EDWARD THE FIFTH AND RICHARD.
Across the wide roadway that runs past Westminster Abbey from the Houses
of Parliament, stands a low group of buildings, facing the north door.
Part of these are the Westminster Police Courts; and about one o'clock,
black-gowned and white-wigged lawyers may be seen rushing out of them to
get their luncheon. The part which fronts the road is the National
Society's Depot, from whence maps and books, slates and pencils go to
furnish all the village schools in England. Hundreds of people go in and
out of the door every day. Thousands pass it by. But very few, I
imagine, reflect on the meaning of the blue plate on the corner, upon
which is written in white letters: "Broad Sanctuary."
From its earliest foundation, Westminster Abbey shared with some thirty
other English monasteries the right of "Sanctuary." Any man in danger of
life or liberty, let the cause be what it might, was safe could he but
once set foot within the precincts of the Sanctuary. No one could touch
him. The monks would not violate this sacred privilege by giving him up.
His foes dared not violate it by pursuing him and taking him by force.
This right of Sanctuary, established in days when "law" meant the will
of the strongest, was often useful in saving an innocent life that
otherwise would have been sacrificed to some unjust tyrant. But as
civilization developed, as the constitution of England encouraged the
framing of wise and just laws for the protection of the good and
punishment of the evil-doer, "Sanctuary" became a frightful abuse.
"The grim old Norman fortress"--the actual sanctuary--stood on the
present site of the National Society's Depot. But the whole precinct of
the Abbey shared the privilege; and the space now covered by St.
Margaret's Church and churchyard was often occupied by a vast crowd of
distressed or discontented citizens who desired, as they called it, to
"take Westminster."
Sometimes, if they were of higher rank, they established
their quarters in the great Northern Porch of the Abbey,
with tents pitched, and guards watching round, for days and
nights together.[26]
Thieves or malefactors would often break away from their captors, as
they were being led by the winding "Thieven Lane" outside to their
prison in the gatehouse, and darting into the consecrated ground would
defy all attempts to lure them forth.
Rich men run thither with poor men's goods. There they
build, there they spend and bid their creditors go whistle
for them. Men's wives run thither with their husband's
plate, and say they dare not abide with their husbands for
beating. Thieves bring thither their stolen goods, and there
live thereon. There devise they new robberies: nightly they
steal out, they rob and reave, and kill, and come in again
as though these places gave not only a safeguard for the
harm they have done, but a license also to do more.[27]
The results of this state of things were felt long after the right of
Sanctuary ceased to exist in James the First's reign. The district
outside the precincts of Westminster has always been one of the very
worst in London. The writer remembers some twenty years ago walking home
with her relative, Mr. Froude, from Sunday afternoon service at the
Abbey, through Great Peter street, and being told to take care of her
purse as every house was a thieves' den. In many of them there was a
dressed-up manikin hung with bells, on which little children were given
lessons in stealing. If they picked the manikin's pockets without
ringing the bells they were rewarded: but if a bell tinkled they were
beaten. Happily this street and many others like it were swept away by
the great new thoroughfare, Victoria street, and its branches; and noble
men and women are working day and night to civilize and christianize the
slums which lie to the south of the Abbey. But it will be many a year
before that Augean stable is cleaned out, which originated with those
who "took Westminster."
[Illustration]
Only twice was Sanctuary broken at Westminster. On August 11, 1378, two
knights named Hawle and Shackle, escaped from the Tower of London where
they had been imprisoned by John of Gaunt, and fled to the Abbey. For
greater security they took refuge in the Choir itself, during the
celebration of High Mass. Alan Boxall, constable of the Tower, and Sir
Ralph Ferrers with fifty armed men were close behind them, and burst in
upon the service "regardless of time or place." Shackle escaped. But
Hawle, chased round and round the Choir, at last fell dead in front of
the Prior's Stall, pierced with twelve wounds. His servant and one of
the monks who had tried to save him, were killed with him; and the stone
on which he lay dead may be seen to this day with the effigy traced upon
it. The Abbey--profaned by the horrible crime--was shut up for four
months, and "Parliament was suspended, lest its assembly should be
polluted by sitting within the desecrated precincts."[28]
The second outrage took place during Wat Tyler's rebellion, when, by his
orders, one John Mangett, Marshal of the Marshalsea, was torn from one
of the slender pillars of the Confessor's Shrine to which he clung for
safety.
But to us, "Sanctuary" is specially interesting, as it is intimately
connected with the short and tragic lives of Edward the Fifth and
Richard, Duke of York, his brother.
In 1470, Edward the Fourth--betrayed by his brother Clarence, and by
that terrible and splendid personage Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick,
"The Kingmaker"--fled over seas with a small following to the court of
his brother-in-law, Charles the Bold, in Flanders. His Queen, Elizabeth
Woodville, was then living in the Tower, where Henry the Sixth, the
deposed king, was imprisoned; and thus by a strange conjunction, the
Yorkist Queen and the Lancastrian King were within that grim building at
the same time. When Elizabeth heard that her husband had taken flight,
and that Henry was to be restored to the throne, she came secretly by
water from the Tower, and took Sanctuary at Westminster, with her three
daughters and Lady Scroope "in greate penurie forsaken of all her
friends." Here Thomas Millyng, the abbot, received her with kindness,
sending her provisions--"half a loaf and two muttons"--daily. And here
on the fourth of November was born her
faire son, called Edward, which was with small pompe like a
poore man's child christened, the godfathers being the Abbot
and the Prior of Westminster, and the godmother the Ladie
Scroope.[29]
The Queen remained in Sanctuary until the spring of the next year, when
her husband returned in triumph to the capital two days before the great
battle of Barnet. There Warwick the Kingmaker, was slain, the
Lancastrian forces were broken up, and Edward was once more king of
England. The Queen has given in her own words an account of her joyful
meeting at Westminster.
When my lord and husband returned safe again and had the
victory, then went I hence to welcome him home, and from
hence I brought my babe the Prince unto his father, when he
first took him in his arms.[30]
Edward was not ungrateful to Westminster for the refuge it had afforded
his queen in her sore distress. Abbot Millyng became a favorite at
court, and was made Bishop of Hereford. The king gave at different times
"fourscore oaks and about two hundred and fifty pounds[31] in money
towards the new building of the nave." The Queen gave one hundred and
seventy pounds, and built the Chapel of St. Erasmus on part of the
present site of Henry the Seventh's chapel, and endowed it with the
manors of Cradeley and Hagley in Worcestershire. And the young prince
during the last eight years of his father's life gave twenty marks
yearly towards the completion of the nave, which work had been begun by
Henry the Fifth.
But the poor Queen was destined to fly again to Sanctuary, in yet more
sore distress. In April, 1483, Edward the Fourth died. Edward, Prince of
Wales--the babe born in Westminster--was twelve and a half years old,
and was living in some state at Ludlow Castle in Shropshire. He had a
council of his own, composed chiefly of his mother's relations and
friends; foremost among whom was Earl Rivers, his mother's brother, and
his own half brother Lord Grey (son of the Queen by her first marriage
to Sir John Grey). Shortly before his death the king had drawn up
ordinances for Prince Edward's daily conduct,
which prescribe his morning attendance at mass, his
occupation "at his school," his meals, and his sports. No
man is to sit at his board but such as earl Rivers shall
allow; and at this hour of meat it is ordered "that there
shall be read before him noble stories, as behoveth a prince
to understand; and that the communication at all times, in
his presence, be of virtue, honour, cunning (knowledge),
wisdom, and deeds of worship, and of nothing that shall move
him to vice."[32]
From this quiet, happy life the little boy was rudely awakened by his
father's death. He was proclaimed King of England under the title of
Edward the Fifth; and a fortnight later set out for London with his
uncle Lord Rivers, Lord Grey, Sir Thomas Vaughan and a large retinue.
All went well until they reached Stony Stratford, a little distance
from Northampton. There the young king stayed for the night with his
attendants, while Lord Rivers returned to Northampton to meet the late
king's brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who was hurrying down from
the Scotch marches--ostensibly to pay homage to his nephew.
A struggle had been long impending between two rival parties in the
state. On one hand the Queen, with her relations, who had been raised to
wealth and power by her marriage. On the other, Gloucester, with many of
the old nobility, whose jealousy had been roused by the sudden advance
of the Woodville family. The king's death and his successor's tender age
would inevitably bring about a collision. It was now merely a question
which faction could out-manoeuvre the other. Richard of Gloucester
struck the first blow. Rivers was arrested at his inn.
Gloucester and the duke of Buckingham then rode on to Stony Stratford,
where they found the poor little king with his company "ready to leap on
horseback, and depart forward." But it was too late. The dukes arrested
Vaughan and Grey, and brought the frightened boy back to Northampton.
"He wept, and was nothing content, but it booted not."[33] Richard
himself took his nephew to London; and at the young king's public entry
on the fourth of May he bore himself "in open sight most reverently to
the prince, with all semblance of lowliness."[34] The peers also took
the oath of fealty. But it was only "a semblance." Able and
unscrupulous, Richard of Gloucester had long been meditating a scheme of
daring ambition. The first step was accomplished. He had possession of
his young nephew's person. Now he was appointed "Protector of England."
And during poor little King Edward's short reign his signature was used
as an instrument for the ruin of his mother's kindred and friends, and
for the aggrandizement of his uncle Gloucester's party.
The Queen, meanwhile, saw only too clearly whither these events tended.
Terrified at Richard's successful blow, seeing that her own faction was
utterly undone, and fearing for the lives of herself and her children,
she flew again to her well-known refuge. She left the Palace of
Westminster at midnight with her youngest son, Richard Duke of York, and
her five daughters, and lodged in the Abbot's Place.
It was in one of the great chambers of the house, probably
the Dining-hall (now the College Hall) that she was received
by Abbot Esteney.[35]
The Queen sate alow on the rushes all desolate and dismayed,
and all about her much heaviness, rumble, haste and
business; carriage and conveyance of her stuff into
Sanctuary; chests, coffers, packers, fardels, trussed all on
men's backs; no man unoccupied--some lading, some going,
some discharging, some coming for more, some breaking down
the walls to bring in the next (nearest) way.[36]
In the midst of all this dismay and confusion the Archbishop of York,
Thomas Rotheram, Chancellor of England, brought the Queen the Great
Seal, trying to comfort and encourage her with a message from the Lord
Chamberlain Hastings, who thought matters were not so hopeless as she
imagined. But she mistrusted Hastings as "one of those that laboreth to
destroy me and my blood." The Archbishop left the Great Seal with her,
and departed home again, yet in the dawning of the day. By
which time, he might in his chamber window (his palace was
on the site of the present Whitehall) see all the Thames
full of boats of the Duke of Gloucester's servants, watching
that no man should go to Sanctuary; nor none could pass
unsearched.
The Queen seems to have withdrawn into her old quarters in the fortress
of the Sanctuary itself, where she had before found safety; and the
Protector, determined to get possession of both his nephews, proposed at
his council in the Star Chamber, that if she would not give up the Duke
of York to keep his brother company he should be taken from thence by
force. But this proposition only served to show in what respect the
privilege of Sanctuary was held. The archbishops and spiritual lords
promptly refused their consent to such a sacrilegious measure. Said the
Archbishop of Canterbury,
God forbid that any man should for anything earthly,
enterprise or break the immunity and liberty of the sacred
Sanctuary, that hath been the safeguard of so many a good
man's life.[37]
The Protector then tried to show that as the child was incapable of such
crimes as needed sanctuary, so he was incapable of receiving it. This
ingenious bit of casuistry convinced some of the listeners; and the
archbishop and several lords went at once to Westminster to try to
persuade the Queen to give up her boy. But she resisted "with all the
force of a woman's art and a mother's love."[38]
_In what place could I reckon him sure, if he be not sure in
this Sanctuary, whereof was there never tyrant yet so
devilish that durst presume to break...._ If examples be
sufficient to obtain privilege for my child I need not far
to seek; _for in this place in which we now be_ (and which
is now in question whether my child may take benefit of it)
_mine other son, now King, was born and kept in his cradle,
and preserved to a more prosperous fortune...._ And I pray
God that my son's palace may be as great a safeguard unto
him now reigning, as this place was sometime unto the king's
enemy.
Gallantly had the poor mother fought for her child's liberty; and at
last wearied out she ended with a fierce and terrible denunciation of
her persecutors:
I can no more, but _whosoever he be that breaketh this holy
sanctuary, I pray God shortly to send him need of sanctuary
where he may not come to it_. For taken out of sanctuary
would I not my mortal enemy were.[39]
At length, pledging both "body and soul," the archbishop prevailed; and
the Queen determined to deliver up Prince Richard as a sacred trust.
Then turning to the child she took leave of him in those well-known and
most pathetic words:
"Farewell mine owne sweete sonne, God send you good keeping;
let me kisse you yet once ere you go, for God knoweth when
we shall kisse togither againe." And therewith she kissed
him and blessed him, turned her back and wept and went her
way, leaving the child weeping as fast.[40]
Poor mother! Her fears were only too well founded. She never saw her
sons again. When little Richard was taken into the Star Chamber, the
Protector took him in his arms and kissed him saying, "Now welcome, my
Lord, even with all my heart." The boy was then conveyed to the Bishop
of London's palace, where his brother, the young king, met him with
delight. This was in the beginning of June; and the two children were
next removed to the Tower (under pretext of preparing for the coronation
fixed for the twenty-second), "out of the which," says Sir Thomas More,
"after that day they never came abroad."
Richard Duke of Gloucester's policy had been developing fast since the
day he took possession of the young king at Stony Stratford. The Queen's
party were all in prison--many of them awaiting execution. Shakespeare
has vividly described how Richard ridded himself of Lord Hastings,[41]
the late king's favorite adviser, who was the only remaining check on
his plans. After Hastings' execution the Protector declared that Edward
the Fourth's marriage was invalid, and that his children could not
therefore succeed to the crown. After a faint show of reluctance he
allowed himself to be proclaimed king, under the title of Richard the
Third, and was crowned at Westminster on the sixth of July.
Every one knows the tragic end to the story. While the little boys lived
their uncle's throne was insecure. They were still in the Tower. Rivers
their uncle was beheaded; so were their half-brother Grey and many more
of their mother's kinsmen and friends. A mystery must always hang over
this dreadful deed. Whether by Richard's direct order, or simply in
accordance with his known but half-expressed wishes, the two children
suddenly disappeared--murdered, as it was alleged, by their uncle. Sir
James Tyrell, when tried for high treason in Henry the Seventh's reign,
only eight years after, confessed to the murder. And it was commonly
supposed that the boys were "buried in a great heap of rubbish near the
footstairs of their lodging; where is now the raised terrace."[42] But
the priest of the Tower having died shortly after, "left the world in
dark as to the place."
For nearly two hundred years nothing more was known. In Charles the
Second's reign, however, orders were given to rebuild some offices in
the Tower. In taking away the stairs going from the King's Lodging into
the Chapel of the White Tower, the workmen found a wooden chest buried
ten feet deep in the ground, which contained the bones of two boys,
about eleven and thirteen years of age. Charles the Second hearing of
this discovery ordered the bones to be carefully collected and put in a
marble urn, which he placed in Westminster Abbey, with an inscription in
Latin of which the following is a translation:
Here lie
The Reliques
of Edward the Fifth King of _England_, and Richard, Duke
of York.
These brothers being confined in the Tower,
and there stifled with Pillows,
Were privately and meanly buried,
By order of
Their perfidious Uncle _Richard_ the usurper;
Whose bones, long enquired after and wished for,
After two hundred and one years
In the Rubbish of the Stairs (i. e. those lately leading to
the Chapel
of the _White Tower_)
Were on the 17th day of _July_, 1674, by undoubted Proofs
discovered,
Being buried deep in that Place.
Charles the Second, a most compassionate Prince, pitying
their severe fate,
Ordered these unhappy Princes to be laid
Amongst the monuments of their Predecessors,
_Anno Dom_ 1678, in the 30th year of his Reign.
The mean and ugly little urn, which was the only monument that "most
compassionate Prince" could afford to the memory of these two children,
stands at the end of the north aisle of Henry the Seventh's Chapel,
close to Queen Elizabeth's tomb.
But let us turn from this dismal theme to something much more cheerful.
While little Richard Duke of York was in Sanctuary with his mother, he
must have often run across under the shadow of the great elms that stood
before the Abbots House, to the Almonry, a small building near by. For
to the Almonry eight years before a wise man had come with a strange new
invention. He hung a red pole at the door for a sign; and soon all the
learned men in the kingdom began to gather at the Almonry of
Westminster, and talk to William Caxton, the printer of books. For he it
was who had come from Bruges in Flanders, bringing with him the first
printing press that had ever been seen in England. And at Westminster he
worked away for fifteen years, translating and printing with ceaseless
industry. It was a hard task that the industrious printer had
undertaken, for the English language was in a state of transition. The
tongue of each shire varied so as to be hardly intelligible to men of
the next county; and Caxton says that the old-English Charters which the
Abbot of Westminster fetched him as models seemed "more like to Dutch
than to English." In his translations he had to choose between two
schools--French affectation, and English pedantry. "Some honest and
great clerks," he says, "have been with me and desired me to write the
most curious terms I could find;" and others blamed him, saying that in
his translations he "had over many curious terms which could not be
understood of common people, and desired me to use old and homely
terms." "Fain would I please every man," the good-tempered printer
exclaims. But, happily for his successors, Caxton's excellent sense
inclined him to good, plain English, "to the common terms that be daily
used"--and he therefore left a far more lasting mark on English
literature than can be gauged by the number and importance of the books
he printed.
[Illustration: MEMORIAL URN IN HENRY THE SEVENTH'S CHAPEL.]
The Almonry soon became a centre for all that was most cultivated in
England. Lord Arundel pressed the printer to take courage when the
length of the Golden Legend made him "half desperate to have accomplisht
it," and ready to "lay it apart;" and promised him a yearly fee of a
buck in summer and a doe in winter if it were done. Noble ladies lent
him their precious books. Churchmen brought him their translations. A
mercer of London prayed him to undertake the "Royal Book" of Philip le
Bel. The Queen's brother, the hapless Lord Rivers, chatted with him over
his own translation of the "Sayings of the Philosophers." His "Tully"
was printed under the patronage of Edward the Fourth. And among his
chief supporters was Richard, Duke of Gloucester, to whom his "Order of
Chivalry" was dedicated.
It is therefore no mere flight of fancy, but a supposition founded on
good evidence, that little Prince Richard may have beguiled some of the
weary hours of his captivity by visits to the Almonry, watching the
curious presses which struck off sheet after sheet of printing, and
talking to the good-natured printer, who must, by all accounts, have
been the cheeriest and busiest of men.
The Almonry is gone.
Bareheaded boys from Westminster School play foot-ball under the few
remaining descendants of the old elms in Dean's Yard, and hurry in and
out of the gateway with their school books under their arms. All that
remains of the ancient Sanctuary is that blue plate with white letters.
But within the great Abbey, the two little princes are in Sanctuary once
more; never again to leave it while the fabric stands. And William
Caxton sleeps in St. Margaret's Church close by, while his memory lives
in every printed page of the English tongue.
FOOTNOTES:
[26] "Memorials of Westminster Abbey." p. 405. Dean Stanley.
[27] Speech of Duke of Buckingham in Sir T. More's "Life of Richard the
Third."
[28] "Memorials of Westminster Abbey." p. 408. Dean Stanley.
[29] Holinshed's Chronicle. Vol. 3. p. 300.
[30] Sir Thomas More's History of Edward the Fifth, and Richard the
Third.
[31] Equal to about L2500 in the present day.
[32] C. Knight's History of England. Vol. 2. p. 176.
[33] More.
[34] More.
[35] "Memorials of Westminster Abbey," Dean Stanley. p. 411.
[36] More's Life of Edward the Fifth. p. 40.
[37] More.
[38] "Memorials of Westminster Abbey." p. 412.
[39] More.
[40] More.
[41] "King Richard the Third." Act III., Scene IV.
[42] Dart. Vol. I. p. 170.