THE FATE OF THE PRINCES.
The king resolves on a grand progress through the kingdom.--State
of public sentiment.--Oxford.--Warwick Castle.--Embassadors.--Arrival
at York.--The coronation repeated.--Richard's son.--Celebrations and
rejoicings.--His determination in respect to the children.--His agent
Green.--Green's return.--Conversation with the page.--Sir James
Tyrrel.--Richard employs Tyrrel.--The letter.--Tyrrel arrives at
the ower.--Murder of the princes.--Action of the assassins.--The
burial.--Joy of Richard.--Re-interment of the bodies.--Richard keeps
the murder secret.
After the coronation, King Richard and Anne, the queen, went to
Windsor, and took up their residence there, with the court, for a
short time, in order that Richard might attend to the most important
of the preliminary arrangements for the management of public affairs,
which are always necessary at the commencement of a new reign. As soon
as these things were settled, the king set out to make a grand
progress through his dominions, for the purpose of receiving the
congratulations of the people, and also of impressing them, as much as
possible, with a sense of his grandeur and power by the magnificence
of his retinue, and the great parades and celebrations by which his
progress through the country was to be accompanied.
From Windsor Castle the king went first to Oxford, where he was
received with distinguished honors by all the great dignitaries
connected with the University. Hence he proceeded to Gloucester, and
afterward to Worcester. At all these places he was received with
great parade and pageantry. Those who were disposed to espouse his
cause, of course, endeavored to gain his favor by doing all in their
power to give éclat to these celebrations. Those who were indifferent
or in doubt, flocked, of course, to see the shows, and thus
involuntarily contributed to the apparent popularity of the
demonstrations; while, on the other hand, those who were opposed to
him, and adhered still secretly to the cause of young King Edward,
made no open opposition, but expressed their dissent, if they
expressed it at all, in private conclaves of their own. They could not
do otherwise than to allow Richard to have his own way during the hour
of his triumph, _their_ hour being not yet come.
At last, Richard, in his progress, reached Warwick Castle, and here he
was joined by the queen and the young prince, who had remained at
Windsor while the king was making his tour through the western towns,
but who now came across the country with a grand retinue of her own,
to join her husband at her own former home; for Warwick Castle was the
chief stronghold and principal residence of the great Earl of Warwick,
the queen's father. The king and queen remained for some time at
Warwick Castle, and the king established his court here, and
maintained it with great pomp and splendor. Here he received
embassadors from Spain, France, and Burgundy, who had been sent by
their several governments to congratulate him on his accession, and to
pay him their homage. Each of these embassadors came in great state,
and were accompanied by a grand retinue; and the ceremonies of
receiving them, and the entertainments given to do them honor, were
magnificent beyond description.
One of these embassadors, the one sent by the government of Spain,
brought a formal proposal from Ferdinand and Isabella for a marriage
between their daughter and Richard's little son. The little prince was
at that time about seven years of age.
After remaining some time at Warwick Castle, the royal party proceeded
northward, and, after passing through several large towns, they
arrived finally at York, which was then, in some sense, the northern
capital of the kingdom. Here there was another grand reception. All
the nobility and gentry of the surrounding country came in to honor
the king's arrival, and the ceremonies attending the entrance of the
royal cortége were extremely magnificent.
While the court was at York, Richard repeated the ceremony of the
coronation. On this occasion, his son, the little Prince Edward, was
brought forward in a conspicuous manner. He was created Prince of
Wales with great ceremony, and on the day of the coronation he had a
little crown upon his head, and his mother led him by the hand in the
procession to the altar.
The poor child did not live, however, to realize the grand destiny
which his father thus marked out for him. He died a few months after
this at Middleham Castle.
The coronation at York was attended and followed, as that at London
had been, with banquets and public parades, and grand celebrations of
all sorts, which continued for several successive days, and the
hilarity and joy which these shows awakened among the crowds that
assembled to witness them seemed to indicate a universal acquiescence
on the part of the people of England in Richard's accession to the
throne.
Still, although outwardly every thing looked fair, Richard's mind was
not yet by any means at ease. From the very day of his accession, he
knew well that, so long as the children of his brother Edward remained
alive at the Tower, his seat on the throne could not be secure. There
must necessarily be, he was well aware, a large party in the kingdom
who were secretly in favor of Edward, and he knew that they would very
soon begin to come to an understanding with each other, and to form
plans for effecting a counter-revolution. The most certain means of
preventing the formation of these plots, or of defeating them, if
formed, would be to remove the children out of the way. He accordingly
determined in his heart, before he left London, that this should be
done.[Q]
[Footnote Q: I say he determined; for, although some of Richard's
defenders have denied that he was guilty of the crime which the almost
unanimous voice of history charges upon him, the evidence leaves very
little room to doubt that the dreadful tale is in all essential
particulars entirely true.]
He resolved to put them to death. The deed was to be performed during
the course of his royal progress to the north, while the minds of the
people of England were engrossed with the splendor of the pageantry
with which his progress was accompanied. He intended, moreover, that
the murder should be effected in a very secret manner, and that the
death of the boys should be closely concealed until a time and
occasion should arrive rendering it necessary that it should be made
public.
Accordingly, soon after he left London, he sent back a confidential
agent, named Green, to Sir Robert Brakenbury, the governor of the
Tower, with a letter, in which Sir Robert was commanded to put the
boys to death.
Green immediately repaired to London to execute the commission.
Richard proceeded on his journey. When he arrived at Warwick, Green
returned and joined him there, bringing back the report that Sir
Robert refused to obey the order.
Richard was very angry when Green delivered this message. He turned to
a page who was in waiting upon him in his chamber, and said, in a
rage,
"Even these men that I have brought up and made, refuse to obey my
commands."
The page replied,
"Please your majesty, there is a man here in the ante-chamber, that I
know, who will obey your majesty's commands, whatever they may be."
Richard asked the page who it was that he meant, and he said Sir James
Tyrrel. Sir James Tyrrel was a very talented and accomplished, but
very unscrupulous man, and he was quite anxious to acquire the favor
of the king. The page knew this, from conversation which Sir James had
had with him, and he had been watching an opportunity to recommend
Sir James to Richard's notice, according to an arrangement that Sir
James had made with him.
So Richard ordered that Sir James should be sent in. When he came,
Richard held a private conference with him, in which he communicated
to him, by means of dark hints and insinuations, what he required.
Tyrrel undertook to execute the deed. So Richard gave him a letter to
Sir Robert Brakenbury, in which he ordered Sir Robert to deliver up
the keys of the Tower to Sir James, "to the end," as the letter
expressed it, "that he might there accomplish the king's pleasure in
such a thing as he had given him commandment."
Sir James, having received this letter, proceeded to London, taking
with him such persons as he thought he might require to aid him in his
work. Among these was a man named John Dighton. John Dighton was Sir
James's groom. He was "a big, broad, square, strong knave," and ready
to commit any crime or deed of violence which his master might
require.
On arriving at the Tower, Sir James delivered his letter to the
governor, and the governor gave him up the keys. Sir James went to see
the keepers of the prison in which the boys were confined. There were
four of them. He selected from among these four, one, a man named
Miles Forest, whom he concluded to employ, together with his groom,
John Dighton, to kill the princes. He formed the plan, gave the men
their instructions, and arranged it with them that they were to carry
the deed into execution that night.
Accordingly, at midnight, when the princes were asleep, the two men
stole softly into the room, and there wrapped the poor boys up
suddenly in the bed-clothes, with pillows pressed down hard over their
faces, so that they could not breathe. The boys, of course, were
suddenly awakened, in terror, and struggled to get free; but the men
held them down, and kept the pillows and bed-clothes pressed so
closely over their faces that they could not breathe or utter any cry.
They held them in this way until they were entirely suffocated.
When they found that their struggles had ceased, they slowly opened
the bed-clothes and lifted up the pillows to see if their victims were
really dead.
"Yes," said they to each other, "they are dead."
The murderers took off the clothes which the princes had on, and laid
out the bodies upon the bed. They then went to call Sir James Tyrrel,
who was all ready, in an apartment not far off, awaiting the summons.
He came at once, and, when he saw that the boys were really dead, he
gave orders that the men should take the bodies down into the
court-yard to be buried.
The grave was dug immediately, just outside the door, at the foot of
the stairs which led up to the turret in which the boys had been
confined. When the bodies had been placed in the ground, the grave was
filled up, and some stones were put upon the top of it.
Immediately after this work had been accomplished, Sir James delivered
back the keys to the governor of the castle, and mounted his horse to
return to the king. He traveled with all possible speed, and, on
reaching the place where the king then was, he reported what he had
done.
The king was extremely pleased, and he rewarded Sir James very
liberally for his energy and zeal; he, however, expressed some
dissatisfaction at the manner in which the bodies had been disposed
of. "They should not have been buried," he said, "in so vile a
corner."
So Richard sent word to the governor of the Tower, and the governor
commissioned a priest to take up the bodies secretly, and inter them
again in a more suitable manner. This priest soon afterward died,
without revealing the place which he chose for the interment, and so
it was never known where the bodies were finally laid.
Richard gave all the persons who had been concerned in this affair
very strict instructions to keep the death of the princes a profound
secret. He did not intend to make it known, unless he should perceive
some indication of an attempt to restore Edward to the throne; and,
had it not been for the occurrence of certain circumstances which will
be related in the next chapter, the fate of the princes might,
perhaps, have thus been kept secret for many years.