and the moment he ceased to have truth before his eyes, gave in to
all the virulence and forgeries of his party, telling us in another
place, "that Richard remained two years in his mother's womb, and
came forth at last with teeth, and hair on his shoulders." I leave
it to the learned in the profession to decide whether women can go
two years with their burden, and produce a living infant; but that
this long pregnancy did not prevent the duchess, his mother, from
bearing afterwards, I can prove; and could we recover the register
of the births of her children, I should not be surprised to find,
that, as she was a very fruitful woman, there was not above a year
between the birth of Richard and his preceding brother Thomas.(52)
However, an ancient bard,(53) who wrote after Richard was born and
during the life of his father, tells us,

Richard liveth yit, but the last of all
Was Ursula, to him whom God list call.

(52) The author I am going to quote, gives us the order in which
the duchess Cecily's children were horn thus; Ann duchess of Exeter,
Henry, Edward the Fourth Edmund earl of Rutland, Elizabeth duchess
of Suffolk, Margaret duchess of Burgundy, William, John, George duke
of Clarence, Thomas, Richard the Third, and Ursula. Cox, Im his
History of Ireland, says, that Clarence was born in 1451. Buck
computed Richard the Third to have fallen at the age of thirty four
or five; but, by Cox's account, he could not be more than thirty
two. Still this makes it provable, that their mother bore them and
their intervening brother Thomas as soon as she well could one after
another.

(53) See Vincent's Errors in Brooks's Heraldry, p. 623.