there, he would not have notified his existence, to acquit Richard and hazard his own crown.  The circumstances of the murder were evidently false, and invented by Henry to discredit Perkin; and the time of the murder is absolutely a fiction, for it appears by the roll of parliament which bastardized Edward the Fifth, that he was then alive, which was seven months after the time assigned by More for his murder, if Richard spared him seven months, what could suggest a reason for his murder afterwards?  To take him off then was strengthening the plan of the earl of Richmond, who aimed at the crown by marrying Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Edward the Fourth.  As the house of York never rose again, as the reverse of Richard’s fortune deprived him of any friend, and as no contemporaries but Fabian and the author of the Chronicle have written a word on that period, and they, too slightly to inform us, it is impossible to know whether Richard ever took any steps to refute the calumny.  But we do know that Fabian only mentions the deaths of the princes as reports, which is proof that Richard never declared their deaths, or the death of either, as he would probably have done if he had removed them for his own security.  The confessions of Sir Thomas More and lord Bacon that many doubted of the murder, amount to a violent presumption that they were not murdered:  and to a proof that their deaths were never declared.  No man has ever doubted that Edward the Second, Richard the Second, and Henry the Sixth perished at the times that were given out.  Nor Henry the Fourth, nor Edward the Fourth thought it would much help their titles to leave it doubtful whether their competitors existed or not.  Observe too, that the chronicle of Croyland, after relating Richard’s second coronation at York, says, it was advised by some in the sanctuary at Westminster to convey abroad some of king Edward’s daughters, “ut si quid dictis masculis humanitus in Turri contingerat, nihilominus per salvandas personas filiarum, regnum aliquando ad veros rediret haeredes.”  He says not a word of the princes being murdered, only urges the fears of their friends that it might happen.  This was a living witness, very bitter against Richard, who still never accuses him of destroying his nephews, and who speaks of them as living, after the time in which Sir Thomas More, who was not then five years old, declared they were dead.  Thus the parliament roll and the chronicle agree, and both contradict More.  “Interim & dum haec agerentur (the coronation at York) remanserunt duo predicti Edwardi regis filii sub certa deputata, custodia infra Turrim Londoniarum.”  These are the express words of the Chronicle, p. 567.