There is, then, no evidence that these rumours existed, beyond the passage in the Croyland Chronicle. But there is strong reason for rejecting the monk's story. If the rumours had really existed, and if in consequence there were mutinous assemblages of the people preliminary to an insurrectionary movement, the vigilant and energetic young King would have made all necessary preparations to meet the danger. Nothing is more certain in his history than that he was taken absolutely by surprise when he received tidings of an outbreak in Kent on October 11, 1483. It was a concerted rising, secretly arranged by Buckingham. This Duke had taken leave of the King at Gloucester on August 2 before the alleged action of Richard at Warwick with a view to the murders, which was on August 8. According to the story, Buckingham can have known nothing of the murders when he arranged his plot. Consequently it is not possible that the rising in Kent, arranged by Buckingham, can {242} have had anything to do with the alleged murder of the young princes. Yet the Croyland monk had certainly been told that there was a rumour that the boys were dead. If it had not reached him as general talk, it must have come direct to him from some malignant enemy of the King. Was there such a man lurking in the fen country round Croyland? We know that Morton had taken refuge in the fen country (Isle of Ely) at this very time. If that schemer was at the chronicler's elbow, the rumour is fully accounted for. It probably originated with Morton while he was lurking in the fens, and ceased to exist when he sailed for Flanders. His own narrative, as we have received it, comes to an abrupt termination while he is conversing with the Duke of Buckingham at Brecknock. If it had been continued, we should doubtless have had a highly coloured version of the rumour mentioned in the Croyland Chronicle. Morton and his slanders went abroad together. The rumour that the young princes had been put to death appeared no more in England during Richard's life. But as soon as Morton went to France, it appeared there. In the autumn of 1483 Morton left England. In January 1484, the murder of the princes was alleged as a fact by the Chancellor of France in a speech to the States-General at Tours. 'Regardez, je vous prie, les événements qui après la mort du Roi Édouard sont arrivés dans ce pays. Contemplez ses enfants, déjà grands et braves, massacreé impunément, et la couronne transportée a l'assassin par la faveur des peuples.'[10] The Chancellor may have received this statement from another Lancastrian exile, but it is {243} most likely that it came from Morton. Louis XI. had hated Richard because he opposed the peace which the French King bought from Edward IV., and because he refused the French bribes with contempt.[11] This hatred was inherited by the Lady of Beaujeu who became Regent on the death of Louis XI. in August 1483. Any calumny was seized upon as an