the crown inconsequence of Dr. Shaw’s sermon and Buckingham’s harangue, to neither of which he pretends the people assented!  Dr. Shaw no doubt tapped the matter to the people; for Fabian asserts that he durst never shew his face afterwards; and as Henry the Seventh succeeded so soon, and as the slanders against Richard increased, that might happen; but it is evident that the nobility were disposed to call the validity of the queen’s marriage in question, and that Richard was solemnly invited by the three estates to accept the regal dignity; and that is farther confirmed by the Chronicle of Croyland, which says, that Richard having brought together a great force from the north, from Wales, and other parts, did on the twenty-sixth of June claim the crown, “seque eodem die apud magnam aulam Westmonasterii in cathedram marmoream ibi intrusit;” but the supplication afore-mentioned had first been presented to him.  This will no doubt be called violence and a force laid on the three estates; and yet that appears by no means to have been the case; for Sir Thomas More, partial as he was against Richard, says, “that to be sure of all enemies, he sent for five thousand men out of the north against his coronation, which came up evil apparelled and worse harnessed, in rusty harnesse, neither defensable nor scoured to the sale, which mustured in Finsbury field, to the great disdain of all lookers on.”  These rusty companions, despised by the citizens, were not likely to intimidate a warlike nobility; and had force been used to extort their assent, Sir Thomas would have been the first to have told us so.  But he suppressed an election that appears to have been voluntary, and invented a scene, in which, by his own account, Richard met with nothing but backwardness and silence, that amounted to a refusal.  The probability therefore remains, that the nobility met Richard’s claim at least half-way, from their hatred and jealousy of the queen’s family, and many of them from the conviction of Edward’s pre-contract.  Many might concur from provocation at the attempts that had been made to disturb the due course of law, and some from apprehension of a minority.  This last will appear highly probable from three striking circumstances that I shall mention hereafter.  The great regularity with which the coronation was prepared and conducted, and the extraordinary concourse of the nobility at it, have not all the air of an unwelcome revolution, accomplished merely by violence.  On the contrary, it bore great resemblance to a much later event, which, being the last of the kind, we term The Revolution.  The three estates of nobility, clergy, and people, which called Richard to the crown, and whose act was confirmed by the subsequent parliament, trod the same steps as the convention did which elected the prince of Orange; both setting aside an illegal pretender, the legitimacy of whose birth was called in question.  And though the partizans of the Stuarts may exult at my comparing king William to Richard