directed against
archbishop Morton and Sir Reginald Bray, the supposed authors of the
grievance. An insurrection against a tax in a southern county, in
which no mention is made of a pretender to the crown, is surely not
so forcible a presumption against him, as the persuasion of the
northern counties that he was the true heir, is an argument in his
favour. Much less can it avail against such powerful evidence as I
have shown exists to overturn all that Henry can produce against
Perkin.
I have thus, I flatter myself, from the discovery of new
authorities, from the comparison of dates, from fair consequences
and arguments, and without straining or wresting probability, proved
all I pretended to prove; not an hypothesis of Richard's universal
innocence, but this assertion with which I set out, that we have no
reasons, no authority for believing by far the greater part of the
crimes charged on him. I have convicted historians of partiality,
absurdities, contradictions, and falshoods; and though I have
destroyed their credit, I have ventured to establish no peremptory
conclusion of my own. What did really happen in so dark a period, it
would be rash to affirm. The coronation and parliament rolls have
ascertained a few facts, either totally unknown, or misrepresented
by historians. Time may bring other monuments to light(46) but one
thing is sure, that should any man hereafter presume to repeat the
same improbable tale on no better grounds that it has been hitherto
urged, he must shut his eyes against conviction, and prefer
ridiculous tradition to the scepticism due to most points of
history, and to none more than to that in question.
(46) If diligent search was to be made in the public offices and
convents of the Flemish towns in which the duchess Margaret
resided, I should not despair of new lights being gained to that
part of our history.
I have little more to say, and only on what regards the person of
Richard, and the story of Jane Shore; but having run counter to a
very valuable modern historian and friend of my own, I must both
make some apology for him, and for myself for disagreeing with him.
When Mr. Hume published his reigns of Edward the Fifth, Richard the
Third, and Henry the Seventh, the coronation roll had not come to
light. The stream of historians concurred to make him take this
portion of our story for granted. Buck had been given up as an
advancer of paradoxes, and nobody but Carte had dared to controvert
the popular belief. Mr. Hume treats Carte's doubts as whimsical: I
wonder, he did; he, who having so closely examined our history, had
discovered how very fallible many of its authorities are. Mr. Hume
himself had ventured to contest both the flattering picture drawn of
Edward the First, and those ignominious portraits of Edward the
Second, and Richard the Second. He had discovered from Foedera, that
Edward the Fourth, while said universally to be prisoner to
archbishop Nevil, was at full liberty and doing acts of royal power.
Why was it whimsical in Carte to exercise the same spirit of
criticism? Mr. Hume could not but know how much the characters of
princes are liable to be flattered or misrepresented. It is of
little importance to the world, to Mr. Hume, or to me, whether
Richard's story is fairly told or not: and in this amicable
discussion I have no fear of offending him by disagreeing with him.
His abilities and sagacity do not rest on the shortest reign in our
annals. I shall therefore attempt to give answers to the questions
on which he pins the credibility due to the history of Richard.
The questions are these, 1. Had not the queen-mother and the other
heads of the York party been fully assured of the death of both the
young princes, would they have agreed to call over the earl of
Richmond, the head of the Lancastrian party, and marry him to the
princess Elizabeth?--I answer, that when the queen-mother could
recall that consent, and send to her son the marquis Dorset to quit
Richmond, assuring him of king Richard's favour to him and her
house, it is impossible to say what so weak and ambitious a woman
would not do. She wanted to have some one of her children on the
throne, in order to recover her own power. She first engaged her
daughter to Richmond and then to Richard. She might not know what
was become of her sons: and yet that is no proof they were murdered.
They were out of her power, whatever was become of them;-and she was
impatient to rule. If she was fully assured of their deaths, could
Henry, after he came to the crown and had married her daughter, be
uncertain of it? I have shown that both Sir Thomas More and lord
Bacon own it remained uncertain, and that Henry's account could not
be true. As to the heads of the Yorkists;(47) how does it appear
they concurred in the projected match? Indeed who were the heads of
that party? Margaret, duchess of Burgundy, Elizabeth duchess of
Suffolk, and her children; did they ever concur in that match? Did
not they to the end endeavour to defeat and overturn it? I hope Mr.
Hume will not call bishop Morton, the duke of Buckingham, and
Margaret countess of Richmond, chiefs of the Yorkists. 2 The story
told constantly by Perkin of his escape is utterly incredible, that
those who were sent to murder his brother, took pity on him and
granted him his liberty.--Answer. We do not know but from Henry's
narrative and the Lancastrian historians that Perkin gave this
account.(48) I am not authorized to believe he did, because I find
no authority for the murder of the elder brother; and if there was,
why is it utterly incredible that the younger should have been
spared? 3. What became of him during the course of seven years from
his supposed death till his appearance in 1491?--Answer. Does
uncertainty of where a man has been, prove his non-identity when he
appears again? When Mr. Hume will answer half the questions in this
work, I will tell him where Perkin was during those seven years. 4.
Why was not the queen-mother, the duchess of Burgundy, and the other
friends of the family applied to, during that time, for his support
and education?--Answer. Who knows that they were not applied to? The
probability is, that they were. The queen's dabbling in the affair
of Simnel indicates that she knew her son was alive. And when the
duchess of Burgundy is accused of setting Perkin to work, it is
amazing that she should be quoted as knowing nothing about him.
5. Though the duchess of Burgundy at last acknowledged him for her
nephew, she had lost all pretence to authority by her former
acknowledgment and support of Lambert Simnel, an avowed impostor.
--Answer. Mr. Hume here makes an unwary confession by distinguishing
between Lambert Simnel, an avowed impostor, and Perkin, whose
impostnre was problematic. But if he was a true prince, the duchess
could only forfeit credit for herself, not for him: nor would her
preparing the way for her nephew, by first playing off and feeling
the ground by a counterfeit, be an imputation on her, but rather a
proof of her wisdom and tenderness. Impostors are easily detected;
as Simnel was. All Henry's art and power could never verify the
cheat of Perkin; and if the latter was astonishingly adroit, the
king was ridiculously clumsy. 6. Perkin himself confessed his
imposture more than once, and read his confession to the people, and
renewed his confession at the foot of the gibbet on which he was
executed.--Answer. I have shown that this confession was such an
aukward forgery that lord Bacon did not dare to quote or adhere to
it, but invented a new story, more specious, but equally
inconsistent with probability. 7. After Henry the Eighth's
accession, the titles of the houses of York and Lancaster were fully
confounded, and there was no longer any necessity for defending
Henry the Seventh and his title; yet all the historians of that
time, when the events were recent, some of these historians, such as
Sir Thomas More, of the highest authority, agree in treating Perkin
as an impostor.--Answer. When Sir Thomas More wrote, Henry the
Seventh was still alive: that argument therefore falls entirely to
the ground: but there was great necessity, I will not say to defend,
but even to palliate the titles of both Henry the Seventh and
Eighth. The former, all the world agrees now, had no title(49) the
latter had none from his father, and a very defective one from his
mother, If she had any right, it could only be after her brothers;
and it is not to be supposed that so jealous a tyrant as Henry the
Eighth would suffer it to be said that his father and mother enjoyed
the throne to the prejudice of that mother's surviving brother, in
whose blood the father had imbrued his hands. The murder therefore
was to be fixed on Richard the Third, who was to be supposed to have
usurped the throne, by murdering, and not, as was really the case,
by bastardizing his nephews. If they were illegitimate, so was their
sister; and if she was, what title had she conveyed to her son Henry
the Eighth? No wonder that both Henrys were jealous of the earl of
Suffolk, whom one bequeathed to slaughter, and the other executed;
for if the children of Edward the Fourth were spurious, and those of
Clarence attainted, the right of the house of York was vested in the
duchess of Suffolk and her descendants. The massacre of the children
of Clarence and the duchess of Suffolk show what Henry the Eighth
thought of the titles both of his father and mother.(50) But, says
Mr. Hume, all the historians of that time agree in treating Perkin
as an impostor. I have shown from their own mouths that they have
all doubted of it. The reader must judge between us. But Mr. Hume
selects Sir Thomas More as the highest authority; I have proved that
he was the lowest--but not in the case of Perkin, for Sir Thomas
More's history does not go so low; yet happening to mention him, he
says, the man, commonly called Perkin Warbeck, was, as well with the
princes as the people, held to be the younger son of Edward the
Fourth; and that the deaths of the young king Edward and of Richard
his brother had come so far in question, as some are yet in doubt,
whether they were destroyed or no in the days of king Richard. Sir
Thomas adhered to the affirmative, relying as I have shown on very
bad authorities. But what is a stronger argument ad hominem, I can
prove that Mr. Hume did not think Sir Thomas More good authority;
no, Mr. Hume was a fairer and more impartial judge: at the very time
that he quotes Sir Thomas More, he tacitly rejects his authority;
for Mr. Hume, agreeably to truth, specifies the lady Eleanor Butler
as the person to whom king Edward was contracted, and not Elizabeth
Lucy, as it stands in Sir Thomas More. An attempt to vindicate
Richard will perhaps no longer be thought whimsical, when so very
acute a reasoner as Mr. Hume could find no better foundation than
these seven queries on which to rest his condemnation.
(47) The excessive affection shown by the Northern counties where
the principal strength of the Yorkists lay, to Richard the Third
while living, and to his memory when dead, implies two things;
first, that the party did not give him up to Henry; secondly, that
they did not believe he had murdered his nephews, Tyrants of that
magnitude are not apt to be popular. Examine the list of the chiefs
in Henry's army as stated by the Chronicle of Croyland, p. 574. and
they will be found Lancastrians, or very private gentlemen, and but
one peer, the earl of Oxford, a noted Lancastrian.
(48) Grafton has preserved a ridiculous oration said to be made by
Perkin to the king of Scotland, in which this silly tale is told.
Nothing can be depended upon less than such orations, almost always
forged by the writer, and unpardonable, if they pass the bounds of
truth. Perkin, in the passage in question, uses these words: "And
farther to the entent that my life might be in a suretie he (the
murderer of my elder brother) appointed one to convey me into some
straunge countrie, where, when I was furthest off, and had most
neede of comfort, he forsooke me sodainly (I think he was so
appointed to do) and left me desolate alone without friend or
knowledge of any relief for refuge," &c. Would not one think one was
reading the tale of Valentine and Orson, or a legend of a barbarous
age, rather than the History of England, when we are told of strange
countries and such indefinite ramblings, as would pass only in a
nursery! It remains not only a secret but a doubt, whether the elder
brother was murdered. If Perkin was the younger, and knew certainly
that his brother was put to death, our doubt would vanish: but can
it vanish on no better authority than this foolish oration! Did
Grafton hear it pronounced? Did king James bestow his kinswoman on
Perkin, on the strength of such a fable?
(49) Henry was so reduced to make out any title to the crown, that
he catched even at a quibble. In the act of attainder passed after
his accession, he calls himself nephew of Henry the Sixth. He was so,
but it was by his father, who was not of the blood royal. Catharine
of Valois, after bearing Henry the Sixth, married Owen Tudor, and
had two sons, Edmund and Jasper, the former of which married
Margaret mother of Henry the Seventh, and so was he half nephew of
Henry the Sixth. On one side he had no blood royal, on the other
only bastard blood.
(50) Observe, that when Lord Bacon wrote, there was great
necessity to vindicate the title even of Henry the Seventh, for
James the First claimed from the eldest daughter of Henry and
Elizabeth.
With regard to the person of Richard, it appears to have been as
much misrepresented as his actions. Philip de Comines, who was very
free spoken even on his own masters, and therefore not likely to
spare a foreigner, mentions the beauty of Edward the Fourth; but
says nothing of the deformity of Richard, though he saw them
together. This is merely negative. The old countess of Desmond, who
had danced with Richard, declared he was the handsomest man in the
room except his brother Edward, and was very well made. But what
shall we say to Dr. Shaw, who in his sermon appealed to the people,
whether Richard was not the express image of his father's person,
who was neither ugly nor deformed? Not all the protector's power
could have kept the muscles of the mob in awe and prevented their
laughing at so ridiculous an apostrophe, had Richard been a little,
crooked, withered, hump-back'd monster, as later historians would
have us believe--and very idly? Cannot a foul soul inhabit a fair
body.
The truth I take to have been this. Richard, who was slender and not
tall, had one shoulder a little higher than the other: a defect, by
the magnifying glasses, of party, by distance of time, and by the
amplification of tradition, easily swelled to shocking deformity;
for falsehood itself generally pays so much respect to truth as to
make it the basis of its superstructures.
I have two reasons for believing Richard was not well made about the
shoulders. Among the drawings which I purchased at Vertue's sale was
one of Richard and his queen, of which nothing is expressed but the
out-lines. There is no intimation from whence the drawing was taken;
but by a collateral direction for the colour of the robe, if not
copied from a picture, it certainly was from some painted window;
where existing I do not pretend to say:--in this whole work I have
not gone beyond my vouchers. Richard's face is very comely, and
corresponds singularly with the portrait of him in the preface to
the Royal and Noble Authors. He has a sort of tippet of ermine
doubled about his neck, which seems calculated to disguise some
want of symmetry thereabouts. I have given two prints(51) of this
drawing, which is on large folio paper, that it may lead to a
discovery of the original, if not destroyed.
(51) In the prints, the single head is most exactly copied from the
drawing, which is unfinished. In the double plate, the reduced
likeness of the king could not be so perfectly preserved.
My other authority is John Rous, the antiquary of Warwickshire, who
saw Richard at Warwick in the interval of his two coronations, and
who describes him thus: "Parvae staturae erat, curtam habens faciem,
inaequales humeros, dexter superior, sinisterque inferior." What
feature in this portrait gives any idea of a monster? Or who can
believe that an eyewitness, and so minute a painter, would have
mentioned nothing but the inequality of shoulders, if Richard's form
had been a compound of ugliness? Could a Yorkist have drawn a less
disgusting representation? And yet Rous was a vehement Lancastrian;
and the moment he ceased to have truth before his eyes, gave in to
all the virulence and forgeries of his party, telling us in another
place, "that Richard remained two years in his mother's womb, and
came forth at last with teeth, and hair on his shoulders." I leave
it to the learned in the profession to decide whether women can go
two years with their burden, and produce a living infant; but that
this long pregnancy did not prevent the duchess, his mother, from
bearing afterwards, I can prove; and could we recover the register
of the births of her children, I should not be surprised to find,
that, as she was a very fruitful woman, there was not above a year
between the birth of Richard and his preceding brother Thomas.(52)
However, an ancient bard,(53) who wrote after Richard was born and
during the life of his father, tells us,
Richard liveth yit, but the last of all
Was Ursula, to him whom God list call.
(52) The author I am going to quote, gives us the order in which
the duchess Cecily's children were horn thus; Ann duchess of Exeter,
Henry, Edward the Fourth Edmund earl of Rutland, Elizabeth duchess
of Suffolk, Margaret duchess of Burgundy, William, John, George duke
of Clarence, Thomas, Richard the Third, and Ursula. Cox, 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 Cox'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 circumstances 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
bloody 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 ship, the rest perishing 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 assumption
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 circumstance 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(54) 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 embassy arrived at Warwick
(while Richard kept his court there) from the king of Spain,(55) to
propose a marriage between their children. Of this embassy Rous is a
proper witness: Guy's Cliff, I think, is but four miles from
Warwick; and he is too circumstancial on what passed 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 ambassador from the queen of Spain was
present at Richard's coronation at York. Rous himself owns, that,
amidst a great concourse of nobility that attended the king at York,
was the duke of Albany, brother of the king of Scotland. Richard
therefore appears not to have been abhorred by either the courts of
Spain or Scotland.
But there is one circumstance, 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 noble 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 God
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 Warckshire 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 title 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 mass of error and
improbability.
(58) Baronage, p. 258.
(59) In his History of York.
(60) 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 passions. Not only the general plan of the story
is most applicable but several passages 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
passage, 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 Shore, 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 godly 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
Shore 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 chastity.
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 God, &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
Shore, 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 God, &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 Shore,
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 Shore, not of the late William Shore, 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 petition 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 Shore, 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 Shore, 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,
assert 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 canvass this subject, I
will recapitulate the most material arguments that tend to disprove
what has been asserted; 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 petitioned 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 assert 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.
That Richard's assumption of the protectorate was in every respect
agreeable to the laws and usage; was probably bestowed on him by the
universal consent of the council and peers, and was a strong
indication that he had then no thought of questioning the right of
his nephew.
That the tale of Richard aspersing the chastity of his own mother is
incredible; it appearing that he lived with her in perfect harmony,
and lodged with her in her palace at that very time.
That it is as little credible that Richard gained the crown by a
sermon of Dr. Shaw, and a speech of the duke of Buckingham, if the
people only laughed at those orators.
That there had been a precontract or marriage between Edward the
Fourth and lady Eleanor Talbot; and that Richard's claim to the
crown was founded on the illegitimacy of Edward's children.
That a convention of the nobility, clergy, and people invited him to
accept the crown on that title.
That the ensuing parliament ratified the act of the convention, and
confirmed the bastardy of Edward's children.
That nothing can be more improbable than Richard's having taken no
measures before he left London, to have his nephews murdered, if he
had any such intention.
That the story of Sir James Tirrel, as related by Sir Thomas More,
is a notorious falshood; Sir James Tirrel being at that time master
of the horse, in which capacity he had walked at Richard's
coronation.
That Tirrel's jealousy of Sir Richard Ratcliffe is another palpable
falshood; Tirrel being already preferred, and Ratcliffe absent.
That all that relates to Sir Robert Brackenbury is no less false:
Brackenbury either being too good a man to die for a tyrant or
murderer, or too bad a man to have refused being his accomplice.
That Sir Thomas More and lord Bacon both confess that many doubted,
whether the two princes were murdered in Richard's days or not; and
it certainly never was proved that they were murdered by Richard's
order.
That Sir Thomas More relied on nameless and uncertain authority;
that it appears by dates and facts that his authorities were bad and
false; that if Sir James Tirrel and Dighton had really committed the
murder and confessed it, and if Perkin Warbeck had made a voluntary,
clear, and probable confession of his imposture, there could have
remained no doubt of the murder.
That Green, the nameless page, and Will Slaughter, having never been
questioned about the murder, there is no reason to believe what is
related of them in the supposed tragedy.
That Sir James Tirrel not being attainted on the death of Richard,
but having, on the contrary, been employed in great services by
Henry the Seventh, it is not probable that he was one of the
murderers. That lord Bacon owning that Tirrel's confession did not
please the king so well as Dighton's; that Tirrel's imprisonment and
execution some years afterwards for a new treason, of which we have
no evidence, and which appears to have been mere suspicion, destroy
all probability of his guilt in the supposed murder of the children.
That the impunity of Dighton, if really guilty, was scandalous; and
can only be accounted for on the supposition of His being a false
witness to serve Henry's cause against Perkin Warbeck.
That the silence of the two archbishops, and Henry's not daring to
specify the murder of the princes in the act of attainder against
Richard, wears all the appearance of their not having been murdered.
That Richard's tenderness and kindness to the earl of Warwick,
proceeding so far as to proclaim him his successor, betrays no
symptom of that cruel nature, which would not stick at assassinating
any competitor.
That it is indubitable that Richard's first idea was to keep the
crown but till Edward the Fifth should attain the age of
twenty-four.
That with this view he did not create his own son prince of Wales
till after he had proved the bastardy of his brother's children.
That there is no proof that those children were murdered.
That Richard made, or intended to make, his nephew Edward the Fifth
walk at his coronation.
That there is strong presumption from the parliament-roll and from
the Chronicle of Croyland, that both princes were living some time
after Sir Thomas More fixes the date of their deaths.
That when his own son was dead, Richard was so far from intending to
get rid of his wife that he proclaimed his nephews, first the earl
of Warwick, and then the earl of Lincoln, his heirs apparent.
That there is not the least probability of his having poisoned his
wife, who died of a languishing distemper: that no proof was ever
pretended to be given of it; that a bare supposition of such a
crime, without proofs or very strong presumptions, is scarce ever to
be credited.
That he seems to have had no intention of marrying his niece, but to
have amused her with the hopes of that match, to prevent her
marrying Richmond.
That Buck would not have dared to quote her letter as extant in the
earl of Arundel's library, if it had not been there: that others of
Buck's assertions having been corroborated by subsequent
discoveries, leave no doubt of his veracity on this; and that that
letter disculpates Richard from poisoning his wife; and only shews
the impatience of his niece to be queen.
That it is probable the queen-dowager knew her second son was
living, and connived at the appearance of Lambert Simnel, to feel
the temper of the nation.
That Henry the Seventh certainly thought that she and the earl of
Lincoln were privy to the existence of Richard duke of York, and
that Henry lived in terror of his appearance.
That the different conduct of Henry with regard to Lambert Simnel
and Perkin Warbeck, implies how different an opinion he had of them;
that in the first case, he used natural and most rational methods
prove him an impostor; whereas his whole behaviour in Perkin's case
was mysterious, and betrayed his belief or doubt that Warbeck was
the true duke of York.
That it was morally impossible for the duchess of Burgundy at the
distance of twenty-seven years to instruct a Flemish lad so
perfectly in all that had passed in the court of England, that he
would not have been detected in a few hours.
That she could not inform him, nor could he know, what had passed in
the Tower, unless he was the true duke of York.
That if he was not the true duke of York, Henry had nothing to do
but to confront him with Tirrel and Dighton, and the imposture must
have been discovered.
That Perkin, never being confronted with the queen dowager, and the
princesses her daughters, proves that Henry did not dare to trust to
their acknowledging him.
That if he was not the true duke of York, he might have been
detected by not knowing the queens and princesses, if shown to him
without his being told who they were.
That it is not pretended that Perkin ever failed in language,
accent,'or circumstances; and that his likeness to Edward the Fourth
is allowed.
That there are gross and manifest blunders in his pretended
confession.
That Henry was so afraid of not ascertaining a good account of the
purity of his English accent, that he makes him learn English twice
over.
That lord Bacon did not dare to adhere to this ridiculous account;
but forges another, though in reality not much more creditable.
That a number of Henry's best friends, as the lord chamberlain, who
placed the crown on his head, knights of the garter, and men of the
fairest characters, being persuaded that Perkin was the true duke of
York, and dying for that belief, without recanting, makes it very
rash to deny that he was so.
That the proclamation in Rymer's Foedera against Jane Shore, for
plotting with the marquis Dorset, not with lord Hastings, destroys
all the credit of Sir Thomas More, as to what relates to the latter
peer.
In short, that Henry's character, as we have received it from his
own apologists, is so much worse and more hateful than Richard's,
that we may well believe Henry invited and propogated by far the
greater part of the slanders against Richard: that Henry, not
Richard, probably put to death the true duke of York, as he did the
earl of Warwick: and that we are not certain whether Edward the
Fifth was murdered; nor, if he was, by whose order he was
murdered.
After all that has been said, it is scarcely necessary to add a word
on the supposed discovery that was made of the skeletons of the two
young princes, in the reign of Charles the Second. Two skeletons
found in that dark abyss of so many secret transactions, with no
marks to ascertain the time, the age of their interment, can
certainly verify nothing. We must believe both princes died there,
before we can believe that their bones were found there; and upon
what that belief can be founded, or how we shall cease to doubt
whether Perkin Warbeck was not one of those children, I am at a loss
to guess.
As little is it requisite to argue on the grants made by Richard the
Third to his supposed accomplices in that murder, because the
argument will serve either way. It was very natural that they, who
had tasted most of Richard's bounty, should be suspected as the
instruments of his crimes. But till it can be proved that those
crimes were committed, it is in vain to bring evidence to show who
assisted him in perpetrating them. For my own part, I know not what
to think of the death of Edward the Fifth: I can neither entirely
acquit Richard of it, nor condemn him; because there are no proofs
on either side; and though a court of justice would, from that
defect of evidence, absolve him; opinion may fluctuate backward and
forwards, and at last remain in suspense.
For the younger brother, the balance seems to incline greatly on the
side of Perkin Warbeck, as the true duke of York; and if one was
saved, one knows not how nor why to believe that Richard destroyed
only the elder.
We must leave this whole story dark, though not near so dark as we
found it: and it is perhaps as wise to be uncertain on one portion
of our history, as to believe so much as is believed, in all
histories, though very probably as falsely delivered to us, as the
period which we have here been examining.