Richard III: His Life & Character, Reviewed in the Light of Recent Research

by Sir Clements R. Markham

Tudor victims

We must now apply the same tests to Henry as we applied to Richard. Had Henry sufficient motive for the crime? It is impossible that a man in his position could have had a stronger motive. He had denied the illegitimacy, and had thus made his wife's brothers his most formidable rivals. He could not, he dared not let them live, unless he relinquished all he had gained. The second test we applied to Richard was his treatment of those persons who were in his power, and who were, as regards relationship, in the same position as the sons of Edward IV. Let us apply the same test to Henry. John of Gloucester, the illegitimate son of Richard III., fell into the hands of Henry. At first the boy received a maintenance allowance of 20l. a year.[[10]] But he was soon thrown into prison, on suspicion of an invitation having reached him to come to Ireland, and he never came out alive.[[11]] This 'active well-disposed boy,'[[12]] as he is described in the warrant in Rymer's 'Foedera,' fell a victim to the usurper's fears. His right to the crown was at least as good as that of Henry Tudor. He was the illegitimate son of a king. Henry was only the great-grandson of an illegitimate son of a younger son of a king. The Earl of Warwick, who was the rightful heir to the crown, was also in Henry's power. The tyrant hesitated for years before he made up his mind to commit another foul crime. But he finally slaughtered the unhappy youth under circumstances of exceptional baseness and infamy, to secure his own ends. His next supposed danger was caused by the Earl of Suffolk, another nephew of King Richard. The ill-fated prince was delivered into Henry's hands under a promise that his life should be spared. He evaded the promise by enjoining his son to kill the victim. That son promptly complied, and followed up the death of Suffolk by putting five other descendants of the Plantagenet royal family to death. These Tudor kings cannot stand the tests we applied to Richard III., which he passed unscathed. The conduct of Richard to the relations who were under his protection was that of a Christian king. The executions of which Henry VII. and his son were guilty were an imitation of the policy of Turkish sultans.

If the young princes were in the Tower when Henry succeeded, his conduct in analogous cases leaves no doubt of their fate. It was the fate of John of Gloucester, Warwick, Suffolk, Exeter, Montagu, Surrey, Buckingham, and the Countess of Salisbury.[[13]] They may not have been made away with before Henry's marriage, nor for some months afterwards. The tyrant had the will but not the courage. He hesitated long, as in the case of young Warwick. For reasons which will appear presently it is likely that the boys were murdered, by order of Henry VII., between June 16 and July 16, 1486, three years after the time alleged by the official Tudor historians.

Imprisonment of the Queen Dowager

Then, for the first time, the 'common fame' was ordered to spread the report that King Richard 'had put them under suer kepynge within the tower, in such wise that they never came abrode after,' and that 'King Richard put them unto secrete death.'[[14]] But Henry feared detection. The mother knew that this was false. If the boys were murdered in July 1486, that mother must soon have begun to feel uneasy. She was at Winchester with her daughter when her grandchild Arthur was born on September 20, 1486, and was present at the baptism. But she was in London in the autumn, and before many months her suspicions must have been aroused. She must be silenced. Consequently, in February 1487 'it was resolved that the Lady Elizabeth, wife of King Edward IV., should lose and forfeit all her lands and possessions because she had voluntarily submitted herself and her daughters to the hands of King Richard. Whereat there was much wondering.'[[15]] She was ordered to reside in the nunnery of Bermondsey.[[16]] Once she was allowed to appear at Court on a State occasion.[[17]] The pretext for her detention was not the real motive, for Henry had made grants of manors and other property to his mother-in-law soon after his accession,[[18]] when her conduct with regard to King Richard was equally well known to him. The real reason was kept secret, as well it might be. Mr. Gairdner calls this proceeding 'a very mysterious decision taken about the Queen Dowager.'[[19]] Very mysterious, indeed, on the assumption of Henry's innocence. But not so if the mother knew that her sons were alive when Richard fell, and could now obtain no tidings of them. If the boys ceased to live in July 1486, it was high time for Henry to silence the awkward questions of their mother in the following February. He did so by condemning her to life-long seclusion in a nunnery. Henry was terrified that a lady who knew some of his secrets, and probably suspected more, should be at large. In the end of the following year, and not till then, Henry's wife Elizabeth was at length crowned on November 25, 1487. The King and his mother beheld the ceremony from a stage, but there is no mention of the poor Queen's mother.

Polydore Virgil's story

Years passed on. Perkin Warbeck personated young Richard, and no one had such good reason as Henry for knowing that he was an impostor. But the tyrant dared not tell how he knew that Perkin was a 'feigned boy,' as he called him. At length, in 1502 or thereabouts, the first detailed story of the murder of the two princes was put forward, after the execution of Sir James Tyrrel. It may be considered as Henry's official statement, and was evidently communicated to his paid historian Polydore Virgil, in whose hands it took the following form:

'Richard lived in continual fear, for the expelling thereof by any kind of means, he determined by death to despatch his nephews, because so long as they lived he could never be out of hazard. Wherefore he sent warrant to Robert Brakenbury, Lieutenant of the Tower, to procure their death with all diligence by some means convenient. Then he departed to York. But the Lieutenant of the Tower of London, after he had received the King's horrible commission, was astonished with the cruelty of the fact, and fearing lest, if he should obey, the same might one time or other turn to his own harm, did therefore defer the doing thereof in hope that the King would spare his own blood, or their tender age, or alter that heavy determination. But any one of these points were so far from taking place, seeing that the mind therein remained immovable, as that when King Richard understood the Lieutenant to make delay of that which he had commanded, he anon committed the charge of hastening that slaughter unto another, that is to say James Tyrrel, who, being forced to do the King's commandment, rode sorrowfully to London, and to the worst example that hath been almost ever heard of, murdered those babes of the issue royal. This end had Prince Edward and Richard his brother, but with what kind of death these silly children were executed is not certainly known.'

This was the story put forward by Henry after Tyrrel's death. He may have added some other particulars afterwards.[[20]] It is indeed probable that he did. A much more detailed fable appeared in the history attributed to More, and in Grafton, both by the same hand. It has been seen already that the statements of this writer are unworthy of credit, and it is very difficult to distinguish what parts were authorised by Henry, and what parts were fabricated by the writer himself. His story is as follows:

'At the time when Sir James Tyrrel and John Dighton were in prison for treason in 1502, they made the following confession. Taking his way to Gloucester in August 1483, King Richard sent one John Green with a letter to Sir Robert Brakenbury, Constable of the Tower, ordering him to put the children to death. Sir Robert plainly answered that he would not put them to death; with which answer John Green returning, recounted the same to King Richard at Warwick.