he confidence of the Yorkists, he paid court to the queen dowager with
such art and address, made such earnest protestations of his sincere
good-will and friendship, that this princess, tired of confinement, and
despairing of any success from her former projects, ventured to leave
her sanctuary, and to put herself and her daughters into the hands of
the tyrant. But he soon carried further his views for the establishment
of his throne. He had married Anne, the second daughter of the earl of
Warwick, and widow of Edward, prince of Wales, whom Richard himself had
murdered; but this princess having born him but one son, who died about
this time, he considered her as an invincible obstacle to the settlement
of his fortune, and he was believed to have carried her off by poison;
a crime for which the public could not be supposed to have any solid
proof, but which the usual tenor of his conduct made it reasonable to
suspect. He now thought it in his power to remove the chief perils which
threatened his government. The earl of Richmond, he knew, could never be
formidable but from his projected marriage with the princess Elizabeth,
the true heir of the crown; and he therefore intended, by means of a
papal dispensation, to espouse, himself, this princess, and thus to
unite in his own family their contending titles. The queen dowager,
eager to recover her lost authority, neither scrupled this alliance,
which was very unusual in England, and was regarded as incestuous, nor
felt any horror at marrying her daughter to the murderer of her three
sons and of her brother: she even joined so farther interests with those
of the usurper, that she wrote to all her partisans, and among the rest
to her son, the marquis of Dorset, desiring them to withdraw from
the earl of Richmond; an injury which the earl could never afterwards
forgive: the court of Rome was applied to for a dispensation: Richard
thought that he could easily defend himself during the interval, till
it arrived; and he had afterwards the agreeable prospect of a full and
secure settlement. He flattered himself that the English nation, seeing
all danger removed of a disputed succession, would then acquiesce under
the dominion of a prince who was of mature years, of great abilities,
and of a genius qualified for government; and that they would forgive
him all the crimes which he had committed in paving his way to the
throne.

But the crimes of Richard were so horrid and so shocking