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 decease (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 divineth upon conjectures may as well shoot too far as too short.
‘The mean, burbling, insinuating old dotard,’ 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 a 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.’
10
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.’