The Life and Times of Richard III (11 page)

At Exeter on 8 November Richard at last had news of Tudor’s ships. Sailing from the Breton port of Paimpol on 31 October with fifteen ships and five thousand men, the fleet had been scattered at sea by a storm. When he hove to outside Poole Harbour in Dorset with his two remaining ships, the shore was lined with armed men. They were Buckingham’s men, they shouted, come to escort him to the Duke. Henry was undeceived. Sailing on to Plymouth he learned that the whole of the West Country lay in Richard’s power, and hoisted sail for the return voyage to Brittany.

*

One great question still overshadows the episode of Buckingham’s rebellion. What
had
happened to the late King’s children, Edward and Richard, the Princes in the Tower?

The few surviving scraps of contemporary evidence offer only rumour and hearsay. Dominic Mancini unfortunately left England early in July 1483, shortly after Richard’s coronation, and does not even mention Buckingham’s revolt. Of the Princes he tells us only that, after Hastings’s execution,

...he [Edward] and his brother were withdrawn into the inner apartments of the Tower proper, and day by day began to be seen more rarely behind the bars and windows, till at length they ceased to appear altogether. A Strasbourg doctor, the last of his attendants whose services the King enjoyed, reported that the young King, like a victim prepared for sacrifice, sought remission of his sins by daily confession and penance, because he believed that death was facing him.

Mancini goes on to say that ‘already there was a suspicion he had been done away with. Whether, however, he has been done away with, and by what manner of death, so far I have not at all discovered.’

The other contemporary English source – the Croyland Chronicle – confirms that these rumours, reported by Mancini as early as July, were also current on the eve of Buckingham’s rebellion in September. ‘A rumour’, it states, ‘was spread that the sons of King Edward had died a violent death, but it was uncertain how.’ However, the wording here implies that the rumour may well have been spread by the rebels with malice aforethought.

The only outright accusation of murder that dates from this time appears in a speech made before the Estates General by the French Chancellor at Tours in January 1484. The Chancellor invited the assembled delegates to spare a thought for the children of Edward IV ‘whose massacre went unpunished, while the assassin was crowned by popular assent’. But the French, who had only a few months before torn up the Treaty of Picquigny, were obviously eager to clutch at any straw which would promote the civil discords of their enemies, and this ‘evidence’ must be taken with a pinch of salt. De Rochford most probably heard the rumours from Mancini and translated them for propaganda purposes from suspicion into fact.

Stricter confinement, suspicion and propaganda... that is as far as the literary evidence goes. But the dearth of these contemporary sources contrasts strangely with the long and involved story given by Sir Thomas More in his unfinished fragment
The History of King Richard III.
More’s account, written forty years later, had such a decisive influence on subsequent versions that it is worth quoting in full:

King Richard, after his coronation, taking his way to Gloucester to visit in his new honour the town of which he bare the name of his old, devised as he rode to fulfil that thing which he before had intended. And forasmuch as his mind gave him that, his nephews living, men would not reckon that he could have right to the realm, he thought therefore without delay to rid them, as though the killing of his kinsmen could amend his cause and make him a kindly King. Whereupon he sent one John Green, whom he specially trusted, unto Sir Robert Brackenbury, constable of the Tower, with a letter and credence also that the same Sir Robert should in any wise put the two children to death. This John Green did his errand unto Brackenbury, kneeling before our Lady in the Tower, who plainly answered that he would never put them to death, to die therefore; with which answer John Green, returning, recounted the same to King Richard at Warwick, yet in his way. Wherewith he took such displeasure and thought that the same night he said unto a secret page of his. ‘Ah, whom shall a man trust? Those that I have brought up myself, those that I had weaned would most surely serve me, even those fail me and at my commandment will do nothing for me.’

‘Sir,’ quoth his page, ‘there lieth one on your pallet without, that I dare well say, to do your Grace pleasure, the thing were right hard that he would refuse’, meaning by this Sir James Tyrell, which was a man of right goodly personage and for nature’s gifts worthy to have served a much better prince, if he had well served God and by grace obtained as much truth and good will as he had strength and wit. The man had an high heart and sore longed upward, not rising yet so fast as he had hoped, being hindered and kept under by the means of Sir Richard Ratcliffe and Sir William Catesby, which longing for no more partners of the prince’s favour, and namely not for him whose pride they wist would bear no peer, kept him by secret drifts out of all secret trust. Which thing this page well had marked and known. Wherefore, this occasion offered, of very special friendship he took his time to put him forward and by such wise do him good that all the enemies he had, except the devil, could never have done him so much hurt. For upon this page’s words King Richard arose (for this communication had he sitting at the draught [privy], a convenient carpet for such a counsel) and came out into the pallet chamber, on which he found in bed Sir James and Sir Thomas Tyrell, of person like and brethren of blood, but nothing of kin in conditions. Then said the King merrily to them: ‘What, Sirs, be ye in bed so soon!’ and calling up Sir James, broke to him secretly his mind in this mischievious matter; in which he found him nothing strange. Wherefore, on the morrow, he sent him to Brackenbury with a letter, by which he was commanded to deliver Sir James all the keys of the Tower for one night, to the end he might there accomplish the King’s pleasure in such thing as he had given him commandment. After which letter delivered and the keys received, Sir James appointed the night next ensuing to destroy them, devising before and preparing the means. The prince, as soon as the protector left that name and took himself as King, had it showed unto him that he should not reign, but his uncle should have the crown. At which word the prince, sore abashed, began to sigh and said: ‘Alas, I would my uncle would let me have my life yet, though I lose my kingdom.’ Then he that told him the tale used him with good words and put him in the best comfort he could. But forthwith was the prince and his brother both shut up: and all others removed from them, only one called Black Will or William Slaughter except, set to serve them and see them sure. After which time the prince never tied his points, nor aught wraught of himself, but with that young babe his brother lingered in thought and heaviness till this traitorous death delivered them of that wretchedness. [An examination of the remains generally held to be those of the Princes shows that Edward V was suffering from a bone disease of the lower jaw and his state of depression may well have been due to ill health rather than any premonition of his fate.] For Sir James Tyrell devised that they should be murdered in their beds. To the execution whereof, he appointed Miles Forest, one of the four that kept them, a fellow fleshed in murder beforetime. To him he joined one John Dighton, his own horsekeeper, a big broad, square, strong knave. Then, all the others being removed from them, this Miles Forest and John Dighton, about midnight (the silly [innocent] children lying in their beds) came into the chamber and suddenly lapped them up among the clothes, so bewrapped them and entangled them, keeping down by force the feather bed and pillows hard unto their mouths, that within a while, smothered and stifled, their breath failing, they gave up to God their innocent souls into the joys of heaven, leaving to the tormentors their bodies dead in the bed. Which after that the wretches perceived, first by the struggling with the pains of death, and after lying still, to be thoroughly dead: they laid their bodies naked out upon the bed, and fetched Sir James to see them. Which, upon the sight of them, caused those murderers to bury them at the stair foot, meetly deep in the ground, under a great heap of stones.

Then rode Sir James in great haste to King Richard, and showed him all the manner of the murder, who give him great thanks and, as some say, there made him knight. But he allowed not, as I have heard, the burying in so vile a corner, saying he would have them buried in a better place, because they were a King’s sons. Lo the honourable courage of a King! Whereupon they say that a priest of Sir Robert Brackenbury took up the bodies again, and secretly entered them in such place, as by the occasion of his death, which only knew it, could never since come to light. Very truth is it and well known, that at such times as Sir James Tyrell was in the Tower, for treason committed against the most famous prince King Henry the Seventh, both Dighton and he were examined, and confessed the murder in manner above written, but whither the bodies were removed they could nothing tell. And thus have I learned of them that much knew and little cause had to lie, were these two noble princes, these innocent tender children, born of most royal blood, brought up in great wealth, likely long to live to reign and rule in the realm, by traitorous tyranny taken, deprived of their estate, shortly shut up in prison, and privily slain and murdered their bodies cast God knows where by the cruel ambition of their unnatural uncle and his dispiteous tormentors.

More’s account, written in 1513, carries a certain glib conviction, because he claims as his source the confession of the alleged assassin, Sir James Tyrell, who was executed for treason in 1502. But to accept it at its face value raises a number of unanswerable questions: why would Sir James make such a damaging confession? Why did Henry VII never have it taken down in writing and circulated? Why does his official historian, Polydore Vergil, omit all mention of the confession?

Caxton was originally a mercer, spending much of his time in Bruges, the central foreign market of the Anglo-Flemish trade. By 1463 he was Acting Governor of the Merchant Adventurers’ Company in the Low Countries. When Margaret of York married Charles the Rash, Caxton entered her household as a commercial adviser.

In 1471 Caxton went to Cologne, and there learned the art of printing. He first set up his press in Bruges, and then in 1476 returned to England and established his press at Westminster. He was patronised by many of Edward IV’s leading courtiers, including Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers, whose work was printed on Caxton’s presses.

The lack of incriminating evidence against Richard and the obvious holes in More’s testimony have led to some ingenious theorising about Henry VII as the possible assassin. In the summer of 1486 – one year after Bosworth – Henry VII issued not one but two royal pardons in the name of Sir James Tyrell. Using this fact in conjunction with More’s narrative, it has been argued that Tyrell did indeed murder the Princes, not at Richard’s bidding but at Henry’s. Added to this there is Henry’s rather puzzling failure to make use of Richard’s alleged murder of the Princes as a weapon in the propaganda war, either before or after Bosworth. Although it would have made sense to publish the Princes’ death as a means of strengthening his wife Elizabeth’s claims to be Edward IV’s heiress, there is only a single, indirect reference to the ‘shedding of infants’ blood’ tucked away in the Act of Attainder which he presented to his Parliament in October 1485. Finally, there is the evidence of Henry’s shabby treatment of his mother-in-law, the Dowager Queen Elizabeth Woodville. In February 1487 he abruptly had her stripped of her possessions and shut up in a nunnery. This has been taken as evidence of the fact that the Queen Dowager had learned of Henry’s guilt in the disposal of her sons, and had to be locked up to prevent her causing a scandal.

The most effective rebuttal of Henry’s guilt lies in the only piece of hard evidence we possess. In 1674 workmen demolishing a staircase outside the White Tower discovered a wooden chest containing the skeletons of two children. From both their location and their approximate ages it was immediately assumed that these were the mortal remains of the murdered Princes, concealed where More indicated they were buried, but not removed for reburial elsewhere as he further stated. In 1933 these skeletons were submitted to a medical examination. From the bone formation and the structure of the teeth it was concluded that the skeletons were those of two children aged about twelve and ten respectively. This tallies with the ages of the two Princes in the early autumn of 1483; if these are the skeletons of the Princes, and their ages have been accurately assessed, it can be argued that Henry VII is exonerated from any part in their deaths.

By the same logic, if the Princes died in the autumn of 1483, there are only two men who could conceivably have been responsible – Richard and Buckingham. Both had the same motive. While Edward IV’s children were alive they would provide a focus for legitimist conspiracies. There were numerous precedents for doing away with embarrassing prisoners of royal blood – from King John’s nephew Arthur to King Henry VI – to persuade their gaolers that reasons of State overrode the dictates of private conscience.

On two counts Buckingham makes a more plausible villain than Richard. First, his motive was stronger than the King’s. By 6 July Richard had already cleared the hurdle of winning the consent of the people who mattered to his usurpation of the Crown. By the simple device of proclaiming his nephews to be bastards he also had a theoretical justification for his successful
coup.
Although the Princes would be an embarrassment, they were no longer an obstacle. But if Buckingham was aiming to depose Richard in his turn, he would have to enlist the support of men who were loyal to the memory of Edward IV – men who would not subscribe to the theory of his children’s bastardy. It was thus essential to make sure the Princes were dead before he made his bid – and to put the blame on Richard.