t 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