for in those times neither the public nor the prisoner were often favoured with knowing the evidence on which sentence was passed.  Nor was much information of that sort given to or asked by parliament itself, previous to bills of attainder.  The duke of Clarence appears to have been at once a weak, volatile, injudicious, and ambitious man.  He had abandoned his brother Edward, had espoused the daughter of Warwick, the great enemy of their house, and had even been declared successor to Henry the Sixth and his son prince Edward.  Conduct so absurd must have left lasting impressions on Edward’s mind, not to be effaced by Clarence’s subsequent treachery to Henry and Warwick.  The Chronicle of Croyland mentions the ill-humour and discontents of Clarence; and all our authors agree, that he kept no terms with the queen and her relations.(1) Habington adds, that these discontents were secretly fomented by the duke of Gloucester.  Perhaps they were:  Gloucester certainly kept fair with the queen, and profited largely by the forfeiture of his brother.  But where jealousies are secretly fomented in a court, they seldom come to the knowledge of an historian; and though he may have guessed right from collateral circumstances, these insinuations are mere gratis dicta and can only be treated as surmises.(2) Hall, Hollingshed, and Stowe say not a word of Richard being the person who put the sentence in execution; but, on the contrary, they all say he openly resisted the murder of Clarence:  all too record another circumstance, which is perfectly ridiculous that Clarence was drowned in a barrel or butt of malmsey.  Whoever can believe that a butt of wine was the engine of his death, may believe that Richard helped him into it, and kept him down till he was suffocated.  But the strong evidence on which Richard must be acquitted, and indeed even of having contributed to his death, was the testimony of Edward himself.  Being some time afterward solicited to pardon a notorious criminal, the king’s conscience broke forth; “Unhappy brother!” cried he, “for whom no man would intercede—­yet ye all can be intercessors for a villain!” If Richard had been instigator or executioner, it is not likely that the king would have assumed the whole merciless criminality to himself, without bestowing a due share on his brother Gloucester.  Is it possible to renew the charge, and not recollect this acquittal?

(1) That chronicle, which now and then, though seldom, is circumstantial, gives a curious account of the marriage of Richard duke of Gloucester and Anne Nevil, which I have found in no other author; and which seems to tax the envy and rapaciousness of Clarence as the causes of the dissention between the brothers.  This account, and from a cotemporary, is the more remarkable, as the Lady Anne is positively said to have been only betrothed to Edward prince of Wales, son of Henry the Sixth, and not his widow, as she is carelessly called by all our historians, and represented