the confessor.

At Baynard's Castle, too, that cruel usurper, Richard III., practised
the same arts as his predecessor. Shakespeare, who has darkened Richard
almost to caricature, has left him the greatest wretch existing in
fiction. At Baynard's Castle our great poet makes Richard receive his
accomplice Buckingham, who had come from the Guildhall with the Lord
Mayor and aldermen to press him to accept the crown; Richard is found by
the credulous citizens with a book of prayer in his hand, standing
between two bishops. This man, who was already planning the murder of
Hastings and the two princes in the Tower, affected religious scruples,
and with well-feigned reluctance accepted "the golden yoke of
sovereignty."

Thus at Baynard's Castle begins that darker part of the Crookback's
career, which led on by crime after crime to the desperate struggle at
Bosworth, when, after slaying his rival's standard-bearer, Richard was
beaten down by swords and axes, and his crown struck off into a hawthorn
bush. The defaced corpse of the usurper, stripped and gory, was, as the
old chroniclers tell us, thrown over a horse and carried by a faithful
herald to be buried at Leicester. It is in vain that modern writers try
to prove that Richard was gentle and accomplished, that this murder
attributed to him was profitless and impossible; his name will still
remain in history blackened and accursed by charges that the great poet
has turned into truth, and which, indeed, are difficult to refute. That
Richard might have become a great, and wise, and powerful king, is
possible; but that he hesitated to commit crimes to clear his way to the
throne, which had so long been struggled for by the Houses of York and
Lancaster, truth forbids us for a moment to doubt. He seems to have been
one of those dark, wily natures that do not trust even their most
intimate accomplices, and to have worked in such darkness that only the
angels know what blows he struck, or what murders he planned. One thing
is certain, that Henry, Clarence, Hastings, and the princes died in
terribly quick succession, and at most convenient moments.

Henry VIII. expended large sums in turning Baynard's Castle from a
fortress into a palace. He frequently lodged there in burly majesty, and
entertained there the King of Castile, who was driven to England by a
tempest. The castle then became the property of the Pembroke family, and
here, in July, 1553, the council was held in which it