Tyrrel. The former certainly did avow the fact, and was suffered to
go unpunished wherever he pleased--undoubtedly that he might spread
the tale. And observe these remarkable words of lord Bacon, "John
Dighton, who it seemeth spake best the king, was forewith set at
liberty." In truth, every step of this pretended discovery, as it
stands in lord Bacon, warns us to give no heed to it. Dighton and
Tirrel agreed both in a tale, as the king gave out. Their confession
therefore was not publickly made, and as Sir James Tirrel was
suffered to live;(24) but was shut up in the Tower, and put to death
afterwards for we know not what reason. What can we believe, but
that Dighton was some low mercenary wretch hired to assume the guilt
of a crime he had not committed, and that Sir James Tirrel never
did, never would confess what he had not done; and was therefore put
out of the way on a fictitious imputation? It must be observed too,
that no inquiry was made into the murder on the accession of Henry
the Seventh, the natural time for it, when the passions of men were
heated, and when the duke of Norfolk, lord Lovel, Catesby,
Ratcliffe, and the real abettors or accomplices of Richard, were
attainted and executed. No mention of such a murder (25)was made in
the very act of parliament that attainted Richard himself, and which
would have been the most heinous aggravation of his crimes. And no
prosecution of the supposed assassins was even thought of till
eleven years afterwards, on the appearance of Perkin Warbeck. Tirrel
is not named in the act of attainder to which I have had recourse;
and such omissions cannot but induce us to surmise that Henry had
never been certain of the deaths of the princes, nor ever interested
himself to prove that both were dead, till he had great reason to
believe that one of them was alive. Let me add, that if the
confessions of Dighton and Tirrel were true, Sir Thomas More had no
occasion to recur to the information of his unknown credible
informers. If those confessions were not true, his informers were
not credible.

(24) It appears by Hall, that Sir James Tirrel had even enjoyed the
favor of Henry; for Tirrel is named as captain of Guards in a list
of valiant officers that were sent by Henry, in his fifth year, on
an expedition into Flanders. Does this look as if Tirrel was so much
as suspected of the murder. And who can believe his pretended
confession afterwards? Sir James was not executed till Henr