Tracts, legal and historical

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calling him King Richarde, affirming, that by favor of
hys kepers he was delivered oute of pry son, and set
at libertie, and they followed in a quadrat array to
the entent to destroy King Henry." 1 Grafton, who
wrote only a year or two afterwards, is to the same
effect ; 2 and Stow is full upon the subject. He
states, that the Lords " bruited that King Richard
was escaped furth of pryson, and that he was there
with them, and to make their wordes to have the
more credite, they had got a chaplain of King
Richard called Maudelen — they put him in armour,
with a crowne on his helmet, so as all men might
take him for King Richard." 3 Additional Eng-
lish authorities might be quoted, but they would
be superfluous. Stow intimates that Maudelain thus
acted " the more strongly to seduce the multitude by
so bold and perilous a fiction." 1 — It is little likely
that these writers could be mistaken in a matter en-
tirely English, and hence, more especially interest-
ing them. Pclydore Virgil, who dedicates his history
to Henry VIII., narrates the same thing, and that the
Lords converted Maudelain into Richard, " ut Hen-
ricum velut hostem patriae perdant." 5
It may be especially observed, that the " French
Metrical History of the Deposition of Richard
II.," upon which Mr. Tytler lays great stress,
gives him the flattest contradiction imaginable, for
1 Edit. 1.550, f. 13. 2 Edit. 1569, f. 411.
3 Edit. 1615, f. 325. * Edit. 1614, p. 614. 5 P. 431.