Horace Walpole. Strawberry Hill House can be glimpsed in the background. Artist John Charles Eccardt c.1755.
Horace/Horatio Walpole (1717-97), 5th Earl of Orford (not to be confused with Oxford), MP, Author, Historian, Antiquarian and Connoisseur, is numbered among the earliest defenders of King Richard III. His father was Sir Robert Walpole, the first British Prime Minister from 1721 to 1742. Following in his father’s footsteps he entered Parliament but was not well suited to it, being in his own words ‘a person who loves to write history better than to act in it’(1). Happily however, coming from a wealthy background, he was able to step back from politics and indulge himself with interests that he did take delight in, such as copious letter writing, as well as surrounding himself by paintings, exquisite objet d’art and items of historical interest such as a lock of Edward IV’s hair to name but a few. To house his collections he built the wonderful Strawberry Hill House, Twickenham. Somehow or other he came across the work of Sir George Buc/Buck which kindled in him a deep interest in Richard III. This led to him penning his spirited defence of the king – Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard III – which was published on the 1st February 1768. However his robust efforts to clear Richard’s name have, to an extent, become overlooked or even decried. Then, as now, any defence of Richard promptly drew a barrage of scathing and irate criticisms including an ‘Answer to Mr Horace Walpole’s Late Work …. or an Attempt to Confute him from his own Arguments…’ (2). In a fit of pique he cancelled his membership of the Society of Antiquaries after they had attacked his Historic Doubts ‘with old Women’s logic’ announcing he was ‘leaving them in peace’ to discuss such things as ‘Whittington and his Cat’ (3). In more recent times the late Paul Murray Kendall, author of one of the leading biographies of Richard III and editor of Richard III: The Great Debate commented that Walpole ‘..often reaches conclusions accepted today, but he not infrequently arrived at them by unsatisfactory arguments, for, lacking 15th century sources that have since come to light, he sometimes had to ground his attack upon the Tudor tradition in the materials of that tradition. Thus he dismisses a number of Richard’s supposed crimes mostly by declaring the accusations to be unconvincing’ (4). I actually struggle to see what the problem is with that exactly – surely the getting there is more important than the route taken!? Kendall also dismissed Walpole’s assertion that Perkin Warbeck was indeed Richard, Duke of York, declaring he was, in this matter, ‘flogging a very dead horse’ although he did grant him accolade for being the ‘first to mount an intelligent attack on the story of the princes murder as recounted by Thomas More (5). Well the very dead horse has now arisen phoenixlike from the ashes because the school of thought regarding Perkin Warbeck/Richard Duke of York has since been revised by new investigations and discoveries. See Philippa Langley’s The Missing Princes. We will return to this point later.
To get back to Historic Doubts – Walpole drew up a list of Richard’s ‘supposed crimes’ beneath which I shall give summaries of his responses, some of which were in response to Thomas More’s History of Richard III.
Ist: The murder of Edward Prince of Wales, son of Henry VI
Thankfully More spared us all when he wasted an opportunity to have a poke at Richard, failing to opine on the matter other than a passing reference to the death of Edward.
Walpole, however, chose the Occam’s razor route, honing in on the unlikelihood of Edward IV’s brothers personally taking part in the horrible murder of the unarmed prince. He cited examples of Richard’s well known undisputed bravery and chivalrous attitude – which would later became more apparent in the honourable man that he would evolve into – which were at odds with someone taking part in a cowardly attack on an unarmed victim. Early writers, including Hall described a scene where the prince, being of a bold and feisty nature – although clearly not gifted with the knack of reading the room – rather foolishly backchatted King Edward. The prince, it seemed, was endowed with the overconfidence of the truly dim and the king, enraged at his presumption, gave him a slap with his gauntlet and thrust him away whereupon the king’s brothers, George Duke of Clarence and Richard Duke of Gloucester along with Thomas Grey Marquess of Dorset and William Lord Hasting all fell upon him like a bunch of rabid hyenas and cruelly murdered him….. If this were how it happened. Walpole, quite rightly, questioned this version of events. Was it really likely, he asked, that the king’s brothers would have been personally embroiled in such a foul and useless assassination? He pointed out the more plausible version, given by Fabyan, that the prince was ‘by the kings servants incontinently slain’ as well as the Croyland Chronicler had recorded the murder was committed ‘by the avenging hands of certain persons’ without giving names.
2nd: The murder of Henry VI
More having spared us his witterings on Henry’s son, Edward, went in all guns ablazing with the old king himself. Here he has Richard murdering, with his own hands, as well as without Edward IV’s say so, the pitiful Henry VI: ‘He slew with his own hands King Henry VI being prisoner in the Tower, as men constantly say; and that without commandment or knowledge of the King, which would undoubtedly, if he had intended that thing, have appointed that butcherly office to some other than his own born brother’. Of course in More’s version it was necessary to have Richard murdering the aged and helpless king without the say so of Edward because of the extreme unlikelihood that the king would have tasked his eighteen year old brother with such a horrible and abhorrent deed. Walpole pointed out that how the old king died was unknown, which is still true to this day.
3rd: The murder of his brother George Duke of Clarence
Walpole pointed out the report by the Croyland Chronicler that it was not Richard who contrived in the execution of his brother but the Speaker of the House of Commons, who accompanied by a group of his ‘fellows’, had demanded the delayed execution of Clarence ‘be completed’ (5). Unfortunately he was unable to utilise Mancini’s statement that Richard was ‘so overcome with grief that he could not dissimulate so well, but that he was overheard to say that he would one day avenge his brother’s death’ because Mancini’s manuscript, De Occupatione Regni Anglie per Riccardum Tercium, would not be discovered until 1934 by historian C.A.J. Armstrong.
4th: The execution of Rivers, Grey and Vaughan
It always amazes me the angst springing from the executions of Anthony Earl Rivers and Richard Grey. It seems as if some ‘historians’ and commentators have been rankled by Richard not rolling over, baring his back to the Woodvilles and inviting them to stab him in it, there and then, and have done. It’s rather odd to say the least and almost as if they dwell in some kind of parallel universe where mothers of murdered children happily hand over their surviving offspring to evil, murderous uncles without qualm. Anyway I have departed on one of my tangents as per usual and to get back to Horace Walpole…..
The story is well known and can be found elsewhere in great detail. However to recap briefly – following the death of Edward IV, Elizabeth, his widow and her Woodville/Wydeville family sought to gain control of the young Edward V, at that time residing in Ludlow, and to get him to London as soon as possible with the intent of getting him crowned and upon the throne with the utmost speed. The intention was to circumnavigate Richard then Duke of Gloucester who was both Lord Protector and Great Chamberlain of England amongst other things. The original plan was for the king’s /Woodville party, led by his uncle Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers, to rendezvous with Richard at Northampton then complete the journey to London together. However upon Richard’s arrival at that appointed place the king’s party had already departed for Stony Stratford. For reasons that remain unclear Rivers returned from Stony Stratford to Northampton probably to give some explanation/story to calm the situation down as by then Richard had no doubt smelt a rather massive rat. The arrival of Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, appears to have been the trigger for the arrest of Rivers closely followed by that of Richard Grey, the king’s uterine brother. Richard Duke of Gloucester and his party then travelled swiftly to meet up with the young king and his party at Stony Stratford before they had time to depart for London whereupon Richard took control of both the young king and the situation. When news of the arrests reached the ears of Queen Elizabeth she took herself and her children into sanctuary at Cheyneygates in the precincts of Westminster Abbey. On the arrival of Richard and Edward V in London wagon loads of armour and weapons were produced as proof of a planned Woodville assassination attempt on Richard somewhere upon the road, possibly Grafton Regis, which was a Woodville property. It was soon after this that Richard wrote his famous letter to York asking for assistance as the Queen and her party planned to destroy him and all the old blood royal. The rest is history. It is therefore quite astonishing and laughable that somehow Richard should be found to be the villain in this but there you go…
Walpole summed it up all very neatly when he noted that the shenanigans of the Woodvilles greatly alarmed the old nobility notably Richard Duke of Gloucester and Buckingham who were clearly now fighting for their lives. He dismissed More’s take on the story as ‘historic buskins’ pointing out that ‘the ambition of the Queen who attempted to usurp the government, contrary to the then established custom of the realm, gave the first provocation to Richard and the princes of the blood to assert their rights and that Richard was solicited by the Duke of Buckingham to vindicate those rights. That the preparation of an armed force under Earl Rivers, the seizure of the Tower and treasure, and the equipment of a fleet by the Marquis of Dorset, gave occasion to the princes to imprison the relations of the queen and that though they were put to death without trial it was consonant to the manners of that barbarous and turbulent age and not until after the Queen’s party had taken up arms’.
Elizabeth Woodville. Portrait from a stained glass window in Canterbury Cathedral c.1482.
5th: The execution of Lord Hastings
In Walpole’s day and indeed up until now the execution of William Lord Hastings is still shrouded in mystery and has been utilised as a fine piece of mud to lob at Richard III. Drill a bit deeper and it’s not quite an out and out abrupt, unjustified and horrible execution/murder ordered by Richard, then Duke of Gloucester, after he threw a sudden wobbly at a council meeting in the Tower of London on the 13th June 1483 possibly because his strawberries had still not turned up. Here Walpole has taken the line that Richard, Constable of England and Lord Protector, acted in sheer self defence. He recognised the ‘amazement‘ at the execution and mentions the supposing by More that the reasons behind the execution were that Hastings had ‘either withstood the deposition of Edward V, or, was accused of such a design by Catesby who was deeply in his confidence’. However Walpole confesses to an ignorance of the ‘immediate motives’ but suggests that the sudden execution of Hastings was triggered by nothing but necessity and the law of self defence despite More’s belief that Richard undoubtedly loved him well, and loath he was to have him lost’.
Click here for an enlightening post regarding the council meeting by Matt Lewis with additional comments by Annette Carson and others.
6th: The murder of Edward V and his brother.
Many writers have expended gallons of ink regarding the ‘murder’ of the two princes and none more so than More. Reading his ‘History’ with its long speeches, its ‘very truth it is’ and profusion of ‘quoths’, you could almost imagine he was there in the room with them taking everything said down in shorthand. Of course he was not. And the one thing it is worth noting from his lurid History is, at the end of the day, he owned up to not having a clue as to what had actually happened to the princes – ‘Whose death and final misfortune has nevertheless so far come in question that some remain yet in doubt whether they were in his (Richard’s) days destroyed or no’. Walpole on the other hand, with the information available at the time, took a far more reasoned and lucid view. He eviscerated More’s nonsensical description of the murder by Miles Forest and John Dighton under the instruction of Sir James Tyrell in one sentence: ‘It is difficult to crowd more improbability and lies together than are comprehended in this short narrative’.
Edward V. His image in St Matthews Church, Coldridge Devon.
Richard Duke of York alias Perkin Warbeck. 16th-century copy by Jacques le Boucq of the orginal. Library of Arras, France.
7th: The murder of his own Queen
Possible portrait of Queen Anne Neville from the Eaton Wall paintings.
Here More’s poisonous pen really does descend to the nadir of all pits describing how King Richard caused a cruel rumour to be spread amongst the ‘common people’ that ‘the Queen was dead to the intent that she, hearing this marvellous rumour, should take so grievious a conceit that soon after she should fall into some great disease, He would essay that way, in case it should chance her afterwards to be sick, dead, or otherwise murdered that then the people might impute her death unto the thought she took or else to the sickness. But when the Queen heard of so horrible a rumour of her death sprung abroad among the common people, she suspected the matter and supposed the world to be at an end with her, and incontinent she went to the king with a lamentable countenance, and with weeping tears asked him whether she had done anything whereby he might judge her worthy to suffer death. The king made answer with a smiling and dissimulating countenance with flattering words bidding her to be of good comfort and to pluck up her heart for there was no such thing towards her that he knew. But howsoever it fortune, either by sorrow or else by poisoning within a few days after the Queen was dead and afterwards buried in the Abbey of Westminster. The king being dust delivered of his wife fancied apace lady Elizabeth his niece desiring in any wise to marry with her….’ (6). He then proceeded to shoot himself in the foot by acknowledging Queen Anne Neville was one of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick’s daughters because, via this familial link, she was the source of his Northern Neville Power base (7). I would say that rather than Richard had treated her in this abhorrent way, even if not deeply in love with her, although that too is possible, he would have always treated her with the utmost respect at the very least. I will return to this pertinent point below. In actual fact we do know that from the onset of Anne’s fatal illness, soon after Christmas 1484 to her death on Wednesday 16 March 1485 Richard never left the Palace of Westminster, where she lay dying, except for a total of eleven days when he was at Windsor which can be taken as evidence of his care and affection for her (8). Walpole also pointed out the lingering death of the queen, i.e. two and a half months, ruled out poisoning.
Walpole also pointed out the glaringly obvious, that Queen Anne Neville was the daughter and co-heiress of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, later known as the Kingmaker and Anne Beauchamp, daughter of Richard Beauchamp Earl of Warwick. Analysing this from the worst cold blooded perception i.e. that Richard, still yet to consolidate his rule, wanted rid of Anne, who as mentioned above, was the source of his Northern Power Base, it’s unlikely he would have risked alienating the North – many of whom would still have held the Nevilles fondly in their collective hearts – by murdering Warwick’s daughter! Indeed so damaging were these malicious rumours that Richard took the extraordinary step of making a public declaration in the Great Hall of the Priory of the Knights Hospitaller of St. John in Clerkenwell …where as he in the grete Hall there in the presens of many of his lordes & muche other people shewde his grefe and displeasure aforsaid & said it neuer came into his thought or mynde to marry in suche maner wise nor willyng or glad of the dethe of his quene but as sorye & in hert as hevye as man myght be… (9).
The Great South Gate now known as St John’s Gateway as it is today. This building was the main entrance to the Grand Priory of the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem. Although this Gatehouse is not the original having been rebuilt in 1504 by Prior Docwra, it covers the site of the original which Richard III rode through. Photo Wikipedia.
The shields above St John’s Gateway. Photo Wikipedia.
It is rather sad to say, Walpole would later revise his good opinion of Richard III, reflecting that it was actually quite possible the king had indeed murdered his nephews. This volte-face was bought about by the horrors of the French Revolution. On the 29 January 1793 Walpole wrote to a friend regarding the Revolution ‘There is not a word left in my dictionary that can express what I feel’ following which he then went on at length to express how he felt. Unfortunately he failed to see the comparisons of the destruction of the French royal family with that of the betrayal and slaughter of an anointed English King, his rationale being the heinous executions of the French king and queen being carried out ergo made it possible that Richard III could have committed the heinous crime of doing away with his brother’s sons. However casting that aside I would like to wind up here with a perfect and pertinent quote from Walpole:
‘Time may bring other monuments to light, but one thing is sure, that should any man hereafter presume to repeat the same improbable tale on no better grounds than it has been hitherto urged, he must shut his eyes against conviction, and prefer ridiculous tradition to the scepticism due to most points of history, and to none more than to that in question’.
Bravo Horace Walpole…. you done well!
- historyofparliamentonline.org. http://www.histparl.ac.uk/volume/1715-1754/member/walpole-hon-horatio-1717-97
- Richard III – The Great Debate p. 149. Ed. Paul Murray Kendall.
- richardIII.net. Early Historians
- Richard the Third. The Great Debate P.138. Editor Paul Murray Kendall.
- Ibid p148.
- Mores History – The Great Debate p.129. Editor Paul Murray Kendall.
- richardiii.net Crimes alleged by Shakespeare. Matthew Lewis.
- The Itinerary of Richard III. Rhoda Edwards.
- Acts of Court, pp.173-4. See also Richard III. The Road to Bosworth Field. pp 198-199. Editors P W Hammond and Anne Sutton.
A MEDIEVAL POTPOURRI 