so good an accent, that all England could not discover the cheat.  I must be answered too, why lord Bacon rejects the youth’s own confession and substitutes another in its place, which makes Perkin born in England, though in his pretended confession Perkin affirms the contrary.  Lord Bacon too confirms my interpretation of the passage in question, by saying that Perkin roved up and down between Antwerp and other towns in Flanders, living much in English company, and having the English tongue perfect, p. 115.

But the gross contradiction of all follows:  “It was in Ireland,” says Perkin, in this very narrative and confession, “that against my will they made me to learne English, and taught me what I should do and say.”  Amazing! what forced him to learn English, after, as he says himself in the very same page, he had learnt it at Antwerp!  What an impudence was there in royal power to dare to obtrude such stuff on the world!  Yet this confession, as it is called, was the poor young man forced to read at his execution—­no doubt in dread of worse torture.  Mr. Hume, though he questions it, owns that it was believed by torture to have been drawn from him.  What matters how it was obtained, or whether ever obtained; it could not be true:  and as Henry could put together no more plausible account, coommiseration will shed a tear over a hapless youth, sacrificed to the fury and jealousy of an usurper, and in all probability the victim of a tyrant, who has made the world believe that the duke of York, executed by his own orders, had been previously murdered by his predecessor.(45)

(45) Mr. Hume, to whose doubts all respect is due, tells me he thinks no mention being made of Perkin’s title in the Cornish rebellion under the lord Audeley, is a strong presumption that the nation was not persuaded of his being the true duke of York.  This argument, which at most is negative, seems to me to lose its weight, when it is remembered, that this was an insurrection occasioned by a poll-tax:  that the rage of the people was directed against archbishop Morton and Sir Reginald Bray, the supposed authors of the grievance.  An insurrection against a tax in a southern county, in which no mention is made of a pretender to the crown, is surely not so forcible a presumption against him, as the persuasion of the northern counties that he was the true heir, is an argument in his favour.  Much less can it avail against such powerful evidence as I have shown exists to overturn all that Henry can produce against Perkin.

I have thus, I flatter myself, from the discovery of new authorities, from the comparison of dates, from fair consequences and arguments, and without straining or wresting probability, proved all I pretended to prove; not an hypothesis of Richard’s universal innocence, but this assertion with which I set out, that we have no reasons, no authority for believing by far the greater part of the crimes charged on him.  I have convicted historians of partiality, absurdities,