. . . . .  For honour,
’Tis a derivative from me to mine,
And only that I stand for.

This seems to be taken from the very letter of Anne Boyleyn to the king before her execution, where she pleads for the infant princess his daughter.  Mamillius, the young prince, an unnecessary character, dies in his infancy; but it confirms the allusion, as queen Anne, before Elizabeth, bore a still-born son.  But the most striking passage,’ and which had nothing to do in the Tragedy, but as it pictured Elizabeth, is, where Paulina, describing the new-born princess, and her likeness to her father, says, she has the very trick of his frown.  There is one sentence indeed so applicable, both to Elizabeth and her father, that I should suspect the poet inserted it after her death.  Paulina, speaking of the child, tells the king,

. . . . . .  ’Tis yours;
And might we lay the old proverb to your charge,
So like you, ’tis the worse.

The Winter Evening’s Tale was therefore in reality a second part of Henry the Eighth.

With regard to Jane Shore, I have already shown that it was her connection with the marquis Dorset, not with lord Hastings, which drew on her the resentment of Richard.  When an event is thus wrested to serve the purpose of a party, we ought to be very cautious how we trust an historian, who is capable of employing truth only as cement in a fabric of fiction.  Sir Thomas More tells us, that Richard pretended Jane “was of councell with the lord Hastings to destroy him; and in conclusion, when no colour could fasten upon these matters, then he layd seriously to her charge what she could not deny, namely her adultry; and for this cause, as a godly continent prince, cleane and faultlesse of himself, sent out of heaven into this vicious world for the amendment of mens manners, he caused the bishop of London to put her to open penance.”

This sarcasm on Richards morals would have had more weight, if the author had before confined himself to deliver nothing but the precise truth.  He does not seem to be more exact in what relates to the penance itself.  Richard, by his proclamation, taxed mistress Shore with plotting treason in confederacy with the marquis Dorset.  Consequently, it was not from defect of proof of her being accomplice with lord Hastings that she was put to open penance.  If Richard had any hand in that sentence, it was, because he had proof of her plotting with the marquis.  But I doubt, and with some reason, whether her penance was inflicted by Richard.  We have seen that he acknowledged at least two natural children; and Sir Thomas More hints that Richard was far from being remarkable for his chastity.  Is it therefore probable, that he acted so silly a farce as to make his brother’s mistress do penance?  Most of the charges on Richard are so idle, that instead of being an able and artful usurper, as his antagonists allow, he must have been a weaker hypocrite than ever attempted to wrest a sceptre out of the hands of a legal possessor.