A.D. 1483. PROCEEDINGS OF DUKE OF GLOUCESTER.

231

The protector then assailed the fidelity of Buckingham by all the arguments capable of swaying a vicious mind, which knew no motive of action but interest and ambition; and he easily obtained from him a promise of supporting him in all his enterprises. He then sounded at a distance the sentiments of Hastings by means of Catesby, a lawyer, who lived in great intimacy with that nobleman; but found him impregnable in his allegiance and fidelity to the children of Edward. He saw, therefore, that there were no longer any measures to be kept with him; and he determined to ruin utterly the man whom he despaired of engaging to concur in his usurpation. He accordingly summoned a council in the Tower; whither that nobleman, suspecting no design against him, repaired without hesitation. The Duke of Gloucester appeared in the easiest and most jovial humor imaginable. After some familiar conversation he left the council, as if called away by other business; but soon after returning with an angry and inflamed countenance, he asked them what punishment those deserved that had plotted against his life, who was so nearly related to the king, and was intrusted with the administration of government? Hastings replied, that they merited the punishment of traitors. "These traitors," cried the protector, are the sorceress, my brother's wife, and Jane Shore, his mistress, with others, their associates; see to what a condition they have reduced me by their incantations and witchcraft;" upon which he laid bare his arm, all shriveled and decayed. But the counselors, who knew that this infirmity had attended him from his birth, looked on each other with amazement; and above all, Lord Hastings, who, as he had since Edward's death engaged in an intrigue with Jane Shore, was naturally anxious concerning the issue of these extraordinary proceedings. "Certainly, my lord," said he, "if they be guilty of these crimes, they deserve the severest punishment." "And do you reply to me," exclaimed the protector, "with your ifs and your ands? You are the chief abettor of that witch Shore; you are yourself a traitor; and I swear by St. Paul that I will not dine before your head be brought to me." He struck the table with his hand; armed men rushed in at the signal. Hastings was seized, was hurried away, and instantly beheaded on a timber log which lay in the court of the Tower. Lord Stanley, the Archbishop of York, the Bishop of Ely, and other counselors, were committed prisoners in different chambers; and the protector, in order to carry on the farce of his accusations, ordered the goods of Jane Shore to be seized; and he summoned her to answer before the council for sorcery and witchcraft. But as no proofs which could be received, even in that ignorant age, were produced against her, he directed her to be tried in the spiritual

court, for her adulteries and lewdness; and she did penance in a white sheet in St. Paul's, before the whole people.

§ 10. These acts of violence, exercised against all the nearest connections of the late king, prognosticated the severest fate to his defenseless children; and after the murder of Hastings the protector no longer made a secret of his intentions to usurp the crown. Dr. Shaw, in a sermon at St. Paul's Cross, attempted to persuade the people that Edward IV. had been previously married to Lady Butler, and that therefore Edward V. and his other children by Elizabeth Woodville were illegitimate. Various other artifices were in vain employed to entrap the people to salute him king. At length Buckingham and the lord mayor proceeded with a rabble to his residence at Baynard's Castle; he was told that the nation were resolved to have him for their sovereign; and, after some well-acted hesitation, he accepted the crown (June 26). This ridiculous farce was soon after followed by a scene truly tragical: the murder of the two young princes. Richard gave orders to Sir Robert Brakenbury, Constable of the Tower, to put his nephews to death; but this gentleman, who had sentiments of honor, refused to have any hand in the infamous office. The tyrant then sent for Sir James Tyrrel, who promised obedience; and he ordered Brakenbury to resign to Tyrrel the keys and government of the Tower for one night. Tyrrel, choosing three associates, Slater, Dighton, and Forest, came in the nighttime to the door of the chamber where the princes were lodged; and sending in the assassins, he bade them execute their commission, while he himself staid without. They found the young princes in bed, and fallen into a profound sleep. After suffocating them with the bolster and pillows they showed their naked bodies to Tyrrel, who ordered them to be buried at the foot of the stairs, deep in the ground, under a heap of stones.*

§ 11. RICHARD III., 1483-1485.-The first acts of Richard's administration were to bestow rewards on those who had assisted him in usurping the crown, and to gain, by favors, those who he thought were best able to support his future government; and he loaded the Duke of Buckingham especially, who was allied to the royal family, with grants and honors. But it was impossible that friendship could long remain inviolate between two men of such corrupt minds as Richard and the Duke of Buckingham. The cause of the latter's discontent is not easily ascertained; but it is

*This story has been questioned by Walpole in his Historic Doubts, and subsequently by other writers; but, on the whole, the balance of probability greatly preponderates in its favor. In 1674, during some repairs, the bones of two youths were discovered under a staircase in the White Tower, and were interred in Westminster Abbey by order of Charles II. as those of Edward V. and his brother.

A.D. 1483.

BUCKINGHAM'S CONSPIRACY.

233

certain that the duke, soon after Richard's accession, began to form a conspiracy against the government, and attempted to overthrow that usurpation which he himself had so zealously contributed to establish. Morton, Bishop of Ely, a zealous Lancastrian, whom the king had imprisoned, and had afterward committed to the custody of Buckingham, encouraged these sentiments; and by his exhortations the duke cast his eye toward the young Earl of Richmond, as the only person who could free the nation from the tyranny of the present usurper. He was descended on his mother's side from John of Gaunt by Catherine Swynford, a branch legitimated by Parliament, but excluded from the succession. On his father's side he was grandson of Sir Owen Tudor and Catherine of France, relict of Henry V.*

The universal detestation of Richard's conduct turned the attention of the nation toward Henry; and as all the descendants of the house of York were either women or minors, he seemed to be the only person from whom the nation could expect the expulsion of the odious and bloody tyrant. It was therefore suggested by Morton, and readily assented to by the duke, that the only means of overturning the present usurpation was to unite the opposite factions, by contracting a marriage between the Earl of Richmond and the Princess Elizabeth, eldest daughter of King Edward, and thereby blending together the opposite pretensions of their families, which had so long been the source of public disorders and convulsions. Margaret, Richmond's mother, assented to the plan without hesitation; while on the part of the queen dowager the desire of revenge for the murder of her brother and of her three sons, apprehensions for her surviving family, and indignation against her confinement, easily overcame all her prejudices against the house of Lancaster, and procured her approbation of a marriage to which the age and birth, as well as the pres* Genealogy of Henry of Richmond and of the Duke of Buckingham;

ent situation of the parties, seemed so naturally to invite them. She secretly borrowed a sum of money in the city, sent it over to the Earl of Richmond, who was at present detained in Brittany in a kind of honorable custody, required his oath to celebrate the marriage as soon as he should arrive in England, advised him to levy as many foreign forces as possible, and promised to join him on his first appearance, with all the friends and partisans of her family. The plan was secretly communicated to the principal persons of both parties in all the counties of England; and a wonderful alacrity appeared in every order of men to forward its success and completion. The Duke of Buckingham took arms in Wales, and gave the signal to his accomplices for a general insurrection in all parts of England. But heavy rains having rendered the Severn, with the other rivers in that neighborhood, impassable, the Welshmen, partly moved by superstition at this extraordinary event, partly distressed by famine in their camp, fell off from him; and Buckingham, finding himself deserted by his followers, put on a disguise, and took shelter in the house of Banister, an old servant of his family. But being detected in his retreat, he was brought to the king at Salisbury; and was instantly executed, according to the summary method practiced in that age (Nov. 3, 1483). The other conspirators immediately dispersed themselves. The Earl of Richmond, in concert with his friends, had set sail from St. Malo's, carrying on board a body of 5000 men levied in foreign parts; but his fleet being at first driven back by a storm, he appeared not on the coast of England till after the dispersion of all his friends; and he found himself obliged to return to the court of Brittany.

The king, every where triumphant, ventured at last to summon a Parliament, which had no choice left but to recognize his authority, and acknowledge his right to the crown; and Richard, in order to reconcile the nation to his government, passed some popular laws, particularly one against the late practice of extorting money on pretense of benevolence. Richard's consort, Anne, the second daughter of the Earl of Warwick, and widow of Edward Prince of Wales, having borne him but one son, who died about this time, he considered her as an invincible obstacle to the settlement of his fortune, and he was believed to have carried her off by poison. He now proposed, by means of a papal dispensation, to espouse himself the Princess Elizabeth, and to unite, in his own family, their contending titles.

§ 12. Being exhorted by his partisans to prevent this marriage by a new invasion, and having received assistance from the court of France, Richmond set sail from Harfleur in Normandy, with a small army of about 2000 men; and after a navigation of six

A.D. 1483-1485.

BATTLE OF BOSWORTH.

235

days he arrived at Milford Haven, in Wales, where he landed without opposition (August 7, 1485). The earl, advancing toward Shrewsbury, received every day some re-enforcement from his partisans.

The two rivals at last approached each other at Bosworth near Leicester; Henry at the head of 6000 men, Richard with an army of above double the number. Soon after the battle began, Lord Stanley, who, without declaring himself, had raised an army of 7000 men, and had so posted himself as to be able to join either party, appeared in the field, and declared for the Earl of Richmond. The intrepid tyrant, sensible of his desperate situation, cast his eyes around the field, and, descrying his rival at no great distance, he drove against him with fury, in hopes that either Henry's death, or his own, would decide the victory between them. He killed with his own hands Sir William Brandon, standard-bearer to the earl; he dismounted Sir John Cheyney; he was now within reach of Richmond himself, who declined not the combat; when Sir William Stanley, breaking in with his troops, surrounded Richard, who, fighting bravely to the last moment, was overwhelmed by numbers, and perished by a fate too mild and honorable for his multiplied and detestable enormities (Aug. 22, 1485). The body of Richard was thrown carelessly across a horse; was carried to Leicester amid the shouts of the insulting spectators; and was interred in the Grey Friars' Church of that place.

The historians who lived in the subsequent reign have probably exaggerated the vices of the monarch whom their master overthrew; and some modern writers have attempted to palliate the crimes by which he obtained possession of the crown. It is certain that he possessed energy, courage, and capacity; but these qualities would never have made compensation to the people for the precedent of his usurpation, and for the contagious example of vice and murder exalted upon a throne. His personal appearance has even been a subject of warm controversy; for while some writers represent him as of a small stature, hump-backed, and with a harsh, disagreeable countenance, others maintain that he had a pleasing expression, and that his only defect was in having one shoulder a little higher than the other.

§ 13. The reign of the house of Plantagenet expired with Richard III. on Bosworth Field. The change of a dynasty forms of itself no historical epoch; but in a limited or constitutional monarchy this change is generally accompanied by some revolution in the state, which gives it the character of a true historical era. The reigns of Henry VII., and his successors of the house of Tudor, bear a distinct character from those of the Plantagenet