ersons with whom we are made
much acquainted. The barons are all represented as brave patriots;
but we have not the satisfaction of knowing which, of them were
really so; nor whether they were not all turbulent and ambitious.
The probability is, that both kings and nobles wished to encroach on
each other, and if any sparks of liberty were struck out in all
likelihood it was contrary to the intention of either the flint or
the steel.

Hence it has been thought necessary to give a new dress to English
history. Recourse has been had to records, and they are far from
corroborating the testimonies of our historians. Want of authentic
memorials has obliged our later writers to leave the mass pretty
much as they found it. Perhaps all the requisite attention that
might have been bestowed, has not been bestowed. It demands great
industry and patience to wade into such abstruse stores as records
and charters: and they being jejune and narrow in themselves, very
acute criticism is necessary to strike light from their assistance.
If they solemnly contradict historians in material facts, we may
lose our history; but it is impossible to adhere to our historians.
Partiality man cannot intirely divest himself of; it is so natural,
that the bent of a writer to one side or the other of a question is
almost always discoverable. But there is a wide difference between
favouring and lying and yet I doubt whether the whole stream of our
historians, misled by their originals, have not falsified one reign
in our annals in the grossest manner. The moderns are only guilty of
taking-on trust what they ought to have examined more scrupulously,
as the authors whom they copied were all ranked on one side in a
flagrant season of party. But no excuse can be made for the original
authors, who, I doubt, have violated all rules of truth.

The confusions which attended the civil war between the houses of
York and Lancaster, threw an obscurity over that part of our annals,
which it is almost impossible to dispel. We have scarce any
authentic monuments of the reign of Edward the Fourth; and ought to
read his history with much distrust, from the boundless partiality
of the succeeding writers to the opposite cause. That diffidence
should increase as we proceed to the reign of his brother.

It occurred to me some years ago, that the picture of Richard the
Third, as drawn by historians, was a character formed by prejudice
and invention. I did not take Shakes