(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 have 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.
(59) In his History of York.