The Last Plantagenet

by Thomas B. Costain

  On November 30, 1933, a report was read before the Society of Antiquaries, containing an historical review of the case prepared by Mr. Lawrence E. Tanner and the findings of Professor Wright. The latter expressed his belief that they were the bones of the two princes and that they had been killed at some time previous to the Battle of Bosworth. The case, it seemed, was closed. Richard was guilty.

  There was quite a little excitement in the daily press and rather considerable satisfaction was manifested by historians and scholars who had supported the traditional view.

  The satisfaction was not general, however. None of those who believed in Richard’s innocence, nor any of the larger body of scholars and readers who considered the case could not be solved, were convinced the last word had been said.

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  Without any thought of suggesting a lack of knowledge or care on the part of Professor Wright, there was a widespread feeling that it would have been more satisfactory if a board of authorities had been appointed to examine the bones. This, after all, was a matter of the utmost historical importance. And should not a longer period than five days have been devoted to the work? The bones had been buried under the masonry for many centuries: was there any pressing need to conclude the examination so quickly? In his report Professor Wright said of the photographs, “These were taken under great difficulties since it was not possible to remove the bones from the chapel.” No reason for the prohibition on moving was stated. The objection was raised at once that no regulations should have been allowed to stand in the way of getting the most complete information.

  The conclusion might be reached from studying the report that the determination of age from a set of bones was a relatively simple matter, but many authorities do not agree with this. Dr. Thomas Dwight says in his The Range and Significance of Variation in the Human Skeleton, “No part of medical literature is so perfunctory, artificial and altogether unsatisfactory as medico-legal anatomy.” Dr. R. B. H. Gradwohl in his Legal Medicine says, “The whole subject of the delicate balance between bone formation and destruction is almost still as much of a puzzle as it was two centuries ago.” In Personal Identification, Bert Wentworth and R. H. Wilder say, “One must bear in mind, however, in all data resting upon development, whether of bone or teeth, that the dates for the events show some individual variation, in certain cases a considerable one, so that an age thus determined can be only approximate.”

  Professor Wright bases his conclusions on three points. The first is a general survey of the teeth which, he states, “permit of Edward’s age being determined as somewhere between twelve and thirteen years.” There was, however, every indication of advanced osteitis, particularly in the skull of the older boy, and this would suggest an older age than that set by the examiners. Osteitis will retard the growth of the teeth from six months to a year.

  The second point on which the case against Richard is built is that the axis cervical vertebra was without the apical part of its odontoid process. The third was based on a first sacral vertebra which showed the laminae still half an inch or so apart. In this connection Wentworth and Wilder say that “when the cartilage between two growing centres is entirely replaced and the pieces are in contact, a long time may elapse before they entirely fuse with each other.” The conclusions reached in the report do not make any allowance for the possibility of a long time lapse of this nature.

  Nor is there any reference to the making of longitudinal sections with a saw on any of the long bones, a method which Thomas Gonzales in his Legal Medicines, Pathology and Toxicology speaks of as a desirable method of reaching conclusions as to age. This applies particularly to long bones, several of which were found complete.

  In a survey conducted some years ago in the United States, a complete six-monthly radiographic record of the bone formations of several thousand healthy children resulted in some curious evidence. There was, for instance, the matter of the knees of three children which were so closely similar in point of development that they suggested the same age for each. One knee belonged to a mature six-year-old, one an average eight-year-old, and one a retarded ten-year-old! A general conclusion was reached from the survey that an average scale of maturation in the bones can be accepted but that it is impossible to tell the ages of children from bone formation without allowing a four-year variable (i.e., two years each way).

  An outstanding American authority, Professor T. Wright Todd of California, was convinced that glandular conditions determined the maturing of children and that certain diseases will retard bone development from two to four years. He introduced a point of supreme importance in his Study of Skeleton Maturity by asserting that in ascertaining skeleton age hand and foot studies are indispensable.

  In his report Professor Wright makes no mention of hands and feet.

  It is unfortunate that any room for doubt was left. Those who take the traditional view are convinced, of course, that the results clear up the case. But it seems to an equally large body that the clouds of uncertainty have not been dispersed.

  There is one factor which seems to weigh rather heavily in lay minds, although it is not referred to in the report. The bones indicate that both boys were very tall for the ages which Professor Wright assigns to them. The height of the older, Edward, is fixed at 57.50 inches and that of the younger at 54.50. In a Housebook of Hygiene, published in England in 1913, the average heights for both country and town boys were given as follows:

  12 years 54.97

  13 years 56.91

  14 years 59.33

  15 years 62.24

  How many men of the present day could squeeze themselves into the suits of armor worn by the brave knights of old? Could many fifteenth-century men, even measuring from the tips of the “steeple” hats of Yorkist days, equal in height the normal man of today? Comparatively few, for the human race has increased very considerably in stature in the centuries which have intervened. It follows that the sons of these stocky men, the boys who wore the bright-colored gallygaskins of the fifteenth century, who swaggered with bows over their shoulders and attached polished bones to their shoes to make skates when there was ice on the ponds, were shorter than the boys of today, very much shorter. But the figures given above would indicate that Prince Edward was close to the average height of boys of fourteen, based on the 1913 scale. Allowing for the greater stature of present-day youth, it seems reasonable to place him at an age of at least fifteen years, which would mean that he could have lived into the first years of the reign of Henry VII.

  There is always, of course, the possibility of individual variations from every rule and every scale, but to assume that both boys were so far in excess of the normal for their day would be to fly in the face of the law of averages.

  CHAPTER XIII

  The Evidence of an Eyewitness

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  THE amazing thing is that this mystery should have remained unsolved when it could have been cleared up with such apparent ease. If Richard were guilty, Henry VII could have moved to punish the men employed for the black deed immediately after the Battle of Bosworth. He did nothing. The man Green did not die until the following year. It is on record that sums of money were paid to Black Will for two more years. The chief accomplices, Sir James Tyrell and Dighton, were both alive and were received into Henry’s open favor. Tyrell was given many honors and appointments, and Dighton was presented with the living of Fullbright.

  If Richard were not guilty, it is easy to understand why nothing was done and why no official announcement was made until all of the conspirators had been done away with, excepting Dighton who, according to the History, “indeed yet walketh on alive, in good possibility to be hanged ere he die.”

  If the testimony of even one of these men had been made public, the mystery would not have continued until a solution of it was sought in an examination of the teeth and bones found in the Tower; at a time when all of the alleged tools of the wicked uncle had been moldering in their graves for centuries and could not be summon
ed from the shades for questioning.

  There is one piece of vital evidence supplied by a man who can be classified as an eyewitness, the only man, in fact, who was in a position to know the truth. He did not leave his testimony in writing nor did he give any verbal statement. But he performed an act which truly spoke as loud as any words.

  It has seemed fitting to leave the story of what he did until the end.

  To provide this incident with a proper background, it will be necessary to retell in part the story of the killing of the two princes as it appears in the History.

  “Whereupon,” says the History, “he [Richard] sent one John Green, whom he especially trusted, unto Sir Robert Brackenbury, constable of the Tower, with a letter and credence also, that the same Sir Robert should in any wise put the two children to death. This John Green did his errand unto Brackenbury, kneeling before Our Lady in the Tower, who plainly answered he would never put them to death, to die therefore.” The meaning of which is that the constable would die himself rather than commit such a crime. Then the story proceeds with the sending of Tyrell to the Tower later. “Wherefore, on the morrow, he sent him to Brackenbury with a letter, by which he was commanded to deliver Sir James all the keys of the Tower for one night, to the end he might then accomplish the king’s pleasure.” There is a final reference to the constable in the report. “Whereupon they say that a priest of Sir Robert Brackenbury took up the bodies again, and secretly interred them.”

  Sir Robert was the one man, therefore, who knew if the princes were murdered on Richard’s orders. On the other hand, if they were alive and still in the Tower when Richard’s reign reached its early ending, he was in a position to know that also.

  Now Sir Robert Brackenbury was an honorable man. Nothing has been said or written against him, not a hint of criticism is found in the records of the day, not a jot of malice, nor a tittle of complaint. It has been made clear that even the History absolved him of all blame.

  When the word reached London that the crucial battle was impending between the army of the king and the invading forces of Henry of Richmond, Sir Robert Brackenbury gathered a few horsemen about him and set out for the scene of action. It was a long and hard ride from London to the bogs on the borders of Leicestershire and Warwickshire where the battle would be fought, more than one hundred miles as the crow flies. It is difficult to estimate what the actual distance was over the twisting, shifting, treacherous, unpaved roads of that day. Sir Robert and his men had to “flog their horses all the way from London” to cover the ground in time. The impatience of this brave knight can be understood, hasting to strike a blow against the infamous uncle who had commanded the murder of his nephews, riding madly through the Midlands, galloping through gaping lanes of watchers in the towns, forgetting the need for sleep and food!

  But hold! When Sir Robert reached Sutton Cheney, he turned off the road to Dickon’s Nook where King Richard was said to be. When he saw the royal standard flapping in a light breeze above the tents, he pulled up. With a sigh of relief, he slipped out of his saddle. He was in time, after all!

  Sir Robert had made that furious ride in order to lend his sword to the cause of the king and not to Henry of Richmond. What is more, he fought the next day both boldly and well and gave up his life in the final stages, a short few moments before Richard made his magnificent last effort by charging almost singlehanded into the ranks of the Lancastrians.

  It was a sad thing, for Sir Robert was a brave and honorable knight and he deserved to live longer. And it was an unfortunate thing for history that his tongue and hand were stilled.

  But can more than one meaning be read into what he did? The princes had not been killed when he led his horsemen out through the Ald Gate and turned in the direction of the Great North Road.

  A Personal Postscript

  FOR reasons which will soon be apparent it is necessary at this point to adopt a personal approach.

  The time to begin the reading of history is when you are young. I do not mean by this the hasty study of textbooks and the memorizing of a few dates. I mean the reading of history for pleasure as well as information. To begin in later years is to lose much of the eager delight, the tendency to become emotionally involved, a tendency which is increased because so much history is written in two colors, black and white.

  As I was born in Canada, my early and insatiable appetite for the subject was fed, first, on the colorful sequence which stretched from Jacques Cartier to Wolfe and Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham. Then I took up English and I found myself emotionally involved from first to last. I remember distinctly that there were tears in my eyes when I came to the last sentence of Charles Dickens’ description of the Battle of Hastings. “—And the Warrior, worked in gold thread and precious stones, lay low, all torn and soiled with blood—and the three Norman Lions kept watch over the field.” How much I had wanted Harold the Saxon to win!

  It is on the question of battles that the feelings of readers can become most deeply engaged. I indulged in long periods of speculation as to what would have happened to England if the Saxons had won at Hastings. I was so eager a partisan of the Scots during the wars in the reign of Edward I that I was quite broken up when my hero, William Wallace, was beaten at Falkirk. If only the haughty (it seemed that the word haughty was used more often in those days than any other adjective) members of the Scottish aristocracy had not been too proud to serve under the great but relatively lowborn Wallace!

  When I came to the Battle of Bosworth Field, that was a different matter. Here the hunchbacked monster of a wicked uncle, who had ordered the murder of his nephews, was punished with defeat and death, seemingly by the direct intervention of God. It never occurred to me then to ponder what might have happened if Richard had won. It was not until I heard of Horace Walpole and his Historic Doubts that I began to follow along the trail which led back to Bosworth. It seemed possible then that a great injustice had been done; and I began to feel the first faint quiver of the old emotional absorption.

  It was at an early stage of my interest in matters historical that I fell under the spell of the Plantagenets. It began with the story of the Fair Rosamond in the maze at Woodstock and grew into a passion with the mighty deeds of Richard of the Lion-Heart. Even after I realized that the wicked Queen Eleanor was actually a very wise and discerning woman and that Rosamond Clifford died in a convent of natural causes, even after I discovered to my horror that the great Richard had heels of clay, even then my interest in these fascinating people continued unabated. As I read deeper into the sources, I saw how many of the Plantagenets had been great kings—Henry II, Edward I, Edward III, Henry V, and, finally, what a fine king-in-the-making Richard III had been. The weaknesses they displayed were of a kind to add to their fascination. They were story-book kings, with their yellow hair and blazing blue eyes; and the wives they brought over to England were fairy-story queens, beautiful always and often wicked, sometimes very wicked. And back of these spectacular qualities, they relied on Parliament and, with some exceptions, they showed a proper regard for constitutional forms. In which latter respect they were far better kings than those who followed after them.

  But to get back to the last of the Richards. In reading history it should be borne in mind that, in spite of the general belief to the contrary human nature does change with the years. The stouthearted Englishmen who loved and hated, who quarreled and laughed and sang, and who lived and died through the Hundred Years War and the Wars of the Roses were actuated by instincts and habits which we do not share today, save, perhaps, in a latent form. We cannot judge the leading figures of centuries ago by our own modern standards. Even if Richard had ordered the deaths of the two princes (which so many fanatically disbelieve), it has to be considered that such things had been going on almost from the beginning of time. Although not a parallel in any sense, the Black Prince, considered the greatest of the knights of chivalry, slaughtered all of the innocent inhabitants of Limoges, and thousands of boys and girls d
ied in the course of a few hours. Is this terrible day remembered still?

  From the welter of contrived history, of book throwing, of efforts to explain away discrepancies of fact by theorizing, there still emerges from the gloom of this particular span of years the figure of a Man. The more I found to read about Richard, the last of the Plantagenets, the harder it became for me to think of him as the murderer of his nephews. I found so many glimpses of him as a warm and understandable human being. There was the delicate boy, thin and quiet but not allowing himself to be warped by jealousy because all his brothers and sisters were tall and fair; the youth who took over in his late teens the command of the Yorkist horse and led the thundering cavalry charges which helped so much to win the decisive battles; the honorable younger brother who scorned the French king’s bribes and refused to set foot on the covered wooden bridge at Picquigny; the shrewd adviser on whom the lordly and successful Edward depended so much; the administrator of firm hand who ruled the turbulent north; the king who applied himself so earnestly to the ruling of England and to introducing common sense into some of the legal statutes; the saddened man who lost his son and his wife within a few months; the king, betrayed on the field of battle, who charged almost singlehanded against the enemy, slashing, cutting, shouting his scorn and defiance before going down.

  The outcome of the Battle of Bosworth became, therefore, the one issue in English history in which my feelings were most deeply engaged. In addition to the sidelights which I found in the course of my reading, I studied the measured reasoning of Horace Walpole and the ardent advocacy of those who followed him, ending with the original and convincing approach employed by Josephine Tey in her Daughter of Time. And so it has been impossible for me to agree with what seems to have been a somewhat hasty verdict in the matter of the bones. There is too much proof on the other side.