found almost entire, and emitted a gracious perfume, though no care
had been taken to embalm it. Is it credible that Richard, if the
murderer, would have exhibited this unnecessary mummery, only to
revive the memory of his own guilt? Was it not rather intended to
recall the cruelty of his brother Edward, whose children he had set
aside, and whom by the comparison of this act of piety, he hoped to
depreciate(53) in the eyes of the people? The very example had been
pointed out to him by Henry the Fifth, who bestowed a pompous
funeral on Richard the Second, murdered by order of his father.

(54) This is not a mere random conjecture, but combated by another
instance of like address. He deforested a large circuit, which
Edward had annexed to the forest of Whichwoode, to the great
annoyance of the subject. This we are told by Rous himself, p. 316,

Indeed the devotion of Rous to that Lancastrian saint, Henry the
Sixth, seems chiefly to engross his attention, and yet it draws him
into a contradiction; for having said that the murder of Henry the
Sixth had made Richard detested by all nations who heard of it, he
adds, two pages afterwards, that an embassy arrived at Warwick
(while Richard kept his court there) from the king of Spain,(55) to
propose a marriage between their children. Of this embassy Rous is a
proper witness: Guy's Cliff, I think, is but four miles from
Warwick; and he is too circumstancial on what passed there not to
have been on the spot. In other respects he seems inclined to be
impartial, recording several good and generous acts of Richard.

(55) Drake says, that an ambassador from the queen of Spain was
present at Richard's coronation at York. Rous> himself owns, that,
amidst a great concourse of nobility that attended the king at York,