This language undoubtedly qualified the Beauforts for the royal succession, and was meant to do so:[#] but at the time the patent was drawn up, there was little reasonable probability of any such event, for not only the reigning Sovereign, but the whole House of Lancaster, lay between them and the throne. But now that the royal family was reduced to the children of Richard Duke of York, and the heiress of the Beauforts, Edward IV. was very naturally jealous of the latter. Under the old law, she stood before him; and it was therefore necessary for his peace that some bar should be provided to her further advance. This was the more desirable, since she had a son, a clever youth of fifteen years, concerning whom an anecdote, very awkward for Edward, was in circulation among the populace. Five years[#] before this, Jaspar Tudor, going into Wales, where young Richmond was residing with Lord Pembroke, had brought him back with him, and presented him to King Henry. The King was reported to have said, laying his hand on the boy’s head as he spoke,—
[#] The qualifying words "the royal dignity excepted," are over-lined, in blacker ink and in a later hand than the original entry.
[#] This is the date usually given; but an earlier one is more likely to be true, since in 1466 King Henry was a prisoner.
"Much striving there is between us; but this is he to whom both we and our adversaries must submit."
There can be little doubt that Henry regarded his young nephew as his heir presumptive, a fact which in itself was likely to rouse Edward’s jealousy against the boy: and even now a popular reaction was beginning in favour of the deceased King, which took the form of reverence for the sanctity of his life, and disposition to believe in his powers of prediction. The last item was rather helped than hindered by his predisposition to insanity, for in the Middle Ages a man with impaired intellect, in whatever form, was always regarded as one with whom God held direct communication. The particular form of madness which had afflicted King Henry, and which was characterised not by any kind of passion or violence, but by silence and dreaminess—an apparent absence of the soul from the body—was especially looked upon as indicative of inspiration. King Henry’s own account of these attacks of aberration was that they were simply a blank to him, and that he had not the slightest idea of any thing that had taken place. It may be that to a man of his tender, sensitive, affectionate nature, placed as he was in these dreadful circumstances, these seasons, resting both mind and body, were God’s greatest mercy. At this early date after Henry’s death, a strong wish for his canonisation had already arisen. Had those who aspired to canonise him after death been a little more friendly to him in life, it would have been a state of things much more to his advantage. But this is human nature. We worry our friend into his grave, and then we call him poor dear So-and-so, and wear his portrait in a locket.