Note 90 — Chapter IV

Footnote 90: A manuscript in the French King's library (No. 8448) states that Sir Piers d'Exton and seven other assassins entered the room to kill him; but that Richard, pushing down the table, darted into the midst of them, and, snatching a battleaxe from one, laid four of them dead at his feet, when Exton felled him with a blow at the back of his head, and, as he was crying to God for mercy, with another blow despatched him. This account is supposed to be entirely disproved by the fact that, when Richard's tomb was accidentally laid open a few years ago in Westminster Abbey, the head was carefully examined, and no marks of violence whatever appeared on it. (See Archæologia, vol. vi. p. 316, and vol. xx. p. 284.) On the other hand, it is equally obvious to remark, that, if Henry IV. did exhibit to the people the body of another person for that of Richard, it was the substituted body which was buried, first at Langley and afterwards at Westminster. The absence, consequently, of all marks of violence on that body, till its identity with the corpse of Richard is established, proves nothing. But surely there is no reason to believe that any deception was practised. There could have been no motive for such fraud, and the strongest reasons must have existed to dissuade Henry from adopting it. The only object wished to be secured by the exposure of Richard's corpse, (and it was exposed at all the chief places between Pontefract and London,—at night after the offices for the dead, in the morning after mass,) was the removal of all doubt as to his being really dead. The false rumours were, not that he was murdered, but that he was alive. Among the thousands who flocked to see him were doubtless numbers of his friends and wellwishers, familiarly acquainted with his features, many of whom, it is thought, must have detected any imposture, and some of whom would surely have been bold enough to publish it. Still, on the other hand, it is suggested that a very short lapse of time after dissolution effects so material a change in a corpse, that the most intimate of a man's friends would often not be able to recognise a single feature in his countenance. And certainly many of Richard's friends remained unconvinced.(back)