This is another falsification of dates made as usual with a purpose. Nothing really happened on Wednesday. On Thursday the 26th, Morton says that Richard III. went to Westminster Hall in royal state. What Morton has done is to transfer the events of Thursday to Wednesday, and to make as little as possible of them, in order to draw off attention from a very momentous event. No one would gather from Morton's narrative that on Thursday, June 26, the Convention Parliament, as it would have been called in later days, consisting of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and the Commons, which had been summoned for the 25th and actually met, proceeded to Crosby Place with the petition embodying Richard's title, and urged him to accept the crown.[[22]] Morton ignores all this, in order that his readers may be kept in ignorance of the solemn and deliberate proceedings which accompanied Richard's acceptance of the crown. Polydore Virgil does the same.
Buckingham's treason
We next come to the treason of the Duke of Buckingham. Its motive was misrepresented by Morton, with the object of creating a belief that the Duke advocated the cause of Henry Tudor. A long conversation between Buckingham and Morton at Brecknock is recorded by Grafton. It is very characteristic, and is no doubt authentic, so far as that it was written or communicated by Morton. But whether it ever took place as narrated is quite another matter. This conversation sets forth the arguments by which the mischievous old intriguer alleged that he induced Buckingham to rebel, and the pretended object of the insurrection.
It is asserted by Morton and Polydore Virgil that the cause of Buckingham's discontent was the refusal of Richard III. to grant him the moiety of the Bohun lands. It is added that Buckingham's suit was rejected by the King, with many spiteful words, and that there was ever afterwards hatred and distrust between them. This can be proved to be false. Richard granted Buckingham's petition, and made him a grant[[23]] of the lands under the royal sign manual, giving him the profits from the date of signature, until the formality was completed by authority of Parliament.
Buckingham and Morton
This story must have been fabricated to conceal the true motive of Buckingham's treason. He probably aspired to the throne as the next heir of the Plantagenets after Richard and his son, in accordance with the 'Titulus Regius.' He had himself concurred in declaring the children of Edward IV. to be illegitimate, and those of Clarence to be incapacitated. Next came Richard III. and his delicate son, of whom he would dispose if the rebellion was successful. He ignored the sisters of the King and their children.[[24]] This completed the descendants of the second son of Edward III. The legitimate descendants of the third son came to an end with Henry VI. Buckingham himself represented the fifth son of Edward III.
Assailed by the insidious flattery of Morton, he was prematurely hurried into a rash attempt which cost him his life. When Morton recorded the conversation with his victim many years afterwards, he was Archbishop of Canterbury, Henry VII. was King, and it was advisable, in order to gratify the new sovereign, that Richard should be accused of murdering his nephews, and that Buckingham should be made to give up the scheme for his own aggrandisement, in order to risk his life for the sake of an unknown adventurer in Brittany. It will be admitted that this is a grossly improbable story.
It is certainly astounding that the childish nonsense which Morton puts into Buckingham's mouth should have been gravely accepted as true by subsequent historians. We are first told that when Buckingham heard of the murder of the two innocents, to which he never agreed, he abhorred the sight of the King and could no longer abide with the Court. So he took his leave at Gloucester with a merry countenance but a despiteful heart. According to this, the murders took place in July, for Buckingham left Gloucester on August 1. The more detailed story directly contradicts Morton, and places the murders in the end of August. Both are false, but this is one out of many instances of the utter recklessness of these slanderers. Buckingham is then made to say that he stopped at Tewkesbury for two days to think. The result was that he came to the conclusion that he ought to be King, not on the ground of his descent from the fifth son of Edward III., but because his mother was a daughter of Edmund, Duke of Somerset. His mother was the fourth daughter of that Duke, who had not the remotest right to the throne, and never put forward a claim. If there had been such a claim, Buckingham would not have first found it out, by thinking for two days at Tewkesbury. After this mental effort he continued his journey towards Shrewsbury, and met Margaret Lady Stanley, the mother of Henry Tudor, on the road. She told him that she was the daughter of John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, Edmund's elder brother. This, we are asked to believe, was quite a new idea to Buckingham. We are to suppose that he knew nothing about his relations before his cogitations at Tewkesbury and his chat with Lady Stanley, and that the receipt of the information made him give up his own ambitious plans altogether. He is made to propose to his fellow-traveller that her son should be king and that he should marry the eldest daughter of Edward IV. Buckingham, after examining the evidence, had just concurred in a solemn declaration that this daughter was illegitimate. But he now evolved from his inner consciousness the discovery that the evidence was derived from suborned witnesses. The Duke then took his leave of Margaret, and proceeded with Morton to Brecknock Castle. Margaret's steward, Reginald Bray, conveyed messages between the conspirators, and an insurrection was arranged. Morton acknowledges that he originally advised Buckingham himself to claim the crown at Brecknock, on which the Duke related the above wonderful story. To complete the absurdity of this childish romance, it must be remembered that Morton was travelling with Buckingham, all the way from Gloucester to Brecknock.