of this Elizabeth Lucy?  We have the best and most undoubted authorities to assure us, that Edward’s pre-contract or marriage, urged to invalidate his match with the lady Grey, was with the lady Eleanor Talbot, widow of the lord Butler of Sudeley, and sister of the earl Shrewsbury, one of the greatest peers in the kingdom; her mother was the lady Katherine Stafford, daughter of Humphrey duke of Buckingham, prince of the blood:  an alliance in that age never reckoned unsuitable.  Hear the evidence.  Honest Philip de Comines says(16) “that the bishop of Bath informed Richard, that he had married king Edward to an English lady; and dit cet evesque qu’il les avoit espouses, & que n’y avoit que luy & ceux deux.”  This is not positive, and yet the description marks out the lady Butler, and not Elizabeth Lucy.  But the Chronicle of Croyland is more express.  “Color autem introitus & captae possessionis hujusmodi is erat.  Ostendebatur per modum supplicationis in quodam rotulo pergameni quod filii Regis Edwardi erant bastardi, supponendo ilium precontraxisse cum quadam domina Alienora Boteler, antequam reginam Elizabeth duxisset uxorem; atque insuper, quod sanguis alterius fratris sui, Georgii ducis Clarentiae, fuisset attinctus; ita quod hodie nullus certus & incorruptus sanguis linealis ex parte Richardi ducis Eboraci poterat inveniri, nisi in persona dicti Richardi ducis Glocestriae.  Quo circa supplicabatur ei in fine ejusdem rotuli, ex parte dominorum & communitatis regni, ut jus suum in se assumeret.”  Is this full?  Is this evidence?

(16) Liv. 5, p. 151.  In the 6th book, Comines insinuates that the bishop acted out of revenge for having been imprisoned by Edward:  it might be so; but as Comines had before alledged that the bishop had actually said he had married them, it might be the truth that the prelate told out of revenge, and not a lie; nor is it probable that his tale would have had any weight, if false, and unsupported by other circumstances.

Here we see the origin of the tale relating to the duchess of York; nullus certus & incorruptus sangnis:  from these mistaken or perverted words flowed the report of Richard’s aspersing his mother’s honour.  But as if truth was doomed to emerge, though stifled for near three hundred years, the roll of parliament is at length come to light (with other wonderful discoveries) and sets forth, “that though the three estates which petitioned Richard to assume the crown were not assembled in form of parliament;” yet it rehearses the supplication (recorded by the chronicle above) and declares, “that king Eduard was and stood married and troth plight to one dame Eleanor Butler, daughter to the earl of Shrewsbury, with whom the said king Edward had made a pre-contract of matrimony, long before he made his pretended marriage with Elizabeth Grey.”  Could Sir Thomas More be ignorant of this fact? or, if ignorant, where is his competence as an historian?  And how egregiously absurd is his romance of Richard’s assuming