—

And be not easily won to our requests;

Play the maid's part, still answer nay, and take it.(Ibid.) And this program is carried out literally, When the deputation wants to be led before the Protector they are at first refused access because his lordship is in deep meditations, but he then appears upon a gallery between two bishops. He wonders why the deputation may have come, perhaps it is to upbraid him for some offense done unwillingly. When Buckingham explains the motive of their coming he at first declines accepting the crown because he thinks himself unfit for it, but when Buckingham assures him:

wher you accept our suit or no,

Your brother's son shall never reign our king:

But we will plant some other in the throne,

To the disgrace and downfall of your house.(Lbid.) he no longer resists, for he cannot see the crown devolve upon another house; and he yields to their request to bear the burthen much against his own liking

For God doth know, and you may partly see,

How far I am from the desire of this.(Ibid.)

That is a piece of consummate dissimulation, indeed, but not so much because he pretends not to wish for the crown, but rather because he pretends to be in deep meditation of religious, pious thoughts when quite different, and most worldly thoughts fill his whole mind.

It seems, however, that Richard was not so great a hypocrit as he is represented by Shakespeare in the above scene. The two bishops, at least, who appear at each side of Richard, we know to have been interpolated into the work of Thomas More by Crafton(Oechelhäuser, Essay), who in doing so either followed some tradition or wished to increase the odium of Richard; they then passed over to Hall's chronicle, and thus came into Shakespeare's play. Richard is known, at all times, and especially during his quiet life in the north, to have shown the greatest respect and attachment to the church, and her institutions, and we should do him wrong if we declared it all to be hypocrisy(Halsted, Richard III.), even if he had thought to atone by his liberalities to the church for the atrocious deeds he had perpetrated.

On the day following that of the deputation to Crosby Place a petition was presented to the three estates assembled at Westminster concerning the illegitimacy of the young princes, and it was decided, that they should be excluded from the throne, and that Richard, as the only right- ful heir, should be king in the place of Edward IV. Richard was again at Baynard’s castle, his mother's residence, when the chief lords and Buckingham, as their speaker, arrived to inform Richard that he had been elected King of England. The circumstance that Richard is at his mother'’s residence proves, I think, that he was on good terms with her, which certainly would not have been the case had he slandered her but a few days before— So the crown had come to Richard by a legal process, and not by usurpation. If these proceedings were not lawful, the stain falls quite as much upon the peers who agreed, as upon Richard who urged them on. Richard, of course, joyfully accepted the much coveted, and now offered crown, went in great pomp to West- minster to receive King Edward's scepter, and from thence proceeded to St. Paul's to give thanks to God; and on the same day was proclaimed king. It was on the 26th of June 1483, in his 31st year. He may perhaps have expected disturbances to take place, and, therefore, ordered