Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time is very clear in its evidence to why King Richard III has become the "whipping boy of history." Due to two devious influential minds, Richard will most often be remembered as the original wicked uncle. John Morton and Henry Tudor systematically destroyed Richard's reputation to save their own, as soon as Richard was dead. During the course of the book, the main character Grant unravels the mystery behind the children's murder. But Tey does not stop there. The book is also a social commentary on human behavior. She explains to us our own follies and as soundly as she proves that Richard is not a murderer, she proves that the human race gives itself too much credit.
Henry Tudor, although generally classified as a hero and positive figure in English history, he, in fact, is one of the more underhanded, devious, and scheming rulers of England. Henry needed to make Richard out to be a villain to justify his usurpation of the throne (to which he had only a very distant claim.) Tey makes it clear that Richard was innocent and, in fact, Henry was the murderer.
Firstly,Tey establishes Richard's character, what has evolved due to Henry's conspiracy versus what it actually was. The nurses explain what a monster Richard is, but many examples prove that Richard was not. Richard was forgiving, even to those who betrayed him. "Indeed, this instinct for revenge seemed to be lacking to a degree that would be surprising in any red-blooded male, and quite astonishing in the case of that reputed monster Richard III."(p.129.) Even a policeman looking at Richard's picture placed him in the judge's seat, not as a criminal. Richard's personality was not parlous or rebarbative, but that of a perfectionist and a benevolent ruler. Furthermore, Richard had no motive.
Richard had no reason to kill his brother's sons. They were declared illegitimate and cast out of the line of accession. The only reasonable motive would be that Richard feared his security on the throne. Yet, Grant counters, "… how it could have ever occurred to anyone, Richard most of all, that the elimination of Edward's two boys would have kept him safe from rebellion. The place was what young Carradine would call just lousy with heirs." (p.137.) If Richard wanted to eliminate his rivals, he would have killed them all, yet all the others were killed during Henry's reign.
Finally, during the time of Henry's usurpation, there was never any mention of the missing or murdered children.
"You know that Henry brought a Bill of Attainder against Richard after Bosworth. Before Parliament, I mean. Well, he accuses Richard of cruelty and tyranny but doesn't even mention the murder."(p.100.)
It is ridiculous to assume that Henry would have tried to cover up Richard's crime when he needed to degrade and denounce him as much as possible. "Henry needed ever small featherweight of advantage in the precarious newness of his accession."(p.112.) Yet, there was no publication of it until much later.
The lasting publication of Richard's guilt is Sir Thomas More's incredibly biased description. However, this document was directly influenced, if not written by one John Morton and basically Richard's number-one enemy. This is where the evidence turns from Richard and points to Henry. The most fascinating clue in Henry's guilt is the issue with Titulus Regius. It establishes motive for killing the boys.
"Henry VII married the boys' eldest sister. Elizabeth."
"Yes."
"By way of reconciling the Yorkists to his occupation of the throne."
"Yes."
"By repealing Titulus Regius, he made her legitimate."
"Sure."
"But by making the children legitimate he automatically made the two boys heir to the throne before her. In fact, by repealing Titulis Regius he made the elder of the two King of England." (p.163.)
As Grant and Carradine discovered, there was no evidence that the boys disappeared during Richard's lifetime. "As Grant was falling asleep a voice said in his mind: 'If the boys were murdered in July, and the Woodville-Lancastrian invasion took pace in October, why didn't they use the murder of the children as a rallying call?'"(p.140.) Therefore, they disappeared during Henry's time, as did all of the remaining powerful Plantagenets. Henry had to cover up his crime for several reasons: he was not supposed to be on the throne; there were plenty of other heirs in line who could easily take over if a scandal broke out; and everything that he had worked for would be lost. Tey makes it clear that Henry dumped the blame on Richard for his own crime. Near the end of the book I was wondering why no one else had done this research before and exposed Henry's plot. Yet, Tey even addresses in her book how others had, and the general public had denied it. Still, in the 20th century, the textbooks still say that Richard was responsible for the murders. Pointedly, Tey discusses society's attitude towards change.
"P.S. It's an odd thing but when you tell someone the true facts of a mythical tale they are indignant not with the teller but with you. They don't want to have their ideas upset. It rouses some vague uneasiness in them, I think, and they resent it. So they reject it and refuse to think about it. If they were merely indifferent it would be natural and understandable. But it is much stronger than that, much more positive. They are annoyed. Very odd, isn't it?" (p.132.)
Tey openly accuses society of ignoring the truth to avoid being wrong. In the modern world, that is not supposed to happen. We are concerned with truth and justice, and yet on the pettiest of issues, people refuse to see the truth. These broader themes are what keeps the book interesting and relevant to an unconcerned reader. This is also an offered explanation of why Richard has become the "whipping boy of history." Although his innocence is easily proven, people refuse to believe that what they know is wrong.
Other comments on society came in Tey's subtle dialogue. Williams, Grant's police friend, says, "I suppose, once you know, you can see it, but off-hand it wouldn't occur to you." (p.44.) Tey points out how the human brain can twist an image to make it look however they expect it to look - whether or not their expectations are wrong. This is a "non-logical" line of reasoning, and people today refuse to believe for a moment that they are irrational. Tey takes the time to show us all that we, in fact, are fallible.
Also, Grant's line of thought leads us to, "… but perhaps a series of small satisfactions scattered like sequins over the texture of everyday life was of greater worth than the academic satisfaction of owning a collection of fine objects at the back of a drawer." (p.56.)
This is one of the morals of the book, and it's also my favorite line. In my opinion Tey is offering that simple pleasures are "worth it". That is a big step, especially in the modern world. Now, only enormous success is considered admirable. Most people look on unimportant purchases as frivolity, but -- to the buyer -- it is a sequin of joy. It is disappointing that Tey does not go into Shakespeare's depiction of Richard in his The Tragedy of King Richard the Third. The main source of Shakespeare's Richard III was Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland who got his information from Edward Halle's Chronicle. Halle, of course, had used Sir Thomas More's biased description. Strangely, though, Holinshed described "Richard, the third son, of whom we now intreat, was in wit and courage equal with either of them [Edward IV and Clarence]…" and then went on to denounce him as "malicious, wrathful, envious, and from afore his birth ever froward." Just as Morton contradicted himself, Holinshed took a complete 180-degree turn against Richard. It would have been interesting for Tey to discuss the theory that Shakespeare wrote Richard III as a farce about the twisted Tudor version of history.
In every case, a cover up from the top and the cover up continued by Henry's successors led Richard's good reputation to be destroyed in this century. People's stubbornness kept the tale told. In the future, I hope that we can overcome our insecurities and admit that we were wrong.
