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PARTISAN REVIEW
cated) historical motive. Knight identifies Godfrey as a devout Protestant
involved with a seditious band of Protestant republicans, who were con–
spiring for a Cromwellian succession, instead of a royal one by the
Catholic Duke of York. Godfrey betrayed his fellow-plotters by befriend–
ing the Duke of York's secretary, Edward Coleman, who was accused by
Titus Oates of participating in the Popish plot against Charles II.
Godfrey's former allies used Herbert to stage-manage a murder that could
plausibly be blamed on the Catholics.
Tey's
The Franchise Affair
has plenty of characterization, action, sus–
pense and surprise, perhaps because it has no intention of being historical
about the Canning case, which inspired the premise of her contemporary
plot. De la Torre's version of the Canning case, however, is thoroughly
researched and presented in abundant detail, including Elizabeth's exile to
Weathersfield, Connecticut, as a serving-maid for seven years. The au–
thor's "conclusion for connoisseurs in mystery" follows Carr in using a
Collingwoodian method of question-and-answer to sift the possibilities:
Elizabeth told the truth, lied, or mixed them together. The author sug–
gests an explanation of hysterical amnesia to account for Canning's mix–
ture in her story of true memories, "cloudy recalls from the amnesic pe–
riod," and "self-glorifying fantasies. " De la Torre originally conjured her
solution as a fictional idea and then came to believe that it was historically
true. Her final conclusion, while psychologically plausible, is something of
a deflationary anticlimax: "She never told her secret; she never knew
what it was."
Tey's Inspector Grant and his American friend construct an alterna–
tive view of Richard and Henry VII in
The Daughter
of
Time
which they
are surprised to discover has been constructed before by earlier historians.
Grant proceeds as if he were following Collingwood's advice: "If you
want to know why a certain kind of thing happened in a certain kind of
case, you must begin by asking, 'What did you expect?' You must con–
sider what the normal development is in cases of that kind. Only then, if
the thing that happened in this case was exceptional, should you try to
explain it by appeal
to
exceptional conditions." Dealing with the issue of
the princes in the Tower, Grant finds that in the short time between
Richard's succession and his death "everyone behaves quite normally"
with "no suggestion that spectacular and unnecessary murder has just
taken place in the family." Nor does Richard's successor, Henry Tudor,
in the Act of Attainder against Richard specifically accuse him of murder–
ing the princes. Moreover, Henry suppresses Titulus Regius, the act au–
thorizing Richard's title to the throne, because it referred to a "pre-con–
tract," a previous promise of marriage between Richard's brother Edward
and Lady Butler, thus by legal custom making illegitimate Edward's
