Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third | Page 8

must
rest at last; for they, who speak most positively, revert to the story
which he was pleased to publish eleven years after their supposed
deaths, and which is so absurd, so incoherent, and so repugnant to dates
and other facts, that as it is no longer necessary to pay court to his
majesty, it is no longer necessary not to treat his assertions as an
impudent fiction. I come directly to this point, because the intervening
articles of the executions of Rivers, Gray, Vaughan, and Hastings will
naturally find their place in that disquisition.
And here it will be important to examine those historians on whose
relation the story first depends. Previous to this, I must ascertain one or
two dates, for they are stubborn evidence and cannot be rejected: they
exist every where, and cannot be proscribed even from a Court
Calendar.
Edward the Fourth died April 9th, 1483. Edward, his eldest son, was
then thirteen years of age. Richard Duke of York, his second son, was
about nine.

We have but two cotemporary historians, the author of the Chronicle of
Croyland, and John Fabian. The first, who wrote in his convent, and
only mentioned incidentally affairs of state, is very barren and concise:
he appears indeed not to have been ill informed, and sometimes even in
a situation of personally knowing the transactions of the times; for in
one place we are told in a marginal note, that the doctor of the canon
law, and one of the king's councellors, who was sent to Calais, was the
author of the Continuation. Whenever therefore his assertions are
positive, and not merely flying reports, he ought to be admitted as fair
evidence, since we have no better. And yet a monk who busies himself
in recording the insignificant events of his own order or monastery, and
who was at most occasionally made use of, was not likely to know the
most important and most mysterious secrets of state; I mean, as he was
not employed in those iniquitous transactions--if he had been, we
should learn or might expect still less truth from him.
John Fabian was a merchant, and had been sheriff of London, and died
in 1512: he consequently lived on the spot at that very interesting
period. Yet no sheriff was ever less qualified to write a history of
England. His narrative is dry, uncircumstantial, and unimportant: he
mentions the deaths of princes and revolutions of government, with the
same phlegm and brevity as he would speak of the appointment of
churchwardens. I say not this from any partiality, or to decry the simple
man as crossing my opinion; for Fabian's testimony is far from bearing
hard against Richard, even though he wrote under Henry the Seventh,
who would have suffered no apology for his rival, and whose reign was
employed not only in extirpating the house of York, but in forging the
most atrocious calumnies to blacken their memories, and invalidate
their just claim.
But the great source from whence all later historians have taken their
materials for the reign of Richard the Third, is Sir Thomas More.
Grafton, the next in order, has copied him verbatim: so does
Hollingshed--and we are told by the former in a marginal note, that Sir
Thomas was under-sheriff of London when he composed his work. It is
in truth a composition, and a very beautiful one. He was then in the
vigour of his fancy, and fresh from the study of the Greek and Roman

historians, whose manner he has imitated in divers imaginary orations.
They serve to lengthen an unknown history of little more than two
months into a pretty sizeable volume; but are no more to be received as
genuine, than the facts they adduced to countenance. An under-sheriff
of London, aged but twenty-eight, and recently marked with the
displeasure of the crown, was not likely to be furnished with materials
from any high authority, and could not receive them from the best
authority, I mean the adverse party, who were proscribed, and all their
chiefs banished or put to death. Let us again recur to dates.(3) Sir
Thomas More was born in 1480: he was appointed under-sheriff in
1508, and three years before had offended Henry the Seventh in the
tender point of opposing a subsidy. Buck, the apologist of Richard the
Third, ascribes the authorities of Sir Thomas to the information of
archbishop Morton; and it is true that he had been brought up under
that prelate; but Morton died in 1500, when Sir Thomas was but twenty
years old, and when he had scarce thought of writing history. What
materials he had gathered from his master were probably nothing more
than a general narrative of the preceding times in discourse at dinner or
in a winter's