Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third

by Horace Walpole

(20) Though I have copied our historian, as the rest have copied him, in this date I must desire the reader to take notice, that this very date is another of Sir T. More's errors; for in the public acts is a deed of Edward the Fifth, dated June 17th.

On the 6th of July Richard was crowned, and soon after set out on a progress to York, on his way visiting Gloucester, the seat of his former duchy. And now it is that I must call up the attention of the reader, the capital and bloody scene of Richard's life being dated from this progress. The narrative teems with improbabilities and notorious falshoods, and is flatly contradicted by so many unquestionable facts, that if we have no other reason to believe the murder of Edward the Fifth and his brother, than the account transmitted to us, we shall very much doubt whether they ever were murdered at all. I will state the account, examine it, and produce evidence to confute it, and then the reader will form his own judgment on the matter of fact.

Richard before he left London, had taken no measures to accomplish the assassination; but on the road "his mind misgave him,(21) that while his nephews lived, he should not possess the crown with security. Upon this reflection he dispatched one Richard Greene to Sir Robert Brakenbury, lieutenant of the Tower, with a letter and credence also, that the same Sir Robert in any wise should put the two children to death. This John Greene did his errand to Brakenbury, kneeling before our Lady in the Tower, who plainly answered 'that he never would put them to death, to dye therefore.' Green returned with this answer to the king who was then at Warwick, wherewith he took such displeasure and thought, that the same night he said unto a secret page of his, 'Ah! whom shall a man trust? They that I have brought up myself, they that I thought would have most surely served me, even those faile me, and at my commandment will do nothing for me.' 'Sir,' quoth the page 'there lieth one in the palet chamber without, that I dare say will doe your grace pleasure; the thing were right hard that he would refuse;' meaning this by James Tirrel, whom," says Sir Thomas a few pages afterwards, "as men say, he there made a knight. The man" continues More, "had an high heart, and sore longed upwards, not rising yet so fast as he had hoped, being hindered and kept under by Sir Richard Ratcliffe and Sir William Catesby, who by secret drifts kept him out of all secret trust." To be short, Tirrel voluntarily accepted the commission, received warrant to authorise Brakenbury to deliver to him the keys of the Tower for one night; and having selected two other villains called Miles Forest and John Dighton, the two latter smothered the innocent princes in their beds, and then called Tirrel to be witness of the execution.

(21) Sir T. More.

It is difficult to croud more improbabilities and lies together than are comprehended in this short narrative. Who can believe if Richard meditated the murder, that he took no care to sift Brakenbury before he left London? Who can believe that he would trust so atrocious a commission to a letter? And who can imagine, that on Brakenbury's(22) non-compliance Richard would have ordered him to cede the government of the Tower to Tirrel for one night only, the purpose of which had been so plainly pointed out by the preceding message? And had such weak step been taken, could the murder itself have remained a problem? And yet Sir Thomas More himself is forced to confess at the outset of this very narration, "that the deaths and final fortunes of the two young princes have nevertheless so far come in question, that some remained long in doubt, whether they were in his days destroyed(23) or no." Very memorable words, and sufficient to balance More's own testimony with the most sanguine believers. He adds, "these doubts not only arose from the uncertainty men were in, whether Perkin Warbeck was the true duke of York, but for that also all things were so covertly demeaned, that there was nothing so plain and openly proved, but that yet men had it ever inwardly suspect." Sir Thomas goes on to affirm, "that he does not relate the story after every way that he had heard, but after that way that he had heard it by such men and such meanes as he thought it hard but it should be true." This affirmation rests on the credibility of certain reporters, we do not know whom, but who we shall find were no credible reporters at all: for to proceed to the confutation. James Tirrel, a man in no secret trust with the king, and kept down by Catesby and Ratcliffe, is recommended as a proper person by a nameless page. In the first place Richard was crowned at York (after this transaction) September 8th. Edward the Fourth had not been dead four months, and Richard in possession of any power not above two months, and those very bustling and active: Tirrel must have been impatient indeed, if the page had had time to observe his discontent at the superior confidence of Ratcliffe and Catesby. It happens unluckily too, that great part of the time Ratcliffe was absent, Sir Thomas More himself telling us that Sir Richard Ratcliffe had the custody of the prisoners at Pontefract, and presided at their execution there. But a much more unlucky circumstance is, that James Tirrel, said to be knighted for this horrid service, was not only a knight before, but a great or very considerable officer of the crown; and in that situation had walked at Richard's preceding coronation. Should I be told that Sir Thomas Moore did not mean to confine the ill offices done to Tirrel by Ratcliffe and Catesby solely to the time of Richard's protectorate and regal power, but being all three attached to him when duke of Gloucester, the other two might have lessened Tirrel's credit with the duke even in the preceding reign; then I answer, that Richard's appointing him master of the horse on his accession had removed those disgusts, and left the page no room to represent him as ready through ambition and despondency to lend his ministry to assassination. Nor indeed was the master of the horse likely to be sent to supercede the constable of the Tower for one night only. That very act was sufficient to point out what Richard desired to, and did, it seems, transact so covertly.

(22) It appears from the Foedera that Brakenbury was appointed Constable of the Tower July 7th; that he surrendered his patent March 9th of the following year, and had one more ample granted to him. If it is supposed that Richard renewed this patent to Sir Robert Brakenbury, to prevent his disclosing what he knew of a murder, in which he had refused to be concerned, I then ask if it is probable that a man too virtuous or too cautious to embark in an assassination, and of whom the supposed tyrant stood in awe, would have laid down his life in that usurper's cause, as Sir Robert did, being killed on Richard's side at Bosworth, when many other of his adherents betrayed him?

(23) This is confirmed by Lord Bacon: "Neither wanted there even at that time secret rumours and whisperings (which afterwards gathered strength, and turned to great trouble) that the two young sons of king Edward the Fourth, or one of them (which were said to be destroyed in the Tower) were not indeed murthered, but conveyed secretly away, and were yet living." Reign of Henry the Seventh, p. 4. again, p. 19. "And all this time it was still whispered every where that at least one of the children of Edward the Fourth was living."

That Sir James Tirrel was and did walk as master of the horse at Richard's coronation cannot be contested. A most curious, invaluable, and authentic monument has lately been discovered, the coronation-roll of Richard the Third. Two several deliveries of parcels of stuff are there expressly entered, as made to "Sir James Tirrel, knyght, maister of the hors of our sayd soverayn lorde the kynge." What now becomes of Sir Thomas More's informers, and of their narrative, which he thought hard but must be true?

I will go a step farther, and consider the evidence of this murder, as produced by Henry the Seventh some years afterwards, when, instead of lamenting it, it was necessary for his majesty to hope it had been true; at least to hope the people would think so. On the appearance of Perkin Warbeck, who gave himself out for the second of the brothers, who was believed so by most people, and at least feared by the king to be so, he bestirred himself to prove that both the princes had been murdered by his predecessor. There had been but three actors, besides Richard who had commanded the execution, and was dead. These were Sir James Tirrel, Dighton, and Forrest; and these were all the persons whose depositions Henry pretended to produce; at least of two of them, for Forrest it seems had rotted piece-meal away; a kind of death unknown at present to the college. But there were some others, of whom no notice was taken; as the nameless page, Greene, one Black Will or Will Slaughter who guarded the princes, the friar who buried them, and Sir Robert Brakenbury, who could not be quite ignorant of what had happened: the latter was killed at Bosworth, and the friar was dead too. But why was no enquiry made after Greene and the page? Still this silence was not so impudent as the pretended confession of Dighton and Sir James Tyrrel. The former certainly did avow the fact, and was suffered to go unpunished wherever he pleased—undoubtedly that he might spread the tale. And observe these remarkable words of lord Bacon, "John Dighton, who it seemeth spake best the king, was forewith set at liberty." In truth, every step of this pretended discovery, as it stands in lord Bacon, warns us to give no heed to it. Dighton and Tirrel agreed both in a tale, as the king gave out. Their confession therefore was not publickly made, and as Sir James Tirrel was suffered to live;(24) but was shut up in the Tower, and put to death afterwards for we know not what reason. What can we believe, but that Dighton was some low mercenary wretch hired to assume the guilt of a crime he had not committed, and that Sir James Tirrel never did, never would confess what he had not done; and was therefore put out of the way on a fictitious imputation? It must be observed too, that no inquiry was made into the murder on the accession of Henry the Seventh, the natural time for it, when the passions of men were heated, and when the duke of Norfolk, lord Lovel, Catesby, Ratcliffe, and the real abettors or accomplices of Richard, were attainted and executed. No mention of such a murder (25)was made in the very act of parliament that attainted Richard himself, and which would have been the most heinous aggravation of his crimes. And no prosecution of the supposed assassins was even thought of till eleven years afterwards, on the appearance of Perkin Warbeck. Tirrel is not named in the act of attainder to which I have had recourse; and such omissions cannot but induce us to surmise that Henry had never been certain of the deaths of the princes, nor ever interested himself to prove that both were dead, till he had great reason to believe that one of them was alive. Let me add, that if the confessions of Dighton and Tirrel were true, Sir Thomas More had no occasion to recur to the information of his unknown credible informers. If those confessions were not true, his informers were not credible.

(24) It appears by Hall, that Sir James Tirrel had even enjoyed the favor of Henry; for Tirrel is named as captain of Guards in a list of valiant officers that were sent by Henry, in his fifth year, on an expedition into Flanders. Does this look as if Tirrel was so much as suspected of the murder. And who can believe his pretended confession afterwards? Sir James was not executed till Henry's seventeenth year, on suspicion of treason, which suspicion arose on the flight of the earl of Suffolk. Vide Hall's Chronicle, fol. 18 & 55.