excellent qualities of earl Rivers:  let therefore my impartiality be believed, when I reject other facts, for which I can discover no good authority.  I can have no interest in Richard’s guilt or innocence; but as Henry the Seventh was so much interested to represent him as guilty, I cannot help imputing to the greater usurper, and to the worse tyrant of the two, all that appears to me to have been calumny and misrepresentation.

(19) In the Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors, vol. 1.

All obstacles thus removed, and Richard being solemnly instated in the throne by the concurrent voice of the three estates, “He openly,” says Sir Thomas More, “took upon him to be king the ninth(20) day of June, and’ the morrow after was proclaimed, riding to Westminster with great state; and calling the judges before him, straightly commanded them to execute the laws without favor or delay, with many good exhortations, of the which he followed not one.”  This is an invidious and false accusation.  Richard, in his regal capacity, was an excellent king, and for the short time of his reign enacted many wise and wholesome laws.  I doubt even whether one of the best proofs of his usurpation was not the goodness of his government, according to a common remark, that princes of doubtful titles make the best masters, as it is more necessary for them to conciliate the favour of the people:  the natural corollary from which observation need not be drawn.  Certain it is that in many parts of the kingdom not poisoned by faction, he was much beloved; and even after his death the northern counties gave open testimony of their affection to his memory.

(20) Though I have copied our historian, as the rest have copied him, in this date I must desire the reader to take notice, that this very date is another of Sir T. More’s errors; for in the public acts is a deed of Edward the Fifth, dated June 17th.

On the 6th of July Richard was crowned, and soon after set out on a progress to York, on his way visiting Gloucester, the seat of his former duchy.  And now it is that I must call up the attention of the reader, the capital and bloody scene of Richard’s life being dated from this progress.  The narrative teems with improbabilities and notorious falshoods, and is flatly contradicted by so many unquestionable facts, that if we have no other reason to believe the murder of Edward the Fifth and his brother, than the account transmitted to us, we shall very much doubt whether they ever were murdered at all.  I will state the account, examine it, and produce evidence to confute it, and then the reader will form his own judgment on the matter of fact.