St Thomas More's 'History of King Richard III'

Thomas More was a public servant who from 1518 served on Henry VIII’s Privy Council and later became Lord Chancellor. He wrote his History of King Richard III between around 1513 and 1518. More’s account looked for causes as well as recording facts. It was popular and, influenced dramatists such as Shakespeare.

Richard III’s Tudor successors from Henry VII onwards had a vested interest in portraying him as an awful, and unlawful, king to increase their own legitimacy as the line who deposed him. More’s account, written under Henry VIII, follows the Tudor propagandist line and paints Richard as a usurper, accusing him of killing the princes in the tower.

He portrays Richard as ‘little of stature, ill featured of limes, croke backed, his left shoulder much higher than his right, hard favoured of visage … he was malicious, wrathfull, envious, and from afore his birth, ever frowarde.’ This has been taken for gramted as the definitive description of Richard’s appearance.  He also describes Richard’s difficult birth, used to portray him as monstrous and unnatural, reporting that it was said he was born feet first.  More considers the possibility that these reports go beyond truth out of hatred for Richard, but also ‘that nature chaunged her course in hys beginning, which in the course of his lyfe many thinges unnaturallye committed.’

While not especially informative, it relies on anarchic anecdotes and blends mythology with fact, it is nevertheless an important work.  This is because it shows how the writing of history has changed over time.  It is now more akin to a scientific process heavily reliant on meticulously referenced sources rather than More’s autobiographical account. 

St Thomas More