Horace Walpole - Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third
H >>
Horace Walpole >> Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 | 7 |
8
(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(53) 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 hav 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.
(58) In his History of York.
(59) 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."
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 | 7 |
8