Morton next proceeds to falsify the title of King Richard III. to the crown. This point is of great importance and merits close attention. The statement of Richard's title to the crown was drawn up, and adopted by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons, after considering all the evidence {218} between June 8 and 25. The document was afterwards embodied in an Act of Parliament entitled the 'Titulus Regius,' with which the writers employed by Henry VII. must have been well acquainted. When Henry came to the throne, he ordered this Act to be repealed without quoting the preamble, with a view to its purport being concealed. He caused it to be destroyed, and threatened any one who kept a copy with fine and imprisonment during his pleasure. The reason he gave for this was that 'all things in the said Act may be forgot.' In spite of this threat the truth was told by the Croyland monk, but his chronicle remained in manuscript, and he was not found out. Henry's conduct affords a strong presumption that the title was valid. But he did more. He granted an illusory pardon to Bishop Stillington, who was the principal witness to the truth of the main statement in the 'Titulus Regius.' This was done with the object of keeping silence on the subject of his real offence, which was telling the truth. Henry then arrested him on another trumped up charge, and kept him in close and solitary imprisonment in Windsor Castle until his death in June 1491. These proceedings show the immense importance attached by Henry VII. to a suppression of the truth relating to Richard's title to the crown. It is certain that if the alleged previous contract with Lady Eleanor Butler was false, the falsehood would have been eagerly exposed, and there would have been no occasion to invent any other story. On the other hand, if the alleged previous contract was true, the evidence would have been suppressed and another story would have been invented and promulgated. The evidence was suppressed, and a different tale was {219} put forward. The conclusion is inevitable that the previous contract of Edward IV. with Lady Eleanor Butler was a fact. [Sidenote: The true claim to the Crown]