and support of Lambert Simnel, an avowed impostor.  —­Answer.  Mr. Hume here makes an unwary confession by distinguishing between Lambert Simnel, an avowed impostor, and Perkin, whose impostnre was problematic.  But if he was a true prince, the duchess could only forfeit credit for herself, not for him:  nor would her preparing the way for her nephew, by first playing off and feeling the ground by a counterfeit, be an imputation on her, but rather a proof of her wisdom and tenderness.  Impostors are easily detected; as Simnel was.  All Henry’s art and power could never verify the cheat of Perkin; and if the latter was astonishingly adroit, the king was ridiculously clumsy. 6.  Perkin himself confessed his imposture more than once, and read his confession to the people, and renewed his confession at the foot of the gibbet on which he was executed.—­Answer.  I have shown that this confession was such an aukward forgery that lord Bacon did not dare to quote or adhere to it, but invented a new story, more specious, but equally inconsistent with, probability. 7.  After Henry the Eighth’s accession, the titles of the houses of York and Lancaster were fully confounded, and there was no longer any necessity for defending Henry the Seventh and his title; yet all the historians of that time, when the events were recent, some of these historians, such as Sir Thomas More, of the highest authority, agree in treating Perkin as an impostor.—­Answer.  When Sir Thomas More wrote, Henry the Seventh was still alive:  that argument therefore falls entirely to the ground:  but there was great necessity, I will not say to defend, but even to palliate the titles of both Henry the Seventh and Eighth.  The former, all the world agrees now, had no title(49) the latter had none from his father, and a very defective one from his mother, If she had any right, it could only be after her brothers; and it is not to be supposed that so jealous a tyrant as Henry the Eighth would suffer it to be said that his father and mother enjoyed the throne to the prejudice of that mother’s surviving brother, in whose blood the father had imbrued his hands.  The murder therefore was to be fixed on Richard the Third, who was to be supposed to have usurped the throne, by murdering, and not, as was really the case, by bastardizing his nephews.  If they were illegitimate, so was their sister; and if she was, what title had she conveyed to her son Henry the Eighth?  No wonder that both Henrys were jealous of the earl of Suffolk, whom one bequeathed to slaughter, and the other executed; for if the children of Edward the Fourth were spurious, and those of Clarence attainted, the right of the house of York was vested in the duchess of Suffolk and her descendants.  The massacre of the children of Clarence and the duchess of Suffolk show what Henry the Eighth thought of the titles both of his father and mother.(50) But, says Mr. Hume, all the historians of that time agree in treating Perkin as an impostor.