unt 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