The Leading Facts of English History Part 28

[1] The first printing in Europe was done in the early part of the fifteenth century from wooden blocks on which the words were cut.

Movable types were invented about 1450.

There, at the sign of a shield bearing a red "pale," or band, he advertised his wares as "good chepe." He was not only printer, but translator and editor. King Edward gave him some royal patronage.

His Majesty was willing to pay liberally for work which was not long before the clergy in France had condemned as a black art emanating from the devil. Many, too, of the English clergy regarded it with no very friendly eye, since it threatened to destroy the copying trade, of which the monks had well-nigh a monopoly (S154).

The first printed book which Caxton is known to have published in England was a small volume ent.i.tled "The Sayings of the Philosophers,"

1477.[1] This venture was followed in due time by Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" (S253), and whatever other poetry, history, or cla.s.sics seemed worthy of preservation; making in all nearly a hundred distinct works comprising more than eighteen thousand volumes.

[1] "The dictes or sayengis of the philosophres, enprynted by me william Caxton at westmestre, the year of our lord MCCCCLxxvii."

Up to this time a book of any kind was a luxury, laboriously "written by the few for the few"; but from this date literature of all sorts was destined to multiply and fill the earth with many leaves and some good fruit.

Caxton's patrons, though few, were choice, and when one of them, the Earl of Worcester, was beheaded in the wars, Caxton said, "The ax did then cut off more learning than was left in all the heads of the surviving lords." Towards the close of the nineteenth century a memorial window was placed in St. Margaret's Church within the abbey grounds, as a tribute to the man who, while England was red with slaughter, introduced "the art preservative of all arts," and preservative of liberty no less[1] (S322).

[1] "Lord! taught by thee, when Caxton bade His silent words forever speak; A grave for tyrants then was made, Then crack'd the chain which yet shall break."

Ebenezer Elliott, "Hymn for the Printers'

Gathering at Sheffield," 1833

307. King Edward's Character.

The King, however, cared more for his pleasures than for literature or the welfare of the nation. His chief aim was to beg, borrow, or extort money to waste in dissipation. The loans which he forced his subjects to grant, and which were seldom, if ever, repaid, went under the name of "benevolences." But it is safe to say that those who furnished them were in no very benevolent frame of mind at the time.

Exception may perhaps be made of the rich and elderly widow, who was so pleased with the King's handsome face that she willingly handed him a 20 pounds (a large sum in those days); and when the jovial monarch gallantly kissed her out of grat.i.tude for her generosity, she at once, like a true and loyal subject, doubled the donation. Edward's course of life was not conducive to length of days, even if the times had favored a long reign. He died early, leaving a son, Prince Edward, to succeed him.

308. Summary.

The reign was marked by the continuation of the Wars of the Roses, the death of King Henry VI and of his son, with the return of Queen Margaret to France. The most important event outside of the war was the introduction of the printing press into England by William Caxton.

Edward V (House of York, White Rose)--1483

309. Gloucester appointed Protector.

Prince Edward, heir to the throne, was a lad of twelve (S307). His position was naturally full of peril. It became much more so, from the fact that his ambitious and unscrupulous uncle, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, had been appointed Lord Protector of the realm until the boy should become of age. Richard protected his young nephew as a wolf would protect a lamb.

He met the Prince coming up to London from Ludlow Castle, Shropshire, attended by his half brother, Sir Richard Grey, and his uncle, Lord Rivers. Under the pretext that Edward would be safer in the Tower of London than at Westminster Palace, Richard sent the Prince there, and soon found means for having his kinsmen, Grey and Rivers, executed.

310. Murder of Lord Hastings and the Two Princes.

Richard shortly after showed his object. Lord Hastings was one of the council who had voted to make him Lord Protector, but he was unwilling to help him in his plot to seize the crown. While at the council table in the Tower of London Richard suddenly started up and accused Hastings of treason, saying, "By St. Paul, I will not to dinner till I see thy head off!" Hastings was dragged out of the room, and without either trial or examination was beheaded on a stick of timber on the Tower green.

The way was now clear for the accomplishment of the Duke's purpose.

The Queen Mother (Elizabeth Woodville, widow of Edward IV) (S305) took her younger son and his sisters, one of whom was the Princess Elizabeth of York, and fled for protection to the sanctuary (S95) of Westminster Abbey, where, refusing all comfort, "she sat alone, on the rush-covered stone floor." Finally, Richard half persuaded and half forced the unhappy woman to give up her second son to his tender care.

With bitter weeping and dread presentiments of evil she parted from him, saying: "Farewell, mine own sweet son! G.o.d send you good keeping!

Let me kiss you once ere you go, for G.o.d knoweth when we shall kiss together again." That was the last time she saw the lad. He and Edward, his elder brother, were soon after murdered in the Tower, and Richard rose by that double crime to the height he coveted.

311. Summary.

Edward V's nominal reign of less than three months must be regarded simply as the time during which his uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, perfected his plot for seizing the crown by the successive murders of Rivers, Grey, Hastings, and the two young Princes.

Richard III (House of York, White Rose)--1483-1485

312. Richard's Accession; he promises Financial Reform.

Richard used the preparations which had been made for the murdered Prince Edward's coronation for his own (S310). He probably gained over an influential party by promises of financial reform. In their address to him at his accession, Parliament said, "Certainly we be determined rather to adventure and commit us to the peril of our lives...than to live in such thraldom and bondage as we have lived long time heretofore, oppressed and injured by extortions and new impositions, against the laws of G.o.d and man, and the liberty, old policy and laws of this realm, wherein every Englishman is inherited."[1]

[1] Taswell-Langmead's "Const.i.tutional History of England."

313. Richard III's Character.

Several attempts have been made of late years to defend the King against the odium heaped upon him by the older historians. But these well-meant efforts to prove him less black than tradition painted him are answered by the fact that his memory was thoroughly hated by those who knew him best. No one of the age when he lived thought of vindicating his character. He was called a "hypocrite" and a "hunchback."

We must believe then, until it is clearly proved to the contrary, that the last of the Yorkist kings was what common report and Shakespeare have together represented him,[2]--distorted in figure, and with ambition so unrestrained that the words the great English poet has seen fit to put into his mouth may have really expressed Richard's own thought:

"Then, since the heavens have shap'd my body so, Let h.e.l.l make crookt my mind to answer it."[1]

[2] In this connection it may be well to say a word in regard to the historical value of Shakespeare's utterances, which have been freely quoted in this book. He generally followed the Chronicles of Hall and Holinshed, which const.i.tute two important sources of information on the periods of which they treat; and he sometimes followed them so closely that he simply turned their prose into verse. Mr. James Gairdner, who is a high authority on the Wars of the Roses, calls Shakespeare "an unrivaled interpreter" of that long and terrible conflict. (See the preface to his "Houses of Lancaster and York.") In the preface to his "Richard III" Mr. Gairdner is still more explicit. He says: "A minute study of the facts of Richard's life has tended more and more to convince me of the general fidelity of the portrait with which we have been made familiar by Shakespeare and Sir Thomas More." On Shakespeare's faithful presentation of history see also A.G.S. Canning's "Thoughts on Shakespeare," p. 295; the Dictionary of National (British) Biography under "Holinshed"; Garnett and Gosse's "English Literature," Vol. II, p. 68; and H.N. Hudson's "Shakespeare's Life and Characters," Vol. II, pp. 5-8. See, too, S298, note 1.

[1] Shakespeare's "Henry VI," Part III, Act V, scene vi.

Personally he was as brave as he was cruel and unscrupulous. He promoted some reforms; he encouraged Caxton in his great work (S306), and he abolished the forced loans ironically called "benevolences"

(S307), at least for a time.

314. Revolts; Buckingham; Henry Tudor.

During his short reign of two years, several revolts broke out, but came to nothing. The Duke of Buckingham, who had helped Richard III to the throne, turned against him because he did not get the rewards he expected. He headed a revolt; but as his men deserted him, he fell into the King's hands, and the executioner speedily did the rest.

Finally, a more formidable enemy arose. Before he gained the crown Richard had cajoled or compelled the unfortunate Anne Neville, widow of that Prince Edward, son of Henry VI, who was slain at Tewkesbury (S305), into becoming his wife. She might have said with truth, "Small joy have I in being England's Queen." The King intended that his son should marry Elizabeth of York, sister to the two Princes he had murdered in the Tower (S310). By so doing he would strengthen his position and secure the succession to the throne to his own family.

But Richard's son shortly after died, and the King, having mysteriously got rid of his wife, now made up his mind to marry Elizabeth himself.

The Princess, however, was already betrothed to Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, the engagement having been effected during that sad winter which she and her mother spent in sactuary (S95) at Westminster Abbey, watched by Richard's soldiers to prevent their escape (S310).

The Earl of Richmond, who was an illegitimate descendant of the House of Lancaster (see the Genealogical Table, p. 172), had long been waiting on the Continent for an opportunity to invade England and claim the crown.

Owing to the enmity of Edward IV and Richard toward him, the Earl had been, as he himself said, "either a fugitive or a captive since he was five years old." He now determined to remain so no longer. He landed (1485) with a force at Milford Haven, in Wales, where he felt sure of a welcome, since his paternal ancestors were Welsh.[1]

Advancing through Shrewsbury, he met Richard on Bosworth Field, in Leicestershire.

[1] Descent of Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond:

Henry V (House of Lancaster) married Catharine of France, who after | his death married Owen Tudor, a Welshman of Anglesey Henry VI | Edmund Tudor (Earl of Richmond) married Margaret Beaufort, a descendent of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster [she was granddaughter of John, Earl of Somerset; see p. 161]

| Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond (also called Henry of Lancaster)

315. Battle of Bosworth Field, 1485.

There the decisive battle was fought between the great rival houses of York and Lancaster (S300). Richard represented the first, and Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, the second. The King went out the evening before to look over the ground. He found one of his sentinels slumbering at his post. Drawing his sword, he stabbed him in the heart, saying, "I found him asleep and I leave him asleep." Going back to his tent, he pa.s.sed a restless night. The ghosts of all his murdered victims seemed to pa.s.s in procession before him. Such a sight may well, as Shakespeare says, have "struck terror to the soul of Richard."[2]

[2] Shakespeare's "Richard III," Act V, scene iii.

At sunrise the battle began. Before the attack, Richard, it is said, confessed to his troops the murder of his two nephews (S310), but pleaded that he had atoned for the crime with "many salt tears and long penance." It is probably that had it not been for the treachery of some of his adherents the King would have won the day.