(26) As cardinal Bourchier set the crown on Richard's head at Westminster, so did archbishop Rotheram at York. These prelates either did not believe Richard had murdered his nephews, or were shamefully complaisant themselves. Yet their characters stand unimpeached in history. Could Richard be guilty, and the archbishops be blameless? Could both be ignorant what was become of the young princes, when both had negotiated with the queen dowager? As neither is accused of being the creature of Richard, it is probable that neither of them believed he had taken off his nephews. In the Foedera there is a pardon passed to the archbishop, which at first made me suspect that he had taken some part in behalf of the royal children, as he is pardoned for all murders, treasons, concealments, misprisons, riots, routs, &c. but this pardon is not only dated Dec. 13, some months after he had crowned Richard; but, on looking farther, I find such pardons frequently granted to the most eminent of the clergy. In the next reign Walter, archbishop of Dublin, is pardoned all murders, rapes, treasons, felonies, misprisons, riots, routs, extortions, &c.

(27) Lord Bacon tells us, that "on Simon's and Jude's even, the king (Henry the Seventh) dined with Thomas Bourchier, archbishop of Canterburie, and cardinal: and from Lambeth went by land over the bridge to the Tower." Has not this the appearance of some curiosity in the king on the subject of the princes, of whose fate he was uncertain?

Richard's conduct in a parallel case is a strong presumption that this barbarity was falsely laid to his charge. Edward earl of Warwick, his nephew, and son of the duke of Clarence, was in his power too, and no indifferent rival, if king Edward's children were bastards. Clarence had been attainted; but so had almost every prince who had aspired to the crown after Richard the Second. Richard duke of York, the father of Edward the Fourth and Richard the Third, was son of Richard earl of Cambridge, beheaded for treason; yet that duke of York held his father's attainder no bar to his succession. Yet how did Richard the Third treat his nephew and competitor, the young Warwick? John Rous, a zealous Lancastrian and contemporary shall inform us: and will at the same time tell us an important anecdote, maliciously suppressed or ignorantly omitted by all our historians. Richard actually proclaimed him heir to the crown after the death of his own son, and ordered him to be served next to himself and the queen, though he afterwards set him aside, and confined him to the castle of Sheriff-Hutton.(28) The very day after the battle of Bosworth, the usurper Richmond was so far from being led aside from attention to his interest by the glare of his new-acquired crown, that he sent for the earl of Warwick from Sheriff-Hutton and committed him to the Tower, from whence he never stirred more, falling a sacrifice to the inhuman jealousy of Henry, as his sister, the venerable countess of Salisbury, did afterwards to that of Henri the Eight. Richard, on the contrary, was very affectionate to his family: instances appear in his treatment of the earls of Warwick and Lincoln. The lady Ann Poole, sister of the latter, Richard had agreed to marry to the prince of Scotland.

(28) P. 218. Rous is the more to be credited for this fact, as he saw the earl of Warwick in company with Richard at Warwick the year before on the progress to York, which shows that the king treated his nephew with kindness, and did not confine him till the plots of his enemies thickening, Richard found it necessary to secure such as had any pretensions to the crown. This will account for his preferring the earl of Lincoln, who, being his sister's son, could have no prior claim before himself.

The more generous behaviour of Richard to the same young prince (Warwick) ought to be applied to the case of Edward the Fifth, if no proof exists of the murder. But what suspicious words are those of Sir Thomas More, quoted above, and unobserved by all our historians. "Some remained long in doubt," says he, "whether they (the children) were in his (Richard's) days destroyed or no." If they were not destroyed in his days, in whose days were they murdered? Who will tell me that Henry the Seventh did not find, the eldest at least, prisoner in the Tower; and if he did, what was there in Henry's nature or character to prevent our surmizes going farther.

And here let me lament that two of the greatest men in our annals have prostituted their admirable pens, the one to blacken a great prince, the other to varnish a pitiful tyrant. I mean the two (29) chancellors, Sir Thomas More and lord Bacon. The most senseless stories of the mob are converted to history by the former; the latter is still more culpable; he has held up to the admiration of posterity, and what is worse, to the imitation of succeeding princes, a man whose nearest approach to wisdom was mean cunning; and has raised into a legislator, a sanguinary, sordid, and trembling usurper. Henry was a tyrannic husband, and ungrateful master; he cheated as well as oppressed his subjects,(30) bartered the honour of the nation for foreign gold, and cut off every branch of the royal family, to ensure possession to his no title. Had he had any title, he could claim it but from his mother, and her he set aside. But of all titles he preferred that of conquest, which, if allowable in a foreign prince, can never be valid in a native, but ought to make him the execration of his countrymen.

(29) It is unfortunate, that another great chancellor should have written a history with the same propensity to misrepresentation, I mean lord Clarendon. It is hoped no more chancellors will write our story, till they can divest themselves of that habit of their profession, apologizing for a bad cause.

(30) "He had no purpose to go through with any warre upon France; but the truth was, that he did but traffique with that warre to make his returne in money." Lord Bacon's reign of Henry the Seventh, p. 99.

There is nothing strained in the supposition of Richard's sparing his nephew. At least it is certain now, that though he dispossessed, he undoubtedly treated him at first with indulgence, attention, and respect; and though the proof I am going to give must have mortified the friends of the dethroned young prince, yet it shewed great aversion to cruelty, and was an indication that Richard rather assumed the crown for a season, than as meaning to detain it always from his brother's posterity. It is well known that in the Saxon times nothingwas more common in cases of minority than, for the uncle to be preferred to the nephew; and though bastardizing his brother's children was, on this supposition, double dealing; yet I have no doubt but Richard went so far as to insinuate an intention of restoring the crown when young Edward should be of full age. I have three strong proofs of this hypothesis. In the first place Sir Thomas More reports that the duke of Buckingham in his conversations with Morton, after his defection from Richard, told the bishop that the protector's first proposal had been to take the crown, till Edward his nephew should attain the age of twenty four years. Morton was certainly competent evidences of these discourses, and therefore a credible one; and the idea is confirmed by the two other proofs I alluded to; the second of which was, that Richard's son did not walk at his father's coronation. Sir Thomas More indeed says that Richard created him prince of Wales on assuming the crown; but this is one of Sir Thomas's misrepresentations, and is contradicted by fact, for Richard did not create his son prince of Wales till he arrived at York; a circumstance that might lead the people to believe that in the interval of the two coronations, the latter of which was celebrated at York, September 8th, the princes were murdered.

But though Richard's son did not walk at his father's coronation, Edward the Fifth probably did, and this is my third proof. I conceive all the astonishment of my readers at this assertion, and yet it is founded on strongly presumptive evidence. In the coronation roll itself(31) is this amazing entry; "To Lord Edward, son of late king Edward the Fourth, for his apparel and array, that is to say, a short gowne made of two yards and three-quarters of crymsy clothe of gold, lyned with two yards of blac velvet, a long gowne made of vi yards of crymsyn cloth of gold lynned with six yards of green damask, a shorte gowne made of two yards of purpell velvett lyned with two yards of green damask, a doublet and a stomacher made of two yards of black satin, &c. besides two foot cloths, a bonnet of purple velvet, nine horse harness, and nine saddle houses (housings) of blue velvet, gilt spurs, with many other rich articles, and magnificent apparel for his henchmen or pages."

(31) This singular curiosity was first mentioned to me by the lord bishop of Carlisle. Mr. Astle lent me an extract of it, with other usual assistances; and Mr. Chamberlain of the great wardrobe obliged me with the perusal of the original; favours which I take this opportunity of gratefully acknowledging.

Let no body tell me that these robes, this magnificence, these trappings for a cavalcade, were for the use of a prisoner. Marvellous as the fact is, there can no longer be any doubt but the deposed young king walked, or it was intended should walk, at his uncle's coronation. This precious monument, a terrible reproach to Sir Thomas More and his copyists, who have been silent on so public an event, exists in the great wardrobe; and is in the highest preservation; it is written on vellum, and is bound with the coronation rolls of Henry the Seventh and Eighth. These are written on paper, and are in worse condition; but that of king Richard is uncommonly fair, accurate, and ample. It is the account of Peter Courteys keeper of the great wardrobe, and dates from the day of king Edward the Fourth his death, to the feast of the purification in the February of the following year. Peter Courteys specifies what stuff he found in the wardrobe, what contracts he made for the ensuing coronation, and the deliveries in consequence. The whole is couched in the most minute and regular manner, and is preferable to a thousand vague and interested histories. The concourse of nobility at that ceremony was extraordinarily great: there were present no fewer than three duchesses of Norfolk. Has this the air of a forced and precipitate election? Or does it not indicate a voluntary concurrence of the nobility? No mention being made in the roll of the young duke of York, no robes being ordered for him, it looks extremely as if he was not in Richard's custody; and strengthens the probability that will appear hereafter, of his having been conveyed away.

There is another article, rather curious than decisive of any point of history. One entry is thus; "To the lady Brygitt, oon of the daughters of K. Edward ivth, being seeke (sick) in the said wardrobe for to have for her use two long pillows of fustian stuffed with downe, and two pillow beres of Holland cloth." The only conjecture that can be formed from this passage is, that the lady Bridget, being lodged in the great wardrobe, was not then in sanctuary.

Can it be doubted now but that Richard meant to have it thought that his assumption of the crown was only temporary? But when he proceeded to bastardize his nephew by act of parliament, then it became necessary to set him entirely aside: stronger proofs of the hastardy might have come out; and it is reasonable to infer this, for on the death of his own son, when Richard had no longer any reason of family to bar his brother Edward's children, instead of again calling them to the succession, as he at first projected or gave out he would, he settled the crown on the issue of his sister, Suffolk, declaring her eldest son the earl of Lincoln his successor. That young prince was slain in the battle of Stoke against Henry the Seventh, and his younger brother the earl of Suffolk, who had fled to Flanders, was extorted from the archduke Philip, who by contrary winds had been driven into England. Henry took a solemn oath not to put him to death; but copying David rather than Solomon he, on his death bed, recommended it to his son Henry the Eighth to execute Suffolk; and Henry the Eighth was too pions not to obey so scriptural an injunction.

Strange as the fact was of Edward the Fifth walking at his successor's coronation, I have found an event exactly parallel which happened some years before. It is well known that the famous Joan of Naples was dethroned and murdered by the man she had chosen for her heir, Charles Durazzo. Ingratitude and cruelty were the characteristics of that wretch. He had been brought up and formed by his uncle Louis king of Hungary, who left only two daughters. Mary the eldest succeeded and was declared king; for that warlike nation, who regarded the sex of a word, more than of a person, would not suffer themselves to be governed by the term queen. Durazzo quitted Naples in pursuit of new ingratitude; dethroned king Mary, and obliged her to walk at his coronation; an insult she and her mother soon revenged by having him assassinated.

I do not doubt but the wickedness of Durazzo will be thought a proper parallel to Richard's. But parallels prove nothing: and a man must be a very poor reasoner who thinks he has an advantage over me, because I dare produce a circumstance that resembles my subject in the case to which it is applied, and leaves my argument just as strong as it was before in every other point.

They who the most firmly believe the murder of the two princes, and from what I have said it is plain that they believe it more strongly than the age did in which it was pretended to be committed; urge the disappearance(32) of the princes as a proof of the murder, but that argument vanishes entirely, at least with regard to one of them, if Perkin Warbeck was the true duke of York, as I shall show that it is greatly probable he was.

(32) Polidore Virgil says, "In vulgas fama valuit filios Edwardi Regis aliquo terrarum partem migrasse, atque ita superstates esse." And the prior of Croyland, not his continuator, whom I shall quote in the next note but one, and who was still better informed, "Vulgatum est Regis Edwardi pueros concessisse in fata, sed quo genere intentus ignoratur."

With regard to the elder, his disappearance is no kind of proof that he was murdered: he might die in the Tower. The queen pleaded to the archbishop of York that both princes were weak and unhealthy. I have insinuated that it is not impossible but Henry the Seventh might find him alive in the Tower.(33) I mention that as a bare possibility—but we may be very sure that if he did find Edward alive there, he would not have notified his existence, to acquit Richard and hazard his own crown. The circumstances of the murder were evidently false, and invented by Henry to discredit Perkin; and the time of the murder is absolutely a fiction, for it appears by the roll of parliament which bastardized Edward the Fifth, that he was then alive, which was seven months after the time assigned by More for his murder, if Richard spared him seven months, what could suggest a reason for his murder afterwards? To take him off then was strengthening the plan of the earl of Richmond, who aimed at the crown by marrying Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Edward the Fourth. As the house of York never rose again, as the reverse of Richard's fortune deprived him of any friend, and as no contemporaries but Fabian and the author of the Chronicle have written a word on that period, and they, too slightly to inform us, it is impossible to know whether Richard ever took any steps to refute the calumny. But we do know that Fabian only mentions the deaths of the princes as reports, which is proof that Richard never declared their deaths, or the death of either, as he would probably have done if he had removed them for his own security. The confessions of Sir Thomas More and lord Bacon that many doubted of the murder, amount to a violent presumption that they were not murdered: and to a proof that their deaths were never declared. No man has ever doubted that Edward the Second, Richard the Second, and Henry the Sixth perished at the times that were given out. Nor Henry the Fourth, nor Edward the Fourth thought it would much help their titles to leave it doubtful whether their competitors existed or not. Observe too, that the chronicle of Croyland, after relating Richard's second coronation at York, says, it was advised by some in the sanctuary at Westminster to convey abroad some of king Edward's daughters, "ut si quid dictis masculis humanitus in Turri contingerat, nihilominus per salvandas personas filiarum, regnum aliquando ad veros rediret haeredes." He says not a word of the princes being murdered, only urges the fears of their friends that it might happen. This was a living witness, very bitter against Richard, who still never accuses him of destroying his nephews, and who speaks of them as living, after the time in which Sir Thomas More, who was not then five years old, declared they were dead. Thus the parliament roll and the chronicle agree, and both contradict More. "Interim & dum haec agerentur (the coronation at York) remanserunt duo predicti Edwardi regis filii sub certa deputata, custodia infra Turrim Londoniarum." These are the express words of the Chronicle, p. 567.

(33) Buck asserts this from the parliament roll. The annotator in Kennett's collection says, "this author would have done much towards the credit he drives at in his history, to have specified the place of the roll and the words thereof, whence such arguments might be gathered: for," adds he, "all histories relate the murders to be committed before this time." I have shown that all histories are reduced to one history, Sir Thomas Moore's; for the rest copy him verbatim; and I have shown that his account is false and improbable. As the roll itself is now printed, in the parliamentary history, vol. 2. I will point out the words that imply Edward the Fifth being alive when the act was passed. "Also it appeareth that all the issue of the said king Edward be bastards and unable to inherit or claim any thing by inheritance, by the law and custom of England." Had Edward the Fifth been dead, would not the act indubitably have run thus, were and be bastards. No, says the act, all the issue are bastards. Who were rendered uncapable to inherit but Edward the Fifth, his brother and sisters? Would not the act have specified the daughters of Edward the Fourth if the sons had been dead? It was to bastardise the brothers, that the act was calculated and passed; and as the words all the issue comprehend male and females, it is clear that both were intended to be bastardized. I must however, impartially observe that Philip de Comines says, Richard having murdered his nephews, degraded their two sisters in full parliament. I will not dwell on his mistake of mentioning two sisters instead of five; but it must be remarked, that neither brothers or sisters being specified in the act, but under the general term of king Edward's issue, it would naturally strike those who were uncertain what was become of the sons, that this act was levelled against the daughters. And as Comines did not write till some years after the event, he could not help falling into that mistake. For my own part I know not how to believe that Richard would have passed that act, if he had murdered the two princes. It was recalling a shocking crime, and to little purpose; for as no< woman had at that time ever sat on the English throne in her own right, Richard had little reason to apprehend the claim of his nieces.

As Richard gained the crown by the illegitimacy of his nephews, his causing them to be murdered, would not only have shown that he did not trust to that plea, but would have transferred their claim to their sisters. And I must not be told that his intended marriage with his neice is an answer to my argument; for were that imputation true, which is very problematic, it had nothing to do with the murder of her brothers. And here the comparison and irrefragability of dates puts this matter out of all doubt. It was not till the very close of his reign that Richard is even supposed to have thought of marrying his neice. The deaths of his nephews are dated in July or August 1483. His own son did not die till April 1484, nor his queen till March 1485. He certainly therefore did not mean to strengthen his title by marrying his neice to the disinherison of his own son; and having on the loss of that son, declared his nephew the earl of Lincoln his successor, it is plain that he still trusted to the illegitimacy of his brother's children: and in no case possibly to be put, can it be thought that he wished to give strength to the claim of the princess Elizabeth.

Let us now examine the accusation of his intending to marry that neice: one of the consequences of which intention is a vague suspicion of poisoning his wife. Buck says that the queen was in a languishing condition, and that the physicians declared she could not hold out till April; and he affirms having seen in the earl of Arundel's library a letter written in passionate strains of love for her uncle by Elizabeth to the duke of Norfolk, in which she expressed doubts that the month of April would never arrive. What is there in this account that looks like poison; Does it not prove that Richard would not hasten the death of his queen? The tales of poisoning for a time certain are now exploded; nor is it in nature to believe that the princess could be impatient to marry him, if she knew or thought he had murdered her brothers. Historians tell us that the queen took much to heart the death of her son, and never got over it. Had Richard been eager to ned his niece, and had his character been as impetuously wicked as it is represented, he would not have let the forward princess wait for the slow decay of her rival: nor did he think of it till nine months after the death of his son; which shows it was only to prevent Richmond's marrying her. His declaring his nephew his successor, implies at the same time no thought of getting rid of the queen, though he did not expect more issue from her: and little as Buck's authority is regarded, a contemporary writer confirms the probability of this story. The Chronicle of Croyland says, that at the Christmas festival,(34) men were scandalized at seeing the queen and the lady Elizabeth dressed in robes similar and equally royal. I should suppose that Richard learning the projected marriage of Elizabeth and the earl of Richmond, amused the young princess with the hopes of making her his queen; and that Richard feared that alliance, is plain from his sending her to the castle of Sheriff-Hutton on the landing of Richmond.

(34) "Per haec festa natalia choreis aut tripudiis, variisque mutatoriis vestium Annae reginae atque dominae Elizabeth, primogenitae defuncti regis, eisdem colore & forma distributis nimis intentum est: dictumque a multis est, ipsum regem aut expectata morte reginae aut per divortium, matrimonio cum dicta Elizabeth contrahendo mentem omnibus modis applicare," p. 572. If Richard projected this match at Christmas, he was not likely to let these intentions be perceived so early, nor to wait till March, if he did not know that the queen was incurably ill. The Chronicle says, she died of a languishing distemper. Did that look like poison? It is scarce necessary to say that a dispensation from the pope was in that age held so clear a solution of all obstacles to the marriage of near relations, and was so easily to be obtained or purchased by a great prince, that Richard would not have been thought by his contemporaries to have incurred any guilt, even if he had proposed to wed his neice, which however is far from being clear to have been his intention.

The behaviour of the queen dowager must also be noticed. She was stripped by her son-in-law Henry of all her possessions, and confined to a monastery, for delivering up her daughters to Richard. Historians too are lavish in their censures on her for consenting to bestow her daughter on the murderer of her sons and brother. But if the murder of her sons, is, as we have seen, most uncertain, this solemn charge falls to the ground: and for the deaths of her brothers and lord Richard Grey, one of her elder sons, it has already appeared that she imputed them to Hastings. It is much more likely that Richard convinced her he had not murdered her sons, than that she delivered up her daughters to him believing it. The rigour exercised on her by Henry the Seventh on her countenancing Lambert Simnel, evidently set up to try the temper of the nation in favour of some prince of the house of York, is a violent presumption that the queen dowager believed her second son living: and notwithstanding all the endeavours of Henry to discredit Perkin Warbeck, it will remain highly probable that many more who ought to know the truth, believed so likewise; and that fact I shall examine next.

It was in the second year of Henry the Seventh that Lambert Simnel appeared. This youth first personated Richard duke of York, then Edward earl of Warwick; and was undoubtedly an impostor. Lord Bacon owns that it was whispered every-where, that at least one of the children of Edward the Fourth was living. Such whispers prove two things; one, that the murder was very uncertain: the second, that it would have been very dangerous to disprove the murder; Henry being at least as much interested as Richard had been to have the children dead. Richard had set them aside as bastards, and thence had a title to the crown; but Henry was himself the issue of a bastard line, and had no title at all. Faction had set him on the throne, and his match with the supposed heiress of York induced the nation to wink at the defect in his own blood. The children of Clarence and of the duchess of Suffolk were living; so was the young duke of Buckingham, legitimately sprung from the youngest son of Edward the Third; whereas Henry came of the spurious stock of John of Gaunt, Lambert Simnel appeared before Henry had had time to disgust the nation, as he did afterwards, by his tyranny, cruelty, and exactions. But what was most remarkable, the queen dowager tampered in this plot. Is it to be believed, that mere turbulence and a restless spirit could in a year's time influence that woman to throw the nation again into a civil war, and attempt to dethrone her own daughter? And in favour of whom? Of the issue of Clarence, whom she had contributed to have put to death, or in favour of an impostor? There is not common sense in the supposition. No; she certainly knew or believed that Richard, her second son, had escaped and was living, and was glad to overturn the usurper without risking her child. The plot failed, and the queen dowager was shut up, where she remained till her death, "in prison, poverty, and solitude."(35) The king trumped up a silly accusation of her having delivered her daughters out of sanctuary to King Richard, "which proceeding," says the noble historian, "being even at the time taxed for rigorous and undue, makes it very probable there was some greater matter against her, which the king, upon reason of policie, and to avoid envy, would not publish." How truth sometimes escapes fiom the most courtly pens! What interpretation can be put on these words, but that the king found the queen dowager was privy to the escape at least or existence of her second son, and secured her, lest she should bear testimony to the truth, and foment insurrections in his favour? Lord Bacon adds, "It is likewise no small argument that there was some secret in it; for that the priest Simon himself (who set Lambert to work) after he was taken, was never brought to execution; no, not so much as to publicke triall, but was only shut up close in a dungeon. Adde to this, that after the earl of Lincoln (a principal person of the house of York) was slaine in Stokefield, the king opened himself to some of his councell, that he was sorie for the earl's death, because by him (he said) he might have known the bottom of his danger."

(35) Lord Bacon.

The earl of Lincoln had been declared heir to the crown by Richard, and therefore certainly did not mean to advance Simnel, an impostor, to it. It will be insinuated, and lord Bacon attributes that motive to him, that the earl of Lincoln hoped to open a way to the crown for himself. It might be so; still that will not account for Henry's wish, that the earl had been saved. On the contrary, one dangerous competitor was removed by his death; and therefore when Henry wanted to have learned the bottom of his danger, it is plain he referred to Richard duke of York, of whose fate he was still in doubt.(36) He certainly was; why else was it thought dangerous to visit or see the queen dowager after her imprisonment, as lord Bacon owns it was; "For that act," continues he, "the king sustained great obliquie; which nevertheless (besides the reason of state) was somewhat sweetened to him In a great confiscation." Excellent prince! This is the man in whose favour Richard the Third is represented as a monster. "For Lambert, the king would not take his life," continues Henry's biographer, "both out of magnanimitie" (a most proper picture of so mean a prince) "and likewise out of wisdom, thinking that if he suffered death he would be forgotten too soon; but being kept alive, he would be a continual spectacle, and a kind of remedy against the like inchantments of people in time to come." What! do lawful princes live in dread of a possibility of phantoms!(37) Oh! no; but Henry knew what he had to fear; and he hoped by keeping up the memory of Simnel's imposture, to discredit the true duke of York, as another puppet, when ever he should really appear.

(36) The earl of Lincoln assuredly did not mean to blacken his uncle Richard by whom he had been declared heir to the crown. One should therefore be glad to know what account he gave of the escape of the young duke of York. Is it probable that the Earl of Lincoln gave out, that the elder had been murdered? It is more reasonable to suppose, that the earl asserted that the child had been conveyed away by means of the queen dowager or some other friend; and before I conclude this examination, that I think will appear most probably to have been the case.

(37) Henry had so great a distrust of his right to the crown in that in his second year he obtained a bull from pope Innocent to qualify the privilege of sanctuaries, in which was this remarkable clause, "That if any took sancturie for case of treason, the king might appoint him keepers to look to him in sanctuarie." Lord Bacon, p. 39.

That appearance did not happen till some years afterwards, and in Henry's eleventh year. Lord Bacon has taken infinite pains to prove a second imposture; and yet owns, "that the king's manner of shewing things by pieces and by darke lights, hath so muffled it, that it hath left it almost a mysterie to this day." What has he left a mystery? and what did he try to muffle? Not the imposture, but the truth. Had so politic a man any interest to leave the matter doubtful? Did he try to leave it so? On the contrary, his diligence to detect the imposture was prodigious. Did he publish his narrative to obscure or elucidate the transaction? Was it his matter to muffle any point that he could clear up, especially when it behoved him to have it cleared? When Lambert Simnel first personated the earl of Warwick, did not Henry exhibit that poor prince one Sunday throughout all the principal streets of London? Was he not conducted to Paul's cross, and openly examined by the nobility? "which did in effect marre the pageant in Ireland." Was not Lambert himself taken into Henry's service, and kept in his court for the same purpose? In short, what did Henry ever muffle and disguise but the truth? and why was his whole conduct so different in the cases of Lambert and Perkin, if their cases were not totally different? No doubt remains in the former; the gross falshoods and contradictions in which Henry's account of the latter is involved, make it evident that he himself could never detect the imposture of the latter, if it was one. Dates, which every historian has neglected, again come to our aid, and cannot be controverted.

Richard duke of York was born in 1474. Perkin Warbeck was not heard of before 1495, when duke Richard would have been Twenty-one. Margaret of York, duchess dowager of Burgundy, and sister of Edward the Fourth, is said by lord Bacon to have been the Juno who persecuted the pious Aeneas, Henry, and set up this phantom against him. She it was, say the historians, and says Lord Bacon, p, 115, "who informed Perkin of all the circumstances and particulars that concerned the person of Richard duke of York, which he was to act, describing unto him the personages, lineaments, and features of the king and queen, his pretended parents, and of his brother and sisters, and divers others that were nearest him in his childhood; together with all passages, some secret, some common that were fit for a child's memory, until the death of king Edward. Then she added the particulars of the time, from the king's death; until he and his brother were committed to the Tower, as well during the time he was abroad, as while he was in sanctuary. As for the times while he was in the Tower, and the manner of his brother's death, and his own escape, she knew they were things that were few could controle: and therefore she taught him only to tell a smooth and likely tale of those matters, warning him not to vary from it." Indeed! Margaret must in truth have been a Juno, a divine power, if she could give all these instructions to purpose. This passage is, so very important, the whole story depends so much upon it, that if I can show the utter impossibility of its being true, Perkin will remain the true duke of York for any thing we can prove to the contrary; and for Henry, Sir Thomas More, lord Bacon, and their copyists, it will be impossible to give any longer credit to their narratives.

I have said that duke Richard was born in 1474. Unfortunately his aunt Margaret was married out of England in 1467, seven years before he was born, and never returned thither. Was not she singularly capable of describing to Perkin, her nephew, whom she had never seen? How well informed was she of the times of his childhood, and of all passages relating to his brother and sisters! Oh! but she had English refugees about her. She must have had many, and those of most intimate connection with the court, if she and they together could compose a tolerable story for Perkin, that was to take in the most minute passages of so many years.(38) Who informed Margaret, that she might inform Perkin, of what passed in sanctuary? Ay; and who told her what passed in the Tower? Let the warmest asserter of the imposture answer that question, and I will give up all I have said in this work; yes, all. Forest was dead, and the supposed priest; Sir James Tirrel, and Dighton, were in Henry's hands. Had they trumpeted about the story of their own guilt and infamy, till Henry, after Perkin's appearance, found it necessary to publish it? Sir James Tirrel and Dighton had certainly never gone to the court of Burgundy to make a merit with Margaret of having murdered her nephews. How came she to know accurately and authentically a tale which no mortal else knew? Did Perkin or did he not correspond in his narrative with Tirrel and Dighton? If he did how was it possible for him to know it? If he did not, is it morally credible that Henry would not have made those variations public? If Edward the Fifth was murdered, and the duke of York saved, Perkin could know it but by being the latter. If he did not know it, what was so obvious as his detection? We must allow Perkin to be the true duke of York, or give up the whole story of Tirrel and Dighton. When Henry had Perkin, Tirrel, and Dighton, in his power, he had nothing to do but to confront them, and the imposture was detected. It would not have been sufficient that Margaret had enjoined him to tell a smooth and likely tale of those matters, A man does not tell a likely tale, nor was a likely tale enough, of matters of which he is totally ignorant.

(38) It would have required half the court of Edward the Fourth to frame a consistent legend Let us state this in a manner that must strike our apprehension. The late princess royal was married out of England, before any of the children of the late prince of Wales were born. She lived no farther than the Hague; and yet who thinks that she could have instructed a Dutch lad in so many passages of the courts of her father and brother, that he would not have been detected in an hour's time. Twenty-seven years at least had elapsed since Margaret had been in the court of England. The marquis of Dorset, the earl of Richmond himself, and most of the fugitives had taken refuge in Bretagne, not with Margaret; and yet was she so informed of every trifling story, even those of the nursery, that she was able to pose Henry himself, and reduce him to invent a tale that had not a shadow of probability in it. Why did he not convict Perkin out of his own mouth? Was it ever pretended that Perkin failed in his part? That was the surest and best proof of his being an impostor. Could not the whole court, the whole kingdom of England, so cross-examine this Flemish youth, as to catch him in one lie? So; lord Bacon's Juno had inspired him with full knowledge of all that had passed in the last twenty years. If Margaret was Juno, he who shall answer these questions satisfactorily, "erit mihi magnus Apollo."

Still farther: why was Perkin never confronted with the queen dowager, with Henry's own queen, and with the princesses, her sisters? Why were they never asked, is this your son? Is this your brother? Was Henry afraid to trust to their natural emotions?—Yet "he himself," says lord Bacon, p. 186, "saw him sometimes out of a window, or in passage." This implies that the queens and princesses never did see him; and yet they surely were the persons who could best detect the counterfeit, if he had been one. Had the young man made a voluntary, coherent, and credible confession, no other evidence of his imposture would be wanted; but failing that, we cannot help asking, Why the obvious means of detection were not employed? Those means having been omitted, our suspicions remain in full force.

Henry, who thus neglected every means of confounding the impostor, took every step he would have done, if convinced that Perkin was the true duke of York. His utmost industry was exerted in sifting to the bottom of the plot, in learning who was engaged in the conspiracy, and in detaching the chief supporters. It is said, though not affirmatively that to procure confidence to his spies, he caused them to be solemnly cursed at Paul's cross. Certain it is, that, by their information, he came to the knowledge, not of the imposture, but of what rather tended to prove that Perkin was a genuine Plantagenet: I mean, such a list of great men actually in his court and in trust about his person, that no wonder he was seriously alarmed. Sir Robert Clifford,(39) who had fled to Margaret, wrote to England, that he was positive that the claimant was the very identical duke of York, son of Edward the Fourth, whom he had so often seen, and was perfectly acquainted with. This man, Clifford, was bribed back to Henry's service; and what was the consequence? He accused Sir William Stanley, lord Chamberlain, the very man who had set the crown on Henry's head in Bosworth field, and own brother to earl of Derby, the then actual husband of Henry's mother, of being in the conspiracy? This was indeed essential to Henry to know; but what did it proclaim to the nation? What could stagger the allegiance of such trust and such connexions, but the firm persuation that Perkin was the true duke of York? A spirit of faction and disgust has even in later times hurried men into treasonable combinations; but however Sir William Stanley might be dissatisfied, as not thinking himself adequately rewarded, yet is it credible that he should risk such favour, such riches, as lord Bacon allows he possessed, on the wild bottom of a Flemish counterfeit? The lord Fitzwalter and the other great men suffered in the same cause; and which is remarkable, the first was executed at Calais —another presumption that Henry would not venture to have his evidence made public. And the strongest presumption of all is, that not one of the sufferers is pretended to have recanted; they all died then in the persuasion that they had engaged in a righteous cause. When peers, knights of the garter, privy councellors, suffer death, from conviction of a matter of which they were proper judges, (for which of them but must know their late master's son?) it would be rash indeed in us to affirm that they laid down their lives for an imposture, and died with a lie in their mouths.

(39) A gentleman of fame and family, says lord Bacon.

What can be said against king James of Scotland, who bestowed a lady of his own blood in marriage on Perkin? At war with Henry, James would naturally support his rival, whether genuine or suppositious. He and Charles the Eighth both gave him aid and both gave him up, as the wind of their interest shifted about. Recent instances of such conduct have been seen; but what prince has gone so far as to stake his belief in a doubtful cause, by sacrificing a princess of his own blood in confirmation of it?

But it is needless to multiply presumptions. Henry's conduct and the narrative (40) he published, are sufficient to stagger every impartial reader. Lord Bacon confesses the king did himself no good by the publication of that narrative, and that mankind was astonished to find no mention in it of the duchess Margaret's machinations. But how could lord Bacon stop there? Why did he not conjecture that there was no proof of that tale? What interest had Henry to manage a widow of Burgundy? He had applied to the archduke Philip to banish Perkin: Philip replied, he had no power over the lands of the duchess's dowry. It is therefore most credible that the duchess has supported Perkin, on the persuasion he was her nephew; and Henry not being able to prove the reports he had spread of her having trained up an impostor, chose to drop all mention of Margaret, because nothing was so natural as her supporting the heir of her house. On the contrary, in Perkin's confession, as it was called, And which though preserved by Grafton, was suppressed by lord Bacon, not only as repugnant to his lordship's account, but to common sense, Perkin affirms, that "having sailed to Lisbon in a ship with the lady Brampton, who, lord Bacon says, was sent by Margaret to conduct him thither, and from thence have resorted to Ireland, it was at Cork that they of the town first threaped upon him that he was son of the duke of Clarence; and others afterwards, that he was the duke of York." But the contradictions both in lord Bacon's account, and in Henry's narrative, are irreconcileable and unsurmountable: the former solves the likeness,(41) which is allowing the likeness of Perkin to Edward the Fourth, by supposing that the king had an intrigue with his mother, of which he gives this silly relation: that Perkin Warbeck, whose surname it seems was Peter Osbeck, was son of a Flemish converted Jew (of which Hebrew extraction,(42) Perkin says not a word in his confession) who with his wife Katherine de Faro come to London on business; and she producing a son, king Edward, in consideration of the conversion, or intrigue, stood godfather to the child and gave him the name of Peter, Can one help laughing at being told that a king called Edward gave the name of Peter to his godson? But of this transfretation and christening Perkin, in his supposed confession, says not a word, nor pretends to have ever set foot in England, till he landed there in pursuit of the crown; and yet an English birth and some stay, though in his very childhood, was a better way of accounting for the purity of his accent, than either of the preposterous tales produced by lord Bacon or by Henry. The former says, that Perkin, roving up and down between Antwerp and Tournay and other towns, and living much in English company, had the English tongue perfect. Henry was so afraid of not ascertaining a good foundation of Perkin's English accent, that he makes him learn the language twice over.(43) "Being sent with a merchant of Turney, called Berlo, to the mart of Antwerp, the said Berlo set me," says Perkin, "to borde in a skinner's house, that dwelled beside the house of the English nation. And after this the said Berlo set me with a merchant of Middleborough to service for to learne the language,(44) with whom I dwelled from Christmas to Easter, and then, I went into Portugale." One does not learn any language very perfectly and with a good, nay, undistinguishable accent, between Christmas and Easter; but here let us pause. If this account was true, the other relating to the duchess Margaret was false; and then how came Perkin by so accurate a knowledge of the English court, that he did not faulter, nor could be detected in his tale? If the confession was not true, it remains that it was trumped up by Henry, and then Perkin must be allowed the true duke of York.

(40) To what degree arbitrary power dares to trifle with the common sense of mankind has been seen in Portuguese and Russian manifestos.

(41) As this solution of the likeness is not authorized by the youth's supposed narrative, the likeness remains uncontrovertable, and consequently another argument for his being king Edward's son.

(42) On the contrary, Perkins calls his grandfather Diryck Osbeck; Diryck every body knows is Theodoric, and Theodoric is certainly no Jewish appellation. Perkin too mentions several of his relations and their employments at Tournay, without any hint of a Hebrew connection.

(43) Grafton's Chronicle, p 930.

(44) I take this to mean the English language, for these reasons; he had just before named the English nation, and the name of his master was John Strewe, which seems to be an English appellation: but there is a stronger reason for believing it means the English language, which is, that a Flemish lad is not set to learn his own language; though even this absurdity is advanced in this same pretended confession, Perkin, affirming that his mother, after he had dwelled some time in Tournay, sent him to Antwerp to learn Flemish. If I am told by a very improbable supposition, that French was his native language at Tournay, that he learned Flemish at Antwerp, and Dutch at Middleburg, I will desire the objector to cast his eye on the map, and consider the small distance between Tournay, Middleburg, and Antwerp, and to reflect that the present United Provinces were not then divided from the rest of Flanders; and then to decide whether the dialects spoken at Tournay, Antwerp, and Middleburg were so different in that age, that it was necessary to be set to learn them all separately. If this cannot be answered satisfactorily, it will remain, that Perkin learned Flemish or English twice over. I am indifferent which, for still there will remain a contradiction in the confession. And if English is not meant in the passage above, it will only produce a greater difficulty, which is, that Perkin, at the age of twenty learned to speak English in Ireland with so good an accent, that all England could not discover the cheat. I must be answered too, why lord Bacon rejects the youth's own confession and substitutes another in its place, which makes Perkin born in England, though in his pretended confession Perkin affirms the contrary. Lord Bacon too confirms my interpretation of the passage in question, by saying that Perkin roved up and down between Antwerp and other towns in Flanders, living much in English company, and having the English tongue perfect, p. 115.

But the gross contradiction of all follows: "It was in Ireland," says Perkin, in this very narrative and confession, "that against my will they made me to learne English, and taught me what I should do and say." Amazing! what forced him to learn English, after, as he says himself in the very same page, he had learnt it at Antwerp! What an impudence was there in royal power to dare to obtrude such stuff on the world! Yet this confession, as it is called, was the poor young man forced to read at his execution—no doubt in dread of worse torture. Mr. Hume, though he questions it, owns that it was believed by torture to have been drawn from him. What matters how it was obtained, or whether ever obtained; it could not be true: and as Henry could put together no more plausible account, coommiseration will shed a tear over a hapless youth, sacrificed to the fury and jealousy of an usurper, and in all probability the victim of a tyrant, who has made the world believe that the duke of York, executed by his own orders, had been previously murdered by his predecessor.(45)

(45) Mr. Hume, to whose doubts all respect is due, tells me he thinks no mention being made of Perkin's title in the Cornish rebellion under the lord Audeley, is a strong presumption that the nation was not persuaded of his being the true duke of York. This argument, which at most is negative, seems to me to lose its weight, when it is remembered, that this was an insurrection occasioned by a poll-tax: that the rage of the people was directed against archbishop Morton and Sir Reginald Bray, the supposed authors of the grievance. An insurrection against a tax in a southern county, in which no mention is made of a pretender to the crown, is surely not so forcible a presumption against him, as the persuasion of the northern counties that he was the true heir, is an argument in his favour. Much less can it avail against such powerful evidence as I have shown exists to overturn all that Henry can produce against Perkin.

I have thus, I flatter myself, from the discovery of new authorities, from the comparison of dates, from fair consequences and arguments, and without straining or wresting probability, proved all I pretended to prove; not an hypothesis of Richard's universal innocence, but this assertion with which I set out, that we have no reasons, no authority for believing by far the greater part of the crimes charged on him. I have convicted historians of partiality, absurdities, contradictions, and falshoods; and though I have destroyed their credit, I have ventured to establish no peremptory conclusion of my own. What did really happen in so dark a period, it would be rash to affirm. The coronation and parliament rolls have ascertained a few facts, either totally unknown, or misrepresented by historians. Time may bring other monuments to light(46) but one thing is sure, that should any man hereafter presume to repeat the same improbable tale on no better grounds that it has been hitherto urged, he must shut his eyes against conviction, and prefer ridiculous tradition to the scepticism due to most points of history, and to none more than to that in question.

(46) If diligent search was to be made in the public offices and convents of the Flemish towns in which the duchess Margaret resided, I should not despair of new lights being gained to that part of our history.

I have little more to say, and only on what regards the person of Richard, and the story of Jane Shore; but having run counter to a very valuable modern historian and friend of my own, I must both make some apology for him, and for myself for disagreeing with him.

When Mr. Hume published his reigns of Edward the Fifth, Richard the Third, and Henry the Seventh, the coronation roll had not come to light. The stream of historians concurred to make him take this portion of our story for granted. Buck had been given up as an advancer of paradoxes, and nobody but Carte had dared to controvert the popular belief. Mr. Hume treats Carte's doubts as whimsical: I wonder, he did; he, who having so closely examined our history, had discovered how very fallible many of its authorities are. Mr. Hume himself had ventured to contest both the flattering picture drawn of Edward the First, and those ignominious portraits of Edward the Second, and Richard the Second. He had discovered from Foedera, that Edward the Fourth, while said universally to be prisoner to archbishop Nevil, was at full liberty and doing acts of royal power. Why was it whimsical in Carte to exercise the same spirit of criticism? Mr. Hume could not but know how much the characters of princes are liable to be flattered or misrepresented. It is of little importance to the world, to Mr. Hume, or to me, whether Richard's story is fairly told or not: and in this amicable discussion I have no fear of offending him by disagreeing with him. His abilities and sagacity do not rest on the shortest reign in our annals. I shall therefore attempt to give answers to the questions on which he pins the credibility due to the history of Richard.

The questions are these, 1. Had not the queen-mother and the other heads of the York party been fully assured of the death of both the young princes, would they have agreed to call over the earl of Richmond, the head of the Lancastrian party, and marry him to the princess Elizabeth?—I answer, that when the queen-mother could recall that consent, and send to her son the marquis Dorset to quit Richmond, assuring him of king Richard's favour to him and her house, it is impossible to' say what so weak and ambitious a woman would not do. She wanted to have some one of her children on the throne, in order to recover her own power. She first engaged her daughter to Richmond and then to Richard. She might not know what was become of her sons: and yet that is no proof they were murdered. They were out of her power, whatever was become of them;-and she was impatient to rule. If she was fully assured of their deaths, could Henry, after he came to the crown and had married her daughter, be uncertain of it? I have shown that both Sir Thomas More and lord Bacon own it remained uncertain, and that Henry's account could not be true. As to the heads of the Yorkists;(47) how does it appear they concurred in the projected match? Indeed who were the heads of that party? Margaret, duchess of Burgundy, Elizabeth duchess of Suffolk, and her children; did they ever concur in that match? Did not they to the end endeavour to defeat and overturn it? I hope Mr. Hume will not call bishop Morton, the duke of Buckingham, and Margaret countess of Richmond, chiefs of the Yorkists. 2 The story told constantly by Perkin of his escape is utterly incredible, that those who were sent to murder his brother, took pity on him and granted him his liberty.—Answer. We do not know but from Henry's narrative and the Lancastrian historians that Perkin gave this account.(48) I am not authorized to believe he did, because I find no authority for the murder of the elder brother; and if there was, why is it utterly incredible that the younger should have been spared? 3. What became of him during the course of seven years from his supposed death till his appearance in 1491?—Answer. Does uncertainty of where a man has been, prove his non-identity when he appears again? When Mr. Hume will answer half the questions in this work, I will tell him where Perkin was during those seven years. 4. Why was not the queen-mother, the duchess of Burgundy, and the other friends of the family applied to, during that time, for his support and education?—Answer. Who knows that they were not applied to? The probability is, that they were. The queen's dabbling in the affair of Simnel indicates that she knew her son was alive. And when the duchess of Burgundy is accused of setting Perkin to work, it is amazing that she should be quoted as knowing nothing about him. 5. Though the duchess of Burgundy at last acknowledged him for her nephew, she had lost all pretence to authority by her former acknowledgment and support of Lambert Simnel, an avowed impostor. —Answer. Mr. Hume here makes an unwary confession by distinguishing between Lambert Simnel, an avowed impostor, and Perkin, whose impostnre was problematic. But if he was a true prince, the duchess could only forfeit credit for herself, not for him: nor would her preparing the way for her nephew, by first playing off and feeling the ground by a counterfeit, be an imputation on her, but rather a proof of her wisdom and tenderness. Impostors are easily detected; as Simnel was. All Henry's art and power could never verify the cheat of Perkin; and if the latter was astonishingly adroit, the king was ridiculously clumsy. 6. Perkin himself confessed his imposture more than once, and read his confession to the people, and renewed his confession at the foot of the gibbet on which he was executed.—Answer. I have shown that this confession was such an aukward forgery that lord Bacon did not dare to quote or adhere to it, but invented a new story, more specious, but equally inconsistent with, probability. 7. After Henry the Eighth's accession, the titles of the houses of York and Lancaster were fully confounded, and there was no longer any necessity for defending Henry the Seventh and his title; yet all the historians of that time, when the events were recent, some of these historians, such as Sir Thomas More, of the highest authority, agree in treating Perkin as an impostor.—Answer. When Sir Thomas More wrote, Henry the Seventh was still alive: that argument therefore falls entirely to the ground: but there was great necessity, I will not say to defend, but even to palliate the titles of both Henry the Seventh and Eighth. The former, all the world agrees now, had no title(49) the latter had none from his father, and a very defective one from his mother, If she had any right, it could only be after her brothers; and it is not to be supposed that so jealous a tyrant as Henry the Eighth would suffer it to be said that his father and mother enjoyed the throne to the prejudice of that mother's surviving brother, in whose blood the father had imbrued his hands. The murder therefore was to be fixed on Richard the Third, who was to be supposed to have usurped the throne, by murdering, and not, as was really the case, by bastardizing his nephews. If they were illegitimate, so was their sister; and if she was, what title had she conveyed to her son Henry the Eighth? No wonder that both Henrys were jealous of the earl of Suffolk, whom one bequeathed to slaughter, and the other executed; for if the children of Edward the Fourth were spurious, and those of Clarence attainted, the right of the house of York was vested in the duchess of Suffolk and her descendants. The massacre of the children of Clarence and the duchess of Suffolk show what Henry the Eighth thought of the titles both of his father and mother.(50) But, says Mr. Hume, all the historians of that time agree in treating Perkin as an impostor. I have shown from their own mouths that they have all doubted of it. The reader must judge between us. But Mr. Hume selects Sir Thomas More as the highest authority; I have proved that he was the lowest—but not in the case of Perkin, for Sir Thomas More's history does not go so low; yet happening to mention him, he says, the man, commonly called Perkin Warbeck, was, as well with the princes as the people, held to be the younger son of Edward the Fourth; and that the deaths of the young' king Edward and of Richard his brother had come so far in question, as some are yet in doubt, whether they were destroyed or no in the days of king Richard. Sir Thomas adhered to the affirmative, relying as I have shown on very bad authorities. But what is a stronger argument ad hominem, I can prove that Mr. Hume did not think Sir Thomas More good authority; no, Mr. Hume was a fairer and more impartial judge: at the very time that he quotes Sir Thomas More, he tacitly rejects his authority; for Mr. Hume, agreeably to truth, specifies the lady Eleanor Butler as the person to whom king Edward was contracted, and not Elizabeth Lucy, as it stands in Sir Thomas More. An attempt to vindicate Richard will perhaps no longer be thought whimsical, when so very acute a reasoner as Mr. Hume could find no better foundation than these seven queries on which to rest his condemnation.

(47) The excessive affection shown by the Northern counties where the principal strength of the Yorkists lay, to Richard the Third while living, and to his memory when dead, implies two things; first, that the party did not give him up to Henry; secondly, that they did not believe he had murdered his nephews, Tyrants of that magnitude are not apt to be popular. Examine the list of the chiefs in Henry's army as stated by the Chronicle of Croyland, p. 574. and they will be found Lancastrians, or very private gentlemen, and but one peer, the earl of Oxford, a noted Lancastrian.

(48) Grafton has preserved a ridiculous oration said to be made by Perkin to the king of Scotland, in which this silly tale is told. Nothing can be depended upon less than such orations, almost always forged by the writer, and unpardonable, if they pass the bounds of truth. Perkin, in the passage in question, uses these words: "And farther to the entent that my life might be in a suretie he (the murderer of my elder brother) appointed one to convey me into some straunge countrie, where, when I was furthest off, and had most neede of comfort, he forsooke me sodainly (I think he was so appointed to do) and left me desolate alone without friend or knowledge of any relief for refuge," &c. Would not one think one was reading the tale of Valentine and Orson, or a legend of a barbarous age, rather than the History of England, when we are told of strange countries and such indefinite ramblings, as would pass only in a nursery! It remains not only a secret but a doubt, whether the elder brother was murdered. If Perkin was the younger, and knew certainly that his brother was put to death, our doubt would vanish: but can it vanish on no better authority than this foolish oration! Did Grafton hear it pronounced? Did king James bestow his kinswoman on Perkin, on the strength of such a fable?

(49) Henry was so reduced to make out any title to the crown, that he catched even at a quibble. In the act of attainder passed after his accession, he calls himself nephew of Henry the Sixth. He was so, but it was by his father, who was not of the blood royal. Catharine of Valois, after bearing Henry the Sixth, married Owen Tudor, and had two sons, Edmund and Jasper, the former of which married Margaret mother of Henry the Seventh, and so was he half nephew of Henry the Sixth. On one side he had no blood royal, on the other only bastard blood.

(50) Observe, that when Lord Bacon wrote, there was great necessity to vindicate the title even of Henry the Seventh, for James the First claimed from the eldest daughter of Henry and Elizabeth.

With regard to the person of Richard, it appears to have been as much misrepresented as his actions. Philip de Comines, who was very free spoken even on his own masters, and therefore not likely to spare a foreigner, mentions the beauty of Edward the Fourth; but says nothing of the deformity of Richard, though he saw them together. This is merely negative. The old countess of Desmond, who had danced with Richard, declared he was the handsomest man in the room except his brother Edward, and was very well made. But what shall we say to Dr. Shaw, who in his sermon appealed to the people, whether Richard was not the express image of his father's person, who was neither ugly nor deformed? Not all the protector's power could have kept the muscles of the mob in awe and prevented their laughing at so ridiculous an apostrophe, had Richard been a little, crooked, withered, hump-back'd monster, as later historians would have us believe—and very idly? Cannot a foul soul inhabit a fair body.

The truth I take to have been this. Richard, who was slender and not tall, had one shoulder a little higher than the other: a defect, by the magnifying glasses, of party, by distance of time, and by the amplification of tradition, easily swelled to shocking deformity; for falsehood itself generally pays so much respect to truth as to make it the basis of its superstructures.

I have two reasons for believing Richard was not well made about the shoulders. Among the drawings which I purchased at Vertue's sale was one of Richard and his queen, of which nothing is expressed but the out-lines. There is no intimation from whence the drawing was taken; but by a collateral direction for the colour of the robe, if not copied from a picture, it certainly was from some painted 'window; where existing I do not pretend to say:—in this whole work I have not gone beyond my vouchers. Richard's face is very comely, and corresponds singularly with the portrait of him in the preface to the Royal and Noble Authors. He has a sort of tippet of ermine doubled about his neck, which seems calculated to disguise some want of symmetry thereabouts. I have given two prints(51) of this drawing, which is on large folio paper, that it may lead to a discovery of the original, if not destroyed.

(51) In the prints, the single head is most exactly copied from the drawing, which is unfinished. In the double plate, the reduced likeness of the king could not be so perfectly preserved.

My other authority is John Rous, the antiquary of Warwickshire, who saw Richard at Warwick in the interval of his two coronations, and who describes him thus: "Parvae staturae erat, curtam habens faciem, inaequales humeros, dexter superior, sinisterque inferior." What feature in this portrait gives any idea of a monster? Or who can believe that an eyewitness, and so minute a painter, would have mentioned nothing but the inequality of shoulders, if Richard's form had been a compound of ugliness? Could a Yorkist have drawn a less disgusting representation? And yet Rous was a vehement Lancastrian; and the moment he ceased to have truth before his eyes, gave in to all the virulence and forgeries of his party, telling us in another place, "that Richard remained two years in his mother's womb, and came forth at last with teeth, and hair on his shoulders." I leave it to the learned in the profession to decide whether women can go two years with their burden, and produce a living infant; but that this long pregnancy did not prevent the duchess, his mother, from bearing afterwards, I can prove; and could we recover the register of the births of her children, I should not be surprised to find, that, as she was a very fruitful woman, there was not above a year between the birth of Richard and his preceding brother Thomas.(52) However, an ancient bard,(53) who wrote after Richard was born and during the life of his father, tells us,

Richard liveth yit, but the last of all Was Ursula, to him whom God list call.

(52) The author I am going to quote, gives us the order in which the duchess Cecily's children were horn thus; Ann duchess of Exeter, Henry, Edward the Fourth Edmund earl of Rutland, Elizabeth duchess of Suffolk, Margaret duchess of Burgundy, William, John, George duke of Clarence, Thomas, Richard the Third, and Ursula. Cox, Im his History of Ireland, says, that Clarence was born in 1451. Buck computed Richard the Third to have fallen at the age of thirty four or five; but, by Cox's account, he could not be more than thirty two. Still this makes it provable, that their mother bore them and their intervening brother Thomas as soon as she well could one after another.

(53) See Vincent's Errors in Brooks's Heraldry, p. 623.

Be it as it will, this foolish tale, with the circumstances of his being born with hair and teeth, was coined to intimate how careful Providence was, when it formed a tyrant, to give due warning of what was to be expected. And yet these portents were far from prognosticating a tyrant; for this plain reason, that all other tyrants have been born without these prognostics. Does it require more time to ripen a foetus, that is, to prove a destroyer, than it takes to form an Aristides? Are there outward and visible signs of a bloody nature? Who was handsomer than Alexander, Augustus, or Louis the Fourteenth? and yet who ever commanded the spilling of more human blood.

Having mentioned John Rous, it is necessary I should say something more of him, as he lived in Richard's time, and even wrote his reign; and yet I have omitted him in the list of contemporary writers. The truth is, he was pointed out to me after the preceding sheets were finished; and upon inspection I found him too despicable and lying an author, even among monkish authors, to venture to quote him, but for two facts; for the one of which as he was an eye-witness, and for the other, as it was of publick notoriety, he is competent authority.

The first is his description of the person of Richard; the second, relating to the young earl of Warwick, I have recorded in its place.

This John Rous, so early as in the reign of Edward the Fourth, had retired to the hermitage of Guy's Cliff, where he was a chantry priest, and where he spent the remaining part of his life in what he called studying and writing antiquities. Amongst other works, most of which are not unfortunately lost, he composed a history of the kings of England. It Begins with the creation, and is compiled indiscriminately from the Bible and from monastic writers. Moses, he tells us, does not mention all the cities founded before the deluge, but Barnard de Breydenback, dean of Mayence, does. With the same taste he acquaints us, that, though the book of Genesis says nothing of the matter, Giraldus Cambrensis writes, that Caphera or Cesara, Noah's niece, being apprehensive of the deluge, set out for Ireland, where, with three men and fifty women, she arrived safe with one ship, the rest perishing in the general destruction.

A history, so happily begun, never falls off: prophecies, omens, judgements, and religious foundations compose the bulk of the book. The lives and actions of our monarchs, and the great events of their reigns, seemed to the author to deserve little place in a history of England. The lives of Henry the Sixth and Edward the Fourth, though the author lived under both, take up but two pages in octavo, and that of Richard the Third, three. We may judge how qualified such an author was to clear up a period so obscure, or what secrets could come to his knowledge at Guy's Cliff: accordingly he retails all the vulgar reports of the times; as that Richard poisoned his wife, and put his nephews to death, though he owns few knew in what manner; but as he lays the scene of their deaths before Richard's assumption of the crown, it is plain he was the worst informed of all. To Richard he ascribes the death of Henry the Sixth; and adds, that many persons believed he executed the murder with his own hands: but he records another circumstance that alone must weaken all suspicion of Richard's guilt in that transaction. Richard not only caused the body to be removed from Chertsey, and solemnly interred at Windsor, but it was publickly exposed, and, if we will believe the monk, was found almost entire, and emitted a gracious perfume, though no care had been taken to embalm it. Is it credible that Richard, if the murderer, would have exhibited this unnecessary mummery, only to revive the memory of his own guilt? Was it not rather intended to recall the cruelty of his brother Edward, whose children he had set aside, and whom by the comparison of this act of piety, he hoped to depreciate(53) in the eyes of the people? The very example had been pointed out to him by Henry the Fifth, who bestowed a pompous funeral on Richard the Second, murdered by order of his father.

(54) This is not a mere random conjecture, but combated by another instance of like address. He deforested a large circuit, which Edward had annexed to the forest of Whichwoode, to the great annoyance of the subject. This we are told by Rous himself, p. 316,

Indeed the devotion of Rous to that Lancastrian saint, Henry the Sixth, seems chiefly to engross his attention, and yet it draws him into a contradiction; for having said that the murder of Henry the Sixth had made Richard detested by all nations who heard of it, he adds, two pages afterwards, that an embassy arrived at Warwick (while Richard kept his court there) from the king of Spain,(55) to propose a marriage between their children. Of this embassy Rous is a proper witness: Guy's Cliff, I think, is but four miles from Warwick; and he is too circumstancial on what passed there not to have been on the spot. In other respects he seems inclined to be impartial, recording several good and generous acts of Richard.

(55) Drake says, that an ambassador from the queen of Spain was present at Richard's coronation at York. Rous> himself owns, that, amidst a great concourse of nobility that attended the king at York, was the duke of Albany, brother of the king of Scotland. Richard therefore appears not to hav been abhorred by either the courts of Spain or Scotland.

But there is one circumstance, which, besides the weakness and credulity of the man, renders his testimony exceedingly suspicious. After having said, that, if he may speak truth in Richard's favour,(56) he must own that, though small in stature and strength, Richard was a noble knight, and defended himself to the last 'breath with eminent valour, the monk suddenly turns, and apostrophizes Henry the Seventh, to whom be had dedicated his work, and whom he flatters to the best of his poor abilities; but, above all things, for having bestowed the name of Arthur on his eldest son, who, this injudicious and over-hasty prophet forsees, will restore the glory of his great ancestor of the same name. Had Henry christened his second 'son Merlin, I do not doubt but poor Rous would have had still more divine visions about Henry the Eighth, though born to shake half the pillars of credulity.

(56) Attamen si ad ejus honorem veritatem dicam, p. 218.

In short, no reliance can be had on an author of such a frame of mind, so removed from the scene of action, and so devoted to the Welsh intruder on the throne. Superadded to this incapacity and defects, he had prejudices or attachments of a private nature: he had singular affection for the Beauchamps, earls of Warwick, zealous Lancastrians, and had written their lives. One capital crime that he imputes to Richard is the imprisonment of his mother-in-law, Ann Beauchamp countess of Warwick, mother of his queen. It does seem that this great lady was very hardly treated; but I have shown from the Chronicle of Croyland, that it was Edward the Fourth, not Richard, that stripped her of her possessions. She was widow too of that turbulent Warwick the King-maker; and Henry the Seventh bore witness that she was faithfully loyal to Henry the Sixth. Still it seems extraordinary that the queen did not or could not obtain the enlargement of her mother. When Henry the Seventh 'attained the crown, she recovered her liberty 'and vast estates: yet young as his majesty was both in years and avarice, for this munificence took place in his third year, still he gave evidence of the falshood and rapacity of his nature; for though by act of parliament he cancelled the former act that had deprived her, as against all reason, conscience, and course of nature, and contrary to the laws of God and man,(57) and restored her possessions to her, this was but a farce, and like his wonted hypocrisy; for the very same year he obliged her to convey the whole estate to him, leaving her nothing but the manor of Sutton for her maintenance. Richard had married her daughter; but what claim had Henry to her inheritance? This attachment of Rous to the house of Beauchamp, and the dedication of his work to Henry, Would make his testimony most suspicious, even if he had guarded his work within the rules of probability, and not rendered it a contemptible legend.

(57) Vide Dugdale's Warckshire in Beauchamp.

Every part of Richard's story is involved in obscurity: we neither known what natural children he had, nor what became of them. Stanford says, he had a daughter called Katherine, whom William Herbert earl of Huntingdon covenanted to marry, and to make her a fair and sufficient estate of certain of his manors to the yearly value of 200 pounds over and above all charges. As this lord received a confirmation of his title from Henry the Seventh, no doubt the poor young lady would have been sacrificed to that interest. But Dugdale seems to think she died before the nuptuals were consummated "whether this marriage took effect or not I cannot say; for sure it is that she died in her tender years."(58) Drake(59) affirms, that Richard knighted at York a natural son called Richard of Gloucester, and supposes it to be the same person of whom Peck has preserved so extraordinary an account.(60) But never was a supposition worse grounded. The relation given by the latter of himself, was, that he never saw the king till the night before the battle of Bosworth: and that the king had not then acknowledged, but intended to acknowledge him, if victorious. The deep privacy in which this person had lived, demonstrates how severely the persecution had raged against all that were connected with Richard, and how little truth was to be expected from the writers on the other side. Nor could Peck's Richard Plantagenet be the same person with Richard of Gloucester, for the former was never known till he discovered himself to Sir Thomas More; and Hall says king Richard's natural son was in the hands of Henry the Seventh. Buck says, that Richard made his son Richard of Gloucester, captain of Calais; but it appears from Rymer's Foedera, that Richard's natural son, who was captain of Calais, was called John. None of these accounts accord with Peck's; nor, for want of knowing his mother, can we guess why king Richard was more secret on the birth of this son (if Peck's Richard Plantagenet was truly so) than on those of his other natural children. Perhaps the truest remark that can be made on this whole story is, that the avidity with which our historians swallowed one gross ill-concocted legend, prevented them from desiring or daring to sift a single part of it. If crumbs of truth are mingled with it, at least they are now undistinguishable in such a mass of error and improbability.

(58) Baronage, p. 258.

(58) In his History of York.

(59) See his Desiderata Curiosae.

It is evident from the conduct of Shakespeare, that the house of Tudor retained all their Lancastrian prejudices, even in the reign of queen Elizabeth. In his play of Richard the Third, he seems to deduce the woes of the house of York from the curses which queen Margaret had vented against them; and he could not give that weight to her curses, without supposing a right in her to utter them. This, indeed is the authority which I do not pretend to combat. Shakespeare's immortal scenes will exist, when such poor arguments as mine are forgotten. Richard at least will be tried and executed on the stage, when his defence remains on some obscure shelf of a library. But while these pages may excite the curiosity of a day, it may not be unentertaining to observe, that there is another of Shakespeare's plays, that may be ranked among the historic, though not one of his numerous critics and commentators have discovered the drift of it; I mean The Winter Evening's Tale, which was certainly intended (in compliment to queen Elizabeth) as an indirect apology for her mother Anne Boleyn. The address of the poet appears no where to more advantage. The subject was too delicate to be exhibited on the stage without a veil; and it was too recent, and touched the queen too nearly, for the bard to have ventured so home an allusion on any other ground than compliment. The unreasonable jealousy of Leontes, and his violent conduct in consequence, form a true portrait of Henry the Eighth, who generally made the law the engine of his boisterous passions. Not only the general plan of the story is most applicable but several passages are so marked, that they touch the real history nearer than the fable. Hermione on her trial says,

. . . . . For honour, 'Tis a derivative from me to mine, And only that I stand for.

This seems to be taken from the very letter of Anne Boyleyn to the king before her execution, where she pleads for the infant princess his daughter. Mamillius, the young prince, an unnecessary character, dies in his infancy; but it confirms the allusion, as queen Anne, before Elizabeth, bore a still-born son. But the most striking passage,' and which had nothing to do in the Tragedy, but as it pictured Elizabeth, is, where Paulina, describing the new-born princess, and her likeness to her father, says, she has the very trick of his frown. There is one sentence indeed so applicable, both to Elizabeth and her father, that I should suspect the poet inserted it after her death. Paulina, speaking of the child, tells the king,

. . . . . . 'Tis yours; And might we lay the old proverb to your charge, So like you, 'tis the worse.

The Winter Evening's Tale was therefore in reality a second part of Henry the Eighth.

With regard to Jane Shore, I have already shown that it was her connection with the marquis Dorset, not with lord Hastings, which drew on her the resentment of Richard. When an event is thus wrested to serve the purpose of a party, we ought to be very cautious how we trust an historian, who is capable of employing truth only as cement in a fabric of fiction. Sir Thomas More tells us, that Richard pretended Jane "was of councell with the lord Hastings to destroy him; and in conclusion, when no colour could fasten upon these matters, then he layd seriously to her charge what she could not deny, namely her adultry; and for this cause, as a godly continent prince, cleane and faultlesse of himself, sent out of heaven into this vicious world for the amendment of mens manners, he caused the bishop of London to put her to open penance."

This sarcasm on Richards morals would have had more weight, if the author had before confined himself to deliver nothing but the precise truth. He does not seem to be more exact in what relates to the penance itself. Richard, by his proclamation, taxed mistress Shore with plotting treason in confederacy with the marquis Dorset. Consequently, it was not from defect of proof of her being accomplice with lord Hastings that she was put to open penance. If Richard had any hand in that sentence, it was, because he had proof of her plotting with the marquis. But I doubt, and with some reason, whether her penance was inflicted by Richard. We have seen that he acknowledged at least two natural children; and Sir Thomas More hints that Richard was far from being remarkable for his chastity. Is it therefore probable, that he acted so silly a farce as to make his brother's mistress do penance? Most of the charges on Richard are so idle, that instead of being an able and artful usurper, as his antagonists allow, he must have been a weaker hypocrite than ever attempted to wrest a sceptre out of the hands of a legal possessor.

It is more likely that the churchmen were the authors of Jane's penance; and that Richard, interested to manage that body, and provoked by her connection with so capital an enemy as Dorset, might give her up, and permit the clergy (who probably had burned incense to her in her prosperity) to revenge his quarrel. My reason for this opinion is grounded on a letter of Richard extant in the Museum, by which it appears that the fair, unfortunate, and aimable Jane (for her virtues far outweighed her frailty) being a prisoner, by Richard's order, in Ludgate, had captivated the king's solicitor, who contracted to marry her. Here follows the letter:

Harl. MSS, No. 2378. By the KING.

"Right reverend fadre in God, &c. Signifying unto you, that it is shewed unto us, that our servaunt and solicitor, Thomas Lynom, merveillously blinded and abused with the late wife of William Shore, now being in Ludgate by oure commandment, hath made contract of matrymony with hir (as it is said) and entendith, to our full grete merveile, to precede to th' effect of the same. We for many causes wold be sory that hee soo shulde be disposed. Pray you therefore to send for him, and in that ye goodly may, exhorte and sture hym to the contrarye. And if ye finde him utterly set for to marye hur, and noen otherwise will be advertised, then (if it may stand with the lawe of the churche.) We be content (the tyme of marriage deferred to our comyng next to London,) that upon sufficient suerite founde of hure good abering, ye doo send for hure keeper, and discharge him of our said commandment by warrant of these, committing hur to the rule and guiding of hure fadre, or any othre by your discretion in the mene season. Yeven, &c. To the right reverend fadre in God, &c. the bishop of Lincoln, our chauncellour."

It appears from this letter, that Richard thought it indecent for his sollicitor to mary a woman who had suffered public punishment for adultery, and who was confined by his command—but where is the tyrant to be found in this paper? Or, what prince ever spoke of such a scandal, and what is stronger, of such contempt of his authority, with so much lenity and temper? He enjoins his chancellor to dissuade the sollicitor from the match—but should he persist—a tyrant would have ordered the sollicitor to prison too—but Richard —Richard, if his servant will not be dissuaded, allows the match; and in the mean time commits Jane—to whose custody?—Her own father's. I cannot help thinking that some holy person had been her persecutor, and not so patient and gentle a king. And I believe so, because of the salvo for the church: "Let them be married," says Richard, "if it may stand with the lawe of the churche."

From the proposed marriage, one should at first conclude that Shore, the former husband of Jane, was dead; but by the king's query, Whether the marriage would be lawful? and by her being called in the letter the late wife of William Shore, not of the late William Shore, I should suppose that her husband was living, and that the penance itself was the consequence of a suit preferred by him to the ecclesiastic court for divorce. If the injured husband ventured, on the death of Edward the Fourth, to petition to be separated from his wife, it was natural enough for the church to proceed farther, and enjoin her to perform penance, especially when they fell in with the king's resentment to her. Richard's proclamation and the letter above-recited seem to point out this account of Jane's misfortunes; the letter implying, that Richard doubted whether her divorce was so complete as to leave her at liberty to take another husband. As we hear no more of the marriage, and as Jane to her death retained the name of Shore, my solution is corroborated; the chancellor-bishop, no doubt, going more roundly to work than the king had done. Nor, however Sir Thomas More reviles Richard for his cruel usage of mistress Shore, did either of the succeeding kings redress her wrongs, though she lived to the eighteenth year of Henry the Eighth, She had sown her good deeds, her good offices, her alms her charities, in a court. Not one took root; nor did the ungrateful soil repay her a grain of relief in her penury and comfortless old age.

I have thus gone through the several accusations against Richard; and have shown that they rest on the slightest and most suspicious ground, if they rest on any at all. I have proved that they ought to be reduced to the sole authorities of Sir Thomas More and Henry the Seventh; the latter interested to blacken and misrepresent every action of Richard; and perhaps driven to father on him even his own crimes. I have proved that More's account cannot be true. I have shown that the writers, contemporary with Richard, either do not accuse him, or give their accusations as mere vague and uncertain reports: and what is as strong, the writers next in date, and who wrote the earliest after the events are said to have happened, assert little or nothing from their own information, but adopt the very words of Sir Thomas More, who was absolutely mistaken or misinformed.

For the sake of those who have a mind to canvass this subject, I will recapitulate the most material arguments that tend to disprove what has been asserted; but as I attempt not to affirm what did happen in a period that will still remain very obscure, I flatter myself that I shall not be thought either fantastic or paradoxical, for not blindly adopting an improbable tale, which our historians have never given themselves the trouble to examine.

What mistakes I may have made myself, I shall be willing to acknowledge; what weak reasoning, to give up: but I shall not think that a long chain of arguments, of proofs and probabilities, is confuted at once, because some single fact may be found erroneous. Much less shall I be disposed to take notice of detached or trifling cavils. The work itself is but an inquiry into a short portion of our annals. I shall be content, if I have informed or amused my readers, or thrown any light on so clouded a scene; but I cannot be of opinion that a period thus distant deserves to take up more time than I have already bestowed upon it.

It seems then to me to appear,

That Fabian and the authors of the Chronicle of Croyland, who were contemporaries with Richard, charge him directly with none of the crimes, since imputed to him, and disculpate him of others.

That John Rous, the third contemporary, could know the facts he alledges but by hearsay, confounds the dates of them, dedicated his work to Henry the Seventh, and is an author to whom no credit is due, from the lies and fables with which his work is stuffed.

That we have no authors who lived near the time, but Lancastrian authors, who wrote to flatter Henry the Seventh, or who spread the tales which he invented.

That the murder of prince Edward, son of Henry the Sixth, was committed by king Edward's servants, and is imputed to Richard by no contemporary.

That Henry the Sixth was found dead in the Tower; that it was not known how he came by his death; and that it was against Richard's interest to murder him.

That the duke of Clarence was defended by Richard; that the parliament petitioned for his execution; that no author of the time is so absurd as to charge Richard with being the executioner; and that king Edward took the deed wholly on himself.

That Richard's stay at York on his brother's death had no appearance of a design to make himself king.

That the ambition of the queen, who attempted to usurp the government, contrary to the then established custom of the realm, gave the first provocation to Richard and the princes of the blood to assert their rights; and that Richard was solicited by the duke of Buckingham to vindicate those rights.

That the preparation of an armed force under earl Rivers, the seizure of the Tower and treasure, and the equipment of a fleet, by the marquis Dorset, gave occasion to the princes to imprison the relations of the queen; and that, though they were put to death without trial (the only cruelty which is proved on Richard) it was consonant to the manners of that barbarous and turbulent age, and not till after the queen's party had taken up arms.

That the execution of lord Hastings, who had first engaged with Richard against the queen, and whom Sir Thomas More confesses Richard was lothe to lose, can be accounted for by nothing but absolute necessity, and the law of self-defence.

That Richard's assumption of the protectorate was in every respect agreeable to the laws and usage; was probably bestowed on him by the universal consent of the council and peers, and was a strong indication that he had then no thought of questioning the right of his nephew.

That the tale of Richard aspersing the chastity of his own mother is incredible; it appearing that he lived with her in perfect harmony, and lodged with her in her palace at that very time.

That it is as little credible that Richard gained the crown by a sermon of Dr. Shaw, and a speech of the duke of Buckingham, if the people only laughed at those orators.

That there had been a precontract or marriage between Edward the Fourth and lady Eleanor Talbot; and that Richard's claim to the crown was founded on the illegitimacy of Edward's children.

That a convention of the nobility, clergy, and people invited him to accept the crown on that title.

That the ensuing parliament ratified the act of the convention, and confirmed the bastardy of Edward's children.

That nothing can be more improbable than Richard's having taken no measures before he left London, to have his nephews murdered, if he had any such intention.

That the story of Sir James Tirrel, as related by Sir Thomas More, is a notorious falshood; Sir James Tirrel being at that time master of the horse, in which capacity he had walked at Richard's coronation.

That Tirrel's jealousy of Sir Richard Ratcliffe is another palpable falshood; Tirrel being already preferred, and Ratcliffe absent.

That all that relates to Sir Robert Brackenbury is no less false: Brackenbury either being too good a man to die for a tyrant or murderer, or too bad a man to have refused being his accomplice.

That Sir Thomas More and lord Bacon both confess that many doubted, whether the two princes were murdered in Richard's days or not; and it certainly never was proved that they were murdered by Richard's order.

That Sir Thomas More relied on nameless and uncertain authority; that it appears by dates and facts that his authorities were bad and false; that if Sir James Tirrel and Dighton had really committed the murder and confessed it, and if Perkin Warbeck had made a voluntary, clear, and probable confession of his imposture, there could have remained no doubt of the murder.