Can it be doubted now but that Richard meant to have it thought that
his assumption of the crown was only temporary? But when he
proceeded to bastardize his nephew by act of parliament, then it
became necessary to set him entirely aside: stronger proofs of the
hastardy might have come out; and it is reasonable to infer this,
for on the death of his own son, when Richard had no longer any
reason of family to bar his brother Edward's children, instead of
again calling them to the succession, as he at first projected or
gave out he would, he settled the crown on the issue of his sister,
Suffolk, declaring her eldest son the earl of Lincoln his successor.
That young prince was slain in the battle of Stoke against Henry the
Seventh, and his younger brother the earl of Suffolk, who had fled
to Flanders, was extorted from the archduke Philip, who by contrary
winds had been driven into England. Henry took a solemn oath not to
put him to death; but copying David rather than Solomon he, on his
death bed, recommended it to his son Henry the Eighth to execute
Suffolk; and Henry the Eighth was too pions not to obey so
scriptural an injunction.

Strange as the fact was of Edward the Fifth walking at his
successor's coronation, I have found an event exactly parallel which
happened some years before. It is well known that the famous Joan of
Naples was dethroned and murdered by the man she had chosen for her
heir, Charles Durazzo. Ingratitude and cruelty were the
characteristics of that wretch. He had been brought up and formed by
his uncle Louis king of Hungary, who left only two daughters. Mary
the eldest succeeded and was declared king; for that warlike nation,
who regarded the sex of a word, more than of a person, would not
suffer themselves to be governed by the term queen. Durazzo quitted