It is very clear, that the earl was not at the battle of Bosworth, fighting on the side of his uncle, not only from the total silence of historians, {192c} but from the fact, that his name does not appear in the list of noblemen, knights, and gentlemen, who were attainted, {192d} when Henry VII. called a Parliament, for taking a part in that battle; and also from the fact of his being one of the nobles allowed to attend a council of Henry VII. {192e} He appears not to have acted with sincerity, when he could so far demean himself, as to bring the impostor, Lambert Simnel, forward as a stalking-horse; and, in the words of Bacon, “neither did the earl refrain the business, for that he knew the pretended Plantagenet to be but an idol. But contrariwise, he was more glad it should be the false Plantagenet than the true; because, the false being sure to fall away of himself, and the true to be made sure of by the King, it might open and pave a fair and prepared way to his own title.” He must have been aware of the imposture, and appears to have been actively concerned in the insurrection, with the intention of benefiting himself, and the hope of successfully advancing his own claims to the crown. It is a remarkable circumstance, that, at the time of the Earl of Lincoln’s death, his grandmother, Cecily Duchess of York, was still living; a woman who was doomed to witness, in her own family, more appalling and extraordinary calamities and vicissitudes, than are to be found in the history of any individual allied to any of the other royal families of Europe; I might, perhaps, even be allowed to go further, and to state, in the known history of any other human being.