Did Richard, Duke of York, the younger of the Princes on the Tower, survive his imprisonment? In this revealing new book medieval historian David Baldwin presents an original and intriguing scenario. On 27 December 1550 an old man named Richard Plantagenet was buried at Eastwell in Kent. He had spent much of his life working as a bricklayer at St John's Abbey, Colchester, but, unusually for a bricklayer, he could read Latin. Reluctant to give any account of his background, he eventually told his employer that he was a natural son of Richard III. Yet, if this was true, why was he not publicly acknowledged by the king? Richard III made provision for his other bastards, John of Gloucester and Katherine. The fact that he was called Richard Plantagenet is also revealing. Had he simply been Richard III's bastard, he would have been styled 'of Gloucester' or given the name of his birthplace. And, most tellingly of all, where is the evidence that Prince Richard actually died? David Baldwin opens up an entirely new line of investigation and offers a startling solution to one of the most enduring mysteries in English history and a final exoneration for Richard III.
Did Richard, Duke of York, the younger of the Princes on the Tower, survive his imprisonment? In this revealing new book medieval historian David Baldwin presents an original and intriguing scenario. On 27 December 1550 an old man named Richard Plantagenet was buried at Eastwell in Kent. He had spent much of his life working as a bricklayer at St John's Abbey, Colchester, but, unusually for a bricklayer, he could read Latin. Reluctant to give any account of his background, he eventually told his employer that he was a natural son of Richard III. Yet, if this was true, why was he not publicly acknowledged by the king? Richard III made provision for his other bastards, John of Gloucester and Katherine. The fact that he was called Richard Plantagenet is also revealing. Had he simply been Richard III's bastard, he would have been styled 'of Gloucester' or given the name of his birthplace. And, most tellingly of all, where is the evidence that Prince Richard actually died? David Baldwin opens up an entirely new line of investigation and offers a startling solution to one of the most enduring mysteries in English history and a final exoneration for Richard III.
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Overview
Did Richard, Duke of York, the younger of the Princes on the Tower, survive his imprisonment? In this revealing new book medieval historian David Baldwin presents an original and intriguing scenario. On 27 December 1550 an old man named Richard Plantagenet was buried at Eastwell in Kent. He had spent much of his life working as a bricklayer at St John's Abbey, Colchester, but, unusually for a bricklayer, he could read Latin. Reluctant to give any account of his background, he eventually told his employer that he was a natural son of Richard III. Yet, if this was true, why was he not publicly acknowledged by the king? Richard III made provision for his other bastards, John of Gloucester and Katherine. The fact that he was called Richard Plantagenet is also revealing. Had he simply been Richard III's bastard, he would have been styled 'of Gloucester' or given the name of his birthplace. And, most tellingly of all, where is the evidence that Prince Richard actually died? David Baldwin opens up an entirely new line of investigation and offers a startling solution to one of the most enduring mysteries in English history and a final exoneration for Richard III.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780752479927 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The History Press |
| Publication date: | 11/30/2011 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 192 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
About the Author
The late David Baldwin taught medieval history and was the author of 'Elizabeth Woodville: Mother of the Princes of the Tower' and 'The Lost Prince: The Survival of Richard of York'.
Read an Excerpt
The Lost Prince
The Survival of Richard of York
By David Baldwin
The History Press
Copyright © 2013 David BaldwinAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7524-7992-7
CHAPTER 1
The Mystery of the Princes
The fate of the 'Princes in the Tower' is the most famous of all historical mysteries. It perplexed contemporaries much as it continues to puzzle modern writers, but no one has yet managed to discover what happened to the deposed King Edward V and Richard, Duke of York, his younger brother, after they were imprisoned in the Tower of London in the summer of 1483. Most books on the Princes are as long on background as they are short on answers, and most conclude that they were killed by their uncle, Richard III, or perhaps by his ally Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, or (less probably) by Henry VII. There is, of course, no proof that they were killed by anyone, and this book will argue that the younger boy survived and lived under an assumed name, in obscurity, until the middle of the sixteenth century. There can never be absolute certainty or there would hardly be a mystery in the first place; but the probability is that Richard III did not murder his nephews, and that the bones found in the Tower in 1674 and placed in an urn in Westminster Abbey are those of two other children whose names and origins will never be known.
The first problem that confronts any investigator into the Princes' disappearance is how knowledgeable contemporary writers with access to the court or court sources could not have known or discovered what had become of them. Edward V and his brother have always excited popular attention, and it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that both Richard III and Henry VII knew more about their disappearance than they chose to reveal to any but their most trusted counsellors. Both may have thought that a policy of 'least said, soonest mended' would best suit their purposes, and both would have sought to draw a veil over the matter if they knew that at least one of the boys was still living. Dead princes were a potential embarrassment, but a live prince, with a better claim to the throne than either of them, would have been a real danger and a closely guarded secret. Writers of histories were left to make what they could of it, and we must first see if anything can be gathered from the few conclusions they were able to reach.
The 'second continuation' of the Croyland (modern Crowland) Chronicle is one of the fullest and most detailed sources for the period, principally because its author served all three Yorkist kings in a senior capacity. He offered, or was invited, to add his memoirs to the rather poor efforts of the monks' own scrivener when he visited Croyland Abbey at the beginning of Henry VII's reign, and the result was a piece of first-rate historical writing containing many details that would otherwise be lost. We do not know his identity, although clues based on internal evidence point to John Russell, Bishop of Lincoln and Richard III's Chancellor, or John Gunthorpe, Dean of Wells and the King's Keeper of the Privy Seal, as the most likely candidates; but there can be no doubt that he possessed inside information and would have known what was being said of the Princes in dark corners at court. He could easily have included something of this in his narrative, but all he chooses to tell us is that when the Duke of Buckingham turned against King Richard in the autumn of 1483 (and presumably contemplated restoring young Edward), 'a rumour arose that King Edward's sons, by some unknown manner of violent destruction, had met their fate'. A rumour is a rumour irrespective of how many are persuaded to believe it, and the Continuator nowhere else mentions the Princes or indicates whether he thought (or knew) that the story was accurate. Professor Hanham suggests that he may have felt embarrassed by the way in which he and others had failed to stand up to Richard after the Princes' friends, Earl Rivers and Lord Hastings, had been brutally executed; but it is equally possible that he knew that at least one of the boys had outlived King Richard, and would not risk endangering him by a single word of 'loose talk'.
The second commentator who was well placed to learn the fate of the Princes was Henry VII's court historian Polydore Vergil. Vergil was born in Urbino, in Italy, about 1470, and came to England when his patron, Adriano Castelli, was appointed Bishop of Hereford in 1502. He brought with him a reputation as a humanist historian and man of letters, and the King asked him to research and write a history of England in about 1506. He spent the next seven years working on the project, and, although he could not match the Croyland writer's personal involvement in the events of the later fifteenth century, he made up for it by studying official documents and by consulting 'those who had often been employed in the highest business of state'. His avowed aim was to be both truthful and impartial, but the critical part of the Anglica Historia is inevitably coloured by the interpretation that Henry VII and his ministers wished to place on the recent past. King Richard, he alleges, decided to rid himself of the Princes when he was at Gloucester at the beginning of August 1483, and sent instructions to this effect to Sir Robert Brackenbury, the constable of the Tower. Brackenbury delayed implementing the 'cruel' and 'horrible' order, hoping that the King would reconsider the matter; but, when word of his reluctance was communicated to Richard, he (Richard) 'anon commyttyd the charge of hastening that slawghter unto another, that is to say James Tyrrell, who, being forcyd to do the kings commandment, rode sorowfully to London, and, to the woorst example that hath been almost ever hard [heard] of, murderyd those babes of thyssew [the issue] royall'.
Vergil's story is based on a confession allegedly made by Tyrell while he was in the Tower of London awaiting execution for other, unrelated, offences, in 1502. It seemed to be the last word on the matter, but if the information had always been available why had the King not used it against the pretender Perkin Warbeck in the 1490s? Tyrell's admission of guilt would have been an excellent way of refuting Warbeck's claim that he was the younger of the two Princes, and it does not say much for Henry's intelligence services if Sir James had successfully concealed his part in the murders for nearly twenty years. The 'confession' no longer exists – perhaps it was never written down anyway – and it is possible that Tyrell, who had been close to Richard III and was now about to be silenced, was simply used as a scapegoat. The government may have decided that 'proof' of the Princes' deaths would help to deter future pretenders, and Vergil was obliged to follow the official 'line' when he came to write his version of the story. This would have cut against the grain – particularly if he knew that one of the boys was still living – and he concludes his account with the curious comment that 'with what kinde of death these sely [innocent] chyldren wer executyd yt is not certanely known'. It beggars belief that Tyrell could have confessed without someone asking him how he had killed the boys, and it is just possible that Vergil is hinting (as far as he could in the circumstances) that what he was writing was not the answer to the mystery it claimed to be.
This brings us to two men who were not themselves courtiers (in the broadest sense of the word) when they wrote their commentaries, but who had access to knowledgeable court figures. The first, Dominic Mancini, was an Italian ecclesiastic whom Angelo Cato, King Louis XI of France's doctor and counsellor, sent to England to gather information, possibly in the summer or autumn of 1482. He was thus in London when Edward V was deposed by his uncle, although he appears to have left very shortly after 6 July 1483, when Cato recalled him and when his narrative ends. He may not have known English and would have relied on fellow Latin or Italian speakers to tell him what was happening; but one of his informants was almost certainly John Argentine, the young King's doctor. Mancini's story of how the two boys were deprived of their attendants and kept in closer confinement 'and day by day began to be seen more rarely behind the bars and windows, till at length they ceased to appear altogether' may be based on gossip, but he then tells us that Dr Argentine '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'. It is usually assumed that Edward V knew that three of his recent predecessors, Edward II, Richard II and Henry VI, had all been murdered by their supplanters (irrespective of any assurances they had been given when they were deposed or forced to abdicate), and feared that his own demise was now inevitable. But, if Dr Argentine was attending him regularly, he was presumably in need of medical assistance, and could have witnessed enough illness and death in his short life to expect the worst. It is interesting that Argentine did not, according to Mancini, say that Prince Richard also expected to die in the near future, although it would have been pointless to kill the ex-king without also eliminating his heir apparent. Mancini wrote that he had 'seen many men burst forth into tears and lamentations when mention was made of him [Edward V] after his removal from men's sight; and already there was a suspicion that he had been done away with'. But he could obtain no confirmation of this from Argentine, and was obliged to admit that, 'whether, however, he has been done away with, and by what manner of death, so far I have not at all discovered' when he reported to Cato on 1 December 1483.
Thomas More, our second informed source, was only 7 years old when Richard III was killed at Bosworth and had not embarked on his distinguished career in royal service when he wrote his unfinished History of the King in 1513. Regrettably, he did not return to the subject after he became a senior minister and perhaps gained access to privileged information, but he had spent several of his boyhood years in the household of John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury, one of the few men who enjoyed Henry VII's confidence and who almost certainly knew what had become of the Princes. Morton, who thought More a youth of great promise, may have hinted to him, almost teasingly, that there were certain things that must remain hidden; and this may be why More qualifies his otherwise full and apparently indisputable account of the boys' murder with the statement: 'I shall rehearse you the dolorous end of those babes, not after every way that I have heard, but after that way that I have so heard by suche men and by such meanes as me thinketh it wer hard but it should be true' (emphasis added).
More wrote at the same time as Polydore Vergil, and, like Vergil, based his story on Sir James Tyrell's alleged confession. The difference is that More named the men whom Tyrell had employed to kill the Princes and described how they met their fate in graphic detail, information that was not, apparently, available to Polydore. It would be tempting to suppose that More had learned this from Morton, who died two years before Vergil arrived in England; but Morton's death also pre-dated Tyrell's confession, and it is hard to imagine a senior statesman regaling a teenager with state secrets. The probability is that, if More ever heard any of this from Morton, it was designed to obfuscate the truth rather than reveal it, and More the eminent lawyer would not, arguably, have betrayed any real confidences his late master had imparted to him. He concludes his account of the Princes' fate with the words 'and thus as I have learned of them that much knew and litle cause had to lye'. He appears, at first glance, to be assuring his readers that his account is based on sound evidence, but a more subtle interpretation would be that he does not vouch personally for its accuracy. His real aim was to warn 'of the evils which permeate a kingdom when tyranny is allowed to take the place of wise government and good order', as his modern editor has it, and a dramatic story does not always tell the whole truth.
The Croyland writer, Vergil, Mancini and More were arguably best placed to know what had become of the Princes, but they were not the only contemporary and nearcontemporary commentators to claim or suspect that they had been killed within a short time of Edward V's deposition. Most foreign observers thought that this was what had happened and placed the blame squarely on King Richard's shoulders. The French chancellor Guillaume de Rochefort, addressing the Estates General at Tours on 15 January 1484, reminded his hearers of how King Edward's children, 'already big and courageous, have been put to death with impunity, and the royal crown transferred to their murderer by the favour of the people', while his fellow courtier Philippe de Commines wrote in his Memoirs that the Duke of Gloucester 'killed Edward's two sons, declared his daughters bastards, and had himself crowned king'. The Castilian Diego de Valera informed Ferdinand and Isabella in March 1486 that 'it is sufficiently well known to your royal majesty that this Richard killed two innocent nephews of his to whom the realm belonged after his brother's life', and Casper Weinrich of Danzig wrote that 'later this summer [1483] Richard the king's brother seized power and had his brother's children killed and the queen secretly put away ...'. Some English writers were no less emphatic. The Warwickshire ecclesiastic John Rous told how 'the usurper King Richard III ascended the throne of the slaughtered children'; the unknown author of the London chronicle British Library Cotton Vitellius AXVI noted that 'he also put to death the two children of King Edward, for which cause he lost the hearts of the people'; and Robert Ricart, recorder of Bristol, stated that 'in this year [i.e. the year ending 15 September 1483] the two sons of King Edward were put to silence in the Tower of London'.
Some of these writers were not as sure as they pretended to be, however, while others were clearly pursuing their own agendas. Guillaume de Rochefort was seeking to emphasise the likely consequences if the French nobility failed to unite behind their own boy king, Charles VIII; Diego de Valera mistakenly thought that Richard had killed his nephews during his brother's reign, while 'King Edward their father was waging war in Scotland'; and John Rous had prudently amended the laudatory opinion of Richard he had expressed in his Roll in the King's lifetime. Philippe de Commines qualified his earlier statement by suggesting elsewhere that it was Richard's principal ally, Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, 'who had put the two children to death', a view also canvassed by the author of the Dutch Divisie Chronicle, composed about 1500, which mentions a rumour that the Princes had died of starvation (a tale told of Richard II, incidentally), adding, 'some others will say that the Duke of Buckingham killed these children hoping to become king himself'. A fragment of narrative in the Ashmolean collection (MS Ashmole 1448.60) claims that Richard killed the boys 'at the prompting of the Duke of Buckingham as it is said', while the brief chronicle edited by Richard Firth Green under the title The Historical Notes of a London Citizen (College of Arms MS 2M6) says that they were put to death in the Tower by Buckingham's 'vise' (that is, by his devising or on his advice).
The Great Chronicle of London, a work probably composed by the draper Robert Fabyan, is still less certain. Fabyan noted that after Easter 1484 there was 'much whysperyng among the people that the kyng hadd put the childyr of kyng Edward to deth', but then betrays his lack of any real knowledge by suggesting that they might have been poisoned, smothered or even drowned in malmsey wine! Perhaps some of these writers would have quietly concurred with Thomas More's comment that the Princes' 'death and final infortune [misfortune] hathe natheles [nevertheless] so far comen in question that some remain yet in doubt whither they wer in his [Richard's] dayes destroyde or no'.
The most obvious way for Richard's apologists to prove that he was not involved in the boys' murders was to search for evidence that they were still living some time after their disappearance and, preferably, had survived beyond 22 August 1485. British Library Harleian Manuscript 433, the record kept by Richard's clerks of the signet, refers to high-born children who were living in the King's northern household at Sheriff Hutton castle in July 1484, and also mentions a 'lord bastard' who received an allowance of clothing on 9 March 1485. The first specifies that 'my lord of Lincolne [the King's lieutenant] and my lord Morley to be at oon [one] brekefast, the Children togeder at oon brekefast [and] suche as be present of the Counsaille at oon brekefast', while the second is a warrant to Henry Davy (a tailor employed by the Great Wardrobe) 'to deliver to John Goddeslande fotemane unto the lord Bastard two dublettes of silk, oon jaket of silk, oone gowne of gloth, two shirtes and two bonetes'. It would be tempting to suggest that the Princes were among the children residing at Sheriff Hutton or that the 'lord bastard' was either Edward V or Prince Richard, but nothing can be said with certainty. The executed Duke of Clarence's son and daughter together with Princess Elizabeth of York and perhaps some of Edward IV's other daughters were members of the northern household, and, while the illegitimate young lord who received the clothes could have been one of the boys in question, he could also have been John of Gloucester (or Pomfret), King Richard's own bastard son.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Lost Prince by David Baldwin. Copyright © 2013 David Baldwin. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
List of Illustrations,Table showing the York, Lancaster and Tudor Genealogies,
Time Chart of the Principal Events of English History during the Period Covered by this Book,
Introduction,
One The Mystery of the Princes,
Two Richard of Eastwell,
Three Richard of York,
Four Uncle Richard,
Five Into the Tower,
Six The Colchester 'Connection',
Seven In the Shadows,
Eight 'Cousin' Henry,
Nine King Richard IV?,
Appendix One. Richard Plantagenet: A Legendary Tale,
Appendix Two. Some Journalistic Asides,
Appendix Three. The Hopper Ring,
A Note for Visitors to St Mary's Church, Eastwell,
Notes,
Select Bibliography,