Richard III and the Murder in the Tower Read Online Free PDF Page B

taken to join his older brother Edward at the Tower. Largely because of the Tudor era, the Tower now possesses a rather dreadful reputation and people often read dark implications into this act. However, it would be a natural course of action to reunite the brothers as the Tower was a major London residence for royalty. 61 Mancini is largely responsible for our impression of the imprisonment of the boys. He noted that:
    after Hastings was removed, all the attendants who had waited upon the king were debarred access to him. He and his brother were withdrawn into the inner apartments of the Tower proper, and day by day began to be seen more rarely behind the bars the windows, till at length they ceased to appear altogether.
     
    However, Mancini left England during July and never had any certain knowledge of their fate. He did note that they were seen shooting and playing in the Tower after this date and before the second week of July. Any subsequent pronouncements become pure speculation. As we shall see, the Stonor letter, written five days after the young Duke of York left the Abbey on the 21st, shows that the immediate reaction of some individuals in London at that time was not so bleak.
Tuesday 17 June 1483
     
    It was around this time that various writs were issued, which served to cancel the proposed meeting of Parliament which had been due to take place on 25 June. It is apparent that some of these cancellations failed to reach some of the recipients before they had begun their trip to the capital. What is clear is that progress on the preparations for the immediate coronation was now largely abandoned. This does not signify that Richard had determined to take the throne, but it is very persuasive evidence that some major rethinking was now in process. A prime example of this comes from the letter to York, the relevant portion of which reads:
    … And or thys, notwythstandyng bt at thys day [21 June] that a sups [supersedes] was direct to the Sheryffe for the plement, so bt it shallnot need to ony Citizin to go upp for the Cite to the plement … 62
     
    We are fortunate in that we have a fairly good idea as to how long messages seem to have taken to travel between the two major cities of London and York. We know that with a more leisurely pace, Brackenbury 63 had taken nine days on this trip, while the more urgent journey of Ratcliffe was completed in about four days. This being so, and given the urgency of the present communication to halt the summons to what appears to have been a parliament of Edward V, it is reasonable to suggest that the present supersedes was sent out some time either late on Monday 16th or a little later on perhaps the morning of Tuesday 17th. If either of these eventualities is correct, and there is every reason to believe that they are, 64 then Richard appears to have altered his course of action by the start of the week, following on the events of Friday 13 June.
Saturday 21 June 1483
     
    Our understanding of events of this day and those immediately preceding it are enlightened by another of the letters from Simon Stallworth to Sir William Stonor. Like the previous missive of 9 June, this critical communication is reproduced in full in the Appendix I of this work. Stallworth indicated that he was unwell, which may account for the brevity of his letter, especially so in relation to the many critical events which had occurred since what we assume was his last letter. Stallworth then had much to report. First, he recorded the execution of Hastings. The hiatus in completing his letter (perhaps because of his illness) has helped cause the confusion over the date of the latter’s execution ( see Appendix II). What we do not know is the exact date on which Stallworth wrote (or had caused to be written) the first section of this present letter which was formally dated 21 June. However, we can infer that the first section was written almost certainly before Friday 20th, since it is his reference to