A.D. 1471.

DEATH OF HENRY VI. IN THE TOWER.

149

bury was followed by the executions of the duke of Somerset and other Lancastrian leaders, who were dragged from the sanctuary of the abbey of Tewkesbury, and condemned to death by the duke of Gloucester and the duke of Norfolk. This is the first time that we find Richard of Gloucester a conspicuous personage in our historical relations. He was now under twenty years of age. From one account he was "little of stature, illfeatured of limbs, crook-backed, his left shoulder much higher than his right, hard-favoured of visage." Another account says, "that he was of bodily shape comely enough, only of low stature."

On the 11th, queen Margaret was brought to Edward at Coventry, and went on to London in the train of the victor. The movements of the king were quickened by the news of an attack upon London by William Falconbridge, who had kept the Channel as admiral by Warwick's appointment. Being bravely repulsed by the armed citizens, Falconbridge retired to Blackheath, and afterwards to Sandwich, which he fortified. Edward arrived in London, with thirty thousand men, on the 21st of May. On the 22nd, he was on his march towards Canterbury, accompanied by his brother Richard, who, within a few days, received the submission of Falconbridge. On the 21st of May, the duke of Gloucester rested in the Tower of London. That same night king Henry died. Fabyan writes, "of the death of this prince [Henry VI.] divers tales were told but the most common fame went that he was sticked with a dagger by the hands of the duke of Gloucester." The circumstance that Richard was in the Tower on that. one night when he rested in London, is a slight foundation upon which to build the charge of the murder of Henry.

The great earl of Warwick's two daughters were the heiresses of his enormous possessions, which Clarence had no inclination to divide with any other. He concealed Anne, the younger sister, from the pursuit of Gloucester, who was her suitor. Gloucester contrived to outwit his brother, and married Anne. In 1474, the parliament divided the great fortune of Warwick between the two royal brothers, leaving the widow of Warwick a very wretched provision.

On the 20th of June, 1475, Edward sailed from Sandwich with fifteen hundred men-at-arms, fifteen thousand archers, and a great number of foot soldiers and artillery. He was bent on a new conquest of the provinces which had been lost during the minority of Henry VI. The parliament had voted supplies with profuse liberality. The duke of Brittany and the duke of Burgundy had promised their assistance, but the latter gave the English a cold welcome at Peronne. Louis of France sent a servant disguised as a herald to the camp of the English king. Louis himself had no heralds, as other princes had. The mock herald was well received at the English camp, and he played his part so well, that a negotiation was opened through commissioners. The wily Louis feasted the English at Amiens; sent Edward three hundred cart-loads of the best wines of France; and bribed his nobles without stint. The two kings met at Pecquigny, and there a peace was sworn between them, upon the conditions, of present and future money payments; of a marriage between

Chronicle, p. 662.

the son of Louis and a daughter of Edward; and the release of Margaret of Anjou. Richard of Gloucester was the only one of the greater nobles in the train of Edward who evinced displeasure at these negotiations, in which the king of France had cajoled and degraded the English. Edward came home to an indignant people with a disappointed army. His soldiers compensated themselves for the loss of plunder in France by pillaging their own countrymen. The king went in person with the judges to try the offenders, and hung every one without mercy who was apprehended for the least theft.

The duke of Clarence lost his wife by poison, and Charles the Rash, duke of Burgundy, perished in 1477. That same year the king of Scotland proposed that Clarence should marry his sister, and that his brother, the duke of Albany, should marry the duchess of Burgundy. King Edward undertook to feel the dispositions of the persons interested. He found that the ambitious Clarence desired to wed the only daughter and heir of Charles of Burgundy, in which desire he was seconded by the widowed duchess, her step-mother. Edward resolutely opposed this scheme, and the brothers became enemies. At this time two of Clarence's dependants were accused of having designed by magic the death of the king and prince, and they were tried and executed. Clarence asserted their innocence before the council; and was immediately arrested by the king, and committed to the Tower, on the 16th of January, 1478. The obsequious peers found the imprudent prince guilty, and sentence of death was pronounced upon him. On the 7th of February, the Commons, by their speaker, demanded the execution of the sentence; and within ten days it was announced that the duke had died in the Tower. The suspicion that the duke of Gloucester was implicated in the condemnation of Clarence rests upon no evidence whatever.

Edward's daughter Cecily was engaged to the son and heir of the king of Scotland. James III. was of a contemplative and indolent nature, and he fell into the hands of favourites. The duke of Albany and the earl of Mar, the brothers of James, at last took the lead in the management of affairs, but soon excited the suspicion of the king that they aspired to the royal authority. Mar was put to death. Albany escaped to France. At this juncture James III. and Edward IV. quarrelled. The marriage treaty was broken off; and in 1480 there was war between England and Scotland. The duke of Gloucester, who was Warden of the Marches, commanded the English forces. The turbulent Scottish nobles seized their king. Albany and Gloucester marched to Edinburgh; and the rebellion and the war with England were ended, by Albany swearing to be a true and faithful subject, and Gloucester obtaining the strong post of Berwick, which ever after remained an English possession. In 1483, Louis of France broke off the contract which he had made with the king of England for the mar riage of the Dauphin and the Lady Cecily. He saw a more advantageous union for his son in the daughter of Mary of Burgundy. Edward was furious, and immediately determined for war. But he was now enfeebled in mind and body by long indulgence in every excess. A serious illness succeeded a slight ailment, and he died on the 9th of April, 1483, in the forty-second year of his age.

A.D. 1483.

PROTECTORATE OF DUKE OF GLOUCESTER.

151

At the death of his father, Edward, prince of Wales, was twelve years and a half old. He was residing in considerable state at Ludlow Castle, with a council, amongst whom were his maternal uncle, earl Rivers; his half-brother, sir Richard Grey; sir Thomas Vaughan, sir William Stanley, sir Richard Croft, and sir Richard Hawte. The bishop of Worcester, John Alcock, the president of his council, was the prince's preceptor. The queen's relations and friends were those who exclusively surrounded the heir to the throne.

Gloucester was in the north at the time of his brother's death. He went to London with a large number of his followers, with the alleged purpose of assisting at the coronation, which had been fixed for the 4th of May. On the 24th of April Edward V. left Ludlow, with Rivers, Vaughan, and Grey. They travelled on until they reached Northampton. There Gloucester and Buckingham arrived the same day; but the king had gone forward to Stony-Stratford, Rivers remaining at Northampton. The dukes of Gloucester and Buckingham passed the evening of the 29th of April in social companionship with Rivers. The next morning they surrounded him in his inn, and arrested him. They then rode on to Stony-Stratford, where they found the king and his company just ready to go forward. The dukes arrested lord Grey and sir Thomas Vaughan, and brought the king back to Northampton. When this news reached London the queen took refuge in the sanctuary of Westminster with her second son. At a meeting of the council, Hastings maintained that Gloucester and Buckingham had commanded the arrests, not for the king's jeopardy but for their own safety. On the 4th of May, Edward the Fifth publicly entered the city. The peers took the oath of fealty to the young king. At a great council of prelates, nobles, and citizens, Gloucester was appointed protector. Those of the prince of Wales's court who had been previously arrested-Rivers, Vaughan, Grey and Hawte-were kept prisoners at various castles, and were eventually beheaded at Pomfret. Buckingham received immediate rewards for his services. Appointments were heaped upon all who were in the interest of the protector.

Lord Hastings, the attached friend of Edward IV., had gone along with Gloucester and Buckingham in the arrest of the queen's kindred and friends. On Friday, the 13th of June, many lords were assembled in the Tower, arranging the solemnity of the coronation. At nine o'clock the protector entered. After talking a little while, he begged the lords to spare him, and left them. In about an hour he returned "all changed with a wonderful sour angry countenance, knitting the brows, frowning and fretting, and gnawing on his lips, and so sat him down in his place." The protector after a while, asked what they were worthy to have that compassed his destruction; and Hastings replied that they deserved to be punished as heinous traitors. At a signal from the protector, one without the chamber cried treason. Immediately the room was filled with armed men. Hastings and other nobles were arrested. "Then were they all quickly bestowed in divers chambers, except the lord chamberlain [Hastings], whom the protector bade speed and shrive him apace, 'for, by St. Paul,' quoth he, ‘I will

* More, p. 70.

not to dinner till I see thy head off.'" The unfortunate chamberlain was almost immediately beheaded on the green beside the chapel within the Tower. Richard pretended to the citizens and others that Hastings and the other lords were in a conspiracy against him and the duke of Buckingham.

The general council of the realm was held at the Tower. The protector had a special council at Crosby-place, where he kept his household. On the 16th of June, the duke of York was removed from his mother's protection in the sanctuary at Westminster. The archbishop of Canterbury pledged himself for the boy's safety.

But a

There was

The opening of parliament had been fixed for the 25th of June. supersedeas was received by the sheriffs of York on the 21st. some kind of assembly on the 25th, in which a bill was presented, claiming the crown for Richard, as his father's heir, in consequence of a pre-contract of matrimony having been made by Edward IV. with dame Eleanor Butler, daughter of the earl of Shrewsbury, by which his children became illegiti mate. Comines says that the bishop of Bath "discovered to the duke of Gloucester" that he had married King Edward IV. to a beautiful young lady, which marriage had taken place before the king's marriage with Lady Elizabeth Woodville.

On the 26th of June Richard sat down in the marble chair of Westminster Hall as King of England. On the 6th of July he was crowned at Westminster, with his queen. A great number of dukes, earls, lords and knights were present at this ceremony, which was conducted with the usual magnificence.

The "Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London"-the register-book of that fraternity-has this simple and impressive entry, under the date of the first year of Richard III. "And the two sons of King Edward were put to silence."* Fabyan says "the common fame went that King Richard had within the Tower put unto secret death the two sons of his brother." Comines speaks of Richard as one "who had caused the two sons of King Edward, his brother, to be put to death." The historian of Croyland, another contemporary writer, says that it was set abroad that the two sons of Edward IV. were deceased, but by what manner of violence was unknown. Bacon relates that when Henry VII. desired to prove the alleged imposture of Perkin Warbeck, by establishing the fact of the murder of the two princes, he committed sir James Tyrrel and John Deighton to the Tower. These two, the only survivors of four persons supposed to be implicated in the murder of the young princes, agreed in a tale to the effect that, on the warrant of Richard, sir James Tyrrel repaired to the Tower, where his two servants, Miles Forrest and John Deighton, executed the murder, by smothering the princes in their beds; that their bodies were buried under the stairs; but afterwards removed to some other place, which could not be known. Bacon derived this circumstantial story from the History of King Richard III.," attributed to sir Thomas More, but if written by him, compiled from the statements of Cardinal Morton, one of those who were arrested with Hastings. Before the publication of More's

Published by the Camden Society, 1852, p. 23.

A.D. 1483.

RICHMOND'S PLOT AGAINST RICHARD III. 153

history, in 1543, the narratives of the death of these princes were of a character far more vague. In 1674, on making a new staircase into the chapel of the White Tower, some bones were found under the old staircase, whose proportions "were answerable to the ages of the royal youths."

CHAPTER XII.

THE character of Richard III. was an extraordinary mixture of hateful and amiable qualities. He released the estates of Hastings from forfeiture, in favour of his widow and children. He secured her jointure to the widow of Rivers, and bestowed a pension on lady Oxford, whose husband was in prison. He moved about amongst the people as though he had no sense of having committed wrongs which would make him obnoxious; going a progress to Reading, Oxford, Gloucester, Tewkesbury, Worcester, Warwick, Coventry, Leicester, Nottingham, York. At the great city

of the north, Richard and his queen were again crowned in the minster. During the progress, he administered justice against offenders, and "heard the complaints of poor folks." All seemed to promise a reign of peace and security, however disturbed were its beginnings. But troubles suddenly sprung up in various parts of the country. Buckingham, who had been the chief instrument of placing Richard on the throne, now concerted with Morton a general insurrection against the rule of his former friend. They put themselves in communication with the earl of Richmond, who had been in Brittany during the reign of Edward IV. Margaret, countess of Richmond, the mother of the young earl, was the great granddaughter of John of Gaunt, and so was Margaret, countess of Stafford, the mother of Buckingham. But the father of Richmond's mother was the elder branch. Her husband was Henry, earl of Richmond, who was the son of Owen Tudor, a gentleman of Wales, whom Catherine, the widow of Henry V., had married. The Croyland Chronicle says, that a rising was about to take place for the release of the princes, when it was reported that they were dead; and that then the conspirators turned to Richmond as the object of their enterprise. Early chronicles and modern histories detail with much minuteness the negotiations which preceded the outbreak; involving communications between the countess of Richmond and the duke of Buckingham; plots between the countess and the widow of king Edward; the heads of the conspiracy going about in England inciting the commonalty to revolt; and, finally, the earl of Richmond sailing with five thousand Breton soldiers, and attempting a landing in Dorsetshire, simultaneously with the proclamation of himself as the coming king in Devonshire, Wiltshire, Kent, Berkshire, and Wales. The revolt was soon quelled by the energetic king. On the 23rd of October he issued a proclamation from Leicester, offering high rewards for the apprehension