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A Tudor Defense of Richard III

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

W. Gordon Zeeveld
W. Gordon Zeeveld*
Affiliation:
The University of Maryland
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Extract

In 1684 William Winstanley summarized the Tudor reputation of Richard III:

But as Honour is always attended on by Envy, so hath this worthy Princes fame been blasted by malicious traducers, who like Shakespear in his Play of him, render him dreadfully black in his actions, a monster of nature, rather then a man of admirable parts; whose slanders having been examined by wise and moderate men, they have onely found malice and ignorance to have been his greatest accusers, persons who can onely lay suspition to his charge; and suspition in Law is no more guilt than imagination.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 55 , Issue 4 , December 1940 , pp. 946 - 957
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1940

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References

1 William Winstanley, England's Worthies (London, 1684), p. 174.

2 George B. Churchill, Richard the Third up to Shakespeare (Berlin, 1900), pp. 48–51.

3 Edward Hall found Richard's early career creditable for his bravery and strategy at Barnet and Tewkesbury, for his impatience with Edward's French truce, and for his success against the Scots. He is even willing to say that had Richard been willing to remain protector “no doubt but the realme had prospered and he much praysed and beloued as he is nowe abhorred and vilipended.” But in that portion of his history based on More and Polydore Vergil, Hall's rhetorical emendations at times exceed his copy in vituperation.

4 Cited hereinafter respectively as “BM,” “D,” “H,” and “F.” Quotations will be made from H unless otherwise noted.

5 Ed. 1616: sig. B 1–E 3; ed. 1617: sig. A 2–D 3.

6 Second Collection, i, 246–261. Reprinted in Scott's edition (1810), iii, 316–328.

7 Pains at child-birth and adultery, the author claimed without risk of contradiction, are natural to the sex, the deformities only a proof that nature neglected the physical man to develop the intellectual and to make his deeds more laudable.

8 Holinshed advances the same argument in defending Edward's conduct.

9 H, fols. 23–24.

10 H, fol. 20.

11 See R. E. Bennett, “Four Paradoxes of Sir William Cornwallis, the Younger,” Harvard Studies and Notes in Phil, and Lit., xiii (1931), 219–240.

12 H. fols. 11, 30. Other references to contemporary affairs and to Elizabethan literature corroborate this view:

(1) It seems reasonable that the reference to “a proude and insolent naïon whoe haue grevouslie oppressed those netherlandes with execrable cruelties, & are att this daye the most capitali enimies of our state” (H, fol. 11) was written before August 1604, the date of the peace between England and Spain. The last threat, the Spanish expedition to Ireland in 1601–02, was hardly serious enough to deserve the name.

(2) A reference to the swords of France as “latelie bloudyed against one an other” (H, fol. 18) seems more likely to refer to the massacre of St. Bartholomew in 1572 than to the unsettled condition leading up to and extending beyond the absolution of Henry IV, July 25, 1592.

(3) A reference to Phillipe de Comines's Memoires (H, fol. 10), translated by Danett, 1566, printed 1596.

(4) A quotation from Guicciardini's History of Italy (H, fols. 25–26), first published in English in 1579.

(5) The mention of Collingburne's indictment (H, fol. 27) which first appeared in Holinshed's chronicle, sets a date after 1577.

(6) References to plays on the theme of Richard likewise strengthen the view that these drafts are Elizabethan, inasmuch as the earliest known play on the subject was Thomas Legge's Ricardus Tertius, first produced in 1580.

(7) The vocabulary likewise hints at composition in late Elizabethan times: “statists” (H, fol. 16); earliest NED reference is 1584, where it has a Machiavellian flavor.

13 H, fol. 36.

14 H, fols. 24–25.

15 Even verbal parallels occur:

(1) More (Ed. W. E. Campbell), p. 402: “lacked not in helping forth his brother of Clarence to his death;” H, fol. 5: “The suspicōn of helpinge his brother [Clarence] to his end.”

(2) More, p. 430: “enticing him to many things highly redounding to the diminishing of his honour;” H, fol. 11: “not onelie intised his master but accompanied him in all sensuallity.”

(3) More, p. 403: “contrived their destruction;” H, fol. 20: “theire deathes were by him contryued and comaunded.”

One baffling parallel in the defense is the scornful play on the word constantly, already quoted (p. 950) with regard to rumors of Richard's murder of Anne. The phrase “as men constantly say” is used in the histories but with reference to the murder of Henry VI.

16 H, fol. 12.

17 John Harington's statement in The Metamorphosis of Ajax (1596) that Morton was the author “as I have heard,” is possibly derivative from Buc, who had preceded him in translating a part of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, E, fol. 121v. See Mark Eccles' “Sir George Buc, Master of the Revels” in C. J. Sisson, Thomas Lodge and Other Elizabethans (1933), p. 501.

18 Cott. MS. Julius C II.

19 Egerton MS. 2216, fol. 121. Cited hereinafter as “E.”

20 E, fol. 153.

21 R. C. Bald, “A manuscript work by Sir George Buc,” MLR, xxx (Jan. 1935), 1–12.

22 E. K. Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, I, 99.

23 Chambers, op. cit., I, 104, states erroneously that Buc's history was published posthumously in 1607. Buc apparently continued to add to the history after 1619. See Eccles, op. cit., p. 477, and E, fol. 255v.

24 A marginal note in Ulpian Fulwell's Flower of Fame (1575), noted by George Chalmers in A supplemental apology for the believers in the Shakespeare-papers (1799), p. 207 n. The copy has since disappeared.

25 E, fol. 181v.

26 E. fols. 187, 276.

27 E, fol. 2v: “I knowe I shall present you with a story, strange & uncouth, in astile & character different from all former and co$mTon storyes; and therefore résolue for many censures, some captious, jealous and incredulous; some mallevolent, and malitious, the fairrest will bee, that all is but a Paradox, or countro' pinion.”

28 E.g.: Richard's liberality is interpreted by his enemies as subtle practice to buy friendship (E, fol. 178v); Richard would have been the object of praise if he had won at Bosworth (E, fol. 179v); if he had really planned to kill Henry VI, he would have employed a menial to do it (E, fol. 185).

29 H, fol. 6.

30 Cott. MS. Tiberius E. x. fol. 146v; E, fol. 187.

31 “An essay on ‘The Authorship of Richard III’,” The English Works of Sir Thomas More, ed. W. E. Campbell (1931), i, 24–41.

32 E, fols. 172–172v. Buc adds a marginal note: “This booke was lately in ye hand of Mr. Roper of Eltham, as Sr Ed: Hoby (whoe sawe it tould mee.” Hoby was knighted May 22, 1582, died 1617.

33 Frank Marcham, The King's Office of the Revels, 1610–22 (London, 1925), p. 3; Mark Eccles, op. cit., p. 503.

33a P. 81.

34 E, fol. 187. The first sentence of the quotation ends at “thought.” Buc misrepresents Jacques De Meyere's Commentarii Sine Annales rerum Flandricarum (1651), Bk. xvii, fol. 353 [sig. YY 1]: Henricus Rex Londini in custodia, ut alii moerore, ut alii Glocestrii gladio deperiit. Apud Lutetiam Parisiorum duobus regnis inauguratus, unctus & coronatus, iā utroque exutus (vide rerum vicissitudinē) misere moritur.

35 E, fol. 187.

36 Mark Eccles, op. cit., p. 474. See also White Kennett, Complete History of England (London, 1719), I, preface; Biographia Britannica (London, 1748), II, 1005.

37 William Winstanley defended Richard against “malicious traducers” in 1684 (see note 1), and George Chambers in A supplemental apology for the believers in the Shakespeare-papers (1799), pp. 205–206, makes a vague reference to other defenses: “It seems to have been the fashion, in the age of Sir George Buc, to vindicate Richard the III but whether from the representations of Shakespeare, only, I am unable to tell.”

38 Vol. i, x.