with which every crime committed in that bloody age was placed to
Richard's account, makes it greatly probable, that interest of party
had more hand than truth in drawing his picture. Other cruelties,
which I shall mention, and to which we know his motives, he
certainly commanded; nor am I desirous to purge him where I find him
guilty: but mob-stories or Lancastrian forgeries ought to be
rejected from sober history; nor can they be repeated, without
exposing the writer to the imputation of weakness and vulgar
credulity.

III. The murder of his brother Clarence.

In the examination of this article, I shall set aside our
historians (whose gossipping narratives, as we have seen, deserve
little regard) because we have better authority to direct our
inquiries: and this is, the attainder of the duke of Clarence, as it
is set forth in the Parliamentary History (copied indeed from
Habington's Life of Edward the Fourth) and by the editors of that
history justly supposed to be taken from Stowe, who had seen the
original bill of attainder. The crimes and conspiracy of Clarence
are there particularly enumerated, and even his dealing with
conjurers and necromancers, a charge however absurd, yet often made
use of in that age. Eleanor Cobham, wife of Humphrey duke of
Gloucester, had been condemned on a parallel accusation. In France
it was a common charge; and I think so late as in the reign of Henry
the Eighth Edward duke of Buckingham was said to have consulted
astrologers and such like cattle, on the succession of the crown.
Whether Clarence was guilty we cannot easily tell; for in those
times neither the public nor the prisoner were often favoured with
knowing the evidence on which sentence was passed. Nor was much