Richard III and the Murder in the Tower (18 page)
Read Richard III and the Murder in the Tower Online
Authors: Peter A. Hancock
Tags: #Richard III and the Murder in the Tower
In a later passage in his sequence of books, de Commines reiterated the story, but with some embellishments:
for King Richard, after his brother’s death, had sworn allegiance to his nephew, as his King and sovereign, and yet committed that inhuman action not long after; and, in full Parliament, caused two of his brother’s daughters to be degraded and declared illegitimate, upon a pretence which he justified by means of the Bishop of Bath, who, having been formerly in great favor with King Edward, had incurred his displeasure, was dismissed, imprisoned, and fined a good sum for his releasement. This bishop affirmed, that King Edward being in love with a certain lady whom he named, and otherwise unable to have his desires of her, had promised her marriage; and caused the bishop to marry them, upon which he enjoyed her person, though his promise was only made to delude her; but such games are dangerous, as the effects frequently demonstrate. I have known many a courtier who would not have lost such a fair lady for want of promise.
This malicious prelate smothered his revenge in his heart near twenty years together, but it recoiled upon himself, for he had a son, of whom he was extremely fond and to whom King Richard designed to give a plentiful estate, and to have married him to one of the young ladies whom he had declared illegitimate (who is now Queen of England, and has two fine children). This young gentleman, being on broad ship by commission from King Richard, was taken upon the coast of Normandy, and upon a dispute between those that took him, he was brought before the Parliament at Paris, put into Petit Chastellet, and suffered to lie there till he was starved to death.”
What we are to make of de Commines’ latter observations on Stillington’s purported son and a marriage to Elizabeth of York I leave, at this time, for future deliberations. Whether and how this would have acted as a reward for Stillington himself is difficult to decipher. However, there is more here concerning Stillington as the source, and especially if de Commines has been considered the sole source of this information for some prolonged interval of time. In particular, we need here to look at de Commines’ specific use of language. A careful reading of the two quotations seems to indicate quite clearly that Stillington was the original source of information concerning the pre-contract. In fact, we read that, ‘This Bishop discovered to the Duke of Gloucester …’: the use of the term ‘discovered’
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here seems specifically to imply that it was Stillington’s voluntary act that revealed the information to Richard. However, when we look a little further into the same text, more is revealed about this phraseology. Shortly after this quotation, de Commines used the term in the following quote: ‘His fortune depending upon the court, he did not discover it, and persuaded the lady likewise to conceal it, which she did, and the matter remained a secret.’ Here, the use is of the same word, but now we can read into this a different interpretation. In this sentence, the word ‘discover’ can mean advertise or broadcast the fact and in actuality it aligns much more with the modern use of the word uncover.
As we read further into de Commines’ two passages, we also find that the Bishop ‘assisted’ Richard, in that he ‘affirmed’ the reality of the pre-contract. In the circumstances described, Richard ‘caused two of his brother’s daughters to be degraded and declared illegitimate, upon a pretence which he justified by means of the Bishop of Bath.’ Here we have yet another description in which the bishop ‘justified’ Richard’s action. I do not wish to belabour the point beyond what a reasonable interpretation will bear. However, the passages which describe Stillington as the primary source of the pre-contract, as opposed to someone who confirmed that the pre-contract had occurred, and whose authority was then employed by Richard to achieve a more general acceptance of the fact of the bastardisation, is not completely unequivocal. It can be interpreted in a number of potentially differing ways. Therefore, from the text alone, the idea that de Commines proves the source of a pristine accusation is not quite as clear as the traditional story might have us think.
However, there are other objections to de Commines as a source in general, beyond his own words. It has been noted that de Commines was ‘unreliable,’ inaccurate and slanderous toward ‘English internal affairs.’
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In respect of his own reporting, Lander has suggested that ‘[Armstrong] points out that [de] Commines himself stressed his ignorance of English affairs.’
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Thus we have a source here of doubtful accuracy and this doubt is actually expressed by the original author himself. Indeed, it has further been suggested that de Commines may have even inferred Stillington’s role here from what he was subsequently told about the Parliament of Richard which convened in early 1484, and some evidence he adduced from what was reported there. Furthermore, we must always remember that, of the three present at the pre-contract ceremony, Stillington was the only one alive at the time in question. Thus, it may be possible that de Commines inferred this role as the source of the revelation to Stillington as opposed to actually knowing of his actions directly. If this is so, it renders de Commines’ identification as Stillington as the source of the information potentially doubtful. In contrast, I contend here that Stillington only acted to confirm what Richard actually put to him. In providing this confirmation, Stillington subsequently became the public face of the pre-contract revelation. What I am questioning is whether he was the original source for this knowledge. It is evident that Wood also expresses doubts about Commines and indeed Croyland also as contemporary to the events of June. He noted, ‘It is clear that Commines and Croyland both base their accounts not on the events of June but on the act of succession passed the following January which contains what is alleged to be a copy of the June petition.’
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It is worth remembering that the Speaker of that latter Parliament, and a skilled and able lawyer himself, was one William Catesby. To garner further understanding of the accusation against Stillington we now need to turn to the other evidence that Hammond identified and subsequently to the reactions of Henry VII upon his assumption of the throne in the early afternoon of 25 August 1485.
Let us now return to Hammond’s observations on other citations which identified Stillington as the source of the pre-contract and explore exactly what these respective sources said. In his brief note, which I have reproduced in full here, Hammond states that:
It has been said that Commines is the sole contemporary source connecting Bishop Stillington with the pre-contract of Edward to Eleanor Butler. This is not in fact so, since from the contemporary report of a discussion of
Titulus Regius
by the Justices in the Exchequer Chamber at the beginning of the reign of Henry VII, and by the Lords in Parliament, it is clear that they thought that Stillington was the author, ‘the Bishop of Bath made the bill’ (
see
James Ramsey,
Lancaster and York
, Vol. 2, 1892, p. 488 and S.B. Chrimes,
English Constitutional Ideas in the Fifteenth Century
, 1936, p. 266, both citing the year book, Hilary Term, Henry VII, Appendix No. 75). The Lords thought he should be summoned before them, as the author of this notorious bill, but the King refused, saying he had pardoned him. It seems clear that his contemporaries thought the Bishop had told Richard about the pre-contract, or had invented it, since they would surely not have been so concerned if they had merely believed him to have drafted the bill on the orders of the King.
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This seeks to establish that, although de Commines may have been the traditional source for the accusation that Stillington revealed the precontract to Richard, it was by no means the only one and indeed if the citations in Ramsey and Chrimes to the same (almost contemporary) source are correct, this latter source
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may have even been closer to events in time than de Commines’ actual writing. So, let us explore this source in further detail. The observation by Hammond basically encapsulates what Chrimes has to say on the matter. Chrimes’ last sentence is however, a little more informative. He states:
All the justices in the exchequer chamber, by command of the king, discussed the reversal and destruction of the act which bastardized the children of Edward IV and his wife. This act was considered so scandalous that they were unwilling to rehearse it, and advised against its recital in the repealing act in order to avoid the perpetuation of its terms. ‘Nota icy bien le policy’ wrote the reporter. ‘Nota ensement,’ he continued, ‘que il (i.e., the offensive act) ne puissoit ester pris hors del record sans act de la parliament pur l’indeminity et jeopardie d’eux qui avoient les records in lour gard.’ The authority of parliament was needed to discharge them. The lords in the parliament chamber thought well of this counsel, and some of them wished to summon the bishop of Bath (Stillington), who had made the false bill, to answer for it, but the king said he had pardoned him and did not wish to proceed against him.
Ramsay is even terser on this matter and simply states, ‘de Comines’ assertions that the troth of Edward and Eleanor had been received by the Bishop of Bath was doubtless based on the mere fact that the case was got up by Stillington.’ Ramsay cites the same source as that which was used later by Chrimes also. It should be carefully noted that these accusations concern the so-called ‘Bill,’ referring directly to the
Titulus Regius
, which was the subject of the conversation by the referenced lords. Stillington is accused of authorship here, although Ramsay goes further and accuses Stillington of the complete fabrication of the whole episode. It remains crucial to reiterate that this original source, used by both later authors, did not accuse Stillington of revealing the pre-contract to Richard. Rather, it accused him of authoring the bill in the Parliament of 1484, which took place some eight months after the events of June 1483 at the Tower. Thus neither of the close-to-contemporary sources that we have unequivocally points to Stillington as Richard’s informant. It is true that both sources heavily implicate him in these events, but the question of whether he was the actual source remains, I suggest, unresolved by these documents. The indication that Henry VII ‘did not wish to proceed against him’ is, in my view, vitally important to the interpretation that we may impose on the actions of Robert Stillington at this time.
The conclusion here is that Stillington certainly had something to do with the bill, that being the
Titulus Regius
of Richard III of the Parliament of early 1484. It may well have been this document which was also the basis of de Commines’ assertions. However, this latter reference, as we have seen, certainly does not unequivocally accuse Stillington of revealing the pre-contract to Richard in the summer of 1483, but only of complicity in the bill passed in Parliament in early 1484. Thus from these initial sources of information, it is at best a tentative assertion that Stillington acted in the manner traditionally ascribed to him by historical commentators such as Markham.
The revelation of the pre-contract and its implication was clearly no secret some few decades later. The cited example of this is to be found in the letter of Eustace Chapuys, an ambassador to the court of Henry VIII. He wrote to his master, the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, on 16 December 1528. In this missive, he was concerned with Henry VIII’s treatment of his youngest daughter, Elizabeth, later Elizabeth I. In the course of expressing this concern he was to hark back to past times. Specifically, he recorded that:
… they say that you [Charles V] have a better title than the present King, who only claims by his mother, who was declared by sentence of the bishop of Bath [Stillington] a bastard, because Edward had espoused another wife before the mother of Elizabeth of York.
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The ‘they’ referred to in the quote of Chapuys’ is his attribution of the disgruntled populace of England, unhappy with a number of the policies of the then current administration. By implication, he was suggesting that circulation of the story of the pre-contract was one of public knowledge and public rumour. However, it is probably the case that Chapuys’ knowledge was derived from the earlier observations of de Commines. After all, these two were countrymen and it is possible, if not probable, that Chapuys had Comines’ text to hand. Of course, even if this were true, it does not necessarily mean that there were not public mutterings and murmurings. It is perhaps one of the sources of the great Tudor cruelty that they were so fragilely established on the throne and were as a result spiteful, vengeful and oppressive of all those that they considered possible rivals, even including the old Countess of Salisbury.
However, there is one further wrinkle to this whole issue of Stillington as the source and it is derived from the observations of the
Croyland Chronicle
. Again, it is critical here to repeat the original words since they, like the other citations, are so important to follow accurately. Croyland said:
and on the 26th day of the same month of June, Richard the protector, claimed for himself the government of the kingdom with the name and title of king; and on the same day in the great hall of Westminster he thrust himself into the marble chair. The pretext of this intrusion and for taking possession in this way was as follows. It was put forward, by means of a supplication contained in a certain parchment roll, that King Edward’s sons were bastards, by submitting that he had been precontracted to a certain Lady Eleanor Boteler before he married Queen Elizabeth and, further, that the blood of his other brother, George, duke of Clarence, had been attainted so that, at the time, no certain and uncorrupt blood of the lineage of Richard, duke of York, was to be found except in the person of the said Richard, duke of Gloucester. At the end of this roll, therefore, on behalf of the lords and commonalty of the kingdom, he was besought to assume his lawful rights. It was put about then that this roll originated in the North whence so many people came to London although there was no-one who did not know the identity of the author (who was in London all the time) of such sedition and infamy.