Richard was described as a venomous hunchback[[12]] and made to commit several atrocious crimes in order to prepare men's minds to receive, without incredulity, the story of the murder of his nephews. It was evidently anticipated that this final draft on their powers of belief would be dishonoured unless the alleged murderer had been steeped in crime from his infancy.
At the early age of eighteen Richard is accordingly accused of having committed a cowardly and inhuman murder in cold blood after the battle of Tewkesbury, on evidence which would be insufficient to hang a dog.[[13]]
Young Edward's death
The battle took place on May 4, 1471. The young Duke of Gloucester had displayed valour and generalship, and had won for himself a name in chivalry. On the other side, Prince Edward of Lancaster, who was exactly one year younger than Richard, led the main battle of his army, and bore himself manfully. Carried away in the rout and closely followed by his victorious enemies, he was slain on the field of battle. There was one eye-witness who wrote an account of the battle of Tewkesbury. He said that young Edward of Lancaster 'was taken fleeing to the townwards and slain in the field.'[[14]] A drawing accompanies this writer's report, in which we see a horse on its knees, the rider receiving his deathblow, the helmet struck off, and the bright golden locks sinking on the horse's mane.[[15]] This was the plain truth. He fell, fighting bravely, on the battle-field. All contemporaries, without an exception, corroborate this evidence. The next writer was Warkworth, but he was not present. He wrote 'There was slain on the field Prince Edward, which cried for succour to the Duke of Clarence.'[[16]] Bernard André, the paid historian of Henry VII., says the same, 'Is enim ante Bernardi campum Theoxberye proelio belligerens ceciderat.' The Croyland monk says that some of the Lancastrian leaders fell in the battle, others 'by the revengeful hands of certain persons afterwards,'[[17]] referring to the fact that some were executed after trial before the Earl Marshal and Constable. There is no hint here of the alleged assassination of Edward. Comines tells the same story, 'et fut le Prince de Galles tué sur le champ et plusieurs autres grans seigneurs.' Such is the unanimous testimony of contemporaries.
We now come to the other Tudor writers and their versions of young Edward's death. Fabyan, writing to please Henry VII., is the first who said that the Prince was captured and brought before Edward IV., and he added the following tale: 'The King strake him with his gauntlet in the face, on which the Prince was by the King's servants incontinently slain.'[[18]] Fabyan's baseless gossip came before Polydore Virgil, and the protégé of Pope Alexander VI. conceived the idea of giving it a lurid Borgian colouring, better suited to the latitude of Urbino than to that of Tewkesbury and calculated to make our flesh creep. It was thus that his ideas found words: 'King Edward gave no answer, only thrusting the young man from him with his hand, whom forthwith those that were present, who were George Duke of Clarence, Richard Duke of Gloucester, and William Lord Hastings, crewelly murderyd.'[[19]] This story was improved upon by Grafton, Hall, Holinshed and other Tudor chroniclers. Dorset was added to the list of alleged assassins by Habington, Grafton, and Hall. Gloucester is made to strike the first blow by Holinshed. Here we have a striking example of the gradual growth of a legend which has eventually become embedded in history.[[20]] Its original conception was due to an Italian, not to an English brain. It is thus that the fable has become a part of the history of England. Honest John Stow is alone in rejecting the Italian's embellishment. He discredits the version of Polydore Virgil as a palpable fraud, and merely repeats Fabyan's statement.
It is very remarkable that three authorities patronised by Henry VII. give no countenance to the fable of Polydore Virgil. Bernard André is in perfect agreement with the contemporaries, simply because Virgil's story had not been invented when he wrote. Rous is silent for the same reason. He was the originator of the birth with teeth and with hair to the shoulders. He heaped calumny on calumny, and would have eagerly repeated the Tewkesbury story if it had existed in his time. Morton's silence is still more singular except on the hypothesis that the slander was not then in existence.
Dr. Morton was actually present at Tewkesbury. If young Edward was murdered he must have known it. Yet in a work prepared for the express purpose of enumerating the alleged crimes of Richard he said nothing. He had no scruples. He repeats all he can think of, with the object of heaping opprobrium on Richard's memory. But there is not a hint about assassinating Edward of Lancaster. Morton's silence, under these circumstances, amounts to a proof that the story was a fabrication of later times. André, Rous, and Morton wrote before Polydore Virgil, and when the Italian's calumny had not yet been invented. It cannot be that Virgil found out what the less vigilant André, Rous, and Morton overlooked. If anyone knew all the details of the battle of Tewkesbury at first hand, it was Morton. He was there. His silence explodes the fable. It also convicts Polydore Virgil of having fabricated an exceptionally foul slander, with a rank scent of its Borgian origin:—
'Virgilii duo sunt: alter Maro: tu Polydore
Alter: Tu Mendax: ille Poeta fuit.'[[21]]
Unless the testimony of those who were absent, and for the most part unborn, is to be preferred to that of eye-witnesses, and that of future generations to contemporaries, the fable of young Edward's murder ought never again to find a place in serious history.
Death of Henry VI