led on Richard's side at Bosworth, when many other of his
adherents betrayed him?

(23) This is confirmed by Lord Bacon: "Neither wanted there even at
that time secret rumours and whisperings (which afterwards
gathered strength, and turned to great trouble) that the two young
sons of king Edward the Fourth, or one of them (which were said to
be destroyed in the Tower) were not indeed murthered, but conveyed
secretly away, and were yet living." Reign of Henry the Seventh, p. 4.
again, p. 19. "And all this time it was still whispered every where
that at least one of the children of Edward the Fourth was living."

That Sir James Tirrel was and did walk as master of the horse at
Richard's coronation cannot be contested. A most curious,
invaluable, and authentic monument has lately been discovered, the
coronation-roll of Richard the Third. Two several deliveries of
parcels of stuff are there expressly entered, as made to "Sir James
Tirrel, knyght, maister of the hors of our sayd soverayn lorde the
kynge." What now becomes of Sir Thomas More's informers, and of
their narrative, which he thought hard but must be true?

I will go a step farther, and consider the evidence of this murder,
as produced by Henry the Seventh some years afterwards, when,
instead of lamenting it, it was necessary for his majesty to hope it
had been true; at least to hope the people would think so. On the
appearance of Perkin Warbeck, who gave himself out for the second of
the brothers, who was believed so by most people, and at least
feared by the king to be so, he bestirred himself to prove that both
the princes had been murdered by his predecessor. There had been but
three actors, besides Richard who had commanded the execution, and
was dead. These were Sir James Tirrel, Dighton, and Forrest; and
these were all the persons whose depositions Henry pretended to
produce; at least of two of them, for Forrest it seems had rotted
piece-meal away; a kind of death unknown at present to the college.
But there were some others, of whom no notice was taken; as the
nameless page, Greene, one Black Will or Will Slaughter who guarded
the princes, the friar who buried them, and Sir Robert Brakenbury,
who could not be quite ignorant of what had happened: the latter was
killed at Bosworth, and the friar was dead too. But why was no
enquiry made after Greene and the page? Still this silence was not
so impudent as the pretended confession of Dighton and Sir James