stripped by her son-in-law Henry of all her possessions, and
confined to a monastery, for delivering up her daughters to Richard.
Historians too are lavish in their censures on her for consenting to
bestow her daughter on the murderer of her sons and brother. But if
the murder of her sons, is, as we have seen, most uncertain, this
solemn charge falls to the ground: and for the deaths of her
brothers and lord Richard Grey, one of her elder sons, it has
already appeared that she imputed them to Hastings. It is much more
likely that Richard convinced her he had not murdered her sons, than
that she delivered up her daughters to him believing it. The rigour
exercised on her by Henry the Seventh on her countenancing Lambert
Simnel, evidently set up to try the temper of the nation in favour
of some prince of the house of York, is a violent presumption
that the queen dowager believed her second son living: and
notwithstanding all the endeavours of Henry to discredit Perkin
Warbeck, it will remain highly probable that many more who ought to
know the truth, believed so likewise; and that fact I shall examine
next.

It was in the second year of Henry the Seventh that Lambert Simnel
appeared. This youth first personated Richard duke of York, then
Edward earl of Warwick; and was undoubtedly an impostor. Lord Bacon
owns that it was whispered every-where, that at least one of the
children of Edward the Fourth was living. Such whispers prove two
things; one, that the murder was very uncertain: the second, that it
would have been very dangerous to disprove the murder; Henry being
at least as much interested as Richard had been to have the children
dead. Richard had set them aside as bastards, and thence had a title
to the crown; but Henry was himself the issue of a bastard line, and
had no title at all. Faction had set him on the throne, and his