38 pages 1 hour read

Josephine Tey

The Daughter Of Time

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1951

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Chapters 8-12

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 8 Summary

Until his researcher returns, Grant gets busy studying a thick historical volume that Brent sent over. He learns where Thomas More got his hearsay information about Richard. It came from John Morton—a follower of Henry VII and Richard’s bitter foe.

When Brent does return after a three days’ absence, he reports some startling facts. Richard wasn’t a hunchback and didn’t have a withered arm. This propaganda was spread by writers working for the Tudors. Even more shocking is Brent’s announcement that Thomas More’s history of Richard wasn’t written by More at all. It was simply a copy of Morton’s biased chronicle.

Brent also announces that he found no evidence that the princes were murdered before Richard’s own death. They were still alive when Henry took the throne. Although Tyrrel confessed to the murders, he did so 20 years after the event. No one actively pursued a murder charge at the time the crimes were committed.

In the face of all these lies, Grant tells Brent about Tonypandy. This is a town in Wales where government soldiers shot down striking miners in 1910. The event is accepted as fact, but it never happened. Not a shot was fired, and no one was killed. Yet eyewitnesses uphold the rumor of a massacre.