Bram Stoker

Famous Impostors Bram Stoker

Richard III literally carved his way to the throne of England. It would hardly be anexaggeration to say that he waded to it through blood. Amongst those who suffered for hisunscrupulous ambition were George Duke of Clarence, his own elder brother, Edward Prince ofWales, who on the death of Edward IV was the natural successor to the English throne, and thebrother of the latter, Richard Duke of York. The two last mentioned were the princes murdered inthe Tower by their malignant uncle. These three murders placed Richard Duke of Gloucester on thethrone, but at a cost of blood as well as of lesser considerations which it is hard to estimate. RichardIII left behind him a legacy of evil consequences which was far-reaching. Henry VII, who succeededhim, had naturally no easy task in steering through the many family complications resulting from thelong-continued "Wars of the Roses"; but Richard's villany had created a new series of complicationson a more ignoble, if less criminal, base. When Ambition, which deals in murder on a wholesalescale, is striving its best to reap the results aimed at, it is at least annoying to have the road to successlittered with the débris of lesser and seemingly unnecessary crimes. Fraud is socially a lesser evil thanmurder; and after all-humanly speaking-much more easily got rid of. Thrones and even dynastieswere in the melting pot between the reigns of Edward III and Henry VII; so there were quitesufficient doubts and perplexities to satisfy the energies of any aspirant to royal honours-howevermilitant he might be. Henry VII's time was so far unpropitious that he was the natural butt of all theshafts of unscrupulous adventure. The first of these came in the person of Lambert Simnel, the sonof a baker, who in 1486 set himself up as Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick-then a prisoner inthe Tower-son of the murdered Duke of Clarence. It was manifestly a Yorkist plot, as he wassupported by Margaret Duchess Dowager of Burgundy (sister of Edward IV) and others.