f Oxford is said to have been
attainted "for the true allegiance and service he owed and did to Henry
VI. at Barnet field and otherwise." (p. 281.) This might be reasonable
enough on the true principle that allegiance is due to a king _de
facto_; if indeed we could determine who was the king de facto on the
morning of the battle of Barnet. But this principle was not fairly
recognised. Richard III. is always called, "in deed and not in right
king of England." Nor was this merely founded on his usurpation as
against his nephew. For that unfortunate boy is little better treated,
and in the act of resumption, 1 H. VII., while Edward IV. is styled
"late king," appears only with the denomination of "Edward his son, late
called Edward V." (p. 336.) Who then was king after the death of Edward
IV.? And was his son really illegitimate, as an usurping uncle
pretended? Or did the crime of Richard, though punished in him, enure to
the benefit of Henry? These were points which, like the fate of the
young princes in the Tower, he chose to wrap in discreet silence. But
the first question he seems to have answered in his own favour. For
Richard himself, Howard duke of Norfolk, Lord Lovel, and some others,
are attainted (p. 276) for "traiterously intending, compassing, and
imagining" the death of Henry; of course before or at the battle of
Bosworth; and while his right, unsupported by possession, could have
rested only on an hereditary title which it was an insult to the nation
to prefer. These monstrous proceedings explain the necessity of that
conservative statute to which I have already alluded, which passed in
the eleventh year of his reign, and afforded as much security for men
following the plain line of rallying round the standard of their country
as mere law can offer. There is some extraordinary reasoning upon this
act in Carte's History (vol. ii. p. 844), for the purpose of proving
that the adherents of George II. would not be protected by it on the
restoration of the true blood.

[456] Difference of Absolute and Limited Monarchy, p. 83.

[457] Rot. Parl. vol. vi. p. 241.

[458] 1 R. III. c. 2.

[459] The long-debated question as to the murder of Edward and his
brother seems to me more probably solved on the common supposition that
it was really perpetrated by the orders of Richard, than on that of
Walpole, Carte, Henry, and Laing, who maintain that the duke of York, at
least, was in some way released from the Tower, and re