Famous Imposters 37

Famous Imposters 37

But here a new trouble would begin. It would be beyond nature to expect

that any mother would consent, especially at a moment’s notice, to

her child running such a risk as the substitute of the dead Princess

Elizabeth was taking, without some kind of assurance or guarantee of

his safety. Moreover, if there were other relatives, they would be sure

to know, and some of them to make trouble unless their mouths were

closed. Practically the only chance of carrying such an enterprise

through would be if the substitute were an orphan or in a worse

position--one whose very life was an embarrassment to those to whom it

should be most dear.

 

Here opens a field for romantic speculation. Such need not clash with

history which is a record of fact. Call it romance if we will; indeed

until we have more perfect records we must. If invention is to be

called in to the aid of deduction no one can complain if these two

methods of exercise of intellect are kept apart and the boundaries

between them are duly charted. Any speculation beyond this can be only

regarded as belonging to the region of pure fiction.

 

In one way there is a duty which the reader must not shirk, if

only on his own account: not to refuse to accept facts without due

consideration. Wildly improbable as the Bisley story is, it is not

impossible. Whoever says, offhand, that such a story is untrue on the

face of it ought to study the account of a death reported at Colchester

in Essex just a hundred years ago. A servant died who had been in

the same situation as housemaid and nurse for thirty years. But only

after death was the true sex of the apparent woman discovered. It was

masculine!

 

* * * * *

 

Here I must remind such readers as honour my work with their attention

that I am venturing merely to tell a tradition sanctioned by long time,

and that I only give as comments historical facts which may be tested

by any student. I have invented and shall invent nothing; and only

claim the same right which I have in common with every one else--that

of forming my own opinion.

 

Here it is that we may consider certain additions to the original

Bisley tradition. How these are connected with the main story is

impossible to say after the lapse of centuries; but in all probability

there is a basis of ancient belief in all that has been added. The

following items cover the additional ground.

 

When the governess wished to hide the secret hurriedly, she hid the

body, intending it to be only temporarily, in the stone coffin which

lay in the garden at Overcourt outside the Princess’s window.

 

Some tens of years ago the bones of a young girl lying amidst rags of

fine clothing were found in the stone coffin.

 

The finder was a churchman--a man of the highest character and a member

of a celebrated ecclesiastical family.

 

The said finder firmly believed in the story of the Bisley Boy.

 

Before Elizabeth came to the throne all those who knew the secret of

the substitution were in some way got rid of or their silence assured.

 

The name of the substituted youth was Neville; or such was the name of

the family with whom he was living at the time.

 

There are several persons in the neighbourhood of Bisley who accept the

general truth of the story even if some of the minor details appear at

first glance to be inharmonious. These persons are not of the ordinary

class of gossipers, but men and women of light and leading who have

fixed places in the great world and in the social life of their own

neighbourhood. With some of them the truth of the story is an old

belief which makes a tie with any new investigator.

 

 

_The Unfulfilled Marriage_

 

The remaining point to touch on is the unfulfilled marriage of the Duke

of Richmond. This certainly needs some explanation, or else the mystery

remains dark as ever.

 

Here we have two young persons of more than fair presence, and graced

with all the endearing qualities that the mind as well as the eye can

grasp. We have the assurance of Chronicles regarding Henry Fitzroy;

and from Holbein’s picture we can judge for ourselves of the lady’s

merits. They are both well-to-do. The lady, one of title, daughter of

one of the most prominent Dukes in England, the man then holding many

of the most important posts in the State, and with every expectation of

wearing in due course the purple of royalty. They both come of families

of which other members have been notorious for amatory episodes;

voluptuousness is in their blood. They have been old friends--and yet

when they marry they at once separate, she going to her own folk and

he to Windsor. Seemingly they do not meet again in the two and a half

years that elapse before his death. The story about his youth and

health preventing cohabitation is all moonshine. The affair points to

the likelihood of some ante-matrimonial liaison of which, as yet, we

know nothing. Applying the experiences of ordinary life in such cases,

we can easily believe that Mary Howard, egged on by her unscrupulous

and ambitiously-intriguing brother, was for ulterior purposes either

forced or helped into an intrigue with the young Duke. There is no

doubt that Surrey was unscrupulous enough for it. A similar design on

his part--only infinitely more base--cost him his head. He had tried

to induce his sister, Duchess of Richmond, to become mistress of Henry

VIII--her own father-in-law!--so that she might have power over him;

and it does not seem that there was any wonderful indignation on the

part of the lady at the shameful proposal.

 

We are told that when Sir John Gates and Sir Richard Southwell, the

royal Commissioners for examining witnesses in the case of the charge

of treason against the Duke of Norfolk and the Earl of Surrey, arrived

at Kenninghall in the early morning and made known their general

purposes in coming, the Duchess of Richmond “almost fainted.” But all

the same when she knew more exactly what they wanted she promised

without any forcing to tell all she knew. As a matter of fact her

evidence (with that of Elizabeth Holland, the mistress of the Duke of

Norfolk), whilst it helped to get Norfolk off, aided in condemning

Surrey. There must have been some other cause for her consternation.

She had been bred up in the midst of intrigues, polemical and dynastic

as well as of personal ambition, and was well inured to keeping her

countenance as well as her head in moments of stress. The cause of her

“almost fainting” must have been something which concerned her even

more nearly than either father or brother. It could only have been fear

for her child or herself--or for both. It is possible that she dreaded

discovery of some sort. _Omne ignotum pro magnifico._ Suspicion has

long flexible tentacula, with eyes and ears at the end of them, which

can penetrate everywhere and see and hear everything. She knew how to

dread suspicion and to fear the consequences which must result from

inquiry or investigation of any sort. If she had had a child it must

have been kept hidden, and if possible far away--as the unknown Boy

was at Bisley. Indeed the Howards had immense family ramifications and

several of them had collateral relationships in and about Bisley. There

were Nevilles there, and doubtless some of them were poor relations

relegated to the far away place where living was cheap and where they

might augment their tenuous incomes by taking in even poorer relations

than themselves whose rich relatives wished to hide them away. It is

only a surmise; but if there had been a case of a child unaccounted

for, which any member of so great a family as the Howards wished to

keep dark, it would be hard to find a more favourable locality than

the little almost inaccessible hamlet in the Cotswolds. If there were

such a child, how easy it would all have been. When the Duke was

married he was fourteen or perhaps sixteen at most--an age which

though over-young for fatherhood in the case of ordinary men seemed to

offer to the Plantagenet-York-Lancaster blood no absolute difficulty

of taking up such responsibility. As Elizabeth was only born some two

months before the Duke’s marriage there was not any time to spare--a

fact which would doubtless have been used to his advantage if Henry’s

natural son had lived. In all probability Richmond’s marriage was a

part of the plot for aggrandisement of the Howards which began with the

unscrupulous securing by Surrey of the son of Henry VIII at the cost of

his sister’s honour; and ended with the death of Surrey as a traitor--a

doom which his father only escaped by the King dying whilst the Act

of Attainder was lying ready for his signature. If this reasoning be

correct--though the data on which it is founded be meagre and without

actual proof--as yet--the risk of Duchess Mary’s child born before

her marriage must have been a terrible hazard. On one side perhaps

the most powerful sceptre in the world as guerdon; on the other death

and ruin of the child on which such hopes were built. No wonder then

that Duchess Mary “almost fainted” when in the early dawn the King’s

Commissioners conveyed to her the broad object of their coming. No

wonder that freed by larger knowledge from the worst apprehension which

could be for her, she announced her willingness to conceal nothing

that she knew. That promise could not and would not have been made

had the whole range of possibilities, which as yet no one suspected,

been opened to their investigation. For even beyond the concern which

she felt from the arbitrary power of the King and at the remorseless

grip of the law, she had reason to doubt her own kin--the nearest of

them--in such a struggle as was going on around them when the whole of

the Empire, the Kingdom of England, France and Spain, and the Papacy

were close to the melting-pot. It would have been but a poor look-out

for a youth of a little more than a dozen years of age had fate made

him the shuttlecock of such strenuous players who did not hold “fair

play” as a primary rule of the game in which they were engaged.

 

In his _Life of Elizabeth_, Gregario Leti concludes a panegyric on the

Queen’s beauty with the following: “This was accompanied by such inward

qualities that those who knew her were accustomed to say that heaven

had given her such rare qualities that she was doubtless reserved for

some great work in the world.” The Italian historian perhaps “builded

better than he knew,” for whether the phrase applies to the one who is

supposed to have occupied the throne or one who did so occupy it, it

is equally true. The world at that crisis wanted just such an one as

Elizabeth. All honour to her whosoever she may have been, boy or girl

matters not.

 

 

 

 

INDEX

 

 

Ahasuerus, 111-114.

 

Alcaçer-el-Kebir, battle of, 20-22, 25.