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!
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