Bourchier was the very man who placed the crown on the head of the latter;(26) and yet not one historian censures this conduct.  Threats and fear could not have dictated this shameless negligence.  Every body knows what was the authority of priests in that age; an archbishop was sacred, a cardinal inviolable.  As Bourchier survived Richard, was it not incumbant on him to show, that the duke of York had been assassinated in spite of all his endeavours to save him?  What can be argued from this inactivity of Bourchier,(27) but that he did not believe the children were murdered.

(26) As cardinal Bourchier set the crown on Richard’s head at Westminster, so did archbishop Rotheram at York.  These prelates either did not believe Richard had murdered his nephews, or were shamefully complaisant themselves.  Yet their characters stand unimpeached in history.  Could Richard be guilty, and the archbishops be blameless?  Could both be ignorant what was become of the young princes, when both had negotiated with the queen dowager?  As neither is accused of being the creature of Richard, it is probable that neither of them believed he had taken off his nephews.  In the Foedera there is a pardon passed to the archbishop, which at first made me suspect that he had taken some part in behalf of the royal children, as he is pardoned for all murders, treasons, concealments, misprisons, riots, routs, &c. but this pardon is not only dated Dec. 13, some months after he had crowned Richard; but, on looking farther, I find such pardons frequently granted to the most eminent of the clergy.  In the next reign Walter, archbishop of Dublin, is pardoned all murders, rapes, treasons, felonies, misprisons, riots, routs, extortions, &c.

(27) Lord Bacon tells us, that “on Simon’s and Jude’s even, the king (Henry the Seventh) dined with Thomas Bourchier, archbishop of Canterburie, and cardinal:  and from Lambeth went by land over the bridge to the Tower.”  Has not this the appearance of some curiosity in the king on the subject of the princes, of whose fate he was uncertain?

Richard’s conduct in a parallel case is a strong presumption that this barbarity was falsely laid to his charge.  Edward earl of Warwick, his nephew, and son of the duke of Clarence, was in his power too, and no indifferent rival, if king Edward’s children were bastards.  Clarence had been attainted; but so had almost every prince who had aspired to the crown after Richard the Second.  Richard duke of York, the father of Edward the Fourth and Richard the Third, was son of Richard earl of Cambridge, beheaded for treason; yet that duke of York held his father’s attainder no bar to his succession.  Yet how did Richard the Third treat his nephew and competitor, the young Warwick?  John Rous, a zealous Lancastrian and contemporary shall inform us:  and will at the same time tell us an important anecdote, maliciously suppressed or ignorantly omitted by all our historians.  Richard actually proclaimed him heir to the crown