[[11]] He misled Horace Walpole (p. 49), and Dr. Lingard (iv. p. 227) on this point. But Dr. Lingard was quite ready to continue in his error. His account is as follows:—'On the same day that Hastings suffered (and the time should be noticed) Ratcliffe entered Pomfret Castle at the head of a numerous body of armed men, seized Rivers, Grey and Vaughan, observed no judicial forms, and struck off the heads of the victims.' He calls the Yorkshire troops that came to London 'the ruffians who had murdered the prisoners at Pontefract.' This is not very temperate language. Dr. Lingard afterwards found that this was all wrong. But he would not alter his erroneous text. He merely added a note in a later edition, showing that he knew Rivers to have been still alive on the 23rd, and that Rous named the Earl of Northumberland as presiding at the trial. Yet he retains the assertion in the text that there were no judicial forms!
[[12]] Croyland, p. 567. Polydore Virgil gives the correct date; and the Croyland monk also places the execution of Rivers after the arrest of Hastings.
[[13]] Rymer, xii. p. 204.
[[14]] 13 die mensis Junii veniens in Turrim ad consilium, jussu Protectoris capite truncatus est.—Croyland Chron. Gale, i. 566.
[[15]] The Croyland Chronicler is quite free from suspicion of intentional falsification. He was informed that Hastings had been beheaded on the 13th, the day of his arrest, and he stated what he believed to be the fact. He, therefore, made no attempt to make this fit in with other events by falsifying dates, as was the course taken by Morton and Fabyan. The monk places the delivery of young Richard and the execution of Rivers in proper order of time, and gives the correct date for Richard's accession.
[[16]] Excerpt. Hist. p. 16.
[[17]] 'Eorum principalis judex.'—Rous, p. 213.
[[18]] Sir George Buck ascertained the truth through having access to the manuscript of the Croyland Chronicle. The writer simply mentions the pre-contract with Lady Eleanor Butler; but the Chronicle was not printed until 1084. Speed was the first to print the full text of the 'Titulus Regius' in his History of Great Britain, 1611.
[[19]] The first Earl of Shrewsbury had a large family by two wives, but the names of all his daughters have not been recorded. Dugdale mentions none. Collins gives Jane married to James Lord Berkeley. There were also Elizabeth wife of John Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, and others, including Eleanor. Buck is mistaken in supposing that Eleanor's first husband was Sir Ralph Butler, Lord Sudeley. His wife was Alice Deincourt, and he was too old. Eleanor's husband may have been an unrecorded son of Ralph Butler, Lord Sudeley, who died when a young man before his father. She must have married Edward IV., when a widow, in or before 1464. She died at Norwich, and was buried in the church of the White Friars Carmelites.—Weever's Funeral Monuments, p. 805.
[[20]] Morton says that 'within few days after he withered and consumed away' (p. 103).