seems to me, between being revengeful and even merciless in war, and in murdering either with one’s own hands or by those of hired assassins, one’s brother and one’s nephews. It was by shedding their blood that Richard was enabled to mount the throne which he usurped: of that there is no room for any reasonable doubt. That Shakespeare, in giving the worst character of any in his great series of historical plays to this monarch, is responsible for the popular opinion of King Richard is also indisputable, for we English take our history from these plays, and “crook-back’d” Richard will ever remain the deepest-dyed villain that ever wore the English crown. The great Duke of Marlborough confessed that all that he knew of English history had been learnt through Shakespeare’s plays, and with all truth the majority of his countrymen might say the same. It has also been said, “The youth of England take their theology from Milton and their history from Shakespeare”; and surely they might go further and fare worse. [Illustration: _View in the Inner Ward_] It should, however, in fairness both to Richard and to Shakespeare, be remembered that the character of the Royal villain in the play was drawn by one who wrote in the days of the Tudors, and at a time when the house of Plantagenet was not in good odour with the reigning Sovereign. Richard appears in three of the dramas—in the second and third parts of _King Henry VI._, and as the hero or chief villain in that which bears his name when King: the important part played by the Tower in the usurper’s reign is strongly marked by the poet placing four scenes of _Richard III._ within or near the fortress—twice as many as occur in any other of his historical dramas.