of Turney, called Berlo, to the mart of Antwerp, the said Berlo set me,” says Perkin, “to borde in a skinner’s house, that dwelled beside the house of the English nation.  And after this the said Berlo set me with a merchant of Middleborough to service for to learne the language,(44) with whom I dwelled from Christmas to Easter, and then, I went into Portugale.”  One does not learn any language very perfectly and with a good, nay, undistinguishable accent, between Christmas and Easter; but here let us pause.  If this account was true, the other relating to the duchess Margaret was false; and then how came Perkin by so accurate a knowledge of the English court, that he did not faulter, nor could be detected in his tale?  If the confession was not true, it remains that it was trumped up by Henry, and then Perkin must be allowed the true duke of York.

(40) To what degree arbitrary power dares to trifle with the common sense of mankind has been seen in Portuguese and Russian manifestos.

(41) As this solution of the likeness is not authorized by the youth’s supposed narrative, the likeness remains uncontrovertable, and consequently another argument for his being king Edward’s son.

(42) On the contrary, Perkins calls his grandfather Diryck Osbeck; Diryck every body knows is Theodoric, and Theodoric is certainly no Jewish appellation.  Perkin too mentions several of his relations and their employments at Tournay, without any hint of a Hebrew connection.

(43) Grafton’s Chronicle, p 930.

(44) I take this to mean the English language, for these reasons; he had just before named the English nation, and the name of his master was John Strewe, which seems to be an English appellation:  but there is a stronger reason for believing it means the English language, which is, that a Flemish lad is not set to learn his own language; though even this absurdity is advanced in this same pretended confession, Perkin, affirming that his mother, after he had dwelled some time in Tournay, sent him to Antwerp to learn Flemish.  If I am told by a very improbable supposition, that French was his native language at Tournay, that he learned Flemish at Antwerp, and Dutch at Middleburg, I will desire the objector to cast his eye on the map, and consider the small distance between Tournay, Middleburg, and Antwerp, and to reflect that the present United Provinces were not then divided from the rest of Flanders; and then to decide whether the dialects spoken at Tournay, Antwerp, and Middleburg were so different in that age, that it was necessary to be set to learn them all separately.  If this cannot be answered satisfactorily, it will remain, that Perkin learned Flemish or English twice over.  I am indifferent which, for still there will remain a contradiction in the confession.  And if English is not meant in the passage above, it will only produce a greater difficulty, which is, that Perkin, at the age of twenty learned to speak English in Ireland with