allowance the exaggerated relations of those times. The latter
suspects, that at the dissolution of the monasteries all evidences
were suppressed that tended to weaken the right of the prince on the
throne; but as Henry the Eighth concentred in himself both the claim
of Edward the Fourth and that ridiculous one of Henry the Seventh,
he seems to have had less occasion to be anxious lest the truth
should come out; and indeed his father had involved that truth in so
much darkness, that it was little likely to force its way. Nor was
it necessary then to load the memory of Richard the Third, who had
left no offspring. Henry the Eighth had no competitor to fear but
the descendants of Clarence, of whom he seems to have had sufficient
apprehension, as appeared by his murder of the old countess of
Salisbury, daughter of Clarence, and his endeavours to root out her
posterity. This jealousy accounts for Hall charging the duke of
Clarence, as well as the duke of Gloucester, with the murder of
prince Edward. But in accusations of so deep a dye, it is not
sufficient ground for our belief, that an historian reports them
with such a frivolous palliative as that phrase, "as some say". A
cotemporary names the king's servants as perpetrators of the murder:
Is not that more probable, than that the king's own brothers should
have dipped their hands in so foul an assassination? Richard, in
particular, is allowed on all hands to have been a brave and martial
prince: he had great share in the victory at Tewksbury: Some years
afterwards, he commanded his brother's troops in Scotland, and made
himself master of Edinburgh. At the battle of Bosworth, where he
fell, his courage was heroic: he sought Richmond, and endeavoured to
decide their quarrel by a personal combat, slaying Sir William
Brandon, his rival's standard-bearer, with his own hand, and
felling to the ground Sir John Cheney, who endeavoured to oppose
his fury. Such men may be carried by ambition to command the
execution of those who stand in their way; but are not likely to
lend their hand, in cold blood, to a base, and, to themselves,
useless assassination. How did it import Richard in what manner the
young prince was put to death? If he had so early planned the
ambitious designs ascribed to him, he might have trusted to his
brother Edward, so much more immediately concerned, that the young
prince would not be spared. If those views did not, as is probable,
take root in his heart ti