II. And, indeed, when we consider how
many persons, according to More's account, took part in the murder or
had some knowledge of it, it does appear not a little strange that there
should have been any difficulty in establishing it on the clearest
evidence. For besides Tyrell, Dighton, and Forest, the chief actors,
there were Brackenbury, Green the page, one Black Will, or Will
Slaughter, who guarded the princes, and the priest who buried them, all
fully aware of the circumstances of the crime.

In Henry VII's time Brackenbury was dead, and so it is said was the
priest; Forest, too, had ended his days miserably in a sanctuary. But it
does not appear what had become of either Green or the page. Tyrell and
Dighton were the only persons said to have been examined; and though we
are told that they both confessed, yet there is a circumstance that
makes the confession look exceedingly suspicious. Tyrell was detained in
prison, and afterward executed, for a totally different offence; while,
as Bacon tells us, "John Dighton, _who it seemeth spake best for the
King,_ was forthwith set at liberty." Taking Bacon's view of the
circumstances of the disclosure as if it were infallible, the sceptics
here find matter of very grave suspicion. "In truth," says Walpole,
"every step of this pretended discovery, as it stands in Lord Bacon,
warns us to give no heed to it. Dighton and Tyrell agreed both in a tale,
_as the King gave out_. Their confession, therefore, was not publicly
made; and as Sir James Tyrell, too, was suffered to live, but was shut
up in the Tower and put to death afterward for we know not what treason,
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
Tyrell 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 VII--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 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 ever thought of till eleven years afterward, o