(23) This is confirmed by Lord Bacon:  “Neither wanted there even at that time secret rumours and whisperings (which afterwards gathered strength, and turned to great trouble) that the two young sons of king Edward the Fourth, or one of them (which were said to be destroyed in the Tower) were not indeed murthered, but conveyed secretly away, and were yet living.”  Reign of Henry the Seventh, p. 4. again, p. 19.  “And all this time it was still whispered every where that at least one of the children of Edward the Fourth was living.”

That Sir James Tirrel was and did walk as master of the horse at Richard’s coronation cannot be contested.  A most curious, invaluable, and authentic monument has lately been discovered, the coronation-roll of Richard the Third.  Two several deliveries of parcels of stuff are there expressly entered, as made to “Sir James Tirrel, knyght, maister of the hors of our sayd soverayn lorde the kynge.”  What now becomes of Sir Thomas More’s informers, and of their narrative, which he thought hard but must be true?

I will go a step farther, and consider the evidence of this murder, as produced by Henry the Seventh some years afterwards, when, instead of lamenting it, it was necessary for his majesty to hope it had been true; at least to hope the people would think so.  On the appearance of Perkin Warbeck, who gave himself out for the second of the brothers, who was believed so by most people, and at least feared by the king to be so, he bestirred himself to prove that both the princes had been murdered by his predecessor.  There had been but three actors, besides Richard who had commanded the execution, and was dead.  These were Sir James Tirrel, Dighton, and Forrest; and these were all the persons whose depositions Henry pretended to produce; at least of two of them, for Forrest it seems had rotted piece-meal away; a kind of death unknown at present to the college.  But there were some others, of whom no notice was taken; as the nameless page, Greene, one Black Will or Will Slaughter who guarded the princes, the friar who buried them, and Sir Robert Brakenbury, who could not be quite ignorant of what had happened:  the latter was killed at Bosworth, and the friar was dead too.  But why was no enquiry made after Greene and the page?  Still this silence was not so impudent as the pretended confession of Dighton and Sir James Tyrrel.  The former certainly did avow the fact, and was suffered to go unpunished wherever he pleased—­undoubtedly that he might spread the tale.  And observe these remarkable words of lord Bacon, “John Dighton, who it seemeth spake best the king, was forewith set at liberty.”  In truth, every step of this pretended discovery, as it stands in lord Bacon, warns us to give no heed to it.  Dighton and Tirrel agreed both in a tale, as the king gave out.  Their confession therefore was not publickly made, and as Sir James Tirrel was suffered to live;(24) but was shut up in the Tower, and put to death afterwards