decide their quarrel by a personal combat, slaying Sir William Brandon, his rival’s standard-bearer, with his own hand, and felling to the ground Sir John Cheney, who endeavoured to oppose his fury.  Such men may be carried by ambition to command the execution of those who stand in their way; but are not likely to lend their hand, in cold blood, to a base, and, to themselves, useless assassination.  How did it import Richard in what manner the young prince was put to death?  If he had so early planned the ambitious designs ascribed to him, he might have trusted to his brother Edward, so much more immediately concerned, that the young prince would not be spared.  If those views did not, as is probable, take root in his heart till long afterwards, what interest had Richard to murder an unhappy young prince?  This crime therefore was so unnecessary, and is so far from being established by any authority, that he deserves to be entirely acquitted of it.

II.  The murder of Henry the Sixth.

This charge, no better supported than the preceding, is still more improbable.  “Of the death of this prince, Henry the Sixth,” says Fabian, “divers tales wer told.  But the most common fame went, that he was sticken with a dagger by the handes of the duke of Gloceter.”  The author of the Continuation of the Chronicle of Croyland says only, that the body of king Henry was found lifeless (exanime) in the Tower.  “Parcat Deus”, adds he, “spatium poenitentiae Ei donet, Quicunque sacrilegas manus in Christum Domini ausus est immittere.  Unde et agens tyranni, patiensque gloriosi martyris titulum mereatur.”  The prayer for the murderer, that he may live to repent, proves that the passage was written immediately after the murder was committed.  That the assassin deserved the appellation of tyrant, evinces that the historian’s suspicions went high; but as he calls him Quicunque, and as we are uncertain whether he wrote before the death of Edward the Fourth or between his death and that of Richard the Third, we cannot ascertain which of the brothers he meant.  In strict construction he should mean Edward, because as he is speaking of Henry’s death, Richard, then only duke of Gloucester, could not properly be called a tyrant.  But as monks were not good grammatical critics, I shall lay no stress on this objection.  I do think he alluded to Richard; having treated him severely in the subsequent part of his history, and having a true monkish partiality to Edward, whose cruelty and vices he slightly noticed, in favour to that monarch’s severity to heretics and ecclesiastic expiations.  “Is princeps, licet diebus suis cupiditatibus & luxui nimis intemperanter indulsisse credatur, in fide tamen catholicus summ, hereticorum severissimus hostis sapientium & doctorum hominum clericorumque promotor amantissimus, sacramentorum ecclesiae devotissimus venerator, peccatorumque fuorum omnium paenitentissimus fuit.”  That monster Philip the Second possessed just the same virtues.  Still, I say, let the monk suspect whom he would, if Henry was found dead, the monk was not likely to know who murdered him—­and if he did, he has not told us.