Is it credible that Richard, if the murderer, would have exhibited this unnecessary mummery, only to revive the memory of his own guilt?  Was it not rather intended to recall the cruelty of his brother Edward, whose children he had set aside, and whom by the comparison of this act of piety, he hoped to depreciate(53) in the eyes of the people?  The very example had been pointed out to him by Henry the Fifth, who bestowed a pompous funeral on Richard the Second, murdered by order of his father.

(54) This is not a mere random conjecture, but combated by another instance of like address.  He deforested a large circuit, which Edward had annexed to the forest of Whichwoode, to the great annoyance of the subject.  This we are told by Rous himself, p. 316,

Indeed the devotion of Rous to that Lancastrian saint, Henry the Sixth, seems chiefly to engross his attention, and yet it draws him into a contradiction; for having said that the murder of Henry the Sixth had made Richard detested by all nations who heard of it, he adds, two pages afterwards, that an embassy arrived at Warwick (while Richard kept his court there) from the king of Spain,(55) to propose a marriage between their children.  Of this embassy Rous is a proper witness:  Guy’s Cliff, I think, is but four miles from Warwick; and he is too circumstancial on what passed there not to have been on the spot.  In other respects he seems inclined to be impartial, recording several good and generous acts of Richard.

(55) Drake says, that an ambassador from the queen of Spain was present at Richard’s coronation at York.  Rous> himself owns, that, amidst a great concourse of nobility that attended the king at York, was the duke of Albany, brother of the king of Scotland.  Richard therefore appears not to hav been abhorred by either the courts of Spain or Scotland.

But there is one circumstance, which, besides the weakness and credulity of the man, renders his testimony exceedingly suspicious.  After having said, that, if he may speak truth in Richard’s favour,(56) he must own that, though small in stature and strength, Richard was a noble knight, and defended himself to the last ’breath with eminent valour, the monk suddenly turns, and apostrophizes Henry the Seventh, to whom be had dedicated his work, and whom he flatters to the best of his poor abilities; but, above all things, for having bestowed the name of Arthur on his eldest son, who, this injudicious and over-hasty prophet forsees, will restore the glory of his great ancestor of the same name.  Had Henry christened his second ’son Merlin, I do not doubt but poor Rous would have had still more divine visions about Henry the Eighth, though born to shake half the pillars of credulity.

(56) Attamen si ad ejus honorem veritatem dicam, p. 218.