Richard III: His Life & Character Part 26

[3] Bayley, _Antiquities of the Tower of London_. (8vo. ed 1830, p.

343 _n_.)

[4] iv. p. 580 (5th ed. 1849).

[5] Rymer, xii. p. 265. 'Pro filio b.a.s.t.a.r.do regis.' 'c.u.m summa dilecti filii nostri b.a.s.t.a.r.di Johannis de Gloucestriae ingenii vivacitas, membrorumque agilitas, et ad omnes bonos mores magnam et indubiam n.o.bis de futuro ejus servitio bono spem, gratia divina promittant.' This warrant granted the wards.h.i.+p of Calais to John of Gloucester, so soon as he should have reached the age of twenty-one.

[6] _Archaeologia_, i. p. 367.

[7] Sir Richard, K.G., the second son, was not then a lord. The t.i.tle of York was a royal one, like that of Wales, and he could not hold it when proved to be illegitimate. Those of Norfolk and Nottingham came from his intended wife, Anne Mowbray, and when she died, they went to her heirs Howard and Berkeley, by creation of the King on June 8, 1483.

Young Richard, as well as Edward, was a Knight of the Garter, but Edward was the only 'Lord b.a.s.t.a.r.d.'

[8] A letter from the King to the Mayor of York, dated April 11, 1485, is on the subject of the suppression of false reports and lies. But this refers to the false report that Richard intended to marry his niece. Davies, _York Records_. Drake incorrectly places this letter in 1484. Drake's _Ebor._ p. 119.

[9] 'Vulgatum est dictos Regis Edwardi pueros, quo genere violenti interitus ignoratur, decessisse in fata.'

[10] _Journal des Etats-Generaux de France tenus en_ 1483-84 (Doc.u.ments Inedits), quoted by Gairdner in his _Richard III._ p. 160.

[11] He accepted a present of horses from Louis as a matter of courtesy.

[12] Rymer's _Foedera_, xii. p. 234.

[13] 'Nepotes clam ferro feriri jussit.'--Andre.

[14] 'Ita quod ex post paucissimis notum fuit qua morte martirizati sunt.'--Rous.

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CHAPTER V

HENRY TUDOR IN THE DOCK

Murder of the Princes in the Tower. Conviction.

[Sidenote: Victims after Bosworth]

Henry Tydder, _alias_ Tudor, must now take his place in the dock. Let us first see what manner of man this fortunate adventurer was. In 1485 he was twenty-eight years of age. He is described as a man of slender build, about five feet nine inches high, with a saturnine expression, grey restless eyes, yellow hair, and very little of it. Having pa.s.sed his life as a fugitive and conspirator, cunning and dissimulation had become a second nature to him. The victory gained for him at Bosworth, by the foulest treachery, placed despotic power in his hands. His first acts were the illegal and unjust executions of William Catesby,[1] Chancellor of the Exchequer, of John Buck, the Comptroller of the late King's Household, of {247} William Bracher, Yeoman of the Crown, and of his son. These executions were in violation of all law.

They were simply murders; for Henry Tudor himself had no legal status, and was in fact an attainted outlaw. Catesby was the faithful and loyal minister of a King who studied the welfare of his subjects, and was the Speaker of the best Parliament that had sat since the time of Edward I. He was an able and diligent public servant. This was his only crime. Nothing tangible has ever been alleged against him, except that he did his duty by reporting the meditated treason of Hastings.

If the fables of Morton and his colleagues are accepted, the executions of Rivers, Grey and Vaughan were doubtful acts. But the executions of Catesby, Buck, and the Brachers were heinous crimes. Richard was the Chief of the State, though it may be held that his measures were unjust. Henry was an outlaw without legal authority of any kind, and his executions were ruthless murders. Thus did this adventurer wade through the blood of innocent men to his usurped throne.[2] His next proceeding was to {248} send Sir Robert Willoughby to Sheriff Hutton, to get possession of young Edward Earl of Warwick, the heir to the throne, and of the late King's niece Elizabeth.

Henry Tudor then marched to London and seized the government. He became responsible for the surviving members of the royal family of England, legitimate or otherwise. What did he do with them? There were Edward and Richard, the illegitimate sons of Edward IV., there was Edward the legitimate son of the Duke of Clarence, and now the rightful King of England, and there was John, the illegitimate son of Richard III. They all fell into his power, and he alone became answerable for their lives. There is too much reason to suspect that they all met with foul play at his hands.

Henry Tudor, on usurping the crown of England, necessarily found himself in a very difficult position. His mother's claim, as heiress to an illegitimate son of the third son of Edward III., was worthless in itself, for even if the descent had been legitimate, she must come after all the descendants of the second son of Edward III. Moreover the claim, such as it was, had not yet descended to Henry Tudor and never did, for his mother survived him. He wisely refrained from stating such a claim as this, although he alleged a vague hereditary right of some sort, which he did not try to explain. There remained the right of conquest with the aid of French mercenaries, and he ventured to put it forward. But he soon saw that he would have to find some other prop to support his usurpation.

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[Sidenote: Character of Henry VII]

Henry must certainly have been a man of great ability, with an acute but narrow mind, marvellous powers of dissimulation and of self-deception, with considerable tact and skill in guiding and influencing those around him. He was essentially un-English. He was a near relation of Louis XI., and he made that mean tyrant his model. He hated English freedom, and that intimate contact with the people which made the Plantagenets popular. He loved mystery. He surrounded himself with an armed guard which constantly went about with him, a thing never done before by former kings.[3] He originated a tribunal with despotic powers, consisting of a committee of his Council, the infamous Star Chamber. He established 'a close and secret, a tyrannical and often a most cruel government.'[4] He extorted money by means of those illegal 'benevolences' which had been abolished by the patriotic Parliament of Richard III. He was penurious, greedy, and mean. He was the first English King who increased his revenue by forfeitures enforced through legal chicanery. He began the practice of setting agents to ferret out any claim which the Crown could make, and a subservient judge would affirm. For he loved the forms of law, which apparently soothed his conscience. He was very superst.i.tious. When his own interests were not concerned he was not devoid of natural affection and he recoiled from crime. Yet he became capable of any foul deed if he deemed it necessary for his own security. But he meditated a crime for months and years, and stood trembling on the brink for a long time before he summoned up {250} courage to act. Even then he much preferred the forms of law, thinking that if he shared the deed with others, the guilt became a limited liability.

Henry had the wisdom to see that, although his claim of conquest and vague a.s.sertion of right by descent[5] might serve for a time, he must establish some better t.i.tle to secure any stability for his throne. He had obtained his position by the favour of a treacherous faction, and was confirmed in it by a pretended Parliament of his adherents, many of them still under attainder. Unlike the grand ceremony of King Richard's coronation, when the whole peerage was present, that of Henry was very thinly attended. He felt that some step must promptly be taken, with a view to strengthening his position, and reconciling the nation to his usurpation.

There was Elizabeth, the late King's niece, whose person he had secured. If she was made queen it might propitiate the powerful Yorkist party. But she was illegitimate, and consequently young Warwick was the rightful King. There was another more fatal difficulty, a knowledge of which was shared with the girl's mother, if not with the girl herself. All evidence of the illegitimacy might be destroyed. Henry caused the Act of Parliament recording and legalising King Richard's t.i.tle to be expunged. He ordered the original Act to be removed from the Rolls and burnt. Every person who possessed a copy or remembrance of it, was commanded to deliver up the same, under a penalty of fine and imprisonment at the tyrant's pleasure.[6] Henry granted a general pardon to Bishop {251} Stillington in order to avoid prosecuting him for the offence of having borne witness to the illegitimacy. For he feared discussion. He then trumped up some other charge, threw the Bishop into prison, and that unfortunate prelate never came out alive.

But this was not enough. There was other work to be done from which Henry long recoiled. Yet without its perpetration he could not safely be married to Elizabeth, and there could be no security for his usurpation. Indeed, his position would be rendered even more precarious by the destruction of the evidence of illegitimacy. He had usurped a throne to retain which he saw that the committal of more than one crime was indispensable.

Meanwhile Henry had summoned the so-called Parliament of his outlawed adherents. He got his own attainder reversed. He then caused an act of attainder to be pa.s.sed against the late King and many loyal n.o.blemen and knights, whose property he seized. He had the effrontery to accuse them of treason to him, by dating the commencement of his reign from the day previous to the battle of Bosworth. No more shameless act of injustice is recorded in the annals of tyranny. The bit of legal chicanery by which an attempt was made to excuse it, shows the character of the man.

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LOYAL MEN WITH THE KING AT BOSWORTH

ILLEGAL ATTAINDERS BY ORDER OF HENRY TUDOR Pa.s.sED IN THE SO-CALLED PARLIAMENT OF 1485

Richard III., King of England, K.G. } John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, K.G. } _Slain at Bosworth_.

Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, K.G. _Prisoner at Bosworth_.

Francis Viscount Lovell, K.G. _Slain at Stoke_.

Walter Lord Ferrers, K.G. } John Lord Zouch. } _Slain at Bosworth_.

Sir James Harington. (Clerk of the Council.) _At Bosworth_.

Sir Robert Harington. _At Bosworth_.

Sir Richard Charlton. _At Bosworth_.

Sir Richard Ratcliffe, K.G. _Slain at Bosworth_.

Sir William Berkeley, K.B. (Knight of the Bath at the Coronation.) Sir Robert Brackenbury. (Constable of the Tower.) _Slain at Bosworth_.

Sir Thomas Pilkington. (Brother-in-law of the Haringtons.) _Slain at Stoke_.

Sir Robert Middleton.

Walter Hopton, Esq. (Treasurer of the Household.) William Catesby, Esq. (Chancellor of the Exchequer.) _Murdered at Leicester_.

Roger Wake, Esq.

William Sapcote, Esq., of Huntingdons.h.i.+re.

Humphrey Stafford, Esq. _Put to death by Henry VII_.

William Clarke, Esq., of Wenlock.

Walter St. Germain, Esq.

Walter Watkin, Esq. (Herald.) Richard Revell, Esq., of Derbys.h.i.+re.

Thomas Pulter, Esq., of Kent.

John Welch, Esq., _otherwise_ Hastings.

John Kendall, Esq. (Secretary of State.) _Slain at Bosworth_.

John Buck, Esq. (Comptroller of the Household.) _Murdered at Leicester_.

John Batte, Esq.

William Brampton, Esq., of Burford.

(From the _Plumpton Correspondence_, p. 48.)