第10章 (第3/3页)
l, it was neat but not gaudy. Reporting at its simplest.
He turned to the second book.
The second book was the School History proper. The two thousand years of England's story were neatly parcelled into compartments for ready reference. The compartments, as usual, were reigns. It was no wonder that one pinned a personality to a reign, forgetful that that personality had known and lived under other kings. One put them in pigeon-holes automatically. Pepys: Charles II. Shakespeare: Elizabeth, Marlborough: Queen Anne. It never crossed one's mind that someone who had seen Queen Elizabeth could also have seen George I. One had been conditioned to the reign idea from childhood.
However, it did simplify things when you were just a policeman with a game leg and a concussed spine hunting up some information on dead and gone royalties to deep yourself from going crazy.
He was surprised to find the reign of Richard III so short. To have made oneself on e of the best-known rulers in all those two thousand years of England's history, and to have had only two years to do it in, surely augured a towering personality. If Richard had no t made friends he had certainly influenced people.
The history book, too, thought that he had personality.
Richard was a man of great ability, but quite unscrupulous as to his means. He boldly claimed the crown on the absurd ground that his brother's marriage with Elizabeth Woodville had been illegal and the children of it illegitimate. he was accepted by the people, who dreaded a minority, and began his reign by making a progress though the south, where he was well received. During this progress, however, the two young Princes, who were living in the Tower, disappeared, and were believed to have been murdered. A serious rebellion followed, which Richard put down with great ferocity. In order to recover some of his lost popularity he held a Parliament, which passed useful statutes against Benevolences, Maintenance, and Livery.
But a second rebellion followed. This took the form of an invasion, with French troops, by the head of the Lancaster branch, Henry Tudor. He encountered Richard at Bosworth, near Leicester, where the treachery of the Satnleys gave the day to Henry. Richard was killed in the battle, fighting courageously, leaving behind him a name hardly less infamous than that John.
What on earth were Benevolences, Maintenance, and Livery?