But here a new trouble would begin. It would be beyond nature to expect
that any mother would consent, especially at a moment’s notice, to
her child running such a risk as the substitute of the dead Princess
Elizabeth was taking, without some kind of assurance or guarantee of
his safety. Moreover, if there were other relatives, they would be sure
to know, and some of them to make trouble unless their mouths were
closed. Practically the only chance of carrying such an enterprise
through would be if the substitute were an orphan or in a worse
position--one whose very life was an embarrassment to those to whom it
should be most dear.
Here opens a field for romantic speculation. Such need not clash with
history which is a record of fact. Call it romance if we will; indeed
until we have more perfect records we must. If invention is to be
called in to the aid of deduction no one can complain if these two
methods of exercise of intellect are kept apart and the boundaries
between them are duly charted. Any speculation beyond this can be only
regarded as belonging to the region of pure fiction.
In one way there is a duty which the reader must not shirk, if
only on his own account: not to refuse to accept facts without due
consideration. Wildly improbable as the Bisley story is, it is not
impossible. Whoever says, offhand, that such a story is untrue on the
face of it ought to study the account of a death reported at Colchester
in Essex just a hundred years ago. A servant died who had been in
the same situation as housemaid and nurse for thirty years. But only
after death was the true sex of the apparent woman discovered. It was
masculine!
* * * * *
Here I must remind such readers as honour my work with their attention
that I am venturing merely to tell a tradition sanctioned by long time,
and that I only give as comments historical facts which may be tested
by any student. I have invented and shall invent nothing; and only
claim the same right which I have in common with every one else--that
of forming my own opinion.
Here it is that we may consider certain additions to the original
Bisley tradition. How these are connected with the main story is
impossible to say after the lapse of centuries; but in all probability
there is a basis of ancient belief in all that has been added. The
following items cover the additional ground.
When the governess wished to hide the secret hurriedly, she hid the
body, intending it to be only temporarily, in the stone coffin which
lay in the garden at Overcourt outside the Princess’s window.
Some tens of years ago the bones of a young girl lying amidst rags of
fine clothing were found in the stone coffin.
The finder was a churchman--a man of the highest character and a member
of a celebrated ecclesiastical family.
The said finder firmly believed in the story of the Bisley Boy.
Before Elizabeth came to the throne all those who knew the secret of
the substitution were in some way got rid of or their silence assured.
The name of the substituted youth was Neville; or such was the name of
the family with whom he was living at the time.
There are several persons in the neighbourhood of Bisley who accept the
general truth of the story even if some of the minor details appear at
first glance to be inharmonious. These persons are not of the ordinary
class of gossipers, but men and women of light and leading who have
fixed places in the great world and in the social life of their own
neighbourhood. With some of them the truth of the story is an old
belief which makes a tie with any new investigator.
_The Unfulfilled Marriage_
The remaining point to touch on is the unfulfilled marriage of the Duke
of Richmond. This certainly needs some explanation, or else the mystery
remains dark as ever.
Here we have two young persons of more than fair presence, and graced
with all the endearing qualities that the mind as well as the eye can
grasp. We have the assurance of Chronicles regarding Henry Fitzroy;
and from Holbein’s picture we can judge for ourselves of the lady’s
merits. They are both well-to-do. The lady, one of title, daughter of
one of the most prominent Dukes in England, the man then holding many
of the most important posts in the State, and with every expectation of
wearing in due course the purple of royalty. They both come of families
of which other members have been notorious for amatory episodes;
voluptuousness is in their blood. They have been old friends--and yet
when they marry they at once separate, she going to her own folk and
he to Windsor. Seemingly they do not meet again in the two and a half
years that elapse before his death. The story about his youth and
health preventing cohabitation is all moonshine. The affair points to
the likelihood of some ante-matrimonial liaison of which, as yet, we
know nothing. Applying the experiences of ordinary life in such cases,
we can easily believe that Mary Howard, egged on by her unscrupulous
and ambitiously-intriguing brother, was for ulterior purposes either
forced or helped into an intrigue with the young Duke. There is no
doubt that Surrey was unscrupulous enough for it. A similar design on
his part--only infinitely more base--cost him his head. He had tried
to induce his sister, Duchess of Richmond, to become mistress of Henry
VIII--her own father-in-law!--so that she might have power over him;
and it does not seem that there was any wonderful indignation on the
part of the lady at the shameful proposal.
We are told that when Sir John Gates and Sir Richard Southwell, the
royal Commissioners for examining witnesses in the case of the charge
of treason against the Duke of Norfolk and the Earl of Surrey, arrived
at Kenninghall in the early morning and made known their general
purposes in coming, the Duchess of Richmond “almost fainted.” But all
the same when she knew more exactly what they wanted she promised
without any forcing to tell all she knew. As a matter of fact her
evidence (with that of Elizabeth Holland, the mistress of the Duke of
Norfolk), whilst it helped to get Norfolk off, aided in condemning
Surrey. There must have been some other cause for her consternation.
She had been bred up in the midst of intrigues, polemical and dynastic
as well as of personal ambition, and was well inured to keeping her
countenance as well as her head in moments of stress. The cause of her
“almost fainting” must have been something which concerned her even
more nearly than either father or brother. It could only have been fear
for her child or herself--or for both. It is possible that she dreaded
discovery of some sort. _Omne ignotum pro magnifico._ Suspicion has
long flexible tentacula, with eyes and ears at the end of them, which
can penetrate everywhere and see and hear everything. She knew how to
dread suspicion and to fear the consequences which must result from
inquiry or investigation of any sort. If she had had a child it must
have been kept hidden, and if possible far away--as the unknown Boy
was at Bisley. Indeed the Howards had immense family ramifications and
several of them had collateral relationships in and about Bisley. There
were Nevilles there, and doubtless some of them were poor relations
relegated to the far away place where living was cheap and where they
might augment their tenuous incomes by taking in even poorer relations
than themselves whose rich relatives wished to hide them away. It is
only a surmise; but if there had been a case of a child unaccounted
for, which any member of so great a family as the Howards wished to
keep dark, it would be hard to find a more favourable locality than
the little almost inaccessible hamlet in the Cotswolds. If there were
such a child, how easy it would all have been. When the Duke was
married he was fourteen or perhaps sixteen at most--an age which
though over-young for fatherhood in the case of ordinary men seemed to
offer to the Plantagenet-York-Lancaster blood no absolute difficulty
of taking up such responsibility. As Elizabeth was only born some two
months before the Duke’s marriage there was not any time to spare--a
fact which would doubtless have been used to his advantage if Henry’s
natural son had lived. In all probability Richmond’s marriage was a
part of the plot for aggrandisement of the Howards which began with the
unscrupulous securing by Surrey of the son of Henry VIII at the cost of
his sister’s honour; and ended with the death of Surrey as a traitor--a
doom which his father only escaped by the King dying whilst the Act
of Attainder was lying ready for his signature. If this reasoning be
correct--though the data on which it is founded be meagre and without
actual proof--as yet--the risk of Duchess Mary’s child born before
her marriage must have been a terrible hazard. On one side perhaps
the most powerful sceptre in the world as guerdon; on the other death
and ruin of the child on which such hopes were built. No wonder then
that Duchess Mary “almost fainted” when in the early dawn the King’s
Commissioners conveyed to her the broad object of their coming. No
wonder that freed by larger knowledge from the worst apprehension which
could be for her, she announced her willingness to conceal nothing
that she knew. That promise could not and would not have been made
had the whole range of possibilities, which as yet no one suspected,
been opened to their investigation. For even beyond the concern which
she felt from the arbitrary power of the King and at the remorseless
grip of the law, she had reason to doubt her own kin--the nearest of
them--in such a struggle as was going on around them when the whole of
the Empire, the Kingdom of England, France and Spain, and the Papacy
were close to the melting-pot. It would have been but a poor look-out
for a youth of a little more than a dozen years of age had fate made
him the shuttlecock of such strenuous players who did not hold “fair
play” as a primary rule of the game in which they were engaged.
In his _Life of Elizabeth_, Gregario Leti concludes a panegyric on the
Queen’s beauty with the following: “This was accompanied by such inward
qualities that those who knew her were accustomed to say that heaven
had given her such rare qualities that she was doubtless reserved for
some great work in the world.” The Italian historian perhaps “builded
better than he knew,” for whether the phrase applies to the one who is
supposed to have occupied the throne or one who did so occupy it, it
is equally true. The world at that crisis wanted just such an one as
Elizabeth. All honour to her whosoever she may have been, boy or girl
matters not.