Mrs. Bennett's 'Jane Shore; or, The Goldsmith's Wife' n.d.

John Lofts first edition? - n.d.

My copy is undated, although it must be after 1842 as Mrs Bennett is described as the authoress of 'The Cottage Girl', published in that year. As is my wont, I looked up the Database of Victorian Fiction - At the Circulating Library - for any information about Mrs. Bennett. Born Mary E. Saunders in 1813, in Exeter, she was the sister of the novelist John Saunders.  Early on, she wrote low-grade fiction, such as The Jew's Daughter (1839). In the 1850s, she married printer and publisher John Bennett. This suggests Jane Shore was published after that date. Another copy has an owner's inscription dated 1853. Mary died in 1899. Many of her publications cannot be traced (in fact, Jane Shore is not on the Database). 

Although only one volume, it felt very much like a three-decker - the 362 pages were in smallish font and had narrow margins. However, I plodded on, taking several days to get to the end. The novel begins in September 1468, at the house of Mr. Winstead, a mercer living in Cheapside. The mercer is honest and upright, but his wife is forever scheming to use her daughter as a passport to wealth and fame. There are four men vying for his beautiful 15 year-old Jane's attention. There is a graceful personage in a masquing dress...talking promiscuously to the ladies present; there is a ridiculous little tailor, the butt of the city; the third is none other than the gallant, winningly noble Lord William Hastings; finally, a well-dressed citizen, standing apart from the rest, eyeing the beauteous object of his honest love with jealous looks, Matthew Shore, of Lombard-street, a worthy man and a prosperous goldsmith.

The tale slowly evolves: Jane marries Shore; Hastings withdraws - not his love (or lust?) - in favour of the masked man, who turns out to be King Edward IV! We follow the vicissitudes not only of Matthew Shore, who loses his wife to the monarch (who sets Jane up in some splendour at Tottenham Court Mansion) -  but also of Edward himself, who has to flee abroad from the Lancastrian/Earl of Warwick fracas of 1470-1. Jane is portrayed as someone with a genuine conscience over her betrayal of her husband but who also reveres the king. She uses her 'power' to save Clarence (albeit temporarily) and is a good mistress to her servants.

Mrs Bennett has definite opinions about the real-life characters.

Edward is ruled by his carnality but neither does Hastings come out of the story well. He  plots against Matthew Shore, is ruthless, ambitious and a womaniser, called a snake by some. The Duke of Clarence is simply shifty, but his wife genuinely befriends Jane.

Matthew Shore's vengeful cousin (she wants to marry him herself and schemes against Jane) Cecily, is one of the bête noires of the tale. She inveigles a Welsh cove, Owen Lewellyn, to spread scandal and rumour about Jane and others. Both meet a deserved end: she, bound to a mast, drowning in the Channel; he struck down and buried in a London back garden.

There is 'Welsh' sub-plot, based around Abergavenny castle, involving Owen's sister Nesta. Lollardy rears its head, with a friar coming to Wales, selling in secret written Welsh copies of the blessed Scriptures, prepared by learned and enlightened men of the English universities, holders of the pure faith which Wickliffe taught. Nesta, her parents and her boyfriend Leolin, a skilful harper, all subscribe to Wycliffite views. Jane's crippled sister Isabel, also had an interdicted Lollard Testament which is passed on to Jane at the latter's death. The author, surely, gives way to her own feeling and opinions in this paragraph:

We who have had the Scriptures with us all our days - who have it daily read in our own tongue in the churches - and find it in every home a familiar household companion - can little estimate the intense curiosity and the ardent eagerness with which the first translations were perused in England. All honour to Wickliffe! the "Morning Star of the Reformation"...Never - never - may we forget what we owe to the first English champion of unshackled Christianity!

Richard, Duke of Gloucester and later King, is presented as Sir Thomas More's (he is directly quoted more than once) and William Shakespeare's caricature. At Tewkesbury, he buried his dagger in the bold heart of the youth (Prince Edward). The author has Hastings immediately saying to Edward IV, I will avow that my lord duke I like not - he is crafty, and there is some hidden design brooding in his breast...He is the murderer of Henry VI and, probably of Clarence: succeeding ages have laid the odium of the barbarous deed on his brother Gloster. Chapter XLVII is simply headed The measures taken by the Duke of Gloster to supplant his nephews. He creeps silently and noiselessly toward his prey like the cunning serpent... The last chapters, which includes Hastings' execution, are simply based on More's account. Richard exhibits a shrunken and distorted arm, which all knew had been so from his birth and blames the witch Shore for this.

As unpleasant as Richard, is his sidekick Catesby - who turns traitor to his erstwhile master Hastings - I am necessary to the Duke of Goster, and will make myself, more so; and when he is on the throne, as he shall be... Catesby has a crime-stained bosom...

On the other hand, the Bishop of Ely was an excellent old man, learned charitable, and of blameless life. Try telling that to a Richard III Society supporter!

There are brief accounts of the battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury, but the author is far more interested in the interchange between the characters. The novel, although generally following actual events and with a surfeit of real historical personages, is not a reliable History. There are too many examples of a disregard, even falsification, of facts - he has Richmond slay Richard at Bosworth, for instance.. 

Two minor asides. Did Englishmen wear wigs in the late 15th century? Certainly, Jane's father Mr. Winstead appears to have done. Secondly, were there black servants in those days in London? Cassandra, who crops up several times as Jane's closest aide and confidant, is an African.

Thomas Featherstone's 'Legends of Leicester, in the Olden Time 1838

 

Whittaker & Co. first edition - 1838

The Author - who had already published 'Midsummer Days in Italy' - sets out his design in an Advertisement at the beginning of the book: The plan of weaving fiction with history, whence legendary lore derives its chiefest charm, has been adhered to in the following pages...the main incidents have been collected from the best authorities.

The result is a slight tale of just fifty-eight pages, followed by eight more of 'Notes'. The account of the Battle of Bosworrh is book-ended by a nondescript story of 18-20 year-old, Luke Babington, who wends his way through Charnwood Forest from Ashby (is that his home?) to Loughborough and then to Leicester, entering the latter over the North bridge which connects the Ashby road with the town. He continues along the Friars Causeway until he comes to a substantial stone built house, large and lofty, and its tall steep roofs and narrow gables were adorned with a variety of fantastic ornament. Here live Sir Reginald Babington, his daughters Mabel and Florence, cousins to young Luke. The former is a young lively-looking girl, her elder sister a taller and more graceful looking damsel... Luke appears to favour Florence but she dismisses him, telling him there is another who loves you - doats [sic] on you. Abashed, Luke returns to the doting Mabel!

Then, suddenly in Chapter III, we are in the realms of factual history. Tudor is at Lichfield. Richard, displaying that tact, promptitude, and intrepidity, for which he was so especially famous, marches from Nottingham to Leicester where Luke joins others to march with the king to Bosworth. Like most others of this period, the author places the battlefield on the western slopes of Ambion Hill. The Stanleys are shown up for their treachery. Richard dies a courageous death: his intrepid spirit, notwithstanding the terrifying odds, still sought, through the thickest of his foes, the contender for his crown; and plunging recklessly forward, madly contending against a whole army, was brutally hacked to pieces by the Earl's followers; who, whilst he was expiring on the ground, plunged their swords and daggers into his body...thus perished Richard the third, than whom a braver warrior and more politic king, perhaps, never existed. Prompted by ambition, his ruling passion, his Machiavelian [sic] subtlety led him through a terrible career of crime, to achieve and maintain his title to the crown. Thus his character, though it presents nothing absolutely despicable, will ever be contemplated with terror and abhorrence.

Chapter IV is entitled 'The Sequel', commencing with a brief quotation from Byron: My native Land, - good night! Florence finds her loved one, Launcelot Lamprey, dead on the battlefield and promptly expires herself over his body! Not long after Sir Reginald, Mabel and Luke are found in an airy villa on the Bristol coast, where they are watching a gallant vessel seen coquetting with the tiny waves, which sparkled gaily in the beams of the rising sun. Hmm. They successfully embark on the boat and sail away  - whence, we will never know.

The 'Notes' interestingly comment on Sir Thomas More - an early historian who has produced a character of Richard the third, which probably guided many future writers, but which, there is every reason to believe, is as false throughout, as it is frightful and ridiculous. The author then continues with a long quotation from William Hutton's 'Bosworth Field' and a less well-known one from John Stockdale Hardy of Leicester, in the Gentleman's Magazine for July, 1837. Both extracts are well worth reading.

Featherstone rather spoils his adherence to 'facts', when he states that, after the Dissolution of Religious Houses, the monument to Richard at Grey Friars was destroyed, and the stone coffin which contained his remains was dug up and converted into a drinking-trough for cattle, at an inn in the Town. False. At least he didn't have Richard's bones thrown into the Soar!

'Peter Leicester's' 'Bosworth Field; or, The Fate of a Plantagenet. An Historical Tale'. 1835

Smith, Elder & Co. 2nd edition - 1837

The novel was published anonymously in 1835 by J. Cochrane & Company. The first edition is presently online, priced at £650 - way above my pocket! On the title page, it mentions that the author had written Arthur of Britany [sic], also A Historical Tale, published in 1833. The Database of Victorian Fiction 1837-1901 - At the Circulating Library - simply says Novelist and poet. This author cannot be traced. Birth and death dates unknown. However, the database gives a name: Peter Leicester, which is also written in pencil on the title pages of my three volumes.

The first volume charts the story of a fifteen year-old (or is he aged twenty?) apparent orphan, who goes by the name of Alwyde and who lives almost in seclusion on the edge of Wychwood Forest.. Mystery surrounds his background, but his bearing suggests he comes from noble stock. He saves a beautiful young lady not once, but twice: first, from drowning, after being swept downstream from a ford; and secondly, by warning her of a gang of ruffians who are out to capture her. She is able to return to the nearby St. Mildred's Abbey. Alwyde gets caught up in the maelstrom of political events of 1485, attaching himself to an odd trio - Rouge Espoir, Reginald Bray and Daypenny, a garrulous 'musician'.  Rouge Espoir soon realises the lady is none other than Lady Elizabeth of York (the late King Edward IV's eldest daughter) and he tells her of his mission - from Henry Tudor to offer his hand in marriage to cement the two 'Roses' of York and Lancaster. The proud daughter of Edward IV makes it clear that the crown is hers, not Tudors - if, therefore, Richmond seeks to win her hand, let him first win the crown...Espoir also engages Alwyde, now assuming the more noble name of De Laissé, to travel to London, contact Lord Stanley and the Queen Dowager Elizabeth, who is in Sanctuary in Westminster Abbey with her three youngest daughters. Alwyde is successful on both counts and gains the queen's blessing for the Tudor-Elizabeth match. Stanley then sends Alwyde, with his son Edward, towards Wales to prepare for Tudor's invasion. They call a halt at Bohun Pleasance - the beauty of Hereford - where not only does Alwyde again meet up with his adored lady, who he now finds out is Elizabeth, but also converses with an old woman who convinces him that he was born there! 

Although we apparently never meet Richard III in the first volume, his ominous presence hovers over all the participants. He is the Black Legend of the Tudor propaganda: the remorseless cruelty of the tyrant whom wrong and murder had placed upon the throne (p.60); Alwyde learnt, also, of the tyrant's butcheries - his remorseless cruelty - his horrible hypocrisy (p.243). Richard has murdered the two princes and looks to marry his niece. But both Elizabeths hate him and Stanley is clearly plotting to go over to Tudor.

Much of Volume II is, frankly, padding. There is a section devoted to the drowning of a 'witch' that hardly advances the tale and the section with a group of outcasts in a wood palls. What it does do is unmask Rouge Espoir (the clue is in the name) as Henry Tudor and it is becoming increasingly obvious that the villain at the start of Volume I - who attempts to capture the Lady Elizabeth - is none other than King Richard III. All the adjectives and epithets levelled against the stranger now make sense! fixed, stern insensibility...unrestrained tempest of passion that rioted within him...malignant scowl of disdain...flinty heart was so dead to feeling that he understood not what pity meant...the only God I acknowledge is my ambition - the one, only director of my actions, my will. Well, at least we know where we are with him.

The character of Sir Hippo de Grypps - the idiotic 'tutor' of Alwyde, has worn very thin by the end of the second volume. He is no Malvolio or Shakespearean or Scottian 'clown'. Rather he is an irritant for this reader at least. The other irritating aspect lies in the silly names given to 'bit' characters (one is minded of Dickens, Trollope  and Scott): Gregory Shufflebottom the Beadle and the robbers  Zacky Blood-sucker, Tom-the Devil, Nick-o-the Blazes, Gaffer Tweak'em and Jem Gripe-all simply grate with the reader, even if the author smugly thought their nomenclature amusing.

By the start of Volume III, Richmond/Tudor has arrived at Milford Haven; Richard is at Nottingham, then at Leicester. More travails are in store for Alwyde. Sent to Sherif [sic] Hutton to give a message to Elizabeth, he is once again imprisoned. He fails to see the Princess, but has counsel with Edward Stanley's estranged squeeze, Anne Harrington. He is then bustled off south to Richard III's tent on the eve of Bosworth. Here he is confronted with the dreadful knowledge that he is the king's son (I guessed that at the beginning of Volume I) - the son of a murderer, of an unnatural monster whom all men hated - whom all men ought to hate.. He is allowed to cross over to Tudor's camp (so unlikely; mind you, Richard has already bamboozled Queen Dowager Elizabeth in the same tent, which was factually impossible!) to explain to Henry why he has to fight on the King's side.  Alwyde also hears from the king that the latter loved his mother, one Edith Austen, the only child of a wealthy merchant. Amazingly, she is the very wretch whom Alwyde saw drowned as a mad witch in Volume I! So, now it all makes sense! Alwyde tells no-one who he actually is, although he leaves a scroll to be passed on to Princess Elizabeth explaining this. Once the reader has half-swallowed these totally improbable 'facts', the actual battle can begin. The author follows his named source, William Hutton, in placing the conflict on the slopes of Ambion Hill, now discredited. Richard, of course, is killed, but Alwyde, although seen fighting near his father, disappears. 

Henry is now king; Elizabeth goes to London (with her tragic cousin, the simple Earl of Warwick) and marries the Tudor. Edward Stanley, after a misplaced first marriage - luckily his wife dies! - marries a forgiving Anne Harrington and goes on to become Lord Mont-Eagle. Where is Alwyde? On the very last page, Elizabeth and the reader find out.

Elizabeth, during one of her journeys to the coast, halted at a retired, peaceful-looking village...she directed her steps towards the small, neat church...a small, recent tomb had quickly arrested her attention...she instantly drew near to it - gazed eagerly on its simple inscription, and a tear fell on it from her trembling cheek, as she read the name, which it alone bore, of "RICHARD PLANTAGENET". So, it was Richard of Eastwell yet again. This time, though, he had not survived into the 1550s, as Elizabeth was to die in February 1503. And here we have followed his career before Bosworth, unlike Heseltine and others who concentrate on his life after the battle.

The third volume continues the unrelenting attack on the tyrant Richard III - he whose hands were, so deeply, dyed in kindred blood...the loathed, the guilty murderer, stained by a thousand crimes... The king confesses to his son his catalogue of murders: Edward, whom I slew at Tewkesbury...Henry, that first sacrifice of my secret cruelty...Clarence, whose death, by a lying fraud, I procured...Rivers, Hastings, and the whole array of more public murders...by my command, smothered her brothers in the Tower...there is, however, one later deed not known - not even suspected - my murdered queen. All for the sake of compelling ambition. This Richard is the fiend of Shakespeare (without the black humour) and Thomas More. Henry Tudor, on the other hand, possessed the wisdom of a far more advanced age, the thought and prudence of an older experience, to assist him in the conduct of the strife; was brave and courageous to dare and possible efforts... One would not recommend Leicester's novel to members of the Richard III Society.

Inevitably, given that the two princes had been murdered, Perkin Warbeck (though unnamed) is dismissed as a false and crafty imposter.

Agnes Strickland's 'Historical Tales of Illustrious Children' 1833

 

N. Hailes first edition - 1833

This small volume of Historical Tales was published in the series of Juvenile Books by N. Hailes of 168, Piccadilly. I also have the American version, published by Munroe and Francis of Boston and New York. Strickland's Preface clearly states its purpose: it is the object of the present work to offer to the Young a series of moral and instructive tales, each founded on some striking authentic fact in the annals of their own country in which royal or distinguished children were engaged... There are seven stories: Guthred, the Widow's Slave, set in King Alfred's time; The Royal Chase of Wareham, telling the story of King Edward 'the Martyr'; Sons of the Conqueror, relating to William Rufus; Wolsey Bridge - the Boy Batchelor, concentrating on the youth of the later Cardinal Wolsey; The Judgement of Sir Thomas More; Lady Lucy's Petition, set in the reign of William III; and, the reason I purchased the book, The Royal Brothers. 

This is the story of the Two Princes in the Tower - Edward V and his younger brother, Richard of York. It is simply told - after all, it was written for juvenile readers - and sticks closely to the 'traditional' version promulgated by More, Shakespeare and others. It is, in effect, the 'Tudor' gospel writ large. The focus is on the youthful Edward V (the singular beauty of his person being less worthy of observation than the noble and ingenuous expression of his countenance, which indicated habits of reflection and intellectual graces beyond his age), from his time in Ludlow castle, through the traumatic meeting with his uncle Gloucester and his henchman Buckingham; (by now, the young king is too well aware he was only a gilded puppet, played off by the hands of his guileful kinsman to suit his own ends, and to give colour to his secret plans of treason); to the brief sojourn at the Bishop of Ely's base in London; and on to the Tower of London. There he, and his little spaniel dog Fido (!) are joined by his more spritely younger brother. It ends with the two boys being murdered in their bed.

As one might expect, the Duke of Gloucester is, from the first, a man of guile, whose crooked policy rendered him extremely eager to get the person of the young king into his possession.

Morton is the good bishop of Ely; uncle Rivers a man betrayed at Northampton; Lord Hastings betrayed at the Tower (the boys watch his execution from their window); Catesby and Lovel, Gloucester's wicked coadjutors in nameless deeds of guilt; and the bad James Tirrel taking over at the Tower from the troubled Sir Robert Brackenbury.

Edward V is pious and sweet, his uncle a wicked murderer (probably of his brother Clarence and Henry VI) - simply white and black. One can imaged the juveniles of the 1830s being read this piteous tale by their nannies, Sunday School teachers or mothers, weeping at the very end, when the murderous work of one irrecoverable moment converted  into the sleep of death, and dismissed the pure spirit of those royal brothers to the enjoyment of that heavenly kingdom, for which the perilous, and to them fatal distinctions of earthly greatness, had been cheaply exchanged. How many listeners slept without their pillows that night? Didacticism rules okay.

One wonders what Richard III Society members would make of this. Surely, they would simply turn to Philippa Langley's recently published book, which 'proves' the two princes escaped their dangerous bed - possibly to reappear as Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck.

William Heseltine's 'The Last of the Plantagenets' 1829

 

Smith, Elder and Co. 2nd edition - 1829

This is the first of some forty or so Historical Novels on Richard III I am pledged to read over the next six months - a daunting task! In fact, Heseltine's work appeared pretty daunting in itself, being 408 pages of densely packed text with not an illustration in sight. I needn't have worried, as I found the novel more than interesting. It is the story of Richard Plantagenet, who is brought up in the monastery of St. Mary, Ely. On the evening prior to the Battle of Bosworth, he is brought to Richard III's tent, where the king tells him that he is his father, and that his mother Matilda, the king's betrothed, had died shortly after his birth. The king intends to name him his heir, but counsels him, if Tudor is victorious, to go into hiding and keep his identity secret. The boy is wounded whilst watching the battle, but is rescued by the Jew Rabbi Israel who, with his wife, nurses him back to health. A variety of adventures follow, often being supported by loyal Yorkists. Eventually, he becomes a builder for Thomas Moyle at Eastwell in Kent. He reveals his identity to Moyle, who builds him a cottage on his estate. He was buried in Eastwell church.' 

There is a very favourable portrait of Richard III - his face...was marked with much serious anxiety...his step and demeanour were full of pomp and royalty; who has nothing but contempt for Tudor and his force - this drove of famished clowns, the scum of France, and the very refuse of its gaols and 'spital houses. I found the 'interlude' of the Jewish couple, Israel and Naomi, sat rather uneasily within the rest of the narrative, but it was very favourable to them. Warbeck is dismissed as fictitious; Francis Lovel escapes the Battle of Stoke and is helped by young Richard to his home at Minster Lovel, where he dies in the famous underground chamber. Richard's travels take him to Brittany, then to Margaret of Burgundy's court (she thinks he looks suspiciously like his father!) and back to England - to Walsingham Abbey as a religious recluse for seven years. Earlier, in London, Richard had first come across Lady Bridget (or Bride as he afterwards always refers to her) Plantagenet, the youngest daughter of Edward IV. She becomes the love of his life - so beauteous was her hair of paly gold, so mild were her eyes of clear blue, and such a heavenly bright look had she of innocence and devotion, while her stature was fair and erect, and much beyond her years. However, she was destined for the veil. He saves her not once, but twice, first from a collapsing scaffold and then from a fire outbreak; and is also at her deathbed (she is now a Lady Prioress) in Dartford Priory where, as Brother Ricardus, he not only listens to her confession but it is made plain to him that she has always returned his love. When the tyrant Henry VIII embarks on the Dissolution of the Monasteries, Richard luckily has a second skill - bricklaying. Thus he is able to work, firstly at Walsingham and finally at Eastwell. One comfort in his declining years is a copy of Wycliffe's New Testament, which Prioress Bride had given him - leading to a spiritual liberation.

However, his final writing is rather depressing: I have ever stood alone in the crowd of those with whom at divers times I consorted, and have never ceased to feel myself as a link severed from the great chain of living men; since but few have mourned with me in my sorrows, and joys have I had none to share with any; and albeit I have suffered much from the cruelty of man, never have I been soothed by the tender cares of woman. There was only Lady Bride, and she was dead. Well, before too long he can be happy when he joins her in the hereafter.

Heseltine's novel was based on Hull's Richard Plantagenet (I am lucky to have a copy), published by J. Bell in 1774. This narrative poem of 81 four-line stanzas (Heseltine calls it a well-known legendary tale in plaintive ballad-measure) was dedicated to David Garrick to whom we owe a livelier idea of Richard the Third, than either Historian or Painter ever gave. 

Heseltine's work, in turn, gave birth to a novel by Richard Hodgetts - Richard IV, Plantagenet (1888), whilst Caroline M. Keteltas published a 56 page Drama in Three Acts in 1830 founded on the romance of that name by William Heseltine of Turret House, South Lambeth, London.