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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Cambridge:

PRINTED BY J. AND C. F. CLAY,

AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

PREFACE.

' I "HIS work was first published about twenty years

-*- ago and, though it passed through two editions,

has now been long out of print. Further study has in

the mean time suggested some corrections and additions,

not merely to the history of Richard III., but still more

to the Chapter on Perkin Warbeck at the end, which is

now very considerably enlarged, with details hitherto

unknown derived from foreign publications.

The portrait of Perkin Warbeck inserted at page 282

is a photograph obtained through the kindness of

Mr Cust, the Keeper of the National Portrait Gallery,

of a drawing preserved in the town library at Arras.

It was quite unknown to me till very lately that any

likeness of the pretender ever existed. This drawing is

contained in a MS. volume along with a considerable

number of other pencil and chalk portraits by a sixteenth

century artist, evidently taken, like this, from painted

originals. With just a few exceptions at the end of the

vi PREFACE.

list, which are portraits of classical or other celebrities,

the subjects are all distinguished persons of the fifteenth

and sixteenth centuries, and the name of each is written

underneath his likeness, generally in a hand contemporary

with the work, but apparently not in that of the artist

himself,

who, in the present instance, has written over

the drawing particulars of colour, dress and other details

in the original picture which he copied. Underneath

this portrait, however, the inscription is in a modern

hand, and is as follows :

" Pierre Varbeck, natif de Tournay, suppose pour

Richard Due d'Jorck, second fils d'Edouard IV. Roy

d'Angleterre, Pan 1492. Fut pendu a Londres par la

fin de Fan 1499."

The fact that this is written in an eighteenth century

hand might of course suggest the question whether the

subject of the drawing has been rightly identified. But

we may dismiss all doubt on that point, as the scribe

has simply followed the authority of an alphabetical

index (now mutilated at the beginning) which was

clearly contemporary with the drawings themselves.

And really, if we had no authority for the name at

all,

internal evidence alone would have very strongly

suggested that the portrait represented Warbeck.

We may take it, therefore, I think, on the authority

of this sketch that Perkin Warbe'ck was a fair haired

youth—the artist, be it observed, has written on the

hair the word

blon

(for blond)—bearing no striking

PREFACE. Vll

resemblance to Edward IV. or the line of the

Plantagenets, but still with a look and bearing that

might have made his supposed parentage plausible

when he was dressed in cloth of gold and cloth of silver,

as he was when the original picture was painted from

which this drawing was taken. The original picture is

doubtless still extant and very likely entered in some

catalogue as the portrait of a royal personage unnamed

or wrongly identified. The photograph is on a reduced

scale, the figure of Perkin in the original drawing being

8| inches in height.

A catalogue of the portraits contained in the Arras

Volume will be found in Bouchot's Les Portraits aux

Crayons

des XVI. et XVII. Siecles, Paris, 1884. Several

of them besides this are of very great interest to the

English historian, and the likenesses in many cases are

well borne out by other portraits.

May, 1898.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

OR writing such a book as the present I have no

other excuse to offer than that the subject is one

which has interested me for very many years. It is a

good quarter of a century since I first read Walpole's

' Historic Doubts'; and they certainly exercised upon

me,

in a very strong degree, the influence which I

perceive they have had on many other minds. I began

to doubt whether Richard III. was really a tyrant at

all.

I more than doubted that principal crime of which

he is so generally reputed guilty

;

and as for everything

else laid to his charge, it was easy to show that the

evidence was still more unsatisfactory. The slenderness

and insufficiency of the original testimony could hardly

be denied; and if it were only admitted that the

prejudices of Lancastrian writers might have perverted

facts,

which the policy of the Tudors would not have

allowed other writers to state fairly, a very plausible

case might have been established for a more favourable

reading of Richard's character.

x PREFACE.

It was the opinion of the late Mr Buckle that a

certain skeptical tendency—a predisposition to doubt

all commonly received opinions until they were found

to stand the test of argument—was the first essential

to the discovery of new truth. I must confess that

my own experience does not verify this remark ; and

whatever may be said for it as regards science, I cannot

but think the skeptical spirit a most fatal one in history.

It is an easy thing to isolate particular facts and events,

cross-examine to our own satisfaction the silent wit-

nesses or first reporters of a celebrated crime, and

appeal to the public for a verdict of' not proven.' But,

after all, we have only raised a question; we have not

advanced one step towards its solution. We have

succeeded in rendering a few things doubtful, which

may have been too hastily assumed before. But if

these doubts are to be of any value as the avenue to

new truths, they must lead to a complete reconsideration

of very many things besides the few dark passages at

first isolated for investigation. They require, in the

first place, that the history of one particular epoch

should be rewritten.; in the second, that the new version

of the story should exhibit a certain moral harmony

with the facts both of subsequent times and of the

times preceding. Until these two conditions have been

fulfilled, no attempt to set aside traditional views of

history can ever be called successful.

The old traditional view of Richard III. has cer-

tainly not yet been set aside in a manner to satisfy the

PREFACE. XI

common sense of the world. Yet there has been no

lack of ingenuity in pleading his cause, or of research

in the pursuit of evidence. Original authorities have

been carefully scrutinised; words have been exactly

weighed; and plausible arguments have been used to

show that for all that is said of him by contemporary

writers he might have been a very different character

from what he is supposed to have been. Only, the

malign tradition itself is not well accounted for; and

we are not clearly shown that the story of Richard's

life is more intelligible without it.

On the contrary, I must record my impression that

a minute study of the facts of Richard's life has tended

more and more to convince me of the general fidelity

of the portrait with which we have been made familiar

by Shakespeare and Sir Thomas More. I feel quite

ashamed, at this day, to think how I mused over this

subject long ago, wasting a great deal of time, ink and

paper, in fruitless efforts to satisfy even my own mind

that traditional black was real historical white, or at

worst a kind of grey. At last I laid aside my incom-

plete MS. and applied myself to other subjects, still of

a kindred nature; and the larger study of history in

other periods convinced me that my method at starting

had been altogether wrong. The attempt to discard

tradition in the examination of original sources of

history is, in fact, like the attempt to learn an unknown

language without a teacher. We lose the benefit of a

living interpreter, who may, indeed, misapprehend, to

xii PREFACE.

some extent, the author whom we wish to read; but at

least he would save us from innumerable mistakes if we

followed his guidance in the first instance.

Tradition, however, is, for the most part, an inter-

preter and nothing more. The cases are few in which

it supplies anything very material in the way of facts;

and where it does, the information is always open to

correction. I have, therefore, in working out this subject

always adhered to the plan of placing my chief reliance

on contemporary information; and, so far as I am

aware, I have neglected nothing important that is either

directly stated by original authorities and contemporary

records, or that can be reasonably inferred from what

they say.

Whatever, then, be the merits or demerits of the

present volume, I have at least aimed at treating the

subject fully, and I think I may fairly say that the work

is the result of mature thought and study. The dis-

sertation at the end on Perkin Warbeck was written

some years ago and has already appeared in print as

an article in the

Contemporary

Review; but some new

facts,

for which I am indebted to the researches of

Mr James Weale in the Low Countries, have caused

me to add a few paragraphs. It will be seen that the

documents now published for the first time give great

additional force to my original argument.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

PREFACE

CHAP.

I. RICHARD'S CAREER AS DUKE OF GLOUCESTER UNTIL THE

DEATH OF EDWARD IV I

II. ACTS OF RICHARD AS PROTECTOR 43

III. TERMINATION OF THE PROTECTORSHIP .... 76

IV. MURDER OF THE PRINCES AND REBELLION OF THE DUKE

BUCKINGHAM 97

Vi RICHARD'S GOVERNMENT, HIS PARLIAMENT AND HIS RELA-

TIONS WITH FOREIGN POWERS 144

VI. INVASION OF RICHMOND :—DEFEAT AND DEATH OF RICHARD 193

THE STORY OF PERKIN WARBECK 263

APPENDIX 337

INDEX 367