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The Deceivers
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 3, 2020
Listen up folks, the mystery of who killed the princes in the tower has been solved. The only mystery for the author of this little volume is why it has taken so long to arrive at the real truth. The deceivers are Margaret Beaufort, her husband Lord Stanley, and Bishop of Ely John Morton. When Richard of Gloucester is Lord Protector, these three conspire to mislead and seduce his greatest supporter the Duke of Buckingham. First they tell Buckingham that there is a plot against the life of the protector by the Woodvilles and Lord Hastings. Off goes Hastings' head. After Richard is crowned instead of his nephew Edward V, Buckingham is elated but when he returns to Brecknock, Morton shakes his head and says he discovered another plot by the Woodville faction to dethrone Richard and place Edward on the throne. There is nothing for Buckingham to do but go back to the Tower and have Edward and his brother killed. Rather than being pleased, Richard is angry when Buckingham tells him what he has done. Buckingham agrees to join the rebellion in favor of Margaret's son, Henry Tudor. The rest, as they say, is history.
While this theory is quite plausible, it does not appear a revelation--I have read novels written in in the 70s and 80s which speculated the same thing. There is no conclusive proof, and we cannot even be sure the princes were murdered. They may have survived and been moved.
This book is an odd little mix of fact and fiction. The author presents his theory by presenting little scenes to show what the deceivers might have said and done on certain occasions. For example, there is Aunt Margaret having her nephew Buckingham over for supper, when Stanley and Morton arrive to tell of the news they have just learned about Lord Hastings. This technique did not bother me until it became difficult to tell fact from fiction and when some of the facts just seemed wrong. After the Battle of Stoke, King Henry Tudor says that they found one of the rebels, Francis Lovell, in the cellars of his home of Minster Lovell so they just bricked up the entrances so he would starve to death. Is this supposed to be a factual claim or just a flight of fancy? Wouldn't it have been easier to drag Lovell out of the cellars and give him a traitor's death by drawing and quartering?
And Henry is upset again by the claim of another pretender to the throne during the Perkin Warbeck affair. For some reason he is discomfited when his mother and Morton speculate that Perkin is probably a bastard son of Edward IV. What should he do? Mother Margaret and Morton come to the rescue again. They assure him the princes are dead, killed by Buckingham, but they can put out a story they were murdered on the orders of their uncle Richard. To lend credibility the account will say that Walter Tyrell who was executed two or three years before, had confessed to the crime during the questioning. The reference is obviously to James Tyrell who was executed after Perkin Warbeck was executed.
As I said, it just felt odd. There was one interesting fact that one of Margaret Beaufort's residences at Deeping was only 10 miles from Croyland Abbey. Did the pious Margaret spend much time at the abbey spewing out some lies to the writer of the Croyland Chronicles? The positives: it was pro Richard, some of the scenes were entertaining, and Henry Tudor was portrayed with some sarcastic humor.
.
While this theory is quite plausible, it does not appear a revelation--I have read novels written in in the 70s and 80s which speculated the same thing. There is no conclusive proof, and we cannot even be sure the princes were murdered. They may have survived and been moved.
This book is an odd little mix of fact and fiction. The author presents his theory by presenting little scenes to show what the deceivers might have said and done on certain occasions. For example, there is Aunt Margaret having her nephew Buckingham over for supper, when Stanley and Morton arrive to tell of the news they have just learned about Lord Hastings. This technique did not bother me until it became difficult to tell fact from fiction and when some of the facts just seemed wrong. After the Battle of Stoke, King Henry Tudor says that they found one of the rebels, Francis Lovell, in the cellars of his home of Minster Lovell so they just bricked up the entrances so he would starve to death. Is this supposed to be a factual claim or just a flight of fancy? Wouldn't it have been easier to drag Lovell out of the cellars and give him a traitor's death by drawing and quartering?
And Henry is upset again by the claim of another pretender to the throne during the Perkin Warbeck affair. For some reason he is discomfited when his mother and Morton speculate that Perkin is probably a bastard son of Edward IV. What should he do? Mother Margaret and Morton come to the rescue again. They assure him the princes are dead, killed by Buckingham, but they can put out a story they were murdered on the orders of their uncle Richard. To lend credibility the account will say that Walter Tyrell who was executed two or three years before, had confessed to the crime during the questioning. The reference is obviously to James Tyrell who was executed after Perkin Warbeck was executed.
As I said, it just felt odd. There was one interesting fact that one of Margaret Beaufort's residences at Deeping was only 10 miles from Croyland Abbey. Did the pious Margaret spend much time at the abbey spewing out some lies to the writer of the Croyland Chronicles? The positives: it was pro Richard, some of the scenes were entertaining, and Henry Tudor was portrayed with some sarcastic humor.
.
February 3, 2013
".....I have come to believe that the deaths of the Princes in the Tower, of Lord Hastings and, affectively, of Buckingham and Richard III himself, were brought about through the collective scheming of three people....."
An interesting theory, inferred from the locations of the main protagonists at critical moments, and which aims to answer to (from the Preface of the book):
- Why was the life of the old Yorkist War-horse, William Hastings, ended so abruptly and so ingloriously
- Why should Henry Stafford, second Duke of Buckingham, rebel against the King he had helped to his throne only three months earlier
- How could a seasoned warrior like Richard III lose the battle of Bosworth against what, at best, was little more than "a rabble in arms"
- Who killed the Princes in the Tower - and When and Why
An interesting theory, inferred from the locations of the main protagonists at critical moments, and which aims to answer to (from the Preface of the book):
- Why was the life of the old Yorkist War-horse, William Hastings, ended so abruptly and so ingloriously
- Why should Henry Stafford, second Duke of Buckingham, rebel against the King he had helped to his throne only three months earlier
- How could a seasoned warrior like Richard III lose the battle of Bosworth against what, at best, was little more than "a rabble in arms"
- Who killed the Princes in the Tower - and When and Why
August 9, 2020
Fiction rather than fact.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews