Tag Archives: doing history

The Daughter of Time

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The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey, is a novel that describes Tey’s definition of history. Throughout the novel, the murder of Richard II’s nephews. This horrendous event is speculated about through the main character, Detective Grant. He is eager to find out the truth, but he comes to learn that what he thinks is the truth is hearsay. Hearsay and the stories about what happened are all questions and rumors. Grant reads Sir Thomas More’s account of Richard II, only to realize later that that story was just another version of the same story he had been hearing. Grant discusses his struggles with the other characters about finding out the truth. This is significant to us, the readers, because as we learn to write about history, it is important to find the whole truth, not simply the parts we hear most often. We had one example of this in the archives when we were debating John Dickinson’s birthday, and that although maybe 70% of sources said his birthday was November 8, the truth was that it was on November 2.

Discussing ones ideas with others around them is a good way to get new information that one may not have received already, or to confirm information one might have. Exchanging ideas is what happens with Detective Grant and Brent Carradine, they use each others ideas and knowledge of what they have researched and heard to uncover the truth about the murders of Richard II’s nephews. At one point of the novel, there is a conversation between Grant and Carradine about the point that Grant really wants to find a “contemporary account of events…not what someone heard-tell about the events that happened”. (Tey pg. 93) This statement is directly related to ‘how to do history’ because it tells the reader, and/or informs the scholar that primary sources are the best way to find accurate information on the topic at hand. Tey’s point in writing this novel was not only to tell a story of a detective and his assistant looking for details of an old crime, but rather the process they go through to find the information. Grant starts out just listening to old stories from people in the town, to getting a research assistant to help him separate folk-lore tales from possible accurate depictions. Next, the share the details they find with one another to see what matches up, and to show that asking questions and sharing information is the best way to go about conducting research. Finally, they use what information they have collected to build their case, however now Grant and Carradine are not sure if it was Richard II or his hired hand who killed Richards two nephews.

And another [case of Tonypandy] bites the dust

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How does a bedridden cop crack one of the biggest mysteries in English history? Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time illuminates what it means to “do” history. When the protagonist Detective Grant becomes intrigued with a portrait of Richard III and the horrendous crime the medieval monarch is supposed to have committed, he sets out to uncover what really happened.

From http://www.guardian.co.uk.

Grant soon finds that modern sources are unable to adequately explain how or why Richard III might’ve murdered his two young nephews. In fact, while they portray a sinister and calculating king they also acknowledge his many admirable qualities and achievements; it is this apparent contradiction that spurs Grant to dig deeper.

The detective is scandalized to find out that Sir Thomas More’s History of King Richard III, a contemporary account and the definitive history of the period, is nothing but a regurgitation of another’s story; More was only a boy during Richard’s reign. Interrogating sources is an important part of a historian’s work. We must seek to contextualize documents and not simply take them at face value. The questions we are currently asking in our archive assignment are a good guide: Who created the document and when? Who is the intended audience? What is the intended purpose of the document? Etc.

Grant is finally able to get his hands on some primary sources with the help of his sidekick-researcher Brent Carradine. Little by little, he pieces together the puzzle of the past. In some cases, what sources don’t say is as important as what they do say: in Henry Tudor’s Bill of Attainder against Richard, the new monarch makes no mention whatsoever of his predecessor’s crime.

Another notable aspect of Grant’s historical journey is that he talks with his companions and colleagues, much like a historian might dialogue with her peers. He shows us the importance of reasoning out loud and bouncing your ideas off of others.

In the end, Grant outlines the evidence he has amassed and builds his case. The driving question guiding the detective’s research: who had the profile and the motives to dispose of the princes? Was it the long-accused Richard III or his successor the usurping Henry VII who killed Edward’s two sons? For Grant, the facts just didn’t stack up against Richard. He is widely-reported as having been a level-headed, just, and merciful king. Henry, on the other hand, was power hungry and crafty. We can almost never know exactly how history happened, but we can make informed theories about the past based on the evidence we have. Using the evidence and his knowledge of human nature, Grant busts the case of how a malicious rumor came to be accepted as truth.