Secondly, the argument with regard to Richard’s imprudence, in pursuing the course ascribed to him, goes but little way to discredit the facts, unless it can be shown that caution and foresight were part of his ordinary character.  The prevailing notion of Richard III, indeed, is of a cold, deeply politic, scheming, and calculating villain.  But I confess I am not satisfied of the justice of such a view.  Not only Richard, but all his family, appear to me to have been headstrong and reckless as to consequences.  His father lost his life by a chivalrous and quixotic impetuosity; his brother Edward lost his kingdom once by pure carelessness; his brother Clarence fell, no less by lack of wisdom than by lack of honesty; and he himself, at Bosworth, threw away his life by his eagerness to terminate the contest in a personal engagement.  Had Richard fully intended to murder his nephews at the time he determined upon dethroning the elder, I have very little doubt that he would have kept his northern forces in London to preserve order in the city till after the deed was done.  I for my part do not believe that such was his intention from the first.  How much more probable, indeed, that after he had left London the contemplated rising in favor of the princes suggested to him an action which cost him his peace of mind during the whole of his after-life!

Thirdly, the doubts of contemporaries do not appear to have been very general.  The expression of Sir Thomas More is only “that some remained in doubt”; and More is not a writer who would have glossed over a fact to please the court.  As to Perkin Warbeck, who pretended to be the younger of the princes, Henry VII’s neglect to confute his pretensions may have arisen from other causes than a suspicion that he was the true duke of York.  There is no reason to suppose that his followers in England were numerous.  The belief in the murder appears to have been general.  It was mentioned as a fact by the Chancellor of France, in addressing the estates-general which met at Tours in the following January.  It was acknowledged to be true in part by Warbeck himself, who, it has been shown since Walpole’s time, in personating the Duke of York, admitted that his brother Edward had been murdered, though he asserted that he himself had providentially escaped.  It is evident that no one dreamed in those days that the story of the murder was altogether a fiction.  The utmost that any well-informed person could doubt was whether it had been successfully accomplished as to both the victims.

With regard to the confessions of Tyrell and Dighton, Bacon has certainly spoken without warrant in stating that they were examined at the time of Warbeck’s appearance.  The time when they were examined is stated by Sir Thomas More to have been when Tyrell was confined in the Tower for treason against Henry VII, which was in 1502, three years after Warbeck’s execution.  Before that date there is no ground for believing that Tyrell’s guilt in regard