RICHARD THE THIRD.* Tam origin of this book is a
peculiar one. Mr. Jesse was ambitious of writing an historical tragedy on the last War of the Roses, and, as a preparation, studied the characters of the time from original documents. The pursuit interested him, and the outturn of his labours was the tragedy, plus some pieces justificatives, in the shape of memoirs of the most interesting characters of the period. The result is something like a German edition of an obscure classic, the notes being very much more voluminous and interesting than the text. The tragedy is just good enough to escape satire and be for- gotten, while the memoirs are very fair and exceedingly readable. If Mr. Jesse will burn his tragedy and expand his materials into a complete series of Memoirs of the House of York, we think we can promise him a reception at least as favourable as that which awaited "England under the Stuarts." He is not, and never will be, an his- torian, but he tells stories well, and might become, if he would only repress a slight tendency to moralizing, a really good writer of inemoirscno slight or insignificant literary function. We shall con- fine our notice of his present work to its best portion, the memoir of Richard the Third. Most people have a vague notion that the popular idea of this king, derived as it is exclusively from Shakspeare, is exaggerated, but few have any distinct conception either of what he really was, or of the sort of evidence upon which the new version of his character ultimately rests. We shall do them, we think, a service by condensing Mr. Jesse's view, which we believe to be at once moderate and authentic.
Richard the Third was born at Fotheringay in Northampton. shire, the eleventh child of Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, and nearest of kin to Edward the Third, the common ancestor of all the royal houses'which have since his death reigned in Great Britain. His mother was also of royal blood, being the daughter of Ralph Neville who had married Joan Beaufort, daughter of John of Gaunt. From his earliest childhood he was bred up amidst the violence and confusion of civil war, and was only seven when, with his mother, he was im- prisoned by Henry the Sixth, and one of his earliest recollections must have been his father's death in the battle of Wakefield, and his mother's consequent flight to the Low Countries, where he re- sided nearly a year, studying, it would appear, at Utrecht. His brother's victory recalled him to Englan& where, still only nine years old, he was created Duke of Gloucester, and was educated after the manner of the nobles of that age. His brother Edward, who seems always to have regarded him with an affection he extended to no other member of his family, seems early to have determined to make him the greatest of barons, and gave him enormous estates, which had accrued to the crown by forfeitures. Some attention, however, seems to have been paid to family claims, for though the boy obtained some portion of the domains of John Lord Clifford, part of the Richmond property, forty-six manors of the Earl of Oxford, the whole property of the Duke of Somerset, with that of Lord "Hungerford, still it is to be noted that all these barons, Lords Oxford and Hiuigerford excepted, were in nearer or remoter de- grees his own kinsmen, being all the descendants of Edward the Third. At seventeen he was summoned to Parliament, and created Lord High Constable, and from this date he played an important part in politics. There is no direct evidence on the point, but there is strong indirect testimony that at eighteen, when with his brother lie was driven from England by a sudden change in the politics of the popular kingmaker, he was regarded as a singularly able man, likely to be the most formidable of his party. He returned of course with his brother, who, after a few months of exile, landed in Yorkshire without a follower, and in thirty-one days marched from Ravenspur to London, received the eager submission of the capital, remounted the throne, fought the battle of Barnet, and so utterly destroyed the Lancastrian faction that for fourteen years it never recovered energy
• Monoirs of King Itialard Me Third. By John Heneage Jesse. R. Bentley. for a dangerous rebellion. This series of exploits is almost without parallel in our history, and suggests strongly what we believe to have been the truth, that throughout the rebellion the people, as such, favoured the House of York, whose determined policy it was to re- press the nobles, and raise the communes and all men with fran- chises. In less than eighteen days more, Edward had advanced to the Severn, and 'fought the battle of Tewkesbury, which cemented his throne, and laid the foundation of the long list of calumnies which followed Richard to his grave. Edward, Prince of Wales, the Lan- castrian heir, died in the battle or after it, and Polydore Virgil ac- cuses Richard of having been the assassin. No contemporary gives any countenance to the charge; one contemporary denies it explicitly. De Comines, the ablest historian of the day, and very severe on Richard's subsequent career, says the prince was slain on the field, and the Warkworth and Fleetword Chronicles both make the same assertion. Mr. Jesse, in his exculpation, lays too much stress on character. "The young and brave," lie says, " are seldom cold-blooded assassins," as if history did not teem with such crimes committed by the young- and brave, from Mark Antony down to Orloff. But the only sound rule of criticism in cases where so violent a presumption of unfair- ness is raised as is created by the final victory of the Lancastrians, is to weigh evidence, and the evidence acquits the Duke of Glou- cester of the personal share in the deed. Cognizant of it he probably was, and he doubtless deemed his brother as right to put to death Edward Plantagenet as any other rebel taken red-handed. Seven- teen days after, Henry the Sixth died, and this crime also the populace attributed to him, apparently for no better reason than that, as the ablest of his family, lie was the one most likely to suggest a crime politically advantageous. He may have com- muted the crime, but if he did, he chose a day throughout the whole of which he can be proved to have been engaged in ceremonial to perpetrate a deed which could scarcely by any possibility bring him any advantage, and would certainly bring him popular execration. Henry the Sixth was not the last of his House, and was an incom- parably less formidable rival than many of the descendants of John of Gaunt. The murder brought Richard no nearer to the throne, for his brother Edward, whom lie served all his life faithfully, was a young man who might have died full of years, with children grown to man's. estate. Everybody in that age whose death was convenient to any- body else was said to be put to death, and of this crime also Richard may be acquitted.
One year after, Richard wooed and married Anne Neville, joint heiress of the King-maker, and the betrothed of Edward of Lan- caster. The marriage, for some inexplicable reason, is added to the catalogue of his crimes, the simple fact being that Anne was one of the very few ladies in England of blood equal to his own, and that the connexion made las authority over the Neville estates a natural as well as a legal one. There is not the smallest evidence of any com- pulsion. The legal right to give Anne away rested with the King, she willingly accepted Richard's protection, and she made him as good a wife as a sickly consumptive woman in that age could. Of the per- sonal deformity through which Shakspeare makes the marriage so repulsive, there is little evidence. Richard was certainly a soldier dreaded for personal prowess, and not one contemporary says any- thing about his frame except that lie was short, while the Countess of Desmond, who had danced with him, declared that he was the handsomest man in the room, his brother excepted. He seems, in fact, to have been a short, round-shouldered, slight-made man, with a face like that of an Italian priest, puckered forehead, and brooding eyes, exactly the figure and face men of that day, accustomed to the splendid form of his brother, and apt to admire only the prize-fighter build, thought contemptible. The execution of Clarence as a rebel followed, and again Richard was accused, the fact being that he had every interest in keeping up the sanctity of the blood royal, that the King pleaded against Clarence in the House of Lords, and that the Duke of Gloucester alone withstood him. Edward hated Clarence because lie had declared him illegitimate, a story which directly be- nefited Richard of Gloucester.
From this period, for some years Richard held the command of the Northern Marches, and in that office in 1482 invaded Scotland, captured Edinburgh, compelled the Scotch to sign a peace, and returned amidst universal applause and popularity.
Edward, worn out with excesses and drink, died in the following year (1483), and his son, a boy of thirteen, became at once the nominal king, and it was soon evident that the guardianship of the minor would be the pretext of another civil war. On one side stood the Barons, irritated and depressed by the measures of the court, and on the other the Woodvilles, the " Queen's kin," the new family who had contrived by marriages mid sequestrations, in less than ten years, to acquire some nine first-class peerages, together more than equal to the old Neville estates. They took possession of the lad, and barons and people turned alike to his uncle and natural guardian, Richard of Gloucester. Richard marched rapidly southward, arrested the Woodvilles at Northampton, obtainedpossession of the king, and with the universal approval of the nobles and people, was declared Protector of the realm. Preparations were rapidly pushed forward for the coronation, and it seemed for a few days probable that Richard would assume the position we now call that of Premier. It is impossible now to discover what changed his plans, but the proba- bility is that his own account was the correct one. He feared the Woodvilles would under a boy king regain their power, an event which would have been instantly followed by the horrors of civil war, horrors so widely imprinted into the popular mind, that years afterwards the mass of the people dreaded the failure of issue to Henry the Eighth as the greatest of calamities. He resolved to set aside his brother's children, and reign, as the Lancastrians had done, by virtue of a Parliamentary title. Using the weapon most familiar to those days, he declared his brother's marriage invalid by reason ofprecontract to Lady Eleanor Butler, a charge which he knew would be gladly endorsed by Parliament, glad to be rid of the Woodvilles on any terms. Parliament unanimously voted the two princes illegitimate, and pressed Richard to assume the crown, on condition of granting a long roll of requests. Richard obeyed, was crowned on the 26th June, 1483, and set out on a regal progress through the North, the chief seat of his personal authority. His departure was the signal for instant insurrection. A rumour spread fast through the land that the princes had been murdered; the Duke of Buckingham, chief of the great barons, declared himself convinced of the crime, and Richard found himself called upon to face the last great accusation of his life. The question of his guilt must, we believe, be left undecided, though -Mr. Jesse gives in a hostile verdict; for, at the best, we have only a balance of probabilities. It is quite certain that after Richard's coronation the two boys were never heard of again, for we utterly, reject Miss Halsted's theory that Perkin Warbeek was really the Duke of York. It is quite certain, also, that the popular voice accused him of the deed, that he took no steps to clear him- self beyond affirming, that the princes died a natural death, and that Molinet, a contemporary and the librarian of Mary of Burgundy, positively affirmed the murder. This is practically the whole of the evidence, for the story of the discovery of the bodies in Charles the Second's time is too suspicions to be believed. On the other hand, we have the entire absence of positive proof, and the most weighty of all arguments, the absence of any profit to Richard from the crime. What was he to put the princes to death for? Their death neither increased his Parliamentary nor his hereditary title. The first was complete, whether they lived or died ; the second was impeded by the Earl of Warwick and the other children of Clarence. True their father had been set aside by Parliamentary vote, but so had the princes themselves, and it is almost inconceivable that a king so madly jealous as Richard, under the popular theory, must have been, should have murdered the children of one elder brother and spared the children of another. He may have done it, but a jury of historians empanelled to try. a prisoner not doomed to infamy by a genius stronger than historians, would probably decide that a king accused without evidence of a murder which brought him no benefit was entitled to the benefit of the doubt. At all events his clergy thought so, for the Convocation, which comprised men of the purest character, Waynfleet, Bishop of Lincoln, and Fisher, afterwards the Bishop of Rochester beheaded by Henry the Eighth, signed, a few months after, a petition beginning thus
" SEEING TOUR MOST NOBLE AND BLESSED DISPOSITION IN ALL OTHER THINGS, we beseech you to take tender respect and consideration unto the pre- mises; and of yourself, as a most Catholic prince, to see such remedies, that under your most gracious letters patent the liberties of the Church may be con- firmed and sufficiently authorized by your high court of Parliament—rather en- larged than diminished."
The rest of Richard's story it is not necessary to repeat. He reigned but two years, and they were years so marked with wisdom that Lord Bacon declared him a " good lawmaker for the common people," and was fain to invent a theory of his hypocrisy. It is quite certain that he enforced even justice, reformed trial by jury by prohibiting packing, enlarged the law of bail, freed commerce, suppressed the right of the nobles to keep retinues, and so maintained the rights of the people, that Perkin Warbeek, in the next reign, declared him one who loved the contentment of his subjects. We need not search very deeply into history to know that wise rulers have committed great crimes, but we may look far before we find a sovereign whose cha- racter, when tested by every rule of evidence, is so uncertain as that of Richard the Third.
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