to the court of Burgundy to make a merit with Margaret of having murdered her nephews.  How came she to know accurately and authentically a tale which no mortal else knew?  Did Perkin or did he not correspond in his narrative with Tirrel and Dighton?  If he did how was it possible for him to know it?  If he did not, is it morally credible that Henry would not have made those variations public?  If Edward the Fifth was murdered, and the duke of York saved, Perkin could know it but by being the latter.  If he did not know it, what was so obvious as his detection?  We must allow Perkin to be the true duke of York, or give up the whole story of Tirrel and Dighton.  When Henry had Perkin, Tirrel, and Dighton, in his power, he had nothing to do but to confront them, and the imposture was detected.  It would not have been sufficient that Margaret had enjoined him to tell a smooth and likely tale of those matters, A man does not tell a likely tale, nor was a likely tale enough, of matters of which he is totally ignorant.

(38) It would have required half the court of Edward the Fourth to frame a consistent legend Let us state this in a manner that must strike our apprehension.  The late princess royal was married out of England, before any of the children of the late prince of Wales were born.  She lived no farther than the Hague; and yet who thinks that she could have instructed a Dutch lad in so many passages of the courts of her father and brother, that he would not have been detected in an hour’s time.  Twenty-seven years at least had elapsed since Margaret had been in the court of England.  The marquis of Dorset, the earl of Richmond himself, and most of the fugitives had taken refuge in Bretagne, not with Margaret; and yet was she so informed of every trifling story, even those of the nursery, that she was able to pose Henry himself, and reduce him to invent a tale that had not a shadow of probability in it.  Why did he not convict Perkin out of his own mouth?  Was it ever pretended that Perkin failed in his part?  That was the surest and best proof of his being an impostor.  Could not the whole court, the whole kingdom of England, so cross-examine this Flemish youth, as to catch him in one lie?  So; lord Bacon’s Juno had inspired him with full knowledge of all that had passed in the last twenty years.  If Margaret was Juno, he who shall answer these questions satisfactorily, “erit mihi magnus Apollo.”

Still farther:  why was Perkin never confronted with the queen dowager, with Henry’s own queen, and with the princesses, her sisters?  Why were they never asked, is this your son?  Is this your brother?  Was Henry afraid to trust to their natural emotions?—­Yet “he himself,” says lord Bacon, p. 186, “saw him sometimes out of a window, or in passage.”  This implies that the queens and princesses never did see him; and yet they surely were the persons who could best detect the counterfeit, if he had been one.  Had the young man made a voluntary, coherent, and credible confession, no other evidence of his imposture would be wanted; but failing that, we cannot help asking, Why the obvious means of detection were not employed?  Those means having been omitted, our suspicions remain in full force.