The next royal victim was the King’s brother, George, Duke of Clarence, “false, perjured Clarence.” For him, however, one feels little pity, since he well merited to be called both “false” and “perjured.” The old tale of his having been drowned in a barrel of Malmsey wine has been believed these four hundred years, and, as it cannot be disproved, it will serve as well as any other. It is the mystery which surrounds these murders committed in the dark towers of the old fortress, which adds not a little to their horror. An execution in broad daylight seems, compared with the unknown manner in which a prisoner was killed in some hole and corner of a dungeon, quite a cheerful event. One shudders at the thought of the helpless victim struggling in his death agony in the arms of his murderers.

Clarence’s death took place on the 18th of February 1478, but even the place of his imprisonment is unknown. By some he is said to have been confined in the Bowyer Tower; but in Mrs Hutchinson’s Memoir she has left on record that the Bloody Tower was the scene of his murder, and as she was the daughter of Sir Allen Apsley, the Lieutenant of the Tower in Charles the First’s reign, her authority on the matter is a good one. The only contemporary, or nearly contemporary writers, in favour of the story of the Malmsey butt are Fabyan and de Commines. The former, a London citizen, writes: “The Duke of Clarence was secretly put to death and drowned in a butt of Malmsay within the Tower.” Philip de Commines considered this to be a true version of the manner of the Duke’s death. It has been suggested that Clarence was poisoned.

Edward IV., as has been said, lived a great deal in the Tower; he also increased its fortifications, and, according to Stowe’s “Survey of London,” built “a brick wall around a piece of ground on Tower Hill west from the Lion’s Tower, now called the Bulwark.” This fortification has long ago disappeared. Edward likewise, according to the same excellent authority, renewed the moat and made considerable general repairs to the buildings. He was the last of our Kings who added materially to the Tower.

With the appointment of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, to the office of Protector, after the death of Edward the Fourth, on 9th April 1483, the Tower plays a conspicuous part in the events which the next few years produced. Edward had left two sons; the elder, now Edward V., being twelve years old, his brother, Richard, Duke of York, being a year or two younger. Gloucester had the reputation of being an excellent soldier, and had not, as was the case with his brother Clarence, been disloyal to the late King. Whether he was hump-backed or whether, as some writers aver, he was scarcely less handsome than his handsome brothers, or whether one of his shoulders was higher than the other, is not of much consequence; for whether he was crooked or not in person, Gloucester was certainly crooked in character. If any faith can be put in the lineaments and expression of the human face, that of Richard, to judge by the portraits that have come down to us, was most evil. His face can be studied in the National Portrait Gallery. The close-set cruel eyes, the heavy nose, the thin white lips, the protruding jaw, are not inviting; but the expression is even more remarkable—a mixture of cunning, boundless determination, and remorseless cruelty. Gloucester possessed, writes Mr Gardiner, “a rare power of winning popular sympathy, and was most liked in Yorkshire, where he was best known. He had, however, grown up in a cruel and unscrupulous age, and had no more hesitation in clearing his way by slaughter than Edward IV. or Margaret of Anjou.” Mr Gardiner is almost apologetic for Richard’s memory; but there is a great difference, it seems to me, between being revengeful and even merciless in war, and in murdering either with one’s own hands or by those of hired assassins, one’s brother and one’s nephews. It was by shedding their blood that Richard was enabled to mount the throne which he usurped: of that there is no room for any reasonable doubt. That Shakespeare, in giving the worst character of any in his great series of historical plays to this monarch, is responsible for the popular opinion of King Richard is also indisputable, for we English take our history from these plays, and “crook-back’d” Richard will ever remain the deepest-dyed villain that ever wore the English crown. The great Duke of Marlborough confessed that all that he knew of English history had been learnt through Shakespeare’s plays, and with all truth the majority of his countrymen might say the same. It has also been said, “The youth of England take their theology from Milton and their history from Shakespeare”; and surely they might go further and fare worse.

View in the Inner Ward

It should, however, in fairness both to Richard and to Shakespeare, be remembered that the character of the Royal villain in the play was drawn by one who wrote in the days of the Tudors, and at a time when the house of Plantagenet was not in good odour with the reigning Sovereign. Richard appears in three of the dramas—in the second and third parts of King Henry VI., and as the hero or chief villain in that which bears his name when King: the important part played by the Tower in the usurper’s reign is strongly marked by the poet placing four scenes of Richard III. within or near the fortress—twice as many as occur in any other of his historical dramas.

On the 13th of June 1483, Richard had the Archbishop of York, and Morton, the Bishop of Ely, together with Lord Stanley and Lord Hastings, arrested during a Council which he had summoned in the White Tower. Without any pretence of a trial, Hastings was led out of the Council Room by the soldiery whom Richard had concealed behind the arras, and, according to Fabyan, his head was struck off on a piece of timber which lay near St Peter’s Chapel. “I will not dine till they have brought me your head,” said Richard to Hastings, as he was being led away. The three other prisoners were placed in separate dungeons, the Archbishop and Stanley being released in the following July. Another victim was required by Richard. Lord Rivers, the late King’s brother-in-law, like Hastings, had been a check upon Richard’s designs for seizing the crown, therefore Rivers was executed, as was also Sir Richard Grey. There only now remained Gloucester’s two nephews between him and the throne. At this particular time they were living with their mother, the Queen, Elizabeth Woodville, at Westminster, and it was only by the strongest persuasion, followed by threats, that the unfortunate Queen was induced to allow their uncle to take charge of them. Gloucester, having first placed the Princes in the Tower, declared them to be bastards, and as Clarence’s children were prevented by their father’s attainder from coming into the succession, Richard openly declared himself the rightful King. He even went to the length of getting a preacher named Shaw to declare to the people that he alone was the legitimate son of the Duke of York, and that his brothers, the late King and the Duke of Clarence, were not his father’s sons. Perhaps this attack on his mother’s good name was the most odious of the many infamous acts of which Richard III. was guilty. On the 25th of June 1483 Parliament declared Gloucester the lawful heir to the throne, and on the 6th of July he was crowned as Richard III. But during that summer rumours as to the death of the sons of Edward IV. began to be spread abroad, and the King’s name was linked with the report that they had met a violent death in the Bloody Tower.

In a wardrobe account for the year 1483 there is a long list of articles of dress delivered at the Tower for Richard’s coronation. Among the dresses mentioned, we find that Richard had ordered the following elaborate costume:—“To our said Soverayne Lord the King for his apparail the vigil afore the day of his most noble coronation, for to ride from his Towre of London, unto his Palays of Westminster, a doublet made of two yerds and a quarter and a half of blue clothe of gold, wrought with netts and pyne-apples, with a stomacher of the same, lined oon ell of Holland clothe, and oon ell of busk, instede of green cloth of gold, and a longe gown for to ryde in, made of eight yerds of p’pul velvet, furred with eight tymbres and a half and 13 bakks of ermyn, and 4 tymbres, 17 coombes of ermyns powdered with 3300 of powderings made of boggy shanks, and a payre of short spurs with gilt.” To describe these queerly named habits of “apparail,” such as “tymbres,” and “bakks of ermyn,” and “boggy shanks,” would require the knowledge of an antiquarian deeply versed in the costume of the Middle Ages, but this account of Richard III.’s coronation outfit proves that he, at any rate, spared no expense in the decoration of his person, whether that was deformed or not.

His coronation was one of the most splendid on record up to that period in the annals of the English sovereignty. From the Tower to the Abbey he was followed by a cortege in which rode three dukes, nine earls, and twenty-two barons, besides a host of knights and esquires, all gorgeously arrayed. After the coronation festivities were ended, Richard went to Warwick, leaving the Tower of London in the charge of Sir Robert Brackenbury. Richard is supposed to have sent Sir Robert a message, which he received whilst attending mass in the chapel of the White Tower, asking him whether he would be willing to rid the King of the Princes. Brackenbury indignantly refused to have anything to do with such villainy, whereupon Richard relieved him of his charge of the Tower, and handed it over to James Tyrell, who hired the three murderers—Dighton, Green, and Forrest—these being admitted into the prison of the Princes in the Bloody Tower at night, when the double murder was accomplished. In describing the Bloody Tower, I have given an account of the place where this deed was done and the passage through which the murderers entered the prison.