725 



EDWARD V. 



EDWARD V. 



72 



in another quarter. Edward, incensed in the highest dettree, was 

 preparing to avenge this affront by a new descent upon France, in 

 which the parliament had eagerly promised to assist him with their 

 lives and fortunes, when he was suddenly cut off by a fever, ou the 

 9th of April 1483, after a reign of twenty-two years. 



Edward IV. had by his wife Elizabeth three sons Edward, who 

 succeeded him; Richard, duke of York, born in H74 ; and George, 

 duke of Bedford, who died iu infancy ; and seven daughters Elizabeth, 

 born llth of February 1466, contracted to the dauphin, and afterwards 

 married to Henry VII. ; Cecilia, contracted to Prince James (afterwards 

 James IV.) of Scotland, and afterwards married first to John, viscount 

 Wells, secondly to Mr. Kyme, of Lincolnshire ; Anne, contracted to 

 Philip, son of the Archduke Maximilian of Austria and his wife the 

 Duchess of Burgundy, and afterwards married to Thomas Howard, 

 duke of Norfolk ; Bridget, born at Eltham, 10th of November 1480, 

 who became a nun at Dartford ; Mary, contracted to John I., king of 

 Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, but who died at Greenwich in 1482, 

 before the marriage was solemnised ; Margaret, born 1 9th of April 1472, 

 who died llth of December following; and Catherine, contracted to 

 John, eldest son of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, and afterwards 

 married to William Courtenay, earl of Devonshire. By one of his 

 many mistresses, Elizabeth Lucy, he had two natural children Arthur, 

 suraawed Plantagenet, created Viscount Lisle by Henry VIII. ; and 

 Elizabeth, who became the wife of Thomas, lord Lumley. 



Edward IV. has the reputation of having been zealous and impartial 

 in the administration of justice; but with the exception of some 

 statutes abridging the ancient jurisdiction of sheriffs, and transferring 

 part of the powers of those officers to the quarter-sessions, no important 

 innovations were made in the law during this reign. It is from this 

 period however that the rise of what is call? d indirect pleading is dated. 

 In this reign also the practice of suffering common recoveries by a 

 tenant in tail, as a means of barring hia estate tail, and also all the 

 estates in remainder and reversion, was fully established by judicial 

 decision (in the twelfth year of this king), after it had been interrupted 

 for some time by the statute of Westminster 2, 13 Ed. I., c. 32. The 

 reduction of the law and its practice to a scientific form is considered 

 to have made great progress iu the latter part of the reign of Henry VI. 

 and iu that of Edward IV. To the latter belong the treatiss ' De 

 Laudibus Legum Anglia)' of Sir John Forteacue, the celebrated treatise 

 on ' Tenures ' of Sir Thomas Littleton, and the work called Statham's 

 ' Abridgment of the Law.' The Year Books also began now to be 

 much more copious than in former reigns. 



Many laws relating to trade and commerce passed in the reign of 

 Edward IV. attest the growing consequence of thos? interests, but are 

 not in other respects important, and do not show that more enlightened 

 views began to ba entertained than had heretofore prevailed. The 

 manufacture of articles of silk, though only by the hand, was now 

 introduced into this country; and we find the parliament endeavouring 

 to protect it by the usual method of prohibiting the importation of 

 similar articles made abroad. This reign is illustrious as being that 

 in which the art of printing was introduced into England. [CiXTOU.] 



The testimony of historians concurs with the probabilities of the 

 case in assuring us that the country must have been subjected to much 

 devastation and many miseries during the bloody and destructive wars 

 of York and Lancaster ; but this contest was undoubtedly useful in 

 shaking the iron-bound system of feudalism, and clearing away much 

 that obstructed the establishment of a better order of things. The 

 country seems to have very soon recovered from the immediate 

 destruction of capital and property occasioned by these wars. 



EDWARD V., the eldest son of Edward IV., was born on the 4th 

 of November 1470, in the Sanctuary of Westminster Abbey, where his 

 mother had taken shelter when her husband was obliged to fly to the 

 continent on the return of Queen Margaret and the Earl of Warwick. 

 He was consequently only in his thirteenth year when his father died. 

 His reign is reckoned from the 9th of April 1483, the day of his 

 father's decease ; but during the few weeks it lasted he never was a 

 king in more than name. The public transactions of his reign all 

 belong properly to the history of his uncle, Richard III. Edward 

 was at Ludlow in Shropshire at the time of hit father's death, and 

 possession of his person was obtained at Northampton by Richard 

 (then Duke of Gloucester) as he was on his way to London in charge 

 of bis maternal uucle Anthony, earl Rivers. He appears not to have 

 been brought to London till the beginning of May. In the course of 

 that month, and probably between the 24th and 27th, Richard was 

 declared at a great council protector of the king and the kingdom. 

 On the 16th of June he contrived to obtain Edward's younger brother, 

 the Duke of York, out of the hands of the queen his mother, who had 

 taken refuge in Westminster Abbey with him and his sister. The 

 two boys were forthwith removed to the Tower, then considered one 

 of the royal palaces, there to remain, as was pretended, till the 

 coronation of the young king, which was appointed to take place on 

 the 22nd. Before that day arrived however Richard had completed 

 his measures for placing the crown on his own head. The 26th of 

 June is reckoned the commencement of his reign, and the close of that 

 of his nephew. After this Edward and his brother were seen no more. 

 They were however universally believed to have been made away with 

 by Kich:ir<l. The account which has been generally received is that 

 given by Sir Thomas More, whose testimony may be regarded as that 



of a contemporary, for he was born some years before the death of 

 Edward IV. His statement is in substance that Richard, while on his 

 way to pay a visit to the town of Gloucester after his coronation, sent 

 one John Green, "whom he specially trusted," to Sir Robert Bracken- 

 bury, the constable of the Tower, with a letter desiring Sir Robert to 

 put the children to death ; that Brackenbury declared he would not 

 commit so dangerous a deed ; that Sir James Tyrrel was then despatched 

 with a commission to receive the keys of the Tower for one night ; 

 and that under his directions the children were about midnight stifled 

 iu bed with their feather-beds and pillows, by Miles Forest, " one of 

 the four that kept them, a fellow fleshed iu murder beforetime," and 

 John Dighton, Tyrrel's own horse-keeper, " a big, broad, square, and 

 strong knave." The relation is given in the fullest and most particular 

 form, not in the Latin translation of More's ' History,' or in the retrans- 

 lation of that into English, published (with a strange ignorance that 

 the work already existed in English) in Bishop Rennet's ' Collection of 

 Histories' (3 vols. folio, 1706), but ia the English work, which we 

 believe is the original. It is printed in full from More's works iu 

 Holiushed, who describes it as written about the year 1513. More 

 does not give the story as' merely " one of the various tales he had 

 heard concerning the death of the two princes " (Henry's ' History of 

 Great Britain,' and Walpole's ' Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign 

 of Richard III.'); he introduces it by saying, "I shall rehearse you 

 the dolorous end of those babes, not after every way that I have heard, 

 but after that way that I have so heard by such men and by such 

 means, as methinketh it were hard but it should be true;" and he 

 closes the narrative by repeating that it is what he ha-i " learned of 

 them that much knew, and little cause had to lie." It is perfectly 

 evident that he had not himself a doubt of its truth. " Very truth it 

 is," he says moreover, " and well known, that at such time as Sir 

 James Tyrrel was in the Tower, for treason committed against the 

 most famous prince, King Henry VII., both Dighton and he were 

 examined, and confessed the murder iu manner above written." The 

 common story seems to be supported by the honours and rewards 

 which were immediately bestowed by Richard upon Tyrrel, Bracken- 

 bury, Green, and Dighton. (See these stated in Strype's ' Notes ou 

 Sir George Buck's Life and Reign of Richard III.,' book 3rd.) Symnel, 

 or Sulford, who in the reign of Henry VII. assumed the character of 

 Edward Piantagenet, eon of George, duke of Clarence, seems to have 

 originally intended to pass himself as Edward V. Perkin Wavbeck, 

 who appeared some years after, called himself Edward's brother, 

 Richard, duke of York. 



Buck and others, who have endeavoured to disprove King Richard's 

 guilt, have rested much of their argument on the fact that the 

 remains of Edward and his brother never could be found iu the 

 Tower, although much search had been made for them ; but on the 

 17th of July 1674, in making some alterations, the labourers found 

 covered with a heap of stones at the foot of an old pair of stairs a 

 quantity of partially-consumed bones, which on examination appeared" 

 to be those of two boys of the ages of the two princes. They were 

 removed by order of Charles II. to Henry VII.'s Chapel in West- 

 minster Abbey, where the inscription placed over them recites that 

 they appeared by undoubted indications to be those of Edward V. 

 and his brother. (" Ossa desideratorurn diu et multum qusosita, &c., 

 scalarum in ruderibus (seals) istse ad sacellum Turris Albte nuoer 

 ducebant) alte defossa, indiciis certissimis sunt reperta, &c.") This 

 discovery is sufficiently in conformity with More's account, who tells 

 us that Tyrrel caused the murderers to bury the bodies " at the stair 

 foot, meetly deep in the ground under a great heap of stone)." It is 

 true he mentions a report that Richard " allowed not the burying in 

 so vile a corner, saying that he would have them buried in a better 

 place, because they were a king's sons ; whereupon they say that a 

 priest of Sir Robert Brackenbury's took up the bodies again, and 

 secretly interred them in such place as, by the occasion of his death 

 which only knew it, could never since come to light." This however 

 is evidently a story both improbable in itself, and one which, although 

 it might naturally enough arise and get into circulation, could never 

 have rested on any trustworthy authority. More gives it as a mere 

 rumour, and we may fairly infer, from the words (" as I have heard ") 

 with which it is introduced, that he did not himself believe it. He 

 carefully adds, in his notice of the examination of Tyrrel and Dighton, 

 " but whither the bodies were removed they could nothing tell." 

 Tyrrel was executed for his treason ; but Dighton still lived when 

 More wrote. He says of him, " Dighton indeed yet walketh on alive, 

 in good possibility to be hanged ere he die." According to Grafton, 

 " Dighton lived at Calais long after, no less disdained and hated than 

 pointed at." The reader may also compare upon this subject the 

 account of the examinations of Tyrrel and Dighton given by Bacon 

 in his ' History of King Henry VII.' (Montagu's edition of Bacon's 

 Works, Hi., 287, 288.) It agrees very closely with the story told by 

 More. Bacon says that Dighton, who was set at liberty after the 

 examinations, " was the principal means of divulging this tradition; " 

 and from the use of thnt expression it has been inferred that Bacon 

 regarded the whole as an idle tale ; but he has in several places in 

 this work distinctly expressed his belief of the guilt both of Richard 

 and Tyrrel, especially in his notice (p. 385) of the execution of Tyrrel, 

 " against whom," he says, " the blood of the innocent princes, 

 Edward V. and his brother, did still cry from under the altar.' 



