9nd 8, No 6.5 Fen. 9, '56.] 
LONDON, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 9,'1856. 
Notes, 
THE HISTORY OF RICHARD III., 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 If. 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 
NOTES AND QUERIES. 
105 
imagines, only to amuse his leisure. But when it 
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 : 
“ Tn 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 Hnglish 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 1V.’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 LY.’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 and 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 ITV. 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 yery much 
