ld that the people had determined to have
another prince; and if he rejected their unanimous voice, they must look
out for one who would be more compliant. This argument was too powerful
to be resisted: he was prevailed on to accept of the crown: and he
thenceforth acted as legitimate and rightful sovereign.

This ridiculous force was soon after followed by a scene truly tragical;
the murder of the two young princes. Richard gave orders to Sir Robert
Brakenbury, constable of the Tower, to put his nephews to death; but
this gentleman, who had sentiments of honor, refused to have any hand
in the infamous office. The tyrant then sent for Sir James Tyrrel,
who promised obedience: and he ordered Brakenbury to resign to this
gentleman the keys and government of the Tower for one night. Tyrre,
choosing three associates, Slater, Dighton, and Forest, came in the
night-time to the door of the chamber where the princes were lodged; and
sending in the assassins he bade them execute their commission, while he
himself staid without. They found the young princes in bed, and fallen
into a profound sleep. After suffocating them with the bolster and
pillows, they showed their naked bodies to Tyrrel, who ordered them to
be buried at the foot of the stairs, deep in the ground, under a heap of
stones.[*] These circumstances were all confessed by the actors in the
following reign; and they were never punished for the crime; probably
because Henry, whose maxims of government were extremely arbitrary,
desired to establish it as a principle, that the commands of the
reigning sovereign ought to justify every enormity in those who paid
obedience to them. But there is one circumstance not so easy to be
accounted for: it is pretended that Richard, displeased with the
indecent manner of burying his nephews, whom he had murdered, gave his
chaplain orders to dig up the bodies, and to inter them in consecrated
ground; and as the man died soon after, the place of their burial
remained unknown, and the bodies could never be found by any search
which Henry could make for them. Yet in the reign of Charles II., when
there was occasion to remove some stones and to dig in the very spot
which was mentioned as the place of their first interment, the bones of
two persons were there found, which by their size exactly corresponded
to the age of Edward and his brother: they were concluded with certainty
to be the remains of those princes, and were interred under a m