2 nd S. N6., FEB.O. '56,]
NOTES AND QUERIES.
105
LONDON, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1856.
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THE HISTORY OF RICHARD lit., ATTRIBUTED TO SIR THOMAS MORE.
Writers of English history, treating of the reigns of Edward V. and Richard III., are all agreed in regarding More's History of King Richard the Third as an authority of great im- portance. Its accuracy has indeed been ques- tioned, and the errors which have been discovered in it are by no means insignificant ; but when we view it as the work of one who was almost con- temporary, who was undoubtedly a man of pe- culiar honour and integrity, who served the state with zeal, and who suffered martyrdom for his religion, it is very hard not to believe it to be a candid and faithful narrative. Nevertheless, the strictures passed upon the work by the author of Historic Doubts have never been satisfactorily rebutted. It is written, to all appearance, in the spirit of a partisan. It attempts to cloak the un- deniable factiousness of the Woodville party, and certainly at least exaggerates many of the crimes attributed to Richard III. It has been convicted of errors sufficient in magnitude to shake the credit of any author whose honesty was not so far above suspicion as Sir Thomas More's ; and if he really was the writer, it is evident that he must have accepted without inquiry, from a very un- candid authority, information which a slight examination would have convinced him was erro- neous. Walpole has pointed out several of these misrepresentations. The principal of them is that relating to the alleged precontract of Edward IV., by virtue of which his children were declared illegitimate, and Richard III. was raised to the throne. Nothing can give a stronger presump- tion in favour of the truth of that allegation than the care which was taken in after-times to pervert the facts and destroy the evidence ; but notwith- standing the statute of Henry VII. which ordered the record to be burned, the Rolls of Parliament still show the real grounds on which Richard based his pretensions ; viz., that Edward IV. had been precontracted to Lady Eleanor Talbot be- fore he married Elizabeth Woodville. More is silent about Lady Eleanor. He says that a pre- contract with Elizabeth Lucy (one of Edward's mistresses) was alleged ; and having given this false version of the story, he has little difficulty in overthrowing the credibility of the allegation by the testimony of Elizabeth Lucy herself, who, he says, acknowledged that it was untrue.
Misstatements like these surely prove the au- thor either to have been very careless or very un- candid. Walpole, with a natural tenderness for Sir Thomas More's honoured name, makes only the less serious charge. Sir Thomas wrote, he
imagines, only to amuse -his leisure. But when ifc
is remembered how near More lived to the period
of which he treats, this does not appear a very
satisfactory exculpation ; and if it could be made
to appear that the authorship of the work has
been falsely attributed to Sir Thomas, I cannot
but think that his integrity would be much better
vindicated.
Sir Henry Ellis, in his Preface to Hardyng's Chronicle, makes the following remarks :
" In Grafton's continuation of Hardyng's Chronicle, the Lives of King Edward V. and King Richard III., usually ascribed to Sir Thomas More, made their first appearance. These Lives were also subsequently published in an united form as ' The History of Richard the Third,' in the great body of More's Works, by Rastell, in 1557, who says not only that he printed from a copy in Sir Thomas More's own hand, but that the original was written about the year 1513. A Latin version of these Lives likewise occurs among the rest of Sir Thomas More's Works, printed in that language at Louvain, in 1566 ; and, I sup- pose, in the editions of 1563 and 1689. Sir John Har- rington, however, in. his Metamorphosis of Ajax, pub- lished in 1596, says : ' Lastly, the best, and best written part, of all our Chronicles, in all men's opinion, is that of Richard the Third ; written, as I have heard, by Morton, but as most suppose, by that worthy and uncorrupt magistrate Sir Thomas More, sometime Lord Chancellor of England.' Buck, also, in his History of the Life and Reign of Richard the Third, says that Dr. Morton (who succeeded Bourchier in the see of Canterbury) wrote 'a book in Latin against King Richard, which afterwards came to the hands of Mr. More, sometime his servant ; ' and adds, 'This book was lately in the hands of Mr. Roper, of Eltham, as Sir Thomas Hoby, who saw it, told me.'
" For myself," adds Sir Henry, " I am inclined to think that the English copy was the work of Morton ; for, as Grafton has printed it, one sentence bears internal evi- dence of an earlier pen than that of Sir Thomas More. The writer, in detailing the circumstances of King Ed- ward IV.'s last sickness, says it ' continued longer than false and fantastical tales have untruly and falsely sur- mised, as I myself, that wrote this pamphlet, truly knew.' Now, at the time of King Edward IV.'s death, Sir Thomas More could have been scarcely three years old."
This argument, however, is not quite conclu- sive. More's History was transcribed, with many little additions arid alterations, by all the chroni- clers of Tudor times ; and it is quite possible that one of the transcribers may have been old enough to recollect the circumstances of the death of Edward IV. When Rastell, who was More's brother-in-law, printed the English work from a copy in More's own handwriting, after Grafton had already printed it with a text somewhat dif- ferent, he certainly thought Sir Thomas something more than a mere transcriber, and took some pains to give the exact words of the MS. before him.*
- Rastell placed the following words on the title-page :
" The History of King Richard the Third (unfinished), written by Master Thomas More, then one of the Under- sheriffs of London, about the year of our Lord 1513. Which work hath been before this time printed in Hard- yng's Chronicle, and in Hall's Chronicle, but very much
