his father; was devotedly attached to King Edward, and
hazarded for him person and life with a constancy then unparalleled and
a zeal rewarded by his brother's entire confidence.

Certain names wear a halter in history, and his was one. Richard I. was
assassinated in the siege of Chalone Castle; Richard II. was murdered at
Pomfret; Richard, Earl of Southampton, was executed for treason;
Richard, Duke of York, was beheaded with insult; his son, Richard III.,
fell by the perfidy of his nobles; Richard, the last Duke of York, was
probably murdered by his uncle, in the Tower.

At the decease of his brother Edward, the Duke of Gloucester was not
only the first prince of the blood royal, but was also a consummate
statesman, intrepid soldier, generous giver, and prompt executor,
naturally compassionate, as is proved by his large pensions to the
families of his enemies, to Lady Hastings, Lady Rivers, the Duchess of
Buckingham, and the rest; peculiarly devout, too, according to a pattern
then getting antiquated, as is shown by his endowing colleges of
priests, and bestowing funds for masses in his own behalf and others.
Shakspeare never loses an opportunity of painting Gloucester's piety as
sheer hypocrisy, but it was not thought so then; for there was a growing
Protestant party whom all these Romanist manifestations of the highest
nobleman in England greatly offended, not to say alarmed.

Richard's change of virtual into actual sovereignty, in other words, the
Lord Protector's usurpation of the crown, was not done by violence: in
his first royal procession he was unattended by troops; a fickle,
intriguing, ambitious, and warlike nobility approved the change;
Buckingham, Catesby, and others, urged it. No doubt he himself saw that
the crown was not a fit plaything for a twelve years' old boy, in such a
time of frequent treason, ferocious crime, and general recklessness.
There is no question but what, as Richard had more head than any man in
England, he was best fitted to be at its head.

The great mystery requiring to be explained is, not that 'the
Lancastrian partialities of Shakspeare have,' as Walter Scott said,
'turned history upside down,' and since the battle of Bosworth, no party
have had any interest in vindicating an utterly ruined cause, but how
such troops of nobles revolted against a monarch alike brave and
resolute, wise in council and energetic in act, generous to reward, but
fearful to punish.

The only soluti