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[ NOTE S, p. 459. We shall give an instance. Almost all the historians, even Coraines, and the continuator of the Annals of Croyland, assert that Edward was about this time taken prisoner by Clarence and Warwick, and was committed to the custody of the archbishop of York, brother to the earl; but being allowed to take the diversion of hunting by this prelate, he made his escape, and afterwards chased the rebels out of the kingdom. But that all the story is false, appears from Rymer, where we find that the king, throughout all this period, continually exercised his authority, and never was interrupted in his government. On the 7th of March, 1470, he gives a commission of array to Clarence, whom he then imagined a good subject; and on the 23d of the same month, we find him issuing an order for apprehending him, Besides, in the king’s manifesto against the duke and earl, (Claus. 10. Edward IV. m. 7, 8,) where he enumerates all their treasons, he mentions no such fact; he does not so much as accuse them of exciting young Welles’s rebellion; he only says, that they exhorted him to continue in his rebellion. We may judge how smaller facts will be misrepresented by historians, who can in the most material transactions mistake so grossly. There may even some doubt arise with regard to the proposal of marriage made to Bona of Savoy; though almost all the historians concur in it, and the fact be very likely in itself; for there are no traces in Rymer of any such embassy of Warwick’s to France. The chief certainty in this and the preceding reign arises either from public records, or from the notice taken of certain passages by the French historians. On the contrary, for some centuries after the conquest, the French history is not complete without the assistance of English authors. We may conjecture, that the reason of the scarcity of historians during this period, was the destruction of the convents, which ensued so soon after. Copies of the more recent historians not being yet sufficiently dispersed, those histories hare perished.]

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[ NOTE T, p. 490. Sir Thomas More, who has been followed, or rather transcribed, by all the historians of this short reign, says, that Jane Shore had fallen into connections with Lord Hastings; and this account agrees best with the course of the events; but in a proclamation of Richard’s, to be found in Rymer, vol. xii. p. 204, the marquis of Dorset is reproached with these connections. This reproach, however, might have been invented by Richard, or founded only on popular rumor; and is not sufficient to overbalance the authority of Sir Thomas More. The proclamation is remarkable for the hypocritical purity of manners affected by Richard. This bloody and treacherous tyrant upbraids the marquis and others with their gallantries and intrigues as the most terrible enormities.]

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[ NOTE U, p., 507. Every one that has perused the ancient monkish writers know that, however barbarous their own style, they are full of allusions to the Latin classics, especially the poets. There seems also in those middle ages to have remained many ancient books that are now lost. Maimesbury, who flourished in the reign of Henry I. and King Stephen, quotes Livy’s description of Caesar’s passage over the Rubicon. Fitz-Stephen, who lived in the reign of Henry II., alludes to a passage in the larger history of Sallust. In the collection of letters which passes under the name of Thomas a Becket, we see how familiar all the ancient history and ancient books were to the more ingenious and more dignified churchmen of that time, and consequently how much that order of men must have surpassed all the other members of the society. That prelate and his friends call each other philosophers in all the course of their correspondence, and consider the rest of the world as sunk in total ignorance and barbarism.]

END OF VOL. Ib.