Third, we cannot
ascertain which of the brothers he meant. In strict construction he
should mean Edward, because as he is speaking of Henry's death,
Richard, then only duke of Gloucester, could not properly be called a
tyrant. But as monks were not good grammatical critics, I shall lay no
stress on this objection. I do think he alluded to Richard; having treated
him severely in the subsequent part of his history, and having a true
monkish partiality to Edward, whose cruelty and vices he slightly
noticed, in favour to that monarch's severity to heretics and ecclesiastic
expiations. "Is princeps, licet diebus suis cupiditatibus & luxui nimis
intemperanter indulsisse credatur, in fide tamen catholicus summ,
hereticorum severissimus hostis sapientium & doctorum hominum
clericorumque promotor amantissimus, sacramentorum ecclesiae
devotissimus venerator, peccatorumque fuorum omnium
paenitentissimus fuit." That monster Philip the Second possessed just
the same virtues. Still, I say, let the monk suspect whom he would, if
Henry was found dead, the monk was not likely to know who murdered
him--and if he did, he has not told us.
Hall says, "Poore kyng Henry the Sixte, a little before deprived of hys
realme and imperial croune, was now in the Tower of London spoyled
of his life and all wordly felicite by Richard duke of Gloucester (as the
constant fame ranne) which, to the intent that king Edward his brother
should be clere out of al secret suspicyon of sudden invasion,
murthered the said king with a dagger." Whatever Richard was, it
seems he was a most excellent and kind-hearted brother, and scrupled
not on any occasion to be the Jack Ketch of the times. We shall see him
soon (if the evidence were to be believed) perform the same friendly
office for Edward on their brother Clarence. And we must admire that
he, whose dagger was so fleshed in murder for the service of another,
should be so put to it to find the means of making away with his
nephews, whose deaths were considerably more essential to him. But
can this accusation be allowed gravely? if Richard aspired to the crown,
whose whole conduct during Edward's reign was a scene, as we are told,
of plausibility and decorum, would he officiously and unnecessarily
have taken on himself the odium of slaying a saint-like monarch,
adored by the people? Was it his interest to save Edward's character at
the expence of his own? Did Henry stand in his way, deposed,
imprisoned, and now childless? The blind and indiscriminate zeal with
which every crime committed in that bloody age was placed to
Richard's account, makes it greatly probable, that interest of party had
more hand than truth in drawing his picture. Other cruelties, which I
shall mention, and to which we know his motives, he certainly
commanded; nor am I desirous to purge him where I find him guilty:
but mob-stories or Lancastrian forgeries ought to be rejected from
sober history; nor can they be repeated, without exposing the writer to
the imputation of weakness and vulgar credulity.
III. The murder of his brother Clarence.
In the examination of this article, I shall set aside our historians (whose
gossipping narratives, as we have seen, deserve little regard) because
we have better authority to direct our inquiries: and this is, the attainder
of the duke of Clarence, as it is set forth in the Parliamentary History
(copied indeed from Habington's Life of Edward the Fourth) and by the
editors of that history justly supposed to be taken from Stowe, who had
seen the original bill of attainder. The crimes and conspiracy of
Clarence are there particularly enumerated, and even his dealing with
conjurers and necromancers, a charge however absurd, yet often made
use of in that age. Eleanor Cobham, wife of Humphrey duke of
Gloucester, had been condemned on a parallel accusation. In France it
was a common charge; and I think so late as in the reign of Henry the
Eighth Edward duke of Buckingham was said to have consulted
astrologers and such like cattle, on the succession of the crown.
Whether Clarence was guilty we cannot easily tell; for in those times
neither the public nor the prisoner were often favoured with knowing
the evidence on which sentence was passed. Nor was much information
of that sort given to or asked by parliament itself, previous to bills of
attainder. The duke of Clarence appears to have been at once a weak,
volatile, injudicious, and ambitious man. He had abandoned his brother
Edward, had espoused the daughter of Warwick, the great enemy of
their house, and had even been declared successor to Henry the Sixth
and his son prince Edward. Conduct so absurd must have left lasting
impressions on Edward's mind, not to be effaced by Clarence's
subsequent treachery to Henry and Warwick. The
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