to be set to learn
them all separately. If this cannot be answered satisfactorily, it
will remain, that Perkin learned Flemish or English twice over. I am
indifferent which, for still there will remain a contradiction in
the confession. And if English is not meant in the passage above, it
will only produce a greater difficulty, which is, that Perkin, at
the age of twenty learned to speak English in Ireland with so good
an accent, that all England could not discover the cheat. I must be
answered too, why lord Bacon rejects the youth's own confession and
substitutes another in its place, which makes Perkin born in
England, though in his pretended confession Perkin affirms the
contrary. Lord Bacon too confirms my interpretation of the passage
in question, by saying that Perkin roved up and down between Antwerp
and other towns in Flanders, living much in English company, and
having the English tongue perfect, p. 115.

But the gross contradiction of all follows: "It was in Ireland,"
says Perkin, in this very narrative and confession, "that against my
will they made me to learne English, and taught me what I should do
and say." Amazing! what forced him to learn English, after, as he
says himself in the very same page, he had learnt it at Antwerp!
What an impudence was there in royal power to dare to obtrude such
stuff on the world! Yet this confession, as it is called, was the
poor young man forced to read at his execution--no doubt in dread of
worse torture. Mr. Hume, though he questions it, owns that it was
believed by torture to have been drawn from him. What matters how it
was obtained, or whether ever obtained; it could not be true: and as
Henry could put together no more plausible account, coommiseration
will shed a tear over a hapless youth, sacrificed to the fury and
jealousy of an usurper, and in all probability the victim of a
tyrant, who has made the world believe that the duke of York,
executed by his own orders, had been previously murdered by his
predecessor.(45)

(45) Mr. Hume, to whose doubts all respect is due, tells me he
thinks no mention being made of Perkin's title in the Cornish
rebellion under the lord Audeley, is a strong presumption that the
nation was not persuaded of his being the true duke of York. This
argument, which at most is negative, seems to me to lose its weight,
when it is remembered, that this was an insurrection occasioned by a
poll-tax: that the rage of the people was directed agai