enter into his realme with banner displayed) sayinge, to recover my
fater's kingdome and enheritage, &c. at which wordes kyng Edward
said nothing, but with his hand thrust him from him, or, as some
say, stroke him with his gauntlet, whome incontinent, they that
stode about, which were George duke of Clarence, Richard duke of
Gloucester, Thomas marques Dorset (son of queen Elizabeth Widville)
and William lord Hastinges, sodainly murthered and pitiously
manquelled." Thus much had the story gained from the time of
Fabian to that of Hall.

Hollingshed repeats these very words, consequently is a transcriber,
and no new authority.

John Stowe reverts to Fabian's account, as the only one not grounded
on hear-say, and affirms no more, than that the king cruelly smote
the young prince on the face with his gauntlet, and after his
servants slew him.

Of modern historians, Rapin and Carte, the only two who seem not to
have swallowed implicitly all the vulgar tales propagated by the
Lancastrians to blacken the house of York, warn us to read with
allowance the exaggerated relations of those times. The latter
suspects, that at the dissolution of the monasteries all evidences
were suppressed that tended to weaken the right of the prince on the
throne; but as Henry the Eighth concentred in himself both the claim
of Edward the Fourth and that ridiculous one of Henry the Seventh,
he seems to have had less occasion to be anxious lest the truth
should come out; and indeed his father had involved that truth in so
much darkness, that it was little likely to force its way. Nor was
it necessary then to load the memory of Richard the Third, who had