as an impostor. I have shown from their own mouths that they have
all doubted of it. The reader must judge between us. But Mr. Hume
selects Sir Thomas More as the highest authority; I have proved that
he was the lowest--but not in the case of Perkin, for Sir Thomas
More's history does not go so low; yet happening to mention him, he
says, the man, commonly called Perkin Warbeck, was, as well with the
princes as the people, held to be the younger son of Edward the
Fourth; and that the deaths of the young' king Edward and of Richard
his brother had come so far in question, as some are yet in doubt,
whether they were destroyed or no in the days of king Richard. Sir
Thomas adhered to the affirmative, relying as I have shown on very
bad authorities. But what is a stronger argument ad hominem, I can
prove that Mr. Hume did not think Sir Thomas More good authority;
no, Mr. Hume was a fairer and more impartial judge: at the very time
that he quotes Sir Thomas More, he tacitly rejects his authority;
for Mr. Hume, agreeably to truth, specifies the lady Eleanor Butler
as the person to whom king Edward was contracted, and not Elizabeth
Lucy, as it stands in Sir Thomas More. An attempt to vindicate
Richard will perhaps no longer be thought whimsical, when so very
acute a reasoner as Mr. Hume could find no better foundation than
these seven queries on which to rest his condemnation.

(47) The excessive affection shown by the Northern counties where
the principal strength of the Yorkists lay, to Richard the Third
while living, and to his memory when dead, implies two things;
first, that the party did not give him up to Henry; secondly, that
they did not believe he had murdered his nephews, Tyrants of that
magnitude are not apt to be popular. Examine the list of the chiefs
in Henry's army as stated by the Chronicle of Croyland, p. 574. and
they will be found Lancastrians, or very private gentlemen, and but