Gairdner J. History of the Life and Reign of Richard the Third: To which is Added the Story of Perkin Warbeck from Original Documents

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8O LIFE OF RICHARD III. CH. III.

Duke of Gloucester, for the Duke of Clarence had been

attainted, and his children were cut off from the succession.

So the story is told by the contemporary chronicler Fabyan.

But if we may trust the somewhat later account of Sir Thomas

More, the preacher did not confine himself to this plea.

Indeed Polydore Vergil, writing about the same time as

Sir Thomas, or shortly after him, positively denies that he

advanced this plea at all, but quite another one, namely,

that King Edward IV. himself and his brother Clarence

were bastards, so that in fact King Edward had never been

lawfully possessed of the crown, and that his issue and that

of Clarence ought both to be cut off from the succession, as

neither the one nor the other was really the son of Richard,

Duke of York, although they had been always so reputed. In

short, to advance the protector's claim to the crown the

calumny Poacher did not scruple to asperse the chastity

set

forth of the protector's mother. And this he must have

against

the * .

Protector's been distinctly authorised to do by the protector

himself,

who, though at this time, or only a few

days later, residing in his mother's mansion of Baynard's

Castle, was not ashamed to put forth an odious and impro-

bable calumny against his parent for the furtherance of his

own ambitious ends.

It is certainly difficult to realise the fact that a scandal so

revolting—and it may be added, so perfectly unnecessary for

the purpose for which it was intended—should have been thus

deliberately propounded by authority. But it is clear, even

from Fabyan's account, that the people were scandalised at

the assertions in Dr Shaw's sermon, and that, notwithstanding

his previous reputation as a man of learning and ability, the

preacher 'lived in little prosperity after

.' Political sermons

Fabyan might have said that he lived scarcely more than a twelve-

month after; for he died in 1484 and his successor in the prebend of

Cadington Minor in St Paul's was presented on the 21st August in that

year. Newcourt's Repertorium, i. 131.

A.D.

1483. DR SHAW'S SERMON. 81

had been preached at Paul's Cross before then to prepare the

way for coming changes. From that pulpit the King-Maker's

chaplain had proclaimed Edward IV. an usurper

. But never

before had the people listened to a tale so extraordinary and

so indecorous. Richard, indeed, was not altogether the author

of the calumny, for, as we have already seen, it had been

thrown out against Edward by his brother Clarence before.

But with Clarence it was probably no more than a hasty

expression uttered in a moment of anger. In this case it

was a disgraceful political figment, devised by a son in utter

disregard of his mother's reputation. Yet it is scarcely possible

to doubt the fact; for when Polydore Vergil wrote, in the

days of Henry VIII., there were noblemen still alive to whom

the Duchess of York had complained of the dishonour done

to her

Family feeling, indeed, was not over-refined in the fifteenth

century,—least of all among the younger members of the

House of

York.

Feudalism had been always a great enemy to

domestic affection, and civil war had well-nigh destroyed in

those days every touch of nature and humanity, till it seemed

that anything might be justified for the sake of power. But

in Richard, besides unscrupulous daring, there was a certain

Habington in Kennett, i. 444.

Polydore Vergil, 545. Moreover, if Polydore be thought an unsafe

authority, we have still stronger evidence. For in 1535 the Imperial

ambassador Chapuys, in conversation with Thomas Cromwell, secretary of

Henry VIII., alluded to the fact as something quite notorious. King

Richard, he said, had proclaimed his brother Edward IV. a bastard and

called his own mother to bear witness of the fact, besides getting preachers

to proclaim it. And Cromwell, for his part, confessed that this was true.

Calendar of Henry

VIII.,

Vol. viii. p. 281. The only thing which can be

exaggeration is that Richard called his mother to bear witness to her own

shame; which presumably he could not have expected her to do except

under great intimidation. And yet if such a thing was actually alleged,

and believed, as we have seen, fifty years afterwards, it is clear that we

must not reject things as incredible, simply because they are monstrous.

82 LIFE OF RICHARD III. CH. III.

Machiavellian cunning that at times overshot the mark; and

if we may believe the story related by More, he had devised

on this occasion to give dramatic effect to Dr Shaw's sermon,

by making his appearance among the people just when the

preacher was setting forth his title as the only legitimate

branch of the House of York. At this point it was expected

that his presence, giving greater effect to the preacher's oratory,

would cause his hearers to look upon his words as if they were

inspired by the Holy Ghost, and to cry out, ' King Richard!

King Richard !' The artifice, however, did not succeed. The

preacher was too fast, and the protector was too slow. The

former, fearing his patron would arrive before he got his

discourse to the point, hurried over his argument to be

ready; the latter, to avoid making a premature appearance,

loitered by the way. The consequence was, the doctor had

come to the point and passed it and entered into other

matters long before the duke arrived; and when at last he

saw him coming, the only thing he could do was to leave

the matter in hand and go back upon his discourse. ' This,'

he said, 'is the very noble prince, the special patron of

knightly prowess, who, as well in all princely behaviour

as in the lineaments and favour of his visage, representeth

the very face of the noble Duke of York, his father. This

is his father's own figure, this his own countenance, the

very print of his visage, the sure undoubted image, the

plain express likeness of the noble duke, whose remembrance

can never die while he liveth.' During the utterance of these

words the protector and the Duke of Buckingham walked

through the crowd, expecting a popular demonstration. ' But,'

says More, 'the people were so far from crying, "King

Richard!" that they stood as they had been turned into

stones for wonder of this shameful sermon.'

On the following Tuesday the Duke of Buckingham,

accompanied by some other lords and knights, came to the

Guildhall of London, and addressed a meeting of the mayor

A.D.

1483. BUCKINGHAM'S SPEECH. 83

and citizens on the same subject. The duke, being a culti-

vated man and an admirable speaker

, delivered

what he had to say with a fluency and eloquence hanTad"

that won the admiration of many who could by no citizen" ^n*

means admire the drift of his discourse. ' Many j5chMd

a wise man,' says Fabyan, who was probably present,

'that day marvelled and commended him for the good ordering

of his words, but not for the intent and purpose which there-

upon ensued.' He began by stating that he came to offer them

what they had long sought in vain—the blessings of good

government, surety of their own bodies, the quiet of their

wives and daughters, the safety of their property. Of these

things, owing to the extortions and licentiousness of the late

king, they had stood in continual doubt, and he referred to one

or two notorious cases of cruelty and injustice

. Rich men

were always in danger for their wealth, and great men for their

lands,

while more suit was made to the king's mistress, Jane

Shore, than to all the lords in England. No women, rich or poor,

young or old, were safe from the king's attentions. He had,

moreover, a wife alive at the time he had married Elizabeth

Woodville, whose family was quite unworthy of the distinction

of being thus joined to the blood royal. Nor could it be said

the marriage had been happy in its consequences, seeing that

it had led to civil war, in which great part of the noble blood

of England had been shed. It was, in fact, as Dr Shaw had

shown in his sermon, and for the reason already stated, an

unlawful marriage; so that the children were bastards. And

These qualities, if Shakespeare is right, must have descended to his

son; of whom, in the play of Henry

VIII.,

the king is made to say: 'The

gentleman is learned and a most rare speaker.' Sir Thomas More says of

the father: ' He was neither unlearned, and of nature marvellously well

spoken.'

More does not mention it as a part of the duke's discourse, though

Buckingham is not likely to have passed over the fact, that the Woodvilles

were to some extent implicated in these acts of injustice, especially in the

case of Sir Thomas Cooke, to which reference was made.

6—2

84 LIFE OF RICHARD III. CH. III.

as there was no other lawful issue of Richard, Duke of York, to

whom the crown had been entailed by Parliament, it followed

that the right to the crown devolved upon the protector. For

this reason the nobles and commons of the realm, particularly

those of the North, had determined to make humble petition

to that prince to take the rule as king, especially considering

the inconvenience of having a child as sovereign; and they

hoped the city of London would join in the request.

But, able and eloquent as the appeal undoubtedly was, it

met with no response. The people remained dumb; the duke

was abashed; the lord mayor grew nervous and taxed his

invention to explain their silence. He said, at length, that

they were not accustomed to be spoken to except by the

recorder, who was the mouthpiece of the city; and that officer

was accordingly called upon to recapitulate the matter to

them. At last, the question being distinctly proposed, whether

the citizens, in concert with all the nobles, would have the

protector for their king, some servants of the duke and the

protector at the other end of the hall raised a cry of ' King

Richard

King Richard !' and flung up their caps into the air.

This the duke and mayor accepted as the voice of the city, and

requested that the citizens would next day accompany them to

lay their petition before the protector

himself.

Next day was the day on which Parliament had been

The 'super- summoned to meet; but it appears by the York

sedeas.

Q-^

ecor(

tnat

erse

deas had been

issued to prevent its assembling

. This fact, which has only

been revealed by recent investigations, affords matter for specu-

lation. Was it to aid the designs of an usurper that the

meeting of Parliament was countermanded? The

supersedeas

was received by the sheriffs of York on the 21st of June, but

the day on which it was issued is unknown. Mr Davies thinks

its date must have been about the 16th or 17th, which would

More.

Davies' York Records, p. 154.

A.D.

1483. THE SUPERSEDEAS. 85

allow four or five days for its transmission. If

so,

the order to

set aside the meeting of Parliament must have been taken at

the very time that the protector obtained the delivery of the

Duke of York out of sanctuary. But it is by no means

inconceivable that the writs were issued before the 13th, and

even without the protector's knowledge, by the Hastings-

Woodville party, which held their council meetings apart

from Richard in the Tower. Certain it is, that so little

did the protector's council at one time contemplate the act,

that a speech or sermon was actually prepared for the opening

of the session by Lord Chancellor Russell; and this speech is

still preserved in the original MS.

Moreover, there is no appearance, as we shall see presently,

that the meeting of Parliament would really have been an

obstacle to Richard's design. The writs of summons were

sent out very soon after he arrived in London, and doubtless

in accordance with his views, at least at the time. The object

for which the king convoked the Legislature was therein stated

to be, generally, 'for certain arduous and urgent affairs touching

ourselves, the state and defence of our kingdom of England,

and of the English Church.' But we are more specifically

informed in Chancellor Russell's speech that it was with a

view to confirm the protector's power. ' In the meantime,'

says the Chancellor, 'till ripeness of years and personal rule

be,

as by God's grace they must once be, concurrent together,

the power and authority of my lord protector is so behoveful

and of reason to be assented [to] and established by the

authority of this high court, that among all the causes of

the assembling of Parliament in this time of year, this is the

It is printed in Nichols' Grants, introduction, pp. xxxix-xlix. At the

beginning the bishop says: ' I have taken a tri-membered text, such as I

found in the divine service of yesterday's feast.' The text in question is

from Isaiah xlix. 1, and occurs in the service of the Nativity of St John the

Baptist (i.e. June 24). Thus the date at which it was intended to be

delivered is certain.

86 LIFE OF RICHARD III. CH. III.

greatest and most necessary first to be affirmed

The chief

object, then, for which Parliament was originally summoned

was to preserve Richard in his office of protector—an office

which, without special safeguards, was always held by a rather

uncertain tenure, and which, if the precedent of Henry VI.'s

minority had been followed, would have ceased upon the

king's coronation. It is quite conceivable, therefore, that the

issue of the

supersedeas

was designed to defeat this object,

that is to say, to prevent Richard being confirmed in the

office of protector, and so to terminate his power

Of course it may be said with equally good reason, that

if Richard had resolved to usurp the crown he did not require

the Legislature to confirm his title to an inferior dignity. But,

on the other hand, it is not so evident that he had any great

cause to fear that a Parliament which would have confirmed

his title as protector would oppose his elevation to the throne.

Plausible reasons could easily have been set forth for termi-

nating a minority which had already given birth to so much

intrigue and violence. Even the undisputed will of a tyrant

was better than everlasting plots and struggles for power.

But, in point of fact, it is scarcely matter for speculation,

seeing that, in spite of the

supersedeas,

Parliament actually

did meet on the very day for which it was summoned, and,

instead of raising any opposition to Richard's purpose, at once

concurred in the petition that he would assume the crown.

It was an informal Parliament, no doubt. Another Parliament,

which ratified the act some months later, declared that the

three estates were not assembled in due form when the

Nichols' Grants of Edward V., introduction, p. xlix.

It is remarkable that the city of York, in which Richard's influence

was very great, had been required to return four citizens to this Parliament,

instead of two. (Davies' York Records, 146.) This may reasonably have

given the opposite party some cause of suspicion; but it shows all the more

clearly that Parliament was summoned in Richard's interest, not in that of

his opponents.

A.D.

1483. AN INFORMAL PARLIAMENT. 87

petition was presented; yet the record no less distinctly

intimates that it was presented on behalf of the Lords and

Commons, thus implying that there had been the semblance,

though not the reality, of a true parliamentary meeting.

The

supersedeas,

in short, could not have been received in

every borough and county; and this in itself affords reason

for believing that the design to set aside the meeting of

Parliament was that of Richard's enemies. If the protector

himself had wished for a packed Parliament, he would certainly

not have countermanded the sending of burgesses from York,

a city in which his influence was greater than perhaps in any

other city in the kingdom. Yet the fact of a

supersedeas

having been issued at all must have been in itself sufficient

to make this Parliament an informal one. Another consider-

ation, which led to the same result, may have been that the

king who summoned it was immediately set aside by the

Parliament

itself;

for if it was maintained that he was no

true king, it followed as a matter of course that they were no

true Parliament. They were, in fact, only what in later times

was called a Convention.

On Wednesday, the 25th of June, therefore, the Lords

and Commons met in obedience to the writ of

summons, and immediately proceeded to an act

fnt

of the highest possible importance. A roll was

brought in, declaring the title of Richard to the ™™

e the

crown. It was therein related how the marriage

of Edward IV. with Elizabeth Woodville had led to great

misgovernment, tyranny, and civil war; how it had been

' made of great presumption, without the knowing and assent

of the lords of this land, and also by sorcery and witchcraft

committed by the said Elizabeth and her mother, Jacquett,

Duchess of Bedford—as the common opinion of the people

and the public voice and fame is, through all this land'; how

it had been made in secret, without proclamation of banns,

' in a private chamber, a profane place, and not openly in the

88 LIFE OF RICHARD III. CH. III.

face of the Church, after the law of God's Church'; and how

at the time it was contracted 'the said King Edward stood

married and troth-plight to one Dame Eleanor Butler, daughter

of the old Earl of Shrewsbury,' with whom he had long before

made a pre-contract of matrimony. Hence it appeared that

the marriage with Elizabeth Woodville was in reality no

marriage at all, and that Edward's children were bastards,

unable to claim by inheritance; and as the issue of the Duke

of Clarence was disabled by his attainder, it followed that the

sole right to the crown belonged to the Duke of Gloucester.

His claim, it was urged, was further strengthened by the

consideration that he had been born in England (his brother

Edward had been born at Rouen, and Clarence in Ireland);

by which not only was he more naturally inclined to promote

the welfare of the country, but, it was insinuated, 'all the

three estates of the land might have more certain knowledge

of his birth and filiation.' It was added that the duke's

wisdom, justice, courage, and the services he had rendered in

war in defence of the kingdom, entitled him to the more

cordial recognition

It is sufficiently apparent from the whole tenor of this

document, that Richard, with the aid of Buckingham, and

perhaps of a small section of the nobles, had resolved to make

use of every available prejudice, calumny, and scandal, to

advance his own pretensions. The Croyland writer tells us

that it was rumoured at the time, that this petition was

actually got up in the North; ' although,' he adds, ' there

was not a person that did not very well know who was the

sole mover at London of such seditious and disgraceful

proceedings.' But there must have been some on whom

these prejudices took effect. The marriage of Edward IV.

had always been unpopular, and the insinuation that it had

been effected by witchcraft was not new. The nobles had

Rolls of Part. vi. 241.

A.D.

1483. THE ALLEGED PRE-CONTRACT. 89

always resented the ascendency of the queen's relations; and

as the renewal of civil war had been due to that cause entirely,

there was no exaggeration in stating that great evils had re-

sulted from the match. The imputation of bastardy against

the late king had, as we have already remarked, been previously

advanced by Clarence, and it was here only insinuated as a

vague possibility, both in respect to Edward and to Clarence

himself,

but without either of them being named. One

statement, however, was altogether new, and must have been

a surprise to the public, except so far as it had been already

broached by Dr Shaw and the Duke of Buckingham. We

mean, of course, the story of the pre-contract, by which it was

alleged that Edward's marriage was invalidated.

The ecclesiastical theory of pre-contracts which prevailed

before the Reformation was the source of great

abuses. Marriages that had been publicly ac- pre-con-

knowledged, and treated for a long time as valid,

were often declared null on the ground of some previous

contract entered into by one or other of the parties. In

this way King Henry VIII. before putting Anne Boleyn to

death, caused his marriage with her to be pronounced invalid

on the ground, as it would seem, of a previous contract on her

part with Percy, Earl of Northumberland. Bulls of divorce

were sometimes procured from Rome, even by the party

that had done the wrong, dissolving a marriage that had

endured for years, on the ground of a pre-contract with

another person. Mere betrothal, in fact, was no less binding

than matrimony, and could not be canonically set aside without

a dispensation; for, as consent constituted the essence of a

marriage, the marriage might be in itself a complete thing,

even before it was celebrated in facie

ecdesice.

The evidence of Edward IV.'s pre-contract with Lady

Eleanor Butler rested on the single testimony of Robert

Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells. It is certain that

Edward indulged in several lawless amours before his marriage,