and is furnished by that able pen with strains of pathetic oratory, which no part of her conduct affords us reason to believe she possessed.  This scene is occasioned by the demand of delivering up her second son.  Cardinal Bourchier archbishop of Canterbury is the instrument employed by the protector to effect this purpose.  The fact is confirmed by Fabian in his rude and brief manner, and by the Chronicle of Croyland, and therefore cannot be disputed.  But though the latter author affirms, that force was used to oblige the cardinal to take that step, he by no means agrees with Sir Thomas More in the repugnance of the queen to comply, nor in that idle discussion on the privileges of sanctuaries, on which Sir Thomas has wasted so many words.  On the contrary, the chronicle declares, that the queen “Verbis gratanter annues, dimisit puerum.”  The king, who had been lodged in the palace of the bishop of London, was now removed with his brother to the Tower.

This last circumstance has not a little contributed to raise horror in vulgar minds, who of late years have been accustomed to see no persons of rank lodged in the Tower but state criminals.  But in that age the case was widely different.  It not only appears by a map engraven so late as the reign of Queen Elizabeth, that the Tower was a royal palace, in which were ranges of buildings called the king’s and queen’s apartments, now demolished; but it is a known fact, that they did often lodge there, especially previous to their coronations.  The queen of Henry the Seventh lay in there:  queen Elizabeth went thither after her triumphant entry into the city; and many other instances might be produced, but for brevity I omit them, to come to one of the principal transactions of this dark period:  I mean Richard’s assumption of the crown.  Sir Thomas More’s account of this extraordinary event is totally improbable, and positively false in the groundwork of that revolution.  He tells us, that Richard meditating usurpation, divided the lords into two separate councils, assembling the king’s or queen’s party at Baynard’s castle, but holding his own private junto at Crosby Place.  From the latter he began with spreading murmurs, whispers, and reports against the legality of the late king’s marriage.  Thus far we may credit him—­ but what man of common sense can believe, that Richard went so far as publicly to asperse the honor of his own mother?  That mother, Cecily duchess dowager of York, a princess of a spotless character, was then living:  so were two of her daughters, the duchesses of Suffolk and Burgundy, Richard’s own sisters:  one of them, the duchess of Suffolk walked at his ensuing coronation, and her son the earl of Lincoln was by Richard himself, after the death of his own son, declared heir apparent to the crown.  Is it, can it be credible, that Richard actuated a venal preacher(12) to declare to the people from the pulpit at Paul’s cross, that his mother had been an adultress, and that her two eldest sons,(13) Edward