RE : Richard declares innocence before the world

Marie wrote: Exactly. I'm not sure why Richard would
have used rotherham as his confessor.

****

I made a mistake. Several fuzzy memories blurred
together, and I was thinking Rotherham might have been
hearing a confession when I posted that.

I was thinking of these passages in P.M. Kendall's
"Richard III:"

p. 393: "To his former enemy whom he had since
treated as a friend and a familiar, Thomas Rotherham,
Archbishop of York, he cried out in agony that he had
lost everything--his son had been taken from him--Anne
had been able to bear him no more children--and now
she too was slipping away, leaving him barren, alone."
[There is no footnote for this passage. So I don't
know what Kendall's source is.]

p. 394: "... Polydore Vergil himself has revealed the
secret enemy in whom Richard by favor and friendliness
had sought in vain to kindle loyalty. It was Thomas
Rotherham, Archbishop of York, who wrought the words
Richard had spoken in confidence into a morsel of
malicious gossip."

Kendall doesn't say Rotherham was Richard's confessor,
and I can't find anything in Kendall's "Richard III"
that identifies Richard's confessor.

I have found the following statement in Charles Ross'
"Richard III."

p. 134: "...Richard's liking for scholars extended
also into appointments of a more personal kind. He
selected as his *private chaplain* [my emphasis] John
Dokett (or Dogett), a scholar of Eton and King's
College, Cambridge, who had also studied in Padua and
then in Bologna, where he became doctor of Canon Law.
He was amongst other things, the author of a
commentary on Plato's "Phaedo," and bequeathed to
King's a collection of books on canon law and
theology."

Now I need to know the difference between a private
chaplain and a confessor.

Can anyone tell me if they were two different
positions? Or did a private chaplian also hear
confessions?

****

Marie wrote: Firstly, they were not exactly mates,
and secondly Richard had his own confessor (the name
Roby pops into my head).

****

I'm disappointed that neither Kendall's "Richard III"
nor Ross' "Richard III" lists "Roby" in their indexes.
I couldn't find his name in the text that seems
relevant in either book. So I can't confirm it now.
But I hope I'll find it eventually. Maybe when I'm
looking for something else the name "Roby" will come
out of hiding.

****

But to be fair to Vergil he doesn't suggest rotherham
was actually told it in confession:
" for first he forbare to lie with her, and withal
began to complain much unto many noble men of his
wife's unfruitfulness, for that she brought him forth
no children, and that chiefly did he lament with
Thomas Rotheram, Archbishop of York, because he was a
grave and good man, whom he had a little before let
out of prison (who thereupon gathered and supposed it
would come to pass that the Queen should not
long live, and foreshowed the same to divers his
friends)."

****

Even if Rotherham wasn't violating the confidentiality
of a confession, it's hard to believe that Richard
"lamented" to Rotherham.

I remember questioning Kendall's statement: "To his
former enemy whom he had since treated as a friend and
a familiar, Thomas Rotherham, Archbishop of York, he
cried out in agony that he had lost everything ..."
the first time I read it. My note is still pencilled
in the margin of my book.

A few pages earlier, on p. 389, Kendall wrote: "It
appears that few in his own day understood or were
intimate with Richard ..."

So I'm still asking why Richard would reveal himself
to a man who had apparently conspired against him in
1483. According to both Kendall and Ross, there were
many scholarly clerics that seemed to be more loyal to
Richard, and more trustworthy. Why didn't Richard
confide in one of them?

I also asked myself why Kendall would accept the story
that Richard "lamented" to Rotherham, since he'd said
only a few pages before that Richard had few
intimates.

****


By the by, I've also found vergil dangerously
unreliable. Rotherham died in 1500, a little while
before Vergil came to England, so Vergil cannot have
had the story directly from Rotherham (or Morton, for
that matter). If Rotherham had been putting this story
about after Richard's death, I think it must have been
baseless tittle-tattle to make himself look wise after
the event. Why would Richard choose
Rotherham as his chief confidant? Rotherham was not
particuarly grave and good, and he had shown himself
after Edward IV's death to be a bit of a loose cannon.
There's only one thing for sure, and that's
that Rotherham was not in a position to deny Vergil's
story.

****

I still have my doubts, and I'd like to know Kendall's
reasoning behind the passages on p. 393 and p. 394.


Marion




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