issue of his sister, Suffolk, declaring her eldest son the earl of Lincoln his successor.  That young prince was slain in the battle of Stoke against Henry the Seventh, and his younger brother the earl of Suffolk, who had fled to Flanders, was extorted from the archduke Philip, who by contrary winds had been driven into England.  Henry took a solemn oath not to put him to death; but copying David rather than Solomon he, on his death bed, recommended it to his son Henry the Eighth to execute Suffolk; and Henry the Eighth was too pions not to obey so scriptural an injunction.

Strange as the fact was of Edward the Fifth walking at his successor’s coronation, I have found an event exactly parallel which happened some years before.  It is well known that the famous Joan of Naples was dethroned and murdered by the man she had chosen for her heir, Charles Durazzo.  Ingratitude and cruelty were the characteristics of that wretch.  He had been brought up and formed by his uncle Louis king of Hungary, who left only two daughters.  Mary the eldest succeeded and was declared king; for that warlike nation, who regarded the sex of a word, more than of a person, would not suffer themselves to be governed by the term queen.  Durazzo quitted Naples in pursuit of new ingratitude; dethroned king Mary, and obliged her to walk at his coronation; an insult she and her mother soon revenged by having him assassinated.

I do not doubt but the wickedness of Durazzo will be thought a proper parallel to Richard’s.  But parallels prove nothing:  and a man must be a very poor reasoner who thinks he has an advantage over me, because I dare produce a circumstance that resembles my subject in the case to which it is applied, and leaves my argument just as strong as it was before in every other point.

They who the most firmly believe the murder of the two princes, and from what I have said it is plain that they believe it more strongly than the age did in which it was pretended to be committed; urge the disappearance(32) of the princes as a proof of the murder, but that argument vanishes entirely, at least with regard to one of them, if Perkin Warbeck was the true duke of York, as I shall show that it is greatly probable he was.

(32) Polidore Virgil says, “In vulgas fama valuit filios Edwardi Regis aliquo terrarum partem migrasse, atque ita superstates esse.”  And the prior of Croyland, not his continuator, whom I shall quote in the next note but one, and who was still better informed, “Vulgatum est Regis Edwardi pueros concessisse in fata, sed quo genere intentus ignoratur.”

With regard to the elder, his disappearance is no kind of proof that he was murdered:  he might die in the Tower.  The queen pleaded to the archbishop of York that both princes were weak and unhealthy.  I have insinuated that it is not impossible but Henry the Seventh might find him alive in the Tower.(33) I mention that as a bare possibility—­but we may be very sure that if he did find Edward alive