THE DUKE OF GLOUCESTER.
Whether Richard the Third, with his hunch back, withered arm, splay
feet, goggle eyes, and swarthy countenance, as portrayed by poets and
chroniclers of the Tudor period, very closely resembles the Richard of
Baynard's Castle and Bosworth Field, is a question which philosophical
historians have answered in the negative. The evidence of the old
Countess of Desmond, when brought to light by Horace Walpole in 1758,
first began to set the world right on this subject. Born about the
middle of the fifteenth century, she lived--when the Plantagenets
had been displaced by the Tudors, and the Tudors succeeded by the
Stuarts--to affirm, in the seventeenth century, that, in her youth,
she had danced with Richard at his brother's court, and that he whom
historians had, in deference to Tudor prejudices, represented as a
monster of ugliness, was in reality the handsomest man in the room
except his brother Edward, and that he was very well made.
It can not be denied that the Countess of Desmond's description of
Richard appears extremely complimentary; and, indeed, it would have
been something novel in human nature if this lady of the house of
Fitzgerald, in old age and penury, had not been inclined to exaggerate
the personal advantages of a Plantagenet prince who, in the days of
her youth and hope, had distinguished her by his attention. Evidence,
however, exists in abundance to prove that Richard was utterly unlike
the deformed ruffian introduced into history by the scribes and
sheriffs of London, who plied their pens with an eye to the favor of
the Tudors.
Portraits and authentic descriptions of the last Plantagenet king which
have come down to posterity convey the idea of a man rather under-sized
and hard-featured, with dark brown hair, an intellectual forehead,
a face slightly deficient in length, dark, thoughtful eyes, and a
short neck, and shoulders somewhat unequal, giving an appearance of
inelegance to a figure, spare indeed, and wanting in bulk, but wiry,
robust, and sinewy; trained by exercise to endure fatigue, and capable
on occasions of exercising almost superhuman strength. Such, clad in
garments far more gorgeous than good taste would have approved, his
head bent forward on his bosom, his hand playing with his dagger, as
if in restlessness of mood, and his lips moving as if in soliloquy,
appeared to his contemporaries the subtle politician who, at Baynard's
Castle, schemed for the crown of St. Edward. Such, arrayed in Milan
steel, bestriding a white steed, the emblem of sovereignty, with a
surcoat of brilliant colors over his armor, a crown of ornament around
his helmet, a trusty lance skillfully poised in his hand, and an
intense craving for vengeance gnawing at his heart, appeared the fiery
warrior whose desperate valor well-nigh saved St. Edward's crown from
fortune and the foe on Bosworth Field.