Richard The Chird (64 page)

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spective being unknown in this age. According to the chronicle, "Some said they were murdered atween two feather beds, Some said they were drowned in malvesey [remaining no doubt from the execution of their uncle George of Clarence!] and some said that they were sticked with a venomous potion." It seems safe to say that two decades after Richard's reign, Fabyan, the Great Chronicle, and Rous have still nothing to contribute but rumor, and that the rumors themselves are sprung from nothing more than suspicion. To suppose that the authentic details of the murder would naturally remain hidden even though a true report of the murder itself leaked out is to predicate the broad improbability that the very nucleus, the inner core, of the secret could somehow wriggle free without bringing a single shred of its attendant circumstances with it.

We come now to the Tudor tradition; it is a leap into another world, particularly in the case of Sir Thomas More's Richard HI. The sparse and uncommunicative desert where grew only scattered shoots of suspicion that Richard was guilty suddenly blossoms into luxuriant certainty. The unreliability of More and Vergil I have demonstrated in the notes to the text and in Appendix II. More's story, and then Vergil's, must be examined, however, for what gleams of light they may cast upon the darkness.

In amazing contrast to what has preceded, More, writing about 1513, tells a brilliantly circumstantial story:

When Richard in his summer's progress of 1483 reached Gloucester, he suddenly decided that he must kill his nephews to secure his throne and so dispatched one John Grene "whom he specially trusted" with a letter and credence to Sir Robert Brack-enbury, Constable of the Tower, commanding Brackenbury to put the children to death. When Grene bore back the blunt answer of Brackenbury that he would never do the deed, Richard, now at Warwick, said to "a secret page of his" that night as he brooded angrily on Brackentmry's refusal, "Ah, whom shall a man trust . . . ?" The page had a ready answer: "Sir . . . 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 James Tyrell, a very ambitious man who was jealous of the favor which Ratcliffe and Catesby had won from the King. Richard at once summoned Tyrell to his chamber and "brake to him secretly his mind in this mischievous matter." Finding Tyrell instantly ready for the work, Richard armed him with a letter to Brackenbury, commanding that the keys of the Tower be delivered to Tyrell for one night. The Princes, according to More, were then in the exclusive charge of one William Slaughter, who, however, makes no further appearance in the story. As assassins Tyrell appointed Miles Forest, one of the four custodians of the Princes, "a fellow fleshed in murder before time," and "one John Dighton his own horsekeeper, a big broad square strong knave." All the other attendants having been sent away, about midnight Forest and Dighton stole upon the sleeping Princes, "suddenly lapped them up among the [bed] clothes/ 5 forced the "featherbed and pillows hard unto their mouths," and so dispatched them. Tyrell had them buried at once "at the stair foot, meetly deep in the ground under a great heap of stones." When Tyrell apprised Richard of the deed, the King gave him great thanks "and as some say there made him knight." But Richard "allowed not, as I have heard, the burying in so vile a corner. . . . Whereupon they say that a priest of Sir Robert Brackenbury took up the bodies again, and secretly interred them in such place, as by the occasion of his death, which only knew it, could never since come to light."

The very incongruities and errors within this tale explode its claim on our belief.

First, it is inconceivable that any king, for the dispatch of business so desperately requiring secrecy, would employ letters such as Grene and Tyrell are supposed to have carried. The elaborateness of the dialogue alone, however, suggests that More's vivid imagination considerably worked up whatever information he did receive.

Second, James Tyrell needed no recommendation of a nameless page, nor did Richard for his dastardly deed "as some say [make] him knight." He had been a confidential servant of Richard's for at least a decade; he was knighted after the battle

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of Tewkesbury in 1471; and for his good service in the Scots campaign of 1482 Richard had made him knight banneret. By the time Richard set out on his progress Tyrell was both Master of the King's Henchmen and Master of the Horse.

Third, Sir Robert Brackenbury cuts an impossible figure in the story. Having made his courageous and terribly dangerous refusal one week, he is, the next, confronted by Tyrell with a written notice to surrender the keys of the Tower for one night. Could he fail to guess TyrelTs business? And what of Will Slaughter and his assistants whom Tyrell did not employ? Abruptly turned out for a night and the next day finding the Princes gone, do they never let loose a word in an alehouse of this surprising circumstance? What does Richard, supposedly so ruthless, do about Brackenbury, hideously dangerous to him because he is so bold and honest? He bestows on Brackenbury, as upon one who has served him faithfully and well, a notable series of grants and offices — grants and offices which nobody ascribes to bribery. And how does honest Brackenbury express his horror of what the King has done? At Richard's call in August of 1485 he rushes north with all the men he can gather and dies fighting for his master. Vergil likewise uses the incident of Brackenbury's stout refusal to do the evil deed. Apparently the Constable of the Tower, called "gentle Brackenbury" by the Chronicle of Calais, was so well remembered for his integrity and charm of character that in order to make this tale of the murder of the Princes convincing, a clumsy device had to be invented to fit into it somehow this much-admired man who was responsible for their custody. But so clumsy does the invention become that he is again involved in the deed portrayed as repulsive to him: a priest of his is said to have removed the bodies to another place — quite a task for a cleric to accomplish in a hurry if, as the description has it, they were buried "deep in the ground under a great heap of stones."

More's story is liberally sprinkled with names— John Grene, who bore the first mandate to Brackenbury; Miles Forest, one of the murderers, who afterward "at sainct Martens pecemele rotted away [an edifying spectacle!]"; and John Dighton, TyrelTs

"horsekeeper." John Grene is of course a very common name, and at least two John Grenes can be found in the register of Richard's grants. One John Grene was appointed Receiver of the Isle of Wight (a rather remote post in which to plant a man so dangerous, on whom one would wish to keep a close eye); another John Grene, of Warwickshire, w r as issued, along with other men of the same neighborhood, a pardon in September of 1483. A Miles Forest died sometime before September of 1484; an annuity of five marks was granted to his widow, one of many such grants to widows. Forest had been Keeper of the Wardrobe —the date of his appointment being unknown—at Barnard Castle, more than two hundred miles from London. There is a John Dighton mentioned as the bailiff of the manor of Aytoun; another John Dighton was presented by Henry VII with the living of Fulbeck near Grantham in May of 1487. Neither of these men much resembles TyrelTs burly "horsekeeper." Since More's story presents so many inaccuracies and absurdities regarding its leading figures, Brackenbury and Tyrell, there is no reason to suppose that it is any more accurate or reasonable in its use of minor figures like Grene, Forest, and Dighton, about whom almost nothing is known. It will appear, furthermore, from the circumstances under which this so-called information was secured, that it would not be very hard to come by a set of names.

The source More gives for his story is most impressive; it is nothing less than a confession of the murders made by Sir James Tyrell himself shortly before he was executed by Henry VII —for quite another-crime—in May of 1502. The disparity between the authenticity of such a source and the incongruities of the tale will appear less puzzling when the circumstances of the "confession" are examined.

Sir James Tyrell occupies a unique—in More's terms, a mor-dantly ironic—position in the history of his times. He is the only intimate officer of Kong Richard's to continue a successful career under Henry VII.

When Bosworth was fought he was serving as the Captain of Guisnes Castle, one of the two fortresses protecting Calais. A month after the battle he was deprived of his sheriffdom of

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Glamorgan and Morgannok and a number of other offices in Wales, but he was not attainted in Henry's first Parliament. He sat tight in Guisnes, a strong position; and he soon began to climb into favor. In February of 1486 he was restored for life to the very offices he had lost the previous September. Continuing to hold Guisnes, he served on diplomatic missions of importance. He jousted at the tournament celebrating the creation of Henry VIFs younger son, Henry, as Duke of York. Henry called him his faithful councilor. He eschewed the causes of the false Pretenders, Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck. Interestingly enough, however, when a true scion of the White Rose crossed his path, his allegiance to Henry apparently faltered. After the Earl of Suffolk, Lincoln's younger brother, fled to the Continent in the summer of 1501, Tyrell was accused, perhaps by Sir Richard Nanfan, deputy lieutenant of Calais, of having given Suffolk treasonable aid. A spy's report to Henry VII about 1503 records that Nanfan once remarked "how long was it ere his grace and his council would believe anything of untruth to be in Sir James Tyrell; and some said I did seek to do him hurt for malice."

In the late winter or early spring of 1502 the garrison of Calais besieged Guisnes in an effort to arrest Tyrell for treason. He was finally lured from his stronghold by a safe-conduct given under the Privy Seal. The moment he came aboard ship to confer with Sir Thomas Lovell, Chancellor of the Exchequer, he was told that unless he sent a token to his son ordering the surrender of the castle, he would instantly be tossed into the sea. When he had complied, he and his son Thomas were promptly clapped into the Tower. This is the story told by Suffolk himself only six days after Tyrell's execution; it is confirmed by a bitter remark Lord Sandys made in a letter of January, 1537, to Thomas Cromwell: "It appears that the privy seal was a ruse to induce Sir James Tyrell to come to England."

On Monday, May 2, at Guildhall, Sir James was tried on a charge of high treason because of his association with Suffolk, before a commission of oyer and terminer composed of some of the greatest officers and lords of the realm. With him were

arraigned one Wellesbourne (a servant of his), a nameless "ship-man," Sir John Wyndham, and a few others. Condemned the same day, he and Wyndham were beheaded on Tower Hill on Friday, May 6. The following day TyrelTs son Thomas was also condemned for treason; but he was not executed and he eventually secured the reversal of the attainders of his father and himself, which had been enacted, along with numerous other attainders, in the Parliament of 1503-04.

What says More? "Very truth is it and well known," he concludes his tale, "that at such time as Sir James Tyrell was in the Tower, for treason committed against . . . 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. . „ . Dighton indeed yet walketh on a live in good possibility to be hanged ere he die."

King Henry could have desired nothing more than to prove that the Princes were dead and that an intimate servant of King-Richard's had confessed to killing them upon Richard's command. Henry's baby son Edmund had died two years before; Arthur, his eldest son and husband of Katherine of Aragon, had suddenly died, to Henry's consternation, only a month before Tyrell was executed. The male succession of the Tudor dynasty now hung by one life, that of Prince Henry. His father knew that the hopes of the White Rose would soon be stirring, as indeed they did stir less than a year later. 2 Perkin Warbeck had been executed a few years before; there had been at least three other "feigned boys." When might not another Pretender, encouraged by the shakiness of the Tudor dynasty, blaze up in the guise of one of King Edward's sons to rally the following of York and the many men who were discontented with the asperities of Tudor rule? Ever since he had mounted the throne it had been of great importance to Henry to prove the Princes murdered; now it was of more pressing importance than ever. A confession by Tyrell would be a Heaven-sent piece of fortune. On the scaffold, as was customary, Tyrell would cry his confession aloud before he died. Copies of the document, signed by Tyrell,

would be circulated through the court and the realm that all might know the truth. . . .

But nothing like this happened. Sometime—an unknown time— after Tyrell's execution, King Henry simply let it be known that Tyrell and a servant of his had, upon being examined in the Tower, confessed to the crime. According to More, the King likewise remarked that this servant, Dighton, was still alive and at liberty. Apparently, however, neither More himself nor any other chronicler had ever actually talked with this man or heard his story. No John Dighton is recorded among those arraigned with Tyrell, or arrested. And what led Henry suddenly to suppose that Tyrell knew anything about the fate of the Princes? It seems clear that if the King had got anything resembling a confession from Tyrell he would have published it; there is no proof that he even tried to get anything from Tyrell. Considering the pressing need to confirm the Princes' death and TyrelTs well-known connection with Richard's government, Henry had probably decided that he might gain some advantage by dropping the remark that Tyrell and a servant of his, still actually alive, had confessed to killing the Princes. The stratagem cost him nothing and might do some good, weak though it was.

Bacon's attitude toward this story is of interest. His source of information appears to have been More. Bacon has no doubt that King Richard murdered the Princes, but here is his comment upon this version of the deed: "Tyrell and Dighton agreed both in a tale (as the King gave out). . . . But the King nevertheless made no use of them [the examinations of Tyrell and Dighton] in any of his declarations; whereby (as it seems) those examinations left the business somewhat perplexed. And as for Sir James Tyrell, he was soon after beheaded in the Tower yard for other matters of treason. But John Dighton (who it seerneth spake best for the King) was forthwith set at liberty, and was the principal means of divulging this tradition."