been imprisoned and fined for his son's offence) had had little
inducement to flatter the Lancastrian cause. It is very true; nor am
I inclined to impute adulation to one of the honestest statesmen and
brightest names in our annals. He who scorned to save his life by
bending to the will of the son, was not likely to canvas the favour
of the father, by prostituting his pen to the humour of the court. I
take the truth to be, that Sir Thomas wrote his reign of Edward the
Fifth as he wrote his Utopia; to amuse his leisure and exercise his
fancy. He took up a paltry canvas and embroidered it with a flowing
design as his imagination suggested the colours. I should deal more
severely with his respected memory on any other hypothesis. He has
been guilty of such palpable and material falshoods, as, while they
destroy his credit as an historian, would reproach his veracity as a
man, if we could impute them to premeditated perversion of truth,
and not to youthful levity and inaccuracy. Standing as they do, the
sole groundwork of that reign's history, I am authorized to
pronounce the work, invention and romance.

Polidore Virgil, a foreigner, and author of a light Latin history,
was here during the reigns of Henry the Seventh and Eighth. I may
quote him now-and-then, and the Chronicle of Croyland; but neither
furnish us with much light.

There was another writer in that age of far greater authority, whose
negligent simplicity and' veracity are unquestionable; who had great
opportunities of knowing our story, and whose testimony is
corroborated by our records: I mean Philip de Comines. He and Buck
agree with one another, and with the rolls of parliament; Sir Thomas
More with none of them.