Be it as it will, this foolish tale, with the circumstances of his
being born with hair and teeth, was coined to intimate how careful
Providence was, when it formed a tyrant, to give due warning of what
was to be expected. And yet these portents were far from
prognosticating a tyrant; for this plain reason, that all other
tyrants have been born without these prognostics. Does it require
more time to ripen a foetus, that is, to prove a destroyer, than it
takes to form an Aristides? Are there outward and visible signs of a
bloody nature? Who was handsomer than Alexander, Augustus, or Louis
the Fourteenth? and yet who ever commanded the spilling of more
human blood.

Having mentioned John Rous, it is necessary I should say something
more of him, as he lived in Richard's time, and even wrote his
reign; and yet I have omitted him in the list of contemporary
writers. The truth is, he was pointed out to me after the preceding
sheets were finished; and upon inspection I found him too despicable
and lying an author, even among monkish authors, to venture to quote
him, but for two facts; for the one of which as he was an
eye-witness, and for the other, as it was of publick notoriety, he
is competent authority.

The first is his description of the person of Richard; the second,
relating to the young earl of Warwick, I have recorded in its place.

This John Rous, so early as in the reign of Edward the Fourth, had
retired to the hermitage of Guy's Cliff, where he was a chantry
priest, and where he spent the remaining part of his life in what
he called studying and writing antiquities. Amongst other works,