CHAPTER III

IN THE DAYS OF THE LATER PLANTAGENETS

_Coronation of Richard II—The Wat Tyler Rebellion—Murder of Archbishop Simon of Canterbury—The Rebellion Quelled—Fresh Troubles raised by the Duke of Gloucester and quieted by Archbishop Courtenay—Still Troubles Continue—Execution of some Prominent Members of Parliament, and of Sir Simon Burley, the King’s Tutor—First Legal Execution on Tower Hill—Richard’s Wilfulness and Treachery—His Dethronement, August 19, 1399—Accession of Henry IV—Death and Burial of Richard II—Conspiracies against Henry IV—Battle of Shrewsbury—Prisoners shut up in the Tower—Among them James of Scotland, “The King’s Quhair”—The Great War with France—Charles, Duke of Orleans, a formidable rival; his Imprisonment and Life in the Tower—His Return to France—The Lollards—Sir John Oldcastle—His Plots and Death—Death of Henry V—Fall of the English Power in France—Rival Nobles in England: Dukes of Bedford and Gloucester, Cardinal Beaufort, Earl of Warwick—Marriage of Henry with Margaret of Anjou—Public Discontent—Cade’s Rebellion—Claim of Richard Duke of York—Battle of Wakefield—The Wakefield Tower—Battle of Towton—Accession of Edward IV—Henry VI a Prisoner in the Tower—Warwick’s Tergiversation—Battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury—King Henry slain in the Wakefield Tower—Continued Tragedies, Duke of Clarence’s Disaffection and Plottings—His Death in the Bowyer Tower—Death of Edward IV—Edward V and his Brother brought to the Tower by their Uncle Gloucester, who has Lord Hastings beheaded for loyalty to Edward—Edward deposed—Richard Crowned King—Edward and his Brother secretly Murdered—Discovery of their Bones and Burial at Westminster._

The reign of Richard II began with festivities and pageantries of unprecedented magnificence, and the Tower was the scene of some of the most prominent. On the day of the Coronation, according to Holinshed, the King, clad in white robes, issued from its gate surrounded by a vast assemblage of nobles and knights. The streets were hung with drapery, and the conduits ran wine. In Cheapside was a castle with four towers, from two sides of which “the wine ran forth abundantly, and at the top stood a golden angel, holding a crown, so contrived that when the King came near, he bowed and presented it to him. In each of the towers was a beautiful virgin, of stature and age like unto the King, apparelled in white vestures, who blew in the King’s face leaves of gold and flowers of gold counterfeit. On the approach of the cavalcade, the damsels took cups of gold, and filling them with wine at the spouts of the castle, presented them to the King and his nobles.”

These revels were scarcely ended, when the Wat Tyler insurrection broke out, and the King, with his mother, fled for refuge within the Tower from which he had lately so proudly emerged. The insurgents assembled on Blackheath and asked for a conference. Richard having heard mass in the chapel, sailed down the Thames to meet them, but was so frightened by their menacing looks that he precipitately fled back to the Tower. Therefore the angry mob advanced, quartered themselves in and near St. Katharine’s Hospital and invested the fortress, “hooting,” says Froissart, “as loud as if the devils were in them.” The Lord Mayor, Walworth, recommended a sally upon them, as the majority were drunk, but this was deemed too desperate, and the King declared he would meet them and hear their grievances. He had no sooner quitted the gates, than some of the insurgents, who had lain concealed, broke into the fortress, and killed some of the King’s officers.[2] But their main quarry was the Archbishop of Canterbury, the King’s Chancellor, Simon of Sudbury, whom John Ball, the Socialist priest, had furiously denounced. They made their way into the chapel where he was engaged in prayer. “Where is the traitor to the kingdom, where is the spoiler of the Commons?” they shouted, and Sudbury replied, “Here am I, my sons; your Archbishop, neither traitor nor spoiler.” They dragged him out on Tower Hill. He saw what was coming and warned them, but in vain. After he had spoken further, and given as far as in him lay absolution to John Starling of Essex, who was standing ready to behead him, he knelt down. He was horribly mutilated, not being killed till the eighth blow of the axe. Hales the treasurer and two others were slain with him, and all the heads were stuck on poles, a cap on the Archbishop’s to distinguish him, and were placed on London Bridge. Two days later Sudbury’s head gave place to Wat Tyler’s, and he was buried with great pomp in his Cathedral at Canterbury, to which he had been a great benefactor. His fine monument is still to be seen there.

How this rebellion was quelled is no part of our subject, but the troubles of King Richard were by no means ended. In 1387 he had again to fly to the Tower for security against his uncle Gloucester and the other disaffected barons. His weakness and imbecility, and the corruptness of his ministers, had exasperated the nation against him, and Gloucester seized the regal authority and placed it in the hands of commissioners. The King summoned a Parliament at Nottingham which supported him; the nobles retorted by marching on London with forty thousand men. There was much anxiety and some fighting, but Archbishop Courtenay mediated with great patience and wisdom. Richard had gone to the Tower and was in fact besieged, and in the great Council Chamber there Courtenay arranged a meeting between the nobles and the King, with the result that the mutual differences were for the time adjusted. But the King had not in the least regained the confidence either of the nobles or of the commonalty. In fact the prominent members of the Parliament which had declared in his favour were arrested. Some were fined, others banished, others confined in the Tower. Of these latter Sir Robert Tresylian, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas; Brembre, Mayor of London; Sir John Salisbury, Sir John Beauchamp and Sir James Berners were put to death at Tyburn. One of the victims calls for special mention. Sir Simon Burley had distinguished himself under the Black Prince in the French war. Edward had such a high opinion of him that he bequeathed the education of his son Richard to him. He seems to have justified the choice in the early days of the young King, and it was he who arranged his marriage with Anne of Bohemia, thereby incurring the enmity of the Lancastrian party. Although he had warned the King of his folly in the early days of his reign, he supported him in Parliament in his struggle against the barons, and in consequence he was sentenced on May 5, 1388, to be hanged, drawn and quartered, but this was commuted to beheading. We have seen that Archbishop Sudbury was executed on Tower Hill, but that was by mob violence. Burley was now condemned by law to die on the same spot. It was the first legal execution on the place which was for many years to come the regular place of execution.

Richard bitterly resented this execution. He never forgave it. Burley had been a loyal and faithful friend both to his father and himself, and he waited for his opportunity of revenge. It came at last. He was accustomed to hold festivals from time to time with tournaments and feastings, and there was special merrymaking on the occasion of his second marriage. His first wife, “the good Anne” of Bohemia, died in 1396, and next year he married Isabel, daughter of Charles VI., the mad King of France. She was lodged in the Tower, awaiting her coronation. In the midst of the festivities the Duke of Gloucester, with the Earls of Arundel and Warwick and some others, were treacherously seized, and brought to the Tower. Gloucester was shipped off to Calais and murdered by the King’s command; Arundel was beheaded on Tower Hill; Warwick was confined in the Beauchamp Tower, named after him. But Richard dared not kill a man who had more than any man living fought for his country in the French wars, and he was sent away to the Isle of Man and kept close prisoner for life.

But Nemesis presently came. Arundel’s memory was revered by the people, who knew him as one of their great heroes, and his grave in the Church of the Austin Friars was visited by crowds day by day. Meanwhile the wretched King lost all self-control. Probably his mind had become unhinged. He dissolved the Parliament, announced that he intended to rule without one, and seized the lands of his uncle, John of Gaunt, who had lately died. On August 19, 1399, Gaunt’s son, Henry of Lancaster, landed in England, made him prisoner in Wales and brought him to London. On September 2 he was lodged in the Tower with the universal approval of the nation. On the 29th he formally resigned the crown “with a cheerful mien,” and next day Henry IV. seated himself on the throne. The fallen man remained in the fortress for a while, but as it became known that conspiracies were being formed to replace him on the throne, it was decided to remove him secretly and confine him in some secure place. First he was taken to Leeds Castle in Kent, then to Yorkshire. There is no reasonable doubt that he died at Pontefract on February 14, 1400, probably of starvation. His body was brought to London, and exposed to the public in St. Paul’s, was then buried at King’s Langley, and afterwards removed to Westminster Abbey by Henry V, whom as a boy he had treated with kindness.

There was a grand ceremonial in the Tower on the eve of Henry IV’s Coronation, and forty-six new Knights of the Bath watched their arms all night in St. John’s Chapel. But the fortress under the Lancastrian kings became less of a royal residence and more of a prison.

Henry IV, after the Battle of Shrewsbury, shut up in the Tower some of the adherents of Owen Glendower, and also a number of preaching Friars, who had circulated taunting rhymes against him to excite an insurrection, and who in due course died as traitors at Tyburn. But King Henry’s most illustrious prisoner here was James, the son and heir of Robert III, King of Scotland. That unfortunate monarch, amiable and just, but infirm in body as in will, was heavily troubled by the plottings of his brother the Duke of Albany, and also by the divisions arising out of the English troubles. The Earl of Northumberland and his son Hotspur were joined by Earl Douglas, and they were all defeated at Shrewsbury. Poor old King Robert, worried by this, and having good reason to distrust Albany, determined to send his remaining son James, a boy of eleven (his eldest son, the Duke of Rothsay, had been got rid of by foul play), for safety to France, for the expressed reason that he could receive a good education there. The vessel conveying him was intercepted off Flamborough Head by an English ship, and the boy was conveyed to London; Henry IV gave orders that he should be confined in the Tower. This was in February, 1406. His poor old father sank under this fresh trouble and died that year, and thus James became King. But King Henry still, contrary to all law, kept him prisoner, and the Duke of Albany was appointed regent.

For nineteen years the young King remained in exile. From the recent publication of English and Scottish records we learn that his expenses in the Tower were reckoned at 6_s._ 8_d._ a day for himself and 3_s._ 4_d._ for his suite. Though his capture was a flagrant breach of law, he was well treated and received an excellent education. He was moved about from time to time: part of the while he was in Nottingham Castle, then at Evesham, then at the palace of the Archbishop of Canterbury at Croydon. The poem which he wrote in his captivity, “The King’s Quhair” (Little Book), was the expression of his love for Lady Jane Beaufort, whom he met at Windsor. His marriage with her attached him to the royal family of England, and at length in 1424 he obtained his release, returned, and took possession of his throne, ruled with vigour and justice, until his earnest endeavours to assure the rights and just treatment of his people led to his assassination in 1436.

Another royal prisoner, partly contemporaneous with King James, and not less illustrious in history, was Charles, Duke of Orleans. Richard II, as we have seen, married for his second wife Isabel of Valois, daughter of King Charles VI. of France. After his death she married Charles, Duke of Orleans, whose clever, reprobate father Louis, brother of Charles VI, had been assassinated by order of the Duke of Burgundy. The two young people were therefore first cousins. When Louis had laid claim to the French throne, our Henry IV made a counterclaim, and thus there was fierce rivalry between the two men, and Louis took every opportunity of sending insulting messages to “the usurping Duke of Lancaster,” and married his son Charles to the young widowed Queen, when Hal, the madcap Prince of Wales, was eagerly wooing her. The hapless young wife died in childbirth in 1409, her husband being only nineteen years old. He bewailed his loss in some very beautiful verses. The little child lived to become Duchess of Alençon. Reasons of State induced Charles to marry again, his wife being Bona, daughter of the Count of Armagnac, who bore him no offspring. In 1415 came the memorable invasion of France and the great English victory at Agincourt. Charles, with his brothers and other members of the French royal family, had done their best in defence of their rights. Shakespeare depicts his zeal and his hatred of the invader in his flying utterances. The brave fellow fell among the wounded, and was found by the victor bleeding and speechless on the field. He made much of him, brought him to England, and sent him to the White Tower, fixing a ransom of 300,000 crowns on his head. He was now twenty-four years old, and Henry was anxious that the ransom should not be forthcoming. For he now married Isabel’s youngest sister, Catherine of Valois, and it was most important in his estimate that Charles should have no children to dispute the rights of those of his wife. It was part of the treaty into which he entered that he should succeed to the French throne, and a son of Charles of Orleans would be a most formidable rival. The result was that the latter remained a prisoner in England for five and twenty years.

And here he continued faithful to his old troubadour instincts, and was constantly occupied in writing lyrics, chiefly on his lost love and his absent wife, some in French, some in English, in which he became proficient. There is in the British Museum a manuscript volume of his poems, beautifully illuminated, with the arms of Henry VII and Prince Arthur introduced into the borders. It contains our frontispiece, the oldest picture of the Tower of London which is known to exist. In the background is London Bridge with the City behind it, in front Traitors’ Gate, though the name had not yet been given. There is the Prince seated in the now demolished banqueting hall, writing his verses. He is seen again looking out of window, evidently hoping for freedom, and again we see him below embracing the messenger who brings his ransom. Next we behold him riding away, a freed man; and in the distance he is seen finally seated in the boat, which is being pulled off to the ship which shall carry him back to France.

That deliverance did not come until 1440. Henry V had been dead eighteen years, his widow Catherine, had married Owun Tudor and his conquests in France were now nearly all lost, thanks to the Maid of Orleans and to Charles’s natural brother, John of Dunois. Every year Charles’s life had become more precious to France, as the children of Charles VI dropped one by one into the grave. The Duke of Burgundy paid the enormous ransom, and Charles returned to find his wife Bona dead, and his daughter a woman of thirty. Reasons of State caused him to marry again, his third consort being Mary of Cleves. By her he had a son, who afterwards became King Louis XII.

A large body of prisoners of a widely different character, namely the Lollards, occupied the Tower at the same period; the most remarkable of them was Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham. There is undoubtedly much mystery about his life and doings. He was a gentleman of Herefordshire, and makes his first appearance in history as a trusted servant of Henry IV, who committed to him the charge of putting down insurrection in Wales at the time of the battle of Shrewsbury. It was then that he made the acquaintance of the Prince of Wales, which ripened into close friendship. In 1409, when a second time a widower, he married Joan, Lady Cobham, who on her side was in her third widowhood. She brought him two Kentish estates, Cobham Manor and Cowling Castle, and in this latter he took up his residence, and still remained high in favour of Henry IV and his son. Wyclif died on the last day of 1384. His opinions had become largely popular, in Kent as much as anywhere. A severe law was passed against them in 1401. How Oldcastle had come to adopt these there is no evidence to show, but in 1410 a great outcry was made against him because his chaplain was preaching Lollard doctrines, and he was accused of trying to bring the Prince of Wales over to them. Convocation which met at St. Paul’s in March, 1413, just before the death of Henry IV, denounced him unsparingly, and produced manuscripts emanating from Paternoster Row of which he was alleged to be the author. It is said that Henry V was so mindful of his old friendship that he wanted to prevent action against him, though he viewed his opinions with horror, and tried in vain to wean him from them. The sequel was that he withdrew from Court and shut himself up in Cowling Castle. When at length he was arrested he was brought before Archbishop Arundel and Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, who were both anxious to save him, perhaps knowing the regard of the King for him; but he refused to recant and was handed over to the secular arm, and meanwhile was committed to the Tower. From it in some mysterious manner he escaped, and there is strong evidence that he engaged in a widespread Lollard conspiracy. The official indictment charged the conspirators with “plotting the death of the King and his brothers, with the prelates and other magnates of the realm, the transference of religious to secular employments, the spoliation and destruction of all cathedrals, churches and monasteries, and the elevation of Oldcastle to the position of regent of the kingdom.” The plot was discovered and defeated. The body of conspirators found out in time that it was so, and escaped home; Oldcastle left London and fled into Wales. He remained hid, but apparently still plotting, until he was again captured, was brought back to the Tower, and on December 14, 1417, was condemned to death, was drawn on a hurdle to St. Giles’s Fields, and there hanged and burnt to ashes. This is the man whom Shakespeare, following an older play, represents as the original of Falstaff. But though young Oldcastle was, as we have seen, a friend of Prince Hal in his youth, he was never a _roué_.

It would almost seem as if fuller knowledge had convinced Shakespeare of this, and that it was in this way of retractation that he put these words in the Epilogue:—“For Oldcastle died a martyr and this is not the man.”

The death of Henry V, August 31, 1422, was a heavy calamity for England. He was a wise and pious king, and his claim to the French crown, however ill-advised, was in his view just. His son was an infant of nine months old, and the mismanagement of the Government, and the victories of Jeanne d’Arc, the Maid of Orleans, make up a great chapter of English disaster. The heroine was burnt at Rouen, May 31, 1431, but it was speedily seen that her work had been successful. Henry VI was indeed crowned King of France at Paris that year, but what popularity remained to the English party was dissipated by the arrogance of the King’s rulers. He returned to England, and the cause still went down. His two royal guardians and uncles, the Dukes of Bedford and Gloucester, were at bitter feud. Two other nobles were now grown active and strong. The first was Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, the illegitimate son of John of Gaunt and Catherine Swynford, a man of great ability as well as of patriotism. Henry V had reposed strong confidence in him, and had willed that he should be the guardian of his son during his minority. This had been set aside, but although Bedford and Gloucester had been substituted, their absence abroad and their quarrels gave Beaufort real power, which had steadily grown. The other was Richard, Earl of Warwick. He too had been highly esteemed by Henry V, and he and Beaufort were now exerting themselves to guide the King wisely, when he on attaining his majority was foolishly interfering in matters which he did not understand. Bedford died, the English cause in France grew more and more hopeless, and through Beaufort’s influence Henry married Margaret of Anjou, niece of King Charles VII. A few years followed during which Henry gave himself to useful work, the foundations of Eton and King’s College, Cambridge, among them. Gloucester died in 1447; murder was suspected, but probably without ground. Beaufort died the same year; William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, was murdered in 1450. That nobleman was one of the most distinguished in England. His father and three brothers had died on battlefields in the French wars. He had been a Knight of the Garter for thirty years when the Cade rebellion broke out, and his enemies got up against him a charge of supporting it. He took ship at Dover to fly to Calais, but was captured in the Strait by the captain of a vessel called _Nicholas of the Tower_. When he heard the name he lost all hope, for he had been told by a soothsayer that if he could escape the danger of the Tower he would be safe. His head was hacked off, and his body thrown upon Dover beach.

The Tower was ever receiving new occupants, and the kingdom was becoming more and more disturbed. Cade’s rebellion broke out in June, 1450, and was a very formidable danger for a short time. The King, to propitiate the rebels, sent Lord Say to the Tower; they dragged him forth and beheaded him in Cheapside. The rebellion was put down in consequence of the worthlessness of Cade himself, but the discontent grew, being increased by the high-handed dealing of Queen Margaret, and that same year Richard, Duke of York, proclaimed himself, with the sanction of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, as the deliverer of the kingdom from anarchy. The difficulties were increased by the mental illness of the King, from which after a while he recovered, but his popularity had still further decreased. The Queen bore him a son, but this strengthened York’s ambition. He claimed the crown and civil war began. The partisans of York made an attack on the Tower, and here comes a decided novelty in its history. It is said that cannon were first used at the battle of Crecy. They were used now to batter the Tower walls, but unsuccessfully apparently. When the moat was cleared out in 1843 a great number of stone cannon balls were found, which were probably a relic of that bombardment. They are now under a glass case in the Beauchamp Tower. Similar balls are shown in our illustration.

On December 29, 1460, York was defeated by Queen Margaret and slain at the battle of Wakefield, while King Henry was keeping Christmas in London. She was fighting for her son’s rights; the King was under the care of the Earl of Warwick, who was actually supporting the claims of the Yorkists. In the following February Margaret was defeated three times, and Edward, Duke of York, was proclaimed King in London without waiting for Parliament. On Palm Sunday, 1461, the battle of Towton, the most terrible ever fought on English ground, placed the kingdom in Edward IV’s hands. The number of prisoners sent up to the Tower after the battle of Wakefield caused what had been hitherto the Hall Tower to be called “the Wakefield Tower,” a name which it has borne ever since. Queen Margaret still kept an army in the north, and Henry moved about from place to place. In 1464 he was captured and lodged in the Tower. Statements differ as to his treatment. One account says that Warwick, acting for the Yorkists, carried him through Cheapside and Cornhill with his legs bound under a horse with leathern thongs and a peasant’s hat on his head. Yorkist writers assert that he was treated “with all humanity and reverence.” He remained five years in this imprisonment; then came a revolution. Warwick joined Margaret and King Edward’s brother, the Duke of Clarence, and with such apparent vigour that Edward fled to Flanders. Henry was brought forth and marched through the London streets with great pomp to Westminster. But the chronicler Hall contemptuously remarks, with an epigram worthy of Sam Weller, “This moved the citizens of London as much as the fire painted on the wall warmed the old woman.” The citizens were flourishing under Yorkist encouragement of commerce, and were by no means disposed to Lancastrian restoration. Edward came back, and on Easter Day, April 14, 1471, Warwick was slain at the battle of Barnet, and Queen Margaret was defeated at Tewkesbury on May 4 following, and her son was slain. On May 21 King Henry was murdered in the Wakefield Tower by Richard, Duke of Gloucester, on the very day of the return of his brother King Edward to London.

In the octagonal chamber of the Wakefield Tower in which the regalia are now placed are two deep recesses opened into the walls. That to the south-east was formerly an oratory, and is so described in the Tower records in 1238. Tradition states that in this oratory Duke Richard, entering through the passage from the palace, stabbed Henry to death with many wounds as he was praying. His body was next day carried to St. Paul’s, “and his face was open that every man might see him, and in his lying he bled.” He was buried at Chertsey and the word went about that he was a saint and martyr. Henry VII afterwards requested Pope Julius II to canonize him, but gave up the idea on learning how much it would cost. He had the body removed from Chertsey, but to this day it is uncertain whether it was buried at St. George’s, Windsor, or in Westminster Abbey.

The reigns of the Kings of the House of York are full of Tower tragedies. Edward IV lived a good deal in the Tower, increased its fortifications, and deepened the moat. He had two brothers, the Dukes of Clarence and Gloucester. The former had long been disaffected, had joined Margaret of Anjou and the Earl of Warwick, whose daughter he had married, in the conspiracy which caused Edward’s temporary flight, and after the latter had recovered himself and was again firmly seated on the throne, Clarence was certainly plotting against him. Clarence’s wife was dead and he aspired to the hand of Mary of Burgundy, to Edward’s indignation, who saw that he still hoped for the crown. He first sent him to the Tower, then accused him before Parliament, and he was sentenced to death. Edward was loth to carry the sentence out, but the House of Commons urged him, and to avoid the disgrace of a public execution he gave orders that it should be done in secret, and according to tradition he was drowned in a butt of malmsey in the Bowyer Tower. And perhaps it is owing to his brother Gloucester’s general bad character that he is accused of superintending the execution. The memory of this tragedy is said to have embittered the whole of Edward’s subsequent life. He was now secure on his throne, but his self-indulgent life was destroying his health, and his recklessness, joined with the perfidy of Louis XI, continually produced fresh troubles. He died at the age of forty-one, on April 19, 1483. His wife had borne him ten children, of whom seven survived him, two sons and five daughters.

The short reign of Edward V was merely a struggle for power between his uncle Gloucester and his mother’s relations, the Woodvilles. He was in Wales when his father died. His uncle, Lord Rivers, and half-brother, Lord Richard Grey, were bringing him up for his Coronation, when the Dukes of Gloucester and Buckingham intercepted them at Northampton, sent them prisoners to Pomfret, and brought the young King up to the Tower with every demonstration of loyalty, even declaring that the coronation should take place on June 22. Queen Elizabeth, anticipating what was coming, threw herself into Sanctuary with the Abbot of Westminster with her other son. A Parliament was summoned ostensibly to declare Gloucester protector, but he had already laid his train. The queen was called upon to allow her second boy to be placed with his brother in the Tower, and though she could see from the windows carpenters, vintners, cooks all making preparations for her son’s coronation, she knew in her heart that it would never be. Gloucester proceeded to make out a case for the illegitimacy of the children, on the ground that their father had made a previous marriage. That he had been a gross libertine was already notorious; Gloucester produced a witness who declared that he had married the King to one of his mistresses, Elinor Talbot. It is incredible, but there may have been some miserable frolic. Gloucester called a Council in the Council Chamber of the White Tower, and there caused his claim to be put forth in a tentative fashion. Lord Hastings thereupon declared his loyalty to Edward, and Gloucester, who had been listening outside, strode into the room. Turning up his sleeve, he showed an arm which he declared had been withered by the sorceries of Hastings, and called on the terrified councillors to condemn him. Words were useless. “I will not dine until your head is off,” he cried, and Hastings was carried down to Tower Green. The block was out of place, but a beam of wood was near; he was thrown on it and the deed was consummated.

Gloucester then got a creature, a brother of the Lord Mayor, to preach at Paul’s Cross from the text (Wisdom iv. 3), “Bastard slips shall not take deep root,” a sermon impugning the validity of Edward’s marriage, but the immediate result was to fill the listeners with shame and indignation. The Duke of Buckingham made a speech of the like character at the Guildhall, and it became known that Gloucester was getting an army together. So a packed assembly went to the schemer and offered him the crown, which he with feigned reluctance accepted. This was on June 28, 1483, and on July 6 he was crowned at Westminster. Immediately afterwards he started on a progress through the country with the intention of strengthening his position by granting privileges and making promises, but the conscience of the Londoners and of the country was roused, and almost immediately a fresh shock was given by the news that the boy King and his brother had been murdered in the Tower. There can be no doubt of the main fact, but the precise date is uncertain. Richard had placed the two boys under the care of Sir Robert Brackenbury, and after he had left London sent a message ordering him to kill them. When Brackenbury refused he sent Sir James Tyrrell with a warrant to receive possession of the Tower keys. Tyrrell’s groom, John Dighton, with one of the gaolers, Miles Forrest, entered the chamber of the two boys in the Bloody Tower, killed them, called on Tyrrell to recognize the bodies, then buried them at the foot of a staircase. This was some time in the latter part of August, and was not divulged until it was known that a plot was hatching to place the young Edward upon the throne.

The life of Richard III, which bears the name of Sir Thomas More as its author, but which appears to have been written by Cardinal Morton and edited by More, gives information which may be implicitly trusted as to the circumstances of this cruel murder. The new king, superstitious as wicked men so frequently are, was uneasy in his mind, and ordered the Tower priest to remove the bodies, and he did so, but dying soon after, no one could ascertain where he had laid them. More does not know, and says so frankly. Shakespeare expresses the uncertainty:—

The Chaplain of the Tower hath buried them, But where, to say the truth, I do not know.

Henry VII would have been glad to learn at the time when Perkin Warbeck was declaring that he was one of the alleged murdered boys. It was not until the reign of Charles II that two skeletons were found under the old stone steps of the royal chapel in the great keep. They were covered with earth and had been carefully bestowed. As they answered in every way to the bones which had been vainly sought after it was concluded, and certainly with probability, that they were the bones of the murdered children, and they were laid, by King Charles’s command, in a royal sepulchre in Westminster Abbey.

FOOTNOTE:

[2] Stow says that though there was a garrison of 1,200 well-armed men in the Tower, they were so panic-stricken that they offered no resistance to the rebels, many of whom rushed into the King’s chamber and wantonly rolled about upon his bed, and insisted on kissing his mother. Mr. Trevelyan, in his _England in the Age of Wycliffe_, evidently thinks that Richard betrayed this fortress to the rebels as Louis XVI did the Tuileries in 1792, and sent orders that the mob were to be admitted.