[1] Richard the third sonne, of whome we now in|treat, was in wit and courage equall with either of them,The descrip|tion of Ri|chard the third. in bodie and prowesse farre vnder them both, litle of stature, ill featured of limmes, crooke backed, his left shoulder much higher than his right, hard fa|uoured of visage, and such as is in states called war|lie, in othermen otherwise; he was malicious, wrath|full, enuious, and from afore his birth euer froward. It is for truth reported, that the duchesse his mother had so much adoo in hir trauell, that she could not be deliuered of him vncut; and that he came into the world with the féet forward, as men be borne out|ward, and (as the same runneth also) not vntoothed, whether men of hatred report aboue the truth, or else that nature changed hir course in his beginning, which in the course of his life manie things vnnatu|rallie committed. So that the full confluence of these qualities, with the defects of fauour and amiable proportion, gaue proofe to this rule of physiognomie:

Distor tum vultum sequitur distorsio morum.