The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-01-06


this comes to very little. Clarence's destruc-
ton appears, from the Indictment against
him, to have been the work of the Queens
family. The execution of Hastings and
of Rivers and the other members
of the Woodville family have all the appear
ance of acts committed at the instigation of
some sudden feeling of resentment and alarm.
The Woodvilles were only committed. to safe
custody as long as it seemed that Hastings
was their enemy; they were executed after
the seizure and execution of Hastings had
probably led to the disclosure Of some more
of the facts of their recent plotting with that
nobleman. The death of Hastings was evil
dently an act of resentment and alarm on the
discovery of the hostile position he had sud
denly assumed. OF the death of the young
Princes it is not easy to speak, since we really
know nothing as to their fate. But the
probability seems to be that something like
the common story actually happened and, at
any rate, Richard must be held responsible
for their disappearance, since he never pro-
duced them, when it became his manifest in
terest thus to refute the accusations against
him. That he certainly gave
special rewards to the men to
whom common opinion afterward attributed
the deed is a fact of compar lively little
weight, since the most trusted of his conf
dental agents would be just those to whom
the public would be likely to assign the COM
mission of the deed; but the coincidence of
the reward of these persons with the sup
posed time of the Princes deaths is of
slightly more Importance On the other hand,
the conduct of Henry VII to the man who
had the charge of the Tower at the time of
the supposed murder, and to whom the ar
rangement of the deed was popularity attri-
buted, is very strange, on the supposition
that that King believed the accusation against
him to be true. The hypothesis that this al
legged assassin, Sir James Tyrrell, revealed
the fact of his completely in the murder only
on the eve of his subsequent execution for
treason is purely gratuitous, and comes to
nothing as Henry could always have easily as
certained if Tyrrell had the custody
of the Tower at the time of the
alleged murder. On the whole, we must
rest satisfied with the leading facts that the
Princes disappeared in the autumn of 1888,
Just in the crisis of an attempted insurrec-
tion in their behalf and that Richard Gas far
as our present knowledge allows us to spe1k)
never denied that they were dead, had him
self crowned again at York just about that
time, and never produced the boys when the
partisans of Henry of Richmond proclaimed
their murder, and when their reappearauce
would have been a death-blow to the hopes
of that pretender, and a matter of compara-
lively little risk to himself. 1t is probable,
then, that Richard, without premeditating
their deaths, had them DESTROYED on a sud
den access of nervous alarm, and thus gave
another signal proof of lis fatal impetuosity
and want of judgment There can
be little doubt that the deposition of the
young King Edward was not an unpopular
act, and that Richard, if he had ruled with
ordinary steadiness and moderation, might
have defied all the efforts of the young Kings
partisans; while his existence was always an
obstacle to the pretensions of Henry of Rich
mond, and of all other possible preteuders
But by destroying him thus hastily. Richard
not only threw away his best card and COM
mitted an unwise and unnecessary crime, but
broke up the Yorkish party forever, and gave
a cry to all his adversaries of which they
eagerly availed themselves. 1t is not at all
impossible that Buckingham (whose preten-
siOns to the Crown were notorious) made
Richard his cats-paw to remove one great
obstacle in the young Princes, and then tried
to avail himself of the odium thus caused to
! destroy Richard himself. The subsequent
attempts of Richard to conciliate Queen Eliza
beth and the Woodvilles, and to unite their
interests with his own, were vain effort to
escape from the consequences of this and
other previous political blunders.
The public policy and government of
Richard were marked by the same general
| character of discontinuity, and excess in oppo-
site directions, which marked hispersonal acts.
| He was always either the ardent reformer and
rigid censor of morals, or the lavish patron
and the ostentatious imitator of his brother s
stately magnifcence. He did many worthy
things, and corrected abuses; but his gov
eminent was unsystematic, his policy change.
able and Inconsistent and his good and evil
acts alike intermittent and dIsproportionate
to the occasion. Such an administration is
even more hostile to settled state of society
than one of unmixed and consistent evil
| The sense of personal insecurity and the
nervous alarms to which he was himself sub
iect, seemed to communicate themselves tc
the kingdom over which he ruled, and with
ont ary definite causes of complaint against
his Government, and with certain conscious
ness that he was in some respects an able
and, generally, not an ill-disposed ruler, the
nation at large longed for termination OF
his reign, and at length submitted quietly
! though without any eagerness, to the success
sion of man of whom they knew nothing
except that he belonged in some way to the
royal family of England, and had relieved
them from a state of painful uncertainty ant
suspense.
That Richard was not a sufficiently bat
man to be beyond the paugs of remorse has
been deduced from the fact of the numerous
chantries he erected in the places connected
with some of his violent acts to pray for hi!
own soul or those of his victims. But thii
act was probably as much one of superstition
as of regret for his nervous Temperament
seems to have rendered him particularly
sensitive to superstitious feelings. But {
feeling of remorse and a sense of retri
button may have mingled with the bite
agony with which, according to q tole
rably reliable chronicler, he wa
tortured almost to madness on recei wing the