Mr. Gairdner has thus removed much of the Tudor garbage from the picture of King Richard, but he will not sweep off the rest. His researches show him that the accusations of the Tudor writers are irreconcilable with the results of modern investigations. But his preconceived convictions, although much shaken, are not yet swept away. The inevitable result is that the life and character of Richard become a puzzle to him. Generous, kind, and patriotic acts continue to be recorded of the young King throughout his life, which are certainly not the acts of an habitual assassin. Those who are forced to acknowledge the facts, and yet cling to a belief in the fictions, find themselves in a tight place. This is Mr. Gairdner's position. He will not give up all the Tudor fables, and clings to such shreds of them as it seems to him possible to retain. Yet his own researches force him to abandon much and to apologize for the rest. The man's acts cannot be made to harmonize with the Tudor calumnies. The consequent contradictions necessitate the explanation that 'Richard was not yet even a hardened criminal' (p. 46); while some of the events which cannot be disputed are 'certainly remarkable' (p. 91), and others 'almost inconceivable' (p. 214). Mr. Gairdner cannot quite give up the fable of the murder of young Edward at Tewkesbury. He admits that it was not countenanced by any contemporary writer, that it was first told by Fabyan many years after the event, and that the final embellishment, according to which young Gloucester was a participator in the crime, was a tradition of later times. Yet in his history, he preferred the tradition of later times to the story of Fabyan, although he thought the latter had every appearance of probability, and he preferred both to the {287} unanimous testimony of contemporaries.[14] There is no reason for this topsy-turvy criticism, except that what Mr. Gairdner calls a 'tradition' accuses Richard, while Fabyan and the contemporaries do not. His arguments in favour of the murder given in his 'Life of Richard III.' were that Richard may very probably have been a murderer at nineteen, if any one of his other alleged murders be admitted; and that he was capable of a cowardly assassination because he condemned prisoners to death in his judicial capacity. On these grounds alone he urged that the accusation is not to be rejected. He did not maintain that it is true, but that it cannot safely be pronounced apocryphal. He also admitted that Richard ought not to bear the whole responsibility, as he was only an accessory. This is very different from the downright condemnation of Hume and Lingard.[15] The fable is evidently doomed. But there can be no sharing of responsibility. If Richard stabbed his young cousin he was a cowardly ruffian, whether other ruffians did the same or not. If he did not, no words can be strong enough to express the infamy of his Italian slanderer.