chard had agreed to marry to the prince of Scotland.

(28) P. 218. Rous is the more to be credited for this fact, as he
saw the earl of Warwick in company with Richard at Warwick the year
before on the progress to York, which shows that the king treated
his nephew with kindness, and did not confine him till the plots of
his enemies thickening, Richard found it necessary to secure such as
had any pretensions to the crown. This will account for his
preferring the earl of Lincoln, who, being his sister's son, could
have no prior claim before himself.

The more generous behaviour of Richard to the same young prince
(Warwick) ought to be applied to the case of Edward the Fifth, if no
proof exists of the murder. But what suspicious words are those of
Sir Thomas More, quoted above, and unobserved by all our historians.
"Some remained long in doubt," says he, "whether they (the children)
were in his (Richard's) days destroyed or no." If they were not
destroyed in his days, in whose days were they murdered? Who will
tell me that Henry the Seventh did not find, the eldest at least,
prisoner in the Tower; and if he did, what was there in Henry's
nature or character to prevent our surmizes going farther.

And here let me lament that two of the greatest men in our annals
have prostituted their admirable pens, the one to blacken a great
prince, the other to varnish a pitiful tyrant. I mean the two (29)
chancellors, Sir Thomas More and lord Bacon. The most senseless
stories of the mob are converted to history by the former; the
latter is still more culpable; he has held up to the admiration of
posterity, and what is worse, to the imitation of succeeding
princes, a man whose nearest approach to wisdom was mean cunning;
and has raised into a legislator, a sanguinary, sordid, and
trembling usurper. Henry was a tyrannic husband, and ungrateful
master; he cheated as well as oppressed his subjects,(30) bartered
the honour of the nation for foreign gold, and cut off every branch
of the royal family, to ensure possession to his no title. Had he
had any title, he could claim it but from his mother, and her he set
aside. But of all titles he preferred that of conquest, which, if
allowable in a foreign prince, can never be valid in a native, but
ought to make him the execration of his countrymen.

(29) It is unfortunate, that another great chancellor should have
written a history with the same propensity to misrepresentation, I
mean lord Cl