This is the third in my trilogy of ‘armchair detective’ articles about events and mysteries in the fifteenth century.
 
Acknowledgments to the Richard  III Society whose books and articles have helped me in my search for the past. 

ACROSS THE RIVER

 My friend to her teenage son: ‘We’re going out for a couple of hours. Want to come?’

 ‘Where to?’ he says.
 'To see if we can find this house where Richard III might have lived.’
 He stares blankly. ‘Why?’

 A good question.

                                                                          *
 
 Tooley Street was the first port of call. There, according to accounts, the Pastons had lived in Sir John Fastolfe’s old home and there two anxious young fugitives had stayed, dreading every unknown step. George and Richard, the children of the Duke of York whose head had been severed from his neck and shoved on a pike with a paper crown. George and Richard, the one fair and fearless and the other dark haired and dark eyed with secrecy and tension. In the house of the good and faithful Pastons with their gift for a fair anecdote, their brother Edward had visited daily, bidding them trust in him, in God and a bright future.
 
So much for expectation.  Of this dwelling – no trace. No plaque, no pub with a sign proclaiming a king had slept there. Even ‘The Duke of Clarence’ was a later model and not golden haired George gasping in Malmsey.

 So we left Tooley Street with the Paston House keeping its secrets and went in search of Crosby Place. This was easier to find.

 There were conkers and yellow leaves in the streets as we walked through, mist and light over the Thames. I stood on the site of Sir Thomas More’s garden and thought about him and Margaret, his daughter and Will Roper, his son-in-law, and it was as if time turned back. I could have reached out my hand and touched those fragile, orchard ghosts.

 
Originally in Billingsgate, Crosby Place was moved, stone by stone in 1910, to Chelsea. Cecily Neville, Richard III’s mother, known poetically as the Rose of Raby, had stayed there.  A lovely name. I can never resist the rose imagery of Plantaganet and Tudor days. She was also known as Proud Cis, so I wonder what she was really like. A rose with prickles probably and hidden stingers. Richard lived there too, as Shakespeare describes, when he was planning his bid for the throne. All within sight of the Tower where the Princes were kept. I wonder  what Cecily Neville thought about it, what she saw. She was their grandmother. Surely she can’t have sat there doing her tapestry or whatever and let them be slaughtered across the water. Maybe she holds the key to the truth.

 Crosby Hall was open to the public then, when I visited. A beautiful place. Rose-red brick and Tudor chimneys, latticed windows glinting in the autumn light. In later years it become a place of sanctuary for university women. Portraits of scholarly female academics stared down intently at us from the walls.

 As we left I was reminded not so much of Richard and Cecily and those lost children, but of women like Dorothy L Sayers, Phyllis Bentley or Vera Britten – the early days of Somerville when students called each other ‘Miss’ until they became good friends and would then make formal request for the honour of using first names. I thought of choir practices and games of lacrosse, chaperones and the peeling of bells.

 The tables in the ancient dining hall at Crosby Place were laid that day – sparsely laid. A knife, a fork, a spoon, a glass tumbler for water. Tables laid for a hundred. I counted them. Who were they for? Who would be there? It was like a ghost room.

CECILY NEVILLE

GEORGE, DUKE OF CLARENCE

EDWARD IV

RICHARD III

CROSBY HALL

I have been writing some 'armchair historian' articles based around events in the fifteenth century, mostly to do with the Princes in the Tower. This, the first article, is about Richard, Duke of York, the younger prince.

NOT IN THE GUIDE BOOK

The sons of Edward IV had brief lives, or so we suppose. Commonly known as the Princes in the Tower, it is their lives that haunt me as much as their deaths. To paraphrase Shakespeare, there must be more to a man’s life than the manner of his leaving it. On a cold, foggy autumn day I set off on a quest.

 It was the younger boy that was hooking me. The older prince, Edward, spent most of his childhood at Ludlow Castle, cared for by a doting retinue, until enticed out by those that would kill him. At least he was safe for a while.

His brother was Richard, Duke of York. Not much is known about him except that he was ‘nimble and merry’ and always ready to play or dance. Also that he was his mother’s pride and joy and she kept him with her, constantly, right up until the terrible day when he was taken away from her into the Tower and the mists of time. It has been suggested by historians that, by her motherly over-protection, Elizabeth denied her younger son the chance of learning the skills of hunting, fighting and masculine conversation and that, had he lived, he would have grown up soft and weak. A medieval wimp. Who knows? He comes down the years as a delightful child and that is all we have to go on.

 His birthplace seemed a good place to begin. Books on the subject were hazy on details but I managed to piece together the information that he was born in Shrewsbury on August 17^th 1473 in the royal quarters of the infirmary attached to the Abbey, at the bottom of Water Lane on the River Severn.

 Trying to instil into my companion a desire to see a place that might no longer exist, we set off early. As it turned out, we had forgotten about motorways, road works, cones and delays. Edward IV and his retinue would probably have made the journey quicker on horseback than we did by car. We arrived in Shrewsbury at five o’ clock in the afternoon as it was getting dark. The streets were choked with cars and ferocious yellow lines. Not too historical.

 I ran into the Tourist Office. Then began the nightmare. I had not realised that a fictitious character lived in Shrewsbury – an imaginary monk called Cadfael who flitted through the pages of medieval whodunits growing herbs. The Tourist Office was full of souvenirs – Cadfael mugs, Cadfael calendars, Cadfael pot porri, notebooks, pencils, videos, rubbers ... no mention of Richard, Duke of York, who was born there, who once was living flesh and blood.

 I returned to the car. My companion was asleep. I studied a guide book. There was an Abbey  – but it was Cadfael’s Abbey, of course. The library – that would have the answers.

 The library was shut. ‘We’re not going to find it,’ I said despondently.

 Oh don’t give up,’ said my friend, refreshed from his sleep. ‘We’ll find it. What have we got?’

 ‘Well, it was at the bottom of Water Lane overlooking the river.’

 ‘That’s easy then. We need a street map.’

 The street map was no problem. However, no Water Lane. There was a Water Street. We headed for that.

 Round by the station is not the most salubrious part of Shrewsbury. Cold and draughty with alleyways and dark tunnels it has scraps of paper blowing about like lost souls. Raven Meadows sounded old and picturesque but turned out to be a warren of traffic lights and un-crossable roads. We couldn’t find Water Street. Shrewsbury seemed to be built on lots of levels. We kept going up steps and down alleys and up slopes and down steps, all the time losing sight of the river. I had this nagging fear that Water Lane had faded with the Middle Ages.

 I became aware that I was on my own. No sign of my companion. Down by the side of a church I found him, smug look on his face, gazing meaningfully at an old street name. I couldn’t believe it. Not just Water Street. Water Lane! He had stumbled across Water Lane.

So there it was, this dark, narrow path, going down and down with red brick walls on either side with traces of arches and bricked up windows and so overgrown above our heads there was hardly any light – but there, through the darkness, so close I could bend down and touch it, was the river, completely deserted, timeless, far from anywhere with the moon shining above it – a tiny pocket of history and I had found it. Near this small stretch of river Elizabeth Woodville’s second son was born.

 There can have been no hint of tragedies to come.

THE PRINCES

SHREWSBURY