would scarce have heard it with patience. Moriar modo imperet! said
that empress, in her wild wish of crowning her son: but had he,
unprovoked, aspersed her honour in the open forum, would the mother
have submitted to so unnatural an insult? In Richard's case the
imputation was beyond measure atrocious and absurd. What! taint the
fame of his mother to pave his way to the crown! Who had heard of
her guilt? And if guilty, how came she to stop the career of her
intrigues? But Richard had better pretensions, and had no occasion
to start doubts even on his own legitimacy, which was too much
connected with that of his brothers to be tossed and bandied about
before the multitude. Clarence had been solemnly attainted by act of
parliament, and his children were out of the question. The doubts on
the validity of Edward's marriage were better grounds for Richard's
proceedings than aspersion of his mother's honour. On that
invalidity he claimed the crown, and obtained it; and with such
universal concurrence, that the nation undoubtedly was on his side
--but as he could not deprive his nephews, on that foundation,
without bastardizing their sisters too, no wonder, the historians,
who wrote under the Lancastrian domination, have used all their art
and industry to misrepresent the fact. If the marriage of Edward the
Fourth with the widow Grey was bigamy, and consequently null, what
became of the title of Elizabeth of York, wife of Henry the Seventh?
What became of it? Why a bastard branch of Lancaster, matched with a
bastard of York, were obtruded on the nation as the right heirs of
the crown! and, as far as two negatives can make an affirmative,
they were so.

(12) What should we think of a modern historian, who should sink all
mention of the convention parliament, and only tell us that one Dr.
Burnet got up into the pulpit, and assured the people that Henrietta