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[ NOTE P, p. 312. To show how little credit is to be given to this charge against Richard, we may observe, that a law in the 13th Edward III. had been enacted against the continuance of sheriffs for more than one year. But the inconvenience of changes having afterwards appeared, from experience, the commons, in the twentieth of this king, applied; by petition, that the sheriffs might be continued; though that petition had not been enacted into a statute, by reason of other disagreeable circumstances which attended it. See Cotton, p. 361. It was certainly a very moderate exercise of the dispensing power in the king to continue the sheriffs, after he found that that practice would be acceptable to his subjects, and had been applied for by one house of parliament; yet is this made an article of charge against him by the present parliament. See article 18. Walsingham, speaking of a period early in Richard’s minority, says, “But what do acts of parliament signify, when, after they are made, they take no effect, since the king, by the advice of the privy council, takes upon him to alter, or wholly set aside, all those things which by general consent had been ordained in parliament?” If Richard, therefore, exercised the dispensing power, he was warranted by the examples of his uncles and grandfather, and indeed of all his predecessors from the time of Henry III., inclusive.]
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[ NOTE Q, p. 318. The following passage in Cotton’s Abridgment (p. 196) shows a strange prejudice against the church and churchmen. “The commons afterwards coming into the parliament, and making their protestation, showed, that for want of good redress about the king’s person in his household, in all his courts, touching maintainers in every county, and purveyors, the commons were daily pilled, and nothing defended against the enemy, and that it should shortly deprive the king and undo the state. Wherefore in the same government they entirely require redress. Whereupon the king appointed sundry bishops, lords, and nobles, to sit in privy council about these matters; who, since that they must begin at the head, and go at the request of the commons, they, in the presence of the king, charged his confessor not to come into the court but upon the four principal festivals.” We should little expect that a popish privy council, in order to preserve the king’s morals, should order his confessor to be kept at a distance from him. This incident happened in the minority of Richard. As the popes had for a long time resided at Avignon, and the majority of the sacred college were Frenchmen, this circumstance naturally increased the aversion of the nation to the papal power; but the prejudice against the English clergy cannot be accounted for from that cause.]
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[ NOTE R, p. 450. That we may judge how arbitrary a court that of the constable of England was, we may peruse the patent granted to the earl of Rivers in this reign, as it is to be found in Spellman’s Glossary in verb. Constabularius: as also more fully in Rymer, vol. xi. p. 581. Here is a clause of it: “Et ulterius de uberiori gratia nostra eidem comiti de Rivers plenam potestatem damus ad cognoscendum et procedendum, in omnibus et singulis causis et negotiis, de et super crimine lesse majestatis, seu super occasione eseterisque causis quibuscunque per præfatum comitem de Rivers, ut constabularium Angliæ——quæ in curia constabularii Angliæ ab antique, viz, tempore dicti domini Gtilielmi Conquætoris, sen aliquo tempore citra, tractari, audiri examinari, aut decidi consueverant, aut jure debuerant aut clebeni, causasque et negotia prædicta cum omnibus et singulis emergentibus, incidentibus et connexis, audiendum, examinandum, et fine debito terminandum, etiam summarie et de plano, sine strepitu et figura justitiæ, sola facti veritate inspecta, ac etiam manu regia, si opportunum visum fuerit eidem comiti de Rivers, vices nostras, appellatione remots.” The office of constable was perpetual in the monarchy; its jurisdiction was not limited to times of war, as appears from this patent, and as we learn from Spellman; yet its authority was in direct contradiction to Magna Charta; and it is evident, that no regular liberty could subsist with it. It involved a full dictatorial power, continually subsisting in the state. The only check on the crown, besides the want of force to support all its prerogatives, was, that the office of constable was commonly either hereditary or during life, and the person invested with it was, for that reason, not so proper an instrument of arbitrary power in the king. Accordingly the office was suppressed by Henry VIII., the most arbitrary of all the English princes. The practice, however, of exercising martial law still subsisted; and was not abolished till the Petition of Right under Charles I. This was the epoch of true liberty, confirmed by the restoration, and enlarged and secured by the revolution.]
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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.]