Note 84 — Chapter IV

Footnote 84: Mr. Tytler, in his History of Scotland, maintains with much ingenuity the paradoxical position, that Richard escaped from Pontefract, made his way in disguise to the Western Isles, was there recognised, and was conducted to the Regent; that, taken into the safe keeping of the government, and sick of the world and its disappointments, he lived for many years in Stirling Castle; and that he there died, and there was buried. It falls not within the province of these Memoirs to examine the facts and reasonings by which that writer supports his theory, or to weigh the value of the objections which have been alleged against it. The Author, however, in confessing that the result of his own inquiries is opposed to the hypothesis of Richard's escape, and that he acquiesces in the general tradition that he died in Pontefract, cannot refrain from making one remark. Whilst he is persuaded that Glyndowr, and many others, believed that Richard was alive in Scotland, yet he thinks it almost capable of demonstration that Henry IV, with his sons and his court, in England; and Charles VI, with his court and clergy, and Isabella herself, and her second husband, had no doubt whatever as to Richard's death. If they had, if they were not fully assured that he was no longer among the living, it is difficult to understand Henry IV.'s proposals to Charles VI. for a marriage between Isabella and one of his sons; or how, on any other hypothesis than the conviction of his death, the Earl of Angouleme, afterwards Duke of Orleans, would have sought her in marriage; how her father and his clergy could have consented to her nuptials; or how she could for a moment have entertained the thought of becoming a bride again. She had not only been betrothed to Richard, but had been with all solemnity married to him by the Archbishop of Canterbury in the face of the church; and she had been crowned queen. Yet she was married to Angouleme in 1406, and died in childbed in 1409. Had she believed Richard to be still alive, she would have been more inclined to follow the bidding which Shakspeare puts into her husband's mouth at their last farewell, than to have given her hand before the altar to another: