rother of the offended monarch and of the royal criminal should
have been deputed, or would have stooped to so vile an office? On
such occasions do arbitrary princes want tools? Was Edward's court
so virtuous or so humane, that it could furnish no assassin but the
first prince of the blood? When the house of commons undertook to
colour the king's resentment, was every member of it too scrupulous
to lend his hand to the deed?

The three preceding accusations are evidently uncertain and
improbable. What follows is more obscure; and it is on the ensuing
transactions that I venture to pronounce, that we have little or no
authority on which to form positive conclusions. I speak more
particularly of the deaths of Edward the Fifth and his brother. It
will, I think, appear very problematic whether they were murdered or
not: and even if they were murdered, it is impossible to believe the
account as fabricated and divulged by Henry the Seventh, on whose
testimony the murder must rest at last; for they, who speak most
positively, revert to the story which he was pleased to publish
eleven years after their supposed deaths, and which is so absurd, so
incoherent, and so repugnant to dates and other facts, that as it is
no longer necessary to pay court to his majesty, it is no longer
necessary not to treat his assertions as an impudent fiction. I come
directly to this point, because the intervening articles of the
executions of Rivers, Gray, Vaughan, and Hastings will naturally
find their place in that disquisition.

And here it will be important to examine those historians on whose
relation the story first depends. Previous to this, I must ascertain
one or two dates, for they are stubborn evidence and cannot be
rejected: they exist every where, and cannot be proscribed even from
a Court Calendar.

Edward the Fourth died April 9th, 1483. Edward, his eldest son, was
then thirteen years of age. Richard Duke of York, his second son,
was about nine.

We have but two cotemporary historians, the author of the Chronicle
of Croyland, and John Fabian. The first, who wrote in his convent,
and only mentioned incidentally affairs of state, is very barren and
concise: he appears indeed not to have been ill informed, and
sometimes even in a situation of personally knowing the transactions
of the times; for in one place we are told in a marginal note, that
the doctor of the canon law, and one of the king's councellors, who
was sent to Calais,