Richard III and the Murder in the Tower by Hancock Peter A

Author:Hancock, Peter A. [Hancock, Peter A.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Richard III and the Murder in the Tower
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2011-08-25T16:00:00+00:00

Ramsay is even terser on this matter and simply states, ‘de Comines’ assertions that the troth of Edward and Eleanor had been received by the Bishop of Bath was doubtless based on the mere fact that the case was got up by Stillington.’ Ramsay cites the same source as that which was used later by Chrimes also. It should be carefully noted that these accusations concern the so-called ‘Bill,’ referring directly to the Titulus Regius, which was the subject of the conversation by the referenced lords. Stillington is accused of authorship here, although Ramsay goes further and accuses Stillington of the complete fabrication of the whole episode. It remains crucial to reiterate that this original source, used by both later authors, did not accuse Stillington of revealing the pre-contract to Richard. Rather, it accused him of authoring the bill in the Parliament of 1484, which took place some eight months after the events of June 1483 at the Tower. Thus neither of the close-to-contemporary sources that we have unequivocally points to Stillington as Richard’s informant. It is true that both sources heavily implicate him in these events, but the question of whether he was the actual source remains, I suggest, unresolved by these documents. The indication that Henry VII ‘did not wish to proceed against him’ is, in my view, vitally important to the interpretation that we may impose on the actions of Robert Stillington at this time.

The conclusion here is that Stillington certainly had something to do with the bill, that being the Titulus Regius of Richard III of the Parliament of early 1484. It may well have been this document which was also the basis of de Commines’ assertions. However, this latter reference, as we have seen, certainly does not unequivocally accuse Stillington of revealing the pre-contract to Richard in the summer of 1483, but only of complicity in the bill passed in Parliament in early 1484. Thus from these initial sources of information, it is at best a tentative assertion that Stillington acted in the manner traditionally ascribed to him by historical commentators such as Markham.

The revelation of the pre-contract and its implication was clearly no secret some few decades later. The cited example of this is to be found in the letter of Eustace Chapuys, an ambassador to the court of Henry VIII. He wrote to his master, the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, on 16 December 1528. In this missive, he was concerned with Henry VIII’s treatment of his youngest daughter, Elizabeth, later Elizabeth I. In the course of expressing this concern he was to hark back to past times. Specifically, he recorded that:

… they say that you [Charles V] have a better title than the present King, who only claims by his mother, who was declared by sentence of the bishop of Bath [Stillington] a bastard, because Edward had espoused another wife before the mother of Elizabeth of York.60

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