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.
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