2.

Having now done away with the sincerest friends and supporters of the young king, and through Cardinal Bourchier got into his clutches, from the Sanctuary of Westminster(16. June), the Duke of York, a most spirited boy of about ten years, the time seemed come for putting forth his own claims to the crown. And there was a very easy way of proving himself to be the only rightful heir to the crown, it was by proving the birth of his nephew's to be illegitimate. Already Clarence, when he wanted to put himself in the place of his brother Edward, had accused him of having been married already.to Lady Eleanor Butler before he married Lady Grey. And this seems, indeed, to have been the case since Dr. Stillington, the bishop of Bath and Wells, has assured that he united Edward and Lady Butler in holy matrimony(Halsted, Richard III.). This certainly was solid ground for Richard to base his pretensions upon, and parliament, upon that ground, afterwards declared the second marriage with Lady Elizabeth Grey illegitimate, and, of course, the children too, that sprang from it. It is only to be wondered at that Richard did not at once come forth with this reason. Perhaps at first having no intention of claiming the crown, he had no interest in divulging the illegitimacy of the birth of his nephews, but when once he began to covet the throne himself, he forgot the love and affection he had always borne to his prother Edward, and was not ashamed of exposing his memory to the contempt of all good people by accusing him of bigamy and profligacy. On the 22nd of June he caused the celebrated preacher Dr. Shaw to preach, at St. Paul's Cross, a sermon directing the attention of the mixed congregation especially to the dissolute life of the late king, and the illegitimacy of his offspring, and showing that Richard, who was the very image of his illustrious father, the Duke of York, was the rightful heir to the crown. It has even been said, that Dr. Shaw, at the bidding of Richard, accused the Duchess of York, Richard's mother, of faithlessness and illicit intimacy with some of her husband's followers during the duke's absence in France in order to prove thus the illegitimacy of the birth of Edward himself. In Shakespeare, where the sermon is not mentioned, it is Buckingham whom Richard bids to put forth this accusation against his mother.

Tell them, when that my mother went with child

Of that insatiate Edward, noble York,

My princely father, then had wars in France;

And, by true computation of the time,

Found that the issue was not his begot;

Which well appeared in his lineaments,

Being nothing like the noble duke my father:

Yet touch this sparingly, as't were far off;

Because, my lord, you know my mother lives.(Richard III. III. 5.)

But it is hardly possible to believe that Richard should have wished to inflict such an awful stigma upon the fair name of his mother who was respected by all that knew her, and much loved aud revered by Richard himself, who, at that very time when the sermon was preached, and Buckingham's speech delivered, was on best terms with her(Oechelhäuser, Essay), frequently visited her at her residence, and repeated his visit but a few days after the sermon. Would not such a dreadful accusation have stung her to the quick? and would she not, at once, have broken off all intercourse with her undutiful son? And, moreover, what could have been the use of inflicting that stain upon his mother as the illegitimacy of Edward'’s children was proved by the