was the author of the Continuation. Whenever
therefore his assertions are positive, and not merely flying
reports, he ought to be admitted as fair evidence, since we have no
better. And yet a monk who busies himself in recording the
insignificant events of his own order or monastery, and who was at
most occasionally made use of, was not likely to know the most
important and most mysterious secrets of state; I mean, as he was
not employed in those iniquitous transactions--if he had been, we
should learn or might expect still less truth from him.

John Fabian was a merchant, and had been sheriff of London, and died
in 1512: he consequently lived on the spot at that very interesting
period. Yet no sheriff was ever less qualified to write a history of
England. His narrative is dry, uncircumstantial, and unimportant: he
mentions the deaths of princes and revolutions of government, with
the same phlegm and brevity as he would speak of the appointment of
churchwardens. I say not this from any partiality, or to decry the
simple man as crossing my opinion; for Fabian's testimony is far
from bearing hard against Richard, even though he wrote under Henry
the Seventh, who would have suffered no apology for his rival, and
whose reign was employed not only in extirpating the house of York,
but in forging the most atrocious calumnies to blacken their
memories, and invalidate their just claim.

But the great source from whence all later historians have taken
their materials for the reign of Richard the Third, is Sir Thomas
More. Grafton, the next in order, has copied him verbatim: so does
Hollingshed--and we are told by the former in a marginal note, that
Sir Thomas was under-sheriff of London when he composed his work. It
is in truth a composition, and a very beautiful one. He was then in
the vigour of his fancy, and fresh from the study of the Greek and
Roman historians, whose manner he has imitated in divers imaginary
orations. They serve to lengthen an unknown history of little more
than two months into a pretty sizeable volume; but are no more to be
received as genuine, than the facts they adduced to countenance. An
under-sheriff of London, aged but twenty-eight, and recently marked
with the displeasure of the crown, was not likely to be furnished
with materials from any high authority, and could not receive them
from the best authority, I mean the adverse party, who were
proscribed, and all their chiefs banished or put to death