Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third by Horace Walpole
page 29 of 115 (25%)
page 29 of 115 (25%)
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Buckingham was the devil that tempted Richard; and if Richard still
wanted instigation, then it must follow, that he had not murdered Henry the Sixth, his son, and Clarence, to pave his own way to the crown. If this fine story of Buckingham and Percival is not true, what becomes of Sir Thomas More's credit, on which the whole fabric leans? Lord Richard, Sir Thomas Vaughan, and Sir Richard Hawte, were arrested, and with Lord Rivers sent prisoners to Pomfret, while the dukes conducted the king by easy stages to London. The queen, hearing what had happened took sanctuary at Westminster, with her other son the duke of York, and the princesses her daughters. Rotheram, archbishop of York and Lord Chancellor, repaired to her with the great seal, and endeavoured to comfort her dismay with the friendly message he had received from Hastings, who was with the confederate lords on the road. "A woe worth him!" quoth the queen, "for it is he that goeth about to destroy me and my blood!" Not a word is said of her suspecting the duke of Gloucester. The archbishop seems to have been the first who entertained any suspicion; and yet, if all that our historian says of him is true, Rotheram was far from being a shrewd man: witness the indiscreet answer which he is said to have made on this occasion. "Madam," quoth he, "be of good comfort, and assure you, if they crown any other king than your son whom they now have we shall on the morrow crown his brother, whom you have here with you." Did the silly prelate think that it would be much consolation to a mother, whose eldest son might be murthered, that her younger son would be crowned in prison, or was she to be satisfied with seeing one son entitled to the crown, and the other enjoying it nominally? |
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