A Word In Edgewise: ‘Truth is the Daughter of Time’

Thus asserts the old proverb. Another shouts, “Truth will out!” More optimistic, yet too often unreliable, exuding false hope with a whiff of justice. “Daughter” evokes a body, and the possibility that ethereal descendants may live centuries in shadows before resurfacing. If not in a palace, perhaps under a parking lot, to put validating flesh — bones at a minimum — to validate the initial wound.

Josephine Tey, creator of the 1951 mystery novel, “Daughter of Time,” framed her plot within a gloss on the first saying. “Tey” (and also Gordon Daviot) were pen names of Scottish author Elizabeth MacKintosh (1896-1952).

In his antepenultimate appearance in the fifth of six Tey mysteries, Scotland Yard Inspector Alan Grant lies fretting in hospital, bored and bed-bound by a broken leg sustained in the futile pursuit of a fleeing miscreant.

Disdaining the “light” literature brought by friends, he’s cheered when Marta Hallard, an actress acquaintance, brings him a sheaf of images: faces of the famous involved in unsolved capital crimes. Grant, sensitive to revelations broadcast by criminal visages, is drawn back again and again to that of England’s King Richard III. Marta also gifts him an acquaintance with her “woolly lamb,” Brent Carradine, a gangly young American researcher, in London pining for his girlfriend, who’s enmeshed in Marta’s everlastingly-long-running play. Despite long hours studying Richard’s portrait (see NPG #148), Grant can’t see that face as one belonging to a child killer.

Borrowing a nurse’s childhood history books, Grant begins to read, going deeper into volumes (real and Tey-generated) to try to get hold of history’s entrenched image of a deformed, hunchback murderer (a good deal of which we must credit WiIl Shakespeare and his eponymous drama). Young Carradine suggests Grant approach the problem like one of his own cases: “cui bono?” Who benefits?

I’ll not attempt to relate Tey’s tangled royal yarn — that’s not really the point, here — but to “cui bono,” the answer is, “Not Richard.” The princely brothers, lodged in the Tower, had already been deemed illegitimate via their dad Edward IV’s dalliance, thus posed no threat to Richard’s kingship. Meanwhile, Richard, after his coronation on July 6, 1483, was travelling in a royal progress to the north during that summer when the boys were last seen.

Until August 22, 1485, Henry Tudor’s title was Earl of Richmond. After the Battle of Bosworth Field, Henry was crowned King Henry VII, becoming the first Tudor, establishing a dynasty, ending the War of the Roses and reaping a passel of cui bonae. His coronation took place on October 30, 1485.

So why would the new King Henry VII create a bill of attainder against now-deceased Richard in November of 1485? Why backdate his reign to August 21, 1485, the day before his Bosworth victory? Because he could then legally charge Richard and his supporters with treason, and could, without trial, seize their lands and property, while blackening Richard’s name and legacy. By later pardoning selected “traitors,” he could maintain control over the rest, while cementing the loyalty of his own followers.

The complete destruction of Richard’s legacy needed only some historical rewrite, lies and misdirection to delegitimize Richard’s short reign and seal this horrendous image into the future: “Evil, ugly, deformed … murderer.”

“And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover, /To entertain these fair well-spoken days /I am determined to prove a villain.” History might have eventually silenced a Henry Tudor, but was powerless to gainsay the words of The Bard.

Reading Tey today, one perceives an earlier con-mind adroitly invoking its own Arts of the Deal. What do you envision when the name “Richard III” is mentioned today? If anything at all, it’s exactly the vision Henry, né Earl of Richmond, intended to appear.

These Arts are nothing new. Known from the beginning and written for all to absorb in Ecclesiastes 1:9 — smack between Proverbs and the Song of Solomon — that there’s “Nothing new under the sun.”