the Fourth and the duke of Clarence(14) were spurious; and that the good lady had not given a legitimate child to her husband, but the protector, and I suppose the duchess of Suffolk, though no mention is said to be made of her in the sermon?  For as the duchess of Suffolk was older than Richard, and consequently would have been involved in the charge of bastardy, could he have declared her son his heir, he who set aside his brother Edward’s children for their illegitimacy?  Ladies of the least disputable gallantry generally suffer their husbands to beget his heir; and if doubts arise on the legitimacy of their issue, the younger branches seem most liable to suspicion—­but a tale so gross could not have passed even on the mob—­no proof, no presumption of the fact was pretended.  Were the duchess(15) and her daughters silent on so scandalous an insinuation?  Agrippina would scarce have heard it with patience.  Moriar modo imperet! said that empress, in her wild wish of crowning her son:  but had he, unprovoked, aspersed her honour in the open forum, would the mother have submitted to so unnatural an insult?  In Richard’s case the imputation was beyond measure atrocious and absurd.  What! taint the fame of his mother to pave his way to the crown!  Who had heard of her guilt?  And if guilty, how came she to stop the career of her intrigues?  But Richard had better pretensions, and had no occasion to start doubts even on his own legitimacy, which was too much connected with that of his brothers to be tossed and bandied about before the multitude.  Clarence had been solemnly attainted by act of parliament, and his children were out of the question.  The doubts on the validity of Edward’s marriage were better grounds for Richard’s proceedings than aspersion of his mother’s honour.  On that invalidity he claimed the crown, and obtained it; and with such universal concurrence, that the nation undoubtedly was on his side —­but as he could not deprive his nephews, on that foundation, without bastardizing their sisters too, no wonder, the historians, who wrote under the Lancastrian domination, have used all their art and industry to misrepresent the fact.  If the marriage of Edward the Fourth with the widow Grey was bigamy, and consequently null, what became of the title of Elizabeth of York, wife of Henry the Seventh?  What became of it?  Why a bastard branch of Lancaster, matched with a bastard of York, were obtruded on the nation as the right heirs of the crown! and, as far as two negatives can make an affirmative, they were so.

(12) What should we think of a modern historian, who should sink all mention of the convention parliament, and only tell us that one Dr. Burnet got up into the pulpit, and assured the people that Henrietta Maria (a little more suspected of gallantry than duchess Cecily) produced Charles the Second, and James the Second in adultry, and gave no legitimate issue to Charles the First, but Mary princess of Orange, mother of king William; that the people laughed at him, and so the prince of Orange became king?