George Buck - Scholarly Work

Scholarly Work

Buck was also a minor poet and prose writer. He published "A Discourse or Treatise of the third universitie of England" (1615), an account of the Inns of Court. His major work, his History of the Life and Reign of Richard III, would not be published until 1646.

As an antiquary, Buck was noted for his discovery of the copy of the act of Parliament, Titulus Regius, which brought Richard III to the throne. He found it in the Croyland Chronicle, one of the sources for his History of King Richard III. (Sir George was a descendant of Sir John Buck, an adherent of Richard III who had been executed following the Battle of Bosworth Field.)

Buck also claimed to have seen a letter written by Elizabeth of York to John Howard, 1st Duke of Norfolk, shortly before the death of Queen Anne Neville, in which Elizabeth declared her love for Richard III and her hope of becoming his wife. In Buck's words, the letter asks Norfolk "to be a mediator for her to the King, in behalf of the marriage propounded between them", who, as she wrote, was her "onely joy and maker in this world", and that she was his in heart and thought: "withall insinuating that the better part of February was past, and that she feared the Queen would never die." The letter, if it ever existed, is now lost.

Buck fell from favour, was overwhelmed by debt, and died insane.

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