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Horace Walpole:Historic Doubts on the
Life and Reign of
King Richard the Third

Horace Walpole is the most famous of Richard III’s defenders. His Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third, published in 1768, is a landmark in the Ricardian controversy.

Because the entire work would require considerable downloading time, this hypertext edition has been divided into four parts, with Walpole’s footnotes in a fifth file. Walpole did not divide his work into chapters; the divisions are therefore fairly arbitrary.

• Part I — Preface; examination of Richard’s earliest supposed “crimes” (murders of Edward of Lancaster, Henry VI, and George, Duke of Clarence)
• Part II — The deaths of Edward V and Richard, Duke of York, an examination of the sources, and of the account of the murder
• Part III — The deaths of Edward V, further examination of evidence, and the case for the legitimacy of Perkin Warbeck’s claims
• Part IV–Richard III’s physical appearance; summation
• Footnotes for the entire text