contradictions, and falshoods; and though I have destroyed their credit, I have ventured to establish no peremptory conclusion of my own.  What did really happen in so dark a period, it would be rash to affirm.  The coronation and parliament rolls have ascertained a few facts, either totally unknown, or misrepresented by historians.  Time may bring other monuments to light(46) but one thing is sure, that should any man hereafter presume to repeat the same improbable tale on no better grounds that it has been hitherto urged, he must shut his eyes against conviction, and prefer ridiculous tradition to the scepticism due to most points of history, and to none more than to that in question.

(46) If diligent search was to be made in the public offices and convents of the Flemish towns in which the duchess Margaret resided, I should not despair of new lights being gained to that part of our history.

I have little more to say, and only on what regards the person of Richard, and the story of Jane Shore; but having run counter to a very valuable modern historian and friend of my own, I must both make some apology for him, and for myself for disagreeing with him.

When Mr. Hume published his reigns of Edward the Fifth, Richard the Third, and Henry the Seventh, the coronation roll had not come to light.  The stream of historians concurred to make him take this portion of our story for granted.  Buck had been given up as an advancer of paradoxes, and nobody but Carte had dared to controvert the popular belief.  Mr. Hume treats Carte’s doubts as whimsical:  I wonder, he did; he, who having so closely examined our history, had discovered how very fallible many of its authorities are.  Mr. Hume himself had ventured to contest both the flattering picture drawn of Edward the First, and those ignominious portraits of Edward the Second, and Richard the Second.  He had discovered from Foedera, that Edward the Fourth, while said universally to be prisoner to archbishop Nevil, was at full liberty and doing acts of royal power.  Why was it whimsical in Carte to exercise the same spirit of criticism?  Mr. Hume could not but know how much the characters of princes are liable to be flattered or misrepresented.  It is of little importance to the world, to Mr. Hume, or to me, whether Richard’s story is fairly told or not:  and in this amicable discussion I have no fear of offending him by disagreeing with him.  His abilities and sagacity do not rest on the shortest reign in our annals.  I shall therefore attempt to give answers to the questions on which he pins the credibility due to the history of Richard.