Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/41

] Norfolk, on his right hand, and the Duke of Suffolk on his left. He stated to the persons present that he chose to commence his reign in that place, because the administration of justice was the first duty of a king. Every one who heard this must have felt that if there were any justice in him, he could not be there. It is clear that the spirit of the nation was with the poor boy Edward; but there was no man who dared to lift up his voice for him. The axe of Gloucester had already lopped off heads enough to render the others dumb, and London was invested by his myrmidons. He was already a dictator, and could do for a while what he pleased. He proclaimed an amnesty to all offenders against him up to that hour, and he then proceeded to St. Paul's, to return thanks to God. Thus, on the 26th of June, 1483, successful villany sat enthroned in the heart of London.  

, now seated on the throne of his nephew, took every means which the possession of one of the most cunuing intellects ever possessed by a scoundrel could suggest, to establish him there. No man knew better than himself that he sat in the royal place, not by any affection for him in the people, but by force and terror alone. There have not been wanting historians who have coolly declared that Richard would have made a good monarch if the people could have thought so; that he was a very brave and a very clever fellow, and had only committed the crimes which were necessary to raise him to the desired throne. Those crimes were only murder of his nearest kindred; betrayal of the most sacred trusts which can be reposed in man—the defence of youth and innocence by the powerful hand and influence of an uncle; the destruction of unhappy orphans of his own blood; the violation of all the established ordinances of the realm; the murder, moreover, of a number of the most eminent of the nobility; perjury; the bribery of assassins; the assassination of his brother and late sovereign's family; the most outrageous slander of his brother's wife; the dishonouring and disinheriting of his brother's children; the overawing of the city, the Parliament, and the realm; the treading down public and private rights by soldiery, and the actual extinction of the Magna Charta, and every freedom of person and speech, purchased by ages of suffering exertion; of the nation's highest and most inestimable privileges, won by the nation's best blood. We can only say that such historians are worthy of such a monarch. The English people, even in that dark and corrupted time, refused to tolerate long such an incubus of iniquity; and soon proceeded to put the eternal stamp of a nation's reprobation on the deeds of that foulest of tyrants.



On the 6th of July, not a fortnight after his acceptance of the crown at Baynard's Castle, Richard was crowned with all splendour. The terror of the blood-stained despot was all-potent, and was evidenced in the fact, that few of the peers or peeresses ventured to absent themselves. With consummate tact, Richard, the Yorkist usurper, appointed the heads of the Lancastrian line to bear the most prominent part in the ceremony, next to royalty itself. Buckingham bore his train, and the Countess of Richmond bore that of his queen. Both these persons were descendants of John of Gaunt, and the countess was the wife of that Lord Stanley who had been wounded at the very council board by Richard's ruffian guards, at the time of the seizure of Hastings. There can be little doubt but that it was the intention of Gloucester to have thus got rid, as by accident, of that respectable and powerful nobleman, who had great influence in the north; but having failed in that, he now made a merit of liberating him and his fellows, the 