"What did he do?"
"He arranged for a requiem mass at York, to which all the nobility of the North were summoned, and in his presence they took an oath of loyalty to the young Prince."
"Interesting," Grant said dryly. "What did Rivers do? The Queen's brother?"
"On the 24th of April he set out with the Prince for London. With two thousand men and a large supply of arms."
"What did he want the arms for?"
"Don't ask me. I'm only a research worker. Dorset, the elder of the Queen's two sons by her first marriage, took over both the arsenal and the treasure in the Tower and began to fit up ships to command the Channel. And Council orders were issued in the name of Rivers and Dorset—'avunculus Regis' and 'frater Regis uterinus' respectively—with no mention of Richard. Which was decidedly off-colour when you remember—if you ever knew—that in his will Edward had appointed Richard guardian of the boy and Protector of the Kingdom in case of any minority. Richard alone, mind you, without a colleague."
"Yes, that is in character, at least. He must always have had complete faith in Richard. Both as a person and as an administrator. Did Richard come south with a young army too?"
"No. He came with six hundred gentlemen of the North, all in deep mourning. He arrived at Northampton on April the 29th. He had apparently expected to join up with the Ludlow crowd there; but that is report and you have only a historian's word for it. But the Ludlow procession—Rivers and the young Prince—had gone on to Stoney Stratford without waiting for him. The person who actually met him at Northampton was the Duke of Buckingham with three hundred men. Do you know Buckingham?"
"We have a nodding acquaintance. He was a friend of Edward's."
"Yes. He arrived post haste from London."
"With the news of what was going on."
"It's a fair deduction. He wouldn't bring three hundred men just to express his condolences. Anyhow a Council was held there and then—he had all the human material for a proper Council in his own train and Buckingham's, and Rivers and his three aides were arrested and sent to the North, while Richard went on with the young Prince to London. They arrived in London on the 4th of May."
"Well, that is very nice and clear. And what is clearest of all is that, considering time and distances, the sainted More's account of his writing sweet letters to the Queen to induce her to send only a small escort for the boy, is nonsense."
"Bunk."
"Indeed, Richard did just what one would expect him to do. He must of course have known the provisions of Edward's will. What his actions suggest is just what one, would expect them to suggest; his own sorrow and his care for the boy. A requiem mass and an oath of allegiance.
"Yes."
"Where does the break in this orthodox pattern come? I mean: in Richard's behaviour."
“Oh, not for a long time. When he arrived in London he found that the Queen, the younger boy, the daughters, and her first-marriage son, Dorset, had all bolted into sanctuary at Westminster. But apart from that things seem to have been normal."
"Did he take the boy to the Tower?"
Carradine riffled through his notes. "I don't remember. Perhaps I didn't get that. I was only—Oh, yes, here it is. No, he took the boy to the Bishop's Palace in St. Paul's Churchyard, and he himself went to stay with his mother at Baynard's Castle. Do you know where that was? I don't."
"Yes. It was the York's town house. It stood on the bank of the river just a little way west of St. Paul's."
"Oh. Well, he stayed there until June the 5th, when his wife arrived from the North and they went to stay in a house called Crosby Place."
"It is still called Crosby Place. It has been moved to Chelsea, and the window Richard put into it may not still be there—I haven't seen it lately—but the building is there."
"It is?" Carradine said, delighted. "I'll go and see it right away. It's a very domestic tale when you think of it, isn't it? Staying with his mother until his wife gets to town and then moving in with her. Was Crosby Place theirs, then?"
"Richard had leased it, I think. It belonged to one of the Aldermen of London. So there is no suggestion of opposition to his Protectorship, or of change of plans, when he arrived in London."
“Oh, no. He was acknowledged Protector before he ever arrived in London."
"How do you know that?"
"In the Patent Rolls he is called Protector on two occasions—let me see—April 21st (that's less than a fortnight after Edward's death) and May the 2nd (that's two days before he arrived in London at all)."
"All right; I'm sold. And no fuss? No hint of trouble?"
"Not that I can find. On the 5th of June he gave detailed orders for the boy's coronation on the 22nd. He even had letters of summons sent out to the forty squires who would be made knights of the Bath. It seems it was the custom for the King to knight them on the occasion of his coronation."
"The 5th," Grant said musingly. "And he fixed the coronation for the 22nd. He wasn't leaving himself much time for a switch-over."
"No. There's even a record of the order for the boy's coronation clothes."
"And then what?"
"Well," Carradine said, apologetic, "that's as far as I've got. Something happened at a Council—on the 8th of June, I think—but the contemporary account is in the Mémoires of Philippe de Comines and I haven't been able to get hold of a copy so far. But someone has promised to let me see a copy of Mandrot's 1901 printing of it tomorrow. It seems that the Bishop of Bath broke some news to the Council on June the 8th. Do you know the Bishop of Bath? His name was Stillington."
"Never heard of him."
"He was a Fellow of AH Souls, whatever that is, and a Canon of York, whatever that may be."
"Both learned and respectable, it appears."
"Well, we'll see."
"Have you turned up any contemporary historians—other than Comines?"
"Not any, so far, who wrote before Richard's death. Comines has a French bias but not a Tudor one, so he's more trustworthy than an Englishman writing about Richard under the Tudors would be. But I've got a lovely sample for you of how history is made. I found it when I was looking up the contemporary writers. You know that one of the things they tell about Richard III is that he killed Henry VI's only son in cold blood after the battle of Tewkesbury? Well, believe it or not, that story is made up out of whole cloth. You can trace it from the very time it was first told. It's the perfect answer to people who say there's no smoke without fire. Believe me, this smoke was made by rubbing two pieces of dry stick together."
"But Richard was just a boy at the time of Tewkesbury."
"He was eighteen, I think. And a very bonny fighter by all contemporary accounts. They were the same age, Henry's son and Richard. Well, all the contemporary accounts, of whatever complexion, are unanimous in saying that he was killed during the battle. Then the fun begins."
Carradine fluttered through his notes impatiently.
"Goldarn it, what did I do with it? Ah. Here we are. Now. Fabyan, writing for Henry VII, says that the boy was captured and brought before Edward IV, was struck in the face by Edward with his gauntlet and immediately slain by the King's servants. Nice? But Polydore Virgil goes one better. He says that the murder was done in person by George, Duke of Clarence, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, and William, Lord Hastings. Hall adds Dorset to the murderers. But that didn't satisfy Holinshed: Holinshed reports that it was Richard, Duke of Gloucester who struck the first blow. How do you like that? Best quality Tonypandy, isn't it?"
"Pure Tonypandy. A dramatic story with not a word of truth in it. If you can bear to listen to a few sentences of the sainted More. I'll give you another sample of how history is made."
"The sainted More makes me sick at the stomach but I'll listen."
Grant looked for the paragraph he wanted, and read:
Some wise men also ween that his drift [that is, Richard's drift] covertly conveyed, lacked not in helping forth his brother Clarence to his death; which he resisted
openly, howbeit somewhat, as men deemed, more faintly than he that were heartily minded to his weal. And they who deem thus think that he, long time in King Edward's life, forethought to be King in case that the King his brother (whose life he looked that evil diet should shorten) should happen to decrease (as indeed he did) while his children were young. And they deem that for this intent he was glad of his brother Clarence's death, whose life must needs have hindered him so intending whether the same Clarence had kept true to his nephew the young King or enterprised to be King himself. But of all this point there is no certainty, and whoso diveneth upon conjectures may as well shoot too far as too short.
"The mean, burbling, insinuating old bastard," said Carradine sweetly.
"Were you clever enough to pick out the one positive statement in all that speculation?"
"Oh, yes."
"You spotted it? That was smart of you. I had to read it three times before I got the one unqualified fact."
"That Richard protested openly against his brother George being put to death."
"Yes."
"Of course, with all that 'men say' stuff," Carradine observed, "the impression that is left is just the opposite. I told you. I wouldn't have the sainted More as a present."
"I think we ought to remember that it is John Morton's account and not the sainted More's."
"The sainted More sounds better. Besides, he liked the thing well enough to be copying it out."
Grant, the one-time soldier, lay thinking of the expert handling of that very sticky situation at Northampton.
"It was neat of him to mop up Rivers' two thousand without any open clash."
"I expect they preferred the King's brother to the Queen's brother, if they were faced with it."
"Yes. And of course a fighting man has a better chance with troops than a man who writes books."
"Did Rivers write books?"
"He wrote the first book printed in England. Very cultured, he was."
"Huh. It doesn't seem to have taught him not to try conclusions with a man who was a brigadier at eighteen and general before he was twenty-five. That's one thing that has surprised me, you know."
"Richard's qualities as a soldier?"
"No, his youth. I'd always thought of him as a middle-aged grouch. He was only thirty-two when he was killed at Bosworth."
"Tell me: when Richard took over the boy's guardianship, at Stoney Stratford, did he make a clean sweep of the Ludlow crowd? I mean, was the boy separated from all the people he had been growing up with?"
"Oh, no. His tutor, Dr. Alcock, came on to London with him, for one."
"So there was no panic clearing-out of everyone who might be on the Woodville side: everyone who might influence the boy against him."
"Seems not. Just the four arrests."
"Yes. A very neat, discriminating operation altogether. I felicitate Richard Plantagenet. "
"I'm positively beginning to like the guy. Well. I'm going along now to look at Crosby Place. I'm tickled pink at the thought of actually looking at a place he lived in. And tomorrow I'll have that copy of Comines, and let you know what he says about events in England in 1483, and what Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath, told the Council in June of that year."
CHAPTER TEN
What Stillington told the Council on that summer day in 1483 was, Grant learned, that he had married Edward IV to Lady Eleanor Butler, a daughter of the first Earl of Shrewsbury, before Edward married Elizabeth Woodville.
"Why had he kept it to himself so long?" he asked when he had digested the news.
"Edward had commanded him to keep it secret. Naturally."
"Edward seems to have made a habit of secret marriages," Grant said dryly.
"Well, it must have been difficult for him, you know, when he came up against unassailable virtue. There was nothing for it but marriage. And he was so used to getting his own way with women—what with his looks and his crown—that he couldn't have taken very resignedly to frustration."
"Yes. That was the pattern of the Woodville marriage. The indestructibly virtuous beauty with the gilt hair, and the secret wedding. So Edward had used the same formula on a previous occasion, if Stillington's story was true. Was it true?"
"Well, in Edward's time, it seems, he was in turn both Privy Seal and Lord Chancellor, and he had been an ambassador to Brittany. So Edward either owed him something or liked him. And he, on his part, had no reason to cook up anything against Edward. Supposing he was the cooking sort."
"No, I suppose not."
"Anyway, the thing was put to Parliament so we don't have to take just Stillington's word for it."
"To Parliament!"
"Sure. Everything was open and above board. There was a very long meeting of the Lords at Westminster on the 9th. Stillington brought in his evidence and his witnesses, and a report was prepared to put before Parliament when it assembled on the 25th. On the 10th Richard sent a letter to the city of York asking for troops to protect and support him."
"Ha! Trouble at last."
"Yes. On the 11th he sent a similar letter to his cousin Lord Nevill. So the danger was real."
"It must have been real. A man who dealt so economically with that unexpected and very nasty situation at Northampton wouldn't be one to lose his head at a threat. "
"On the 20th he went with a small body of retainers to the Tower—did you know that the Tower was the royal residence in London, and not a prison at all?"
"Yes, I knew that. It got its prison meaning only because nowadays being sent to the Tower has one meaning only. And of course because, being the royal castle in London, and the only strong keep, offenders were sent there for safe keeping in the days before we had His Majesty's Prisons. What did Richard go to the Tower for?"
"He went to interrupt a meeting of the conspirators, and arrested Lord Hastings, Lord Stanley, and one John Morton, Bishop of Ely."
"I thought we would arrive at John Morton sooner or later!"
"A proclamation was issued, giving details of the plot to murder Richard, but apparently no copy now exists. Only one of the conspirators was beheaded, and that one, oddly enough, seems to have been an old friend of both Edward and Richard. Lord Hastings."
"Yes, according to the sainted More he was rushed down to the courtyard and beheaded on the nearest log. "
"Rushed nothing," said Carradine disgustedly. "He was beheaded a week later. There's a contemporary letter about it that gives the date. Moreover, Richard couldn't have done it out of sheer vindictiveness, because he granted Hastings' forfeited estates to his widow, and restored the children's right of succession to them—which they had automatically lost."
"No, the death of Hastings must have been inevitable," said Grant, who was thumbing through More's Richard III. "Even the sainted More says: 'Undoubtedly the Protector loved him well, and was loth to have lost him.' What happened to Stanley and to John Morton?"
"Stanley was pardoned—What are you groaning about?"
"Poor Richard. That was his death warrant."
"Death warrant? How could pardoning Stanley be his death warrant?"
"Because it was Stanley's sudden decision to go over to the other side that lost Richard the battle of Bosworth."
"You don't say."
"Odd to think that if Richard had seen to it that Stanley went to the block like his much-loved Hastings, he would have won the battle of Bosworth, there would never have been any Tudors, and the hunchbacked monster that appears in Tudor tradition would never have been invented. On his previous showing he would probably have had the best and most enlightened reign in history. What was done to Morton?"
"Nothing."
"Another mistake."
"Or at least nothing to signify. He was put into gentlemanly detention under the care of Buckingham. The people who did go to the block were the heads of the conspiracy that Richard had arrested at Northampton: Rivers and Co. And Jane Shore was sentenced to do penance."
"Jane Shore? What on earth has she go
t to do with the case? I thought she was Edward's mistress?"
"So she was. But Hastings inherited her from Edward, it seems. Or rather—let me see—Dorset did. And she was go-between between the Hastings side of the conspiracy and the Woodville side. One of Richard's letters existing today is about her. About Jane Shore."
"What about her?"
"His Solicitor-General wanted to marry her; when he was King, I mean."
"And he agreed?"
"He agreed. It's a lovely letter. More in sorrow than in anger—with a kind of twinkle in it."
" 'Lord, what fools these mortals be!' "
"That's it exactly."
"No vindictiveness there, either, it seems."
"No. Quite the opposite. You know, I know it isn't my business to think or draw deductions—I'm just the Research Worker—but it does strike me that Richard's ambition was to put an end to the York-Lancaster fight once and for all."
"What makes you think that?"
"Well, I've been looking at his coronation lists. It was the best-attended coronation on record, incidentally. You can't help being struck by the fact that practically nobody stayed away. Lancaster or York."
"Including the weather-cock Stanley, I suppose."
"I suppose so. I don't know them well enough to remember them individually."
"Perhaps you're right about his wanting a final end to the York-Lancaster feud. Perhaps his lenience with Stanley was due to that very thing."
"Was Stanley a Lancastrian, then?"
"No, but he was married to an abnormally rabid one. His wife was Margaret Beaufort, and the Beauforts were the reverse side, so to speak—the illegitimate side—of the Lancaster family. Not that her by-blow side worried her. Or her son."
"Who was her son?"
"Henry VII."
Carradine whistled, long and low.
"You actually mean to say that Lady Stanley was Henry's mother."
"She was. By her first husband Edmund Tudor."
"But—but Lady Stanley had a place of honour at Richard's coronation. She carried the Queen's train. I noticed that because I thought it quaint. Carrying the train, I mean. In our country we don't carry trains. It's an honour, I take it."