XII.
THE TRAGEDY OF THE BLUE BOAR.
THE annals of Leicester do not contain any story more curious and interesting than that of the fateful visit paid to the Blue Boar Inn by King Richard the Third, two days before his death, and the legacy of woe which that disastrous event is said to have bequeathed to a future generation. The tale, which is partly true, and partly shrouded in mystery, has something of the sombre fatalism of a Greek Tragedy. Indeed it has not wholly escaped the dramatist, for, on December 4th, 1837, a year after the destruction of the Blue Boar Inn, a play called "Black Anna's Bower, or the Maniac of the Dane Hills," was performed at the Leicester Theatre. The plot of this drama turned upon the murder of Mrs. Clarke, hereinafter related, and Black Anna, who is a local spirit of evil repute, played a part therein somewhat like that of the Three Witches in Macbeth. The story falls naturally into four episodes:—I. The King's Visit. II. The King's Fate. III. The Treasure in the Bedstead; and IV. The Murder.
I. THE KING'S VISIT.
On Saturday, August the 20th, 1485, as we may conclude from the available evidence,[1] King Richard III left Nottingham
- ↑ Different dates have been assigned by Hutton and others, but this is the only one that seems to fit in with all the known facts. Kelly, owing to a curious mistake, wrote of the 20th as a Sunday. He relied upon a passage in the Croyland Chronicle, which he quoted in the following form:— "On the Lord's Day before the Feast of Bartholomew the Apostle (August 24th), the King proceeded on his way"; whence he concluded that it was on a Sunday that Richard came to Leicester. But the passage does not refer to the King's march from Nottingham, but to his departure from Leicester, "opidum Leicestrense egressus." The original passage runs thus:— "Die autem Donunico ante festum Bartholomei Apostoli Rex maxima pompa diadema portans in capite cum Duce Norfolchia: Johanne de Howard ac Henrico Percy comite Northumbrice ceterisque magnificis Dominis Militibus et armigeris populariumque multitudine infinita opidum Leicestrense egressus satis per intercursores edoctus ubi hostes sequenti nocte de verisimili manere volebant ad octo militaria ab eo opido distantia juxta Abbathiam de Mirivall castra metatus est." Historiae Croylandensis Continuatio. Gale. Rerum Anglicarum Scriptores I, 573-4.
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