birth, and the deformity of his body, Richard, who is always stung to the quick by such allusions, cuts short any further words by piercing the poor King with his sword, and then reveals the innermost thoughts of his depraved heart. We hear that he did the deed for himself, not for his brother, for whom he has no love,

I have no brother, I am like no brother:

And this word love, which greybeards call divine,

Be resident in men like one another, And not in me; I am myself alone.(Henry VI. 3d P. V. 6.) Richard cares for nothing, and for nobody but himself, and the execution of his designs.

But the whole scene is an invention of the poet, and modern historians do not think that there are proofs enough for laying the death of Henry to Gloster's charge(Pauli, Aufsätze).— When but a few days after the battle of Tewkesbury, on the morning of May 22nd King Henry VI. was found dead in his bed in the Tower, his death was universally attributed to foul means. King Henry was certainly quite harmless, he was without any power or will of doing Edward any harm, yet, as long as he lived, he could always, without his wish or consent, give a pretext for revolt, and nothing, therefore, could be more welcome to Edward than his death, especially at that very time when Warwick's illegitimate son, the bastard of Falconbridge, was approaching London with the intention of setting King Henry free. And now, when Henry was found dead in his bed the very day that King Edward, and his attendants had passed at the Tower, it is not to be wondered at that it was generally believed that Henry'’s death had not been a natural one, but that the unfortunate King had been killed at the command of King Edward. The Yorkists have certainly tried to prove that Henry, who had been weak and declining for some time, was exhausted by the awful emotions just gone through, and that he died of melancholy and grief. And certainly the awful death of his only son, and the downfall of his party might have broken a stouter heart than Henry's, but as things stood now, the belief that he had been killed was but too natural. And there is indeed hardly any doubt that his death was a violent one; the question is only: who did the deed, was it really Richard as it was generally believed, and as Shakespeare represents it? Of the contem- porary chronicles, which certainly are the most important in settling that question, none accuses Richard of the deed. The Yorkist narrative(Fleetwood'’s) ascribes Henry's death(as already stated) to„pure melancholy ire and indignation“, whilst the Lancastrian(Warkworth's) chronicle, says that „the same night that King Edward came to London, King Henry, being inward in prison in the Tower of London, was put to death, the 21st day of May, on a Tuesday night betwixt 11 and 12 of the clock. If we bring this very minute report into connexion with what Dr. Habington says in his life of Edward IV.“it was resolved in King Edward's cabinet council that, to take away all title from future insurrections, King Henry should be sacrificed“, it seems that the deed was done by order of the King, which well agrees with what Croyland Continuator says about it:"The body of King Henry was found lifeless in the Tower: may God pardon and give time for repen- tance to that man, whoever he was, that dared to lay his sacrilegious hands upon the Lord's anointed! The doer may obtain the name of a tyrant; the sufferer, of a glorious martyr“. These words, dark as they are, may quite as well refer to the King himself, whose name the writer dare not mention, than to the Duke of Gloster, for although Warkworth's chronicle says, that the Duke of Gloster was at the Tower the night of the murder, it also says, that there were there as.