Tudor fables discredited
On the other hand, there have been a few historians who have approached the questions at issue either without considering the other side at all or with a strong though possibly unconscious bias. Hume only had a superficial knowledge of the subject. The most authoritative and important upholder of the Tudor accusations is Dr. Lingard.[[30]] He defends them in their entirety, and in this he stands alone among those who have really studied the subject. Mr. Gairdner[[31]] rejects some of the accusations and supports other Tudor stories with hesitation, and in an apologetic and more or less doubtful tone. But Mr. Gairdner's knowledge of the subject is so exhaustive, and his position as a historian is so justly high, that I have devoted a separate chapter to the consideration of his views on the chief accusations against King Richard III.
The Tudor fables are now discredited and are dying, but they are dying hard.
[[1]] Richard II. was the first of our Kings, after the Norman Conquest, who was partly an Englishman. Henry V., Edward IV., and Richard III. were almost pure Englishmen. So was Edward VI., and Elizabeth was a thorough Englishwoman. Mary II. and Anne were half English.
[[2]] See p. 159, note 1.
[[3]] 'Dr. Morton had taken his revenge and written a book in Latin against King Richard, which came afterwards to the hands of Mr. More. The book was lately in the hands of Mr. Roper of Eltham, as Sir Edward Hoby, who saw it, told me.'—Buck, p. 75.
[[4]] 'Written as I have heard by Morton.'—Harington's Metamorphosis of Ajax, p. 46. Mr. Gairdner has suggested that the book attributed to More is a translation of one written in Latin by Morton. See Letters and Papers illustrative of the Reign of Richard III., &c. Preface xviii. (n). It is really the English version that was dictated or inspired by Morton.
[[5]] More's Utopia, p. 20.
[[6]] See for instance Sharon Turner (iii. 462), who claims unquestioning belief in this scurrilous production, because 'all confess More's ability and integrity.' See also Jesse (p. 156 n. and p. 500).
In the same spirit Sir John Harington defended his own filthy treatise because 'the worthy and incorrupt Master More' was dirty in his History of Richard III. These writers seem to think that falsehood becomes truth, and obscenity becomes decency in this book, merely because its authorship is attributed to More. See Metamorphosis of Ajax, p. 46.