d 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