Reblogged from Medieval Potpourri @sparkypus.com
Horace Walpole. Strawberry Hill House can be glimpsed in the background. Artist John Charles Eccardt c.1755.
Horace/Horatio Walpole (1717-97), 5th Earl of Orford (not to be confused with Oxford), MP, Author, Historian, Antiquarian and Connoisseur, is numbered among the earliest defenders of King Richard III. His father was Sir Robert Walpole, the first British Prime Minister from 1721 to 1742. Following in his father’s footsteps he entered Parliament but was not well suited to it, being in his own words ‘a person who loves to write history better than to act in it’(1). Happily however, coming from a wealthy background, he was able to step back from politics and indulge himself with interests that he did take delight in, such as copious letter writing, as well as surrounding himself by paintings, exquisite objet d’art and items of historical interest such as a lock of Edward IV’s hair to name but a few. To house his collections he built the wonderful Strawberry Hill House, Twickenham. Somehow or other he came across the work of Sir George Buc/Buck which kindled in him a deep interest in Richard III. This led to him penning his spirited defence of the king – Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard III – which was published on the 1st February 1768. However his robust efforts to clear Richard’s name have, to an extent, become overlooked or even decried. Then, as now, any defence of Richard promptly drew a barrage of scathing and irate criticisms including an ‘Answer to Mr Horace Walpole’s Late Work …. or an Attempt to Confute him from his own Arguments…’ (2). In a fit of pique he cancelled his membership of the Society of Antiquaries after they had attacked his Historic Doubts ‘with old Women’s logic’ announcing he was ‘leaving them in peace’ to discuss such things as ‘Whittington and his Cat’ (3). In more recent times the late Paul Murray Kendall, author of one of the leading biographies of Richard III and editor of Richard III: The Great Debate commented that Walpole ‘..often reaches conclusions accepted today, but he not infrequently arrived at them by unsatisfactory arguments, for, lacking 15th century sources that have since come to light, he sometimes had to ground his attack upon the Tudor tradition in the materials of that tradition. Thus he dismisses a number of Richard’s supposed crimes mostly by declaring the accusations to be unconvincing’ (4). I actually struggle to see what the problem is with that exactly – surely the getting there is more important than the route taken!? Kendall also dismissed Walpole’s assertion that Perkin Warbeck was indeed Richard, Duke of York, declaring he was, in this matter, ‘flogging a very dead horse’ although he did grant him accolade for being the ‘first to mount an intelligent attack on the story of the princes murder as recounted by Thomas More (5). Well the very dead horse has now arisen phoenixlike from the ashes because the school of thought regarding Perkin Warbeck/Richard Duke of York has since been revised by new investigations and discoveries. See Philippa Langley’s The Missing Princes. We will return to this point later.
To get back to Historic Doubts – Walpole drew up a list of Richard’s ‘supposed crimes’ beneath which I shall give summaries of his responses, some of which were in response to Thomas More’s History of Richard III.
Ist: The murder of Edward Prince of Wales, son of Henry VI
Thankfully More spared us all when he wasted an opportunity to have a poke at Richard, failing to opine on the matter other than a passing reference to the death of Edward.
Walpole, however, chose the Occam’s razor route, honing in on the unlikelihood of Edward IV’s brothers personally taking part in the horrible murder of the unarmed prince. He cited examples of Richard’s well known undisputed bravery and chivalrous attitude – which would later became more apparent in the honourable man that he would evolve into – which were at odds with someone taking part in a cowardly attack on an unarmed victim. Early writers, including Hall described a scene where the prince, being of a bold and feisty nature – although clearly not gifted with the knack of reading the room – rather foolishly backchatted King Edward. The prince, it seemed, was endowed with the overconfidence of the truly dim and the king, enraged at his presumption, gave him a slap with his gauntlet and thrust him away whereupon the king’s brothers, George Duke of Clarence and Richard Duke of Gloucester along with Thomas Grey Marquess of Dorset and William Lord Hasting all fell upon him like a bunch of rabid hyenas and cruelly murdered him….. If this were how it happened. Walpole, quite rightly, questioned this version of events. Was it really likely, he asked, that the king’s brothers would have been personally embroiled in such a foul and useless assassination? He pointed out the more plausible version, given by Fabyan, that the prince was ‘by the kings servants incontinently slain’ as well as the Croyland Chronicler had recorded the murder was committed ‘by the avenging hands of certain persons’ without giving names.
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