I have shown from their own mouths that they have all doubted of it.  The reader must judge between us.  But Mr. Hume selects Sir Thomas More as the highest authority; I have proved that he was the lowest—­but not in the case of Perkin, for Sir Thomas More’s history does not go so low; yet happening to mention him, he says, the man, commonly called Perkin Warbeck, was, as well with the princes as the people, held to be the younger son of Edward the Fourth; and that the deaths of the young’ king Edward and of Richard his brother had come so far in question, as some are yet in doubt, whether they were destroyed or no in the days of king Richard.  Sir Thomas adhered to the affirmative, relying as I have shown on very bad authorities.  But what is a stronger argument ad hominem, I can prove that Mr. Hume did not think Sir Thomas More good authority; no, Mr. Hume was a fairer and more impartial judge:  at the very time that he quotes Sir Thomas More, he tacitly rejects his authority; for Mr. Hume, agreeably to truth, specifies the lady Eleanor Butler as the person to whom king Edward was contracted, and not Elizabeth Lucy, as it stands in Sir Thomas More.  An attempt to vindicate Richard will perhaps no longer be thought whimsical, when so very acute a reasoner as Mr. Hume could find no better foundation than these seven queries on which to rest his condemnation.

(47) The excessive affection shown by the Northern counties where the principal strength of the Yorkists lay, to Richard the Third while living, and to his memory when dead, implies two things; first, that the party did not give him up to Henry; secondly, that they did not believe he had murdered his nephews, Tyrants of that magnitude are not apt to be popular.  Examine the list of the chiefs in Henry’s army as stated by the Chronicle of Croyland, p. 574. and they will be found Lancastrians, or very private gentlemen, and but one peer, the earl of Oxford, a noted Lancastrian.

(48) Grafton has preserved a ridiculous oration said to be made by Perkin to the king of Scotland, in which this silly tale is told.  Nothing can be depended upon less than such orations, almost always forged by the writer, and unpardonable, if they pass the bounds of truth.  Perkin, in the passage in question, uses these words:  “And farther to the entent that my life might be in a suretie he (the murderer of my elder brother) appointed one to convey me into some straunge countrie, where, when I was furthest off, and had most neede of comfort, he forsooke me sodainly (I think he was so appointed to do) and left me desolate alone without friend or knowledge of any relief for refuge,” &c.  Would not one think one was reading the tale of Valentine and Orson, or a legend of a barbarous age, rather than the History of England, when we are told of strange countries and such indefinite ramblings, as would pass only in a nursery!  It remains not only a secret but a doubt, whether the elder brother was murdered.  If Perkin was the younger, and knew certainly that his brother was put to death, our doubt would vanish:  but can it vanish on no better authority than this foolish oration!  Did Grafton hear it pronounced?  Did king James bestow his kinswoman on Perkin, on the strength of such a fable?