deprived of
hys realme and imperial croune, was now in the Tower of London
spoyled of his life and all wordly felicite by Richard duke of
Gloucester (as the constant fame ranne) which, to the intent that
king Edward his brother should be clere out of al secret suspicyon
of sudden invasion, murthered the said king with a dagger." Whatever
Richard was, it seems he was a most excellent and kind-hearted
brother, and scrupled not on any occasion to be the Jack Ketch of the
times. We shall see him soon (if the evidence were to be believed)
perform the same friendly office for Edward on their brother
Clarence. And we must admire that he, whose dagger was so fleshed in
murder for the service of another, should be so put to it to find
the means of making away with his nephews, whose deaths were
considerably more essential to him. But can this accusation be
allowed gravely? if Richard aspired to the crown, whose whole
conduct during Edward's reign was a scene, as we are told, of
plausibility and decorum, would he officiously and unnecessarily
have taken on himself the odium of slaying a saint-like monarch,
adored by the people? Was it his interest to save Edward's character
at the expence of his own? Did Henry stand in his way, deposed,
imprisoned, and now childless? The blind and indiscriminate zeal
with which every crime committed in that bloody age was placed to
Richard's account, makes it greatly probable, that interest of party
had more hand than truth in drawing his picture. Other cruelties,
which I shall mention, and to which we know his motives, he
certainly commanded; nor am I desirous to purge him where I find him
guilty: but mob-stories or Lancastrian forgeries ought to be
rejected from sober history; nor can they be repeated, without
exposing the writer to the imputation of weakness and vulgar
credulity.

III. The murder of his brother Clarence.

In the examination of this article, I shall set aside our
historians (whose gossipping narratives, as we have seen, deserve
little regard) because we have better authority to direct our
inquiries: and this is, the attainder of the duke of Clarence, as it
is set forth in the Parliamentary History (copied indeed from
Habington's Life of Edward the Fourth) and by the editors of that
history justly supposed to be taken from Stowe, who had seen the
original bill of attainder. The crimes and conspiracy of Clarence
are there particularly enumerated, and even his dealing with