sufferaunce of our Lord God is born and ordeyned to be subject and thralled unto the storms of fortune, and so in divers and many sundry wayes man is perplexed with worldly adversities, of the which, I, Antoine Wydeville, Erle Ryuers, Lord Scales, &c. have largely and in many different manner, have had my parte, and of him releived by the infinite grace and goodness of our said Lord, through the means of the mediation of mercy, which grace evidently to know and understood hath compelled me to set aparte all ingratitude, and droofe (drove) ine by reson and conscience as far as my wretchedness would suffice to give therefore singular lovynges and thankes, and exhorted me to dispose my recovered lyf to his service, in following his lawes and commandements, and in satisfaction and recompense of mine iniquities and fawtes before donn, to seke and execute the workes that might be most acceptable to hym; and as far as my frailness would suffer me, I rested in the wyll and purpose during the season I understood the Jubylee and pardon to be at the holy appostle Seynt James in Spain, which was the year of grace, a thousand cccclxxiii. Thenne I determined me to take that voyage, and shipped from Southampton in the month of July in the said year, and so sayled from thence for a recreacyon, and passing of time I had delight, and used to read some good historye, and among other there was that person in my company, a worshipful gentleman called Louis de Breteylles, which greatly delighted him in all virtuous and honest things, that sayd to me he had there a book that he trusted I should like right well, and brought it to me, which book I had never seen before, and is called The Sayinges and Dictes of Philosophers,' and as I understand it was translatyd out of Latin into French, by a worshipfull man called Messire Jehan de Teonville, Provost of Parys. When I had heeded and looked upon it as I had tyme and space, I gave thereto a very affection; and in special because of the holsom and swete sayinges of the paynims which is a glorious fayre myrrour to all good Christian people to be hold and understand; ever that a greate comforte to every well-disposed soul; it speaketh also universally to the example, weal, and doctrine of all kynges, princes, and to people of every estate. It lauds virtue and science, it blames vice and ignorance; and albeit as I could not at that season, no in all that pilgrimage time, have leisure to oversee it well at my pleasure, whilst for the dispositions that belongǝth to a taker of jubylee and pardons, and also for the great acquaintance that I founde there of worshipful folkes, with whom it was fittinge that I should keepe good and honest company, yet nevertheless it rested still in the desirous favour of my minde, intending utterly to take these with greater acquaintance at some other convenient time, and so remaining in that oppynyon after such season as it listed the king's grace to commaunde me to give my attendance upon my lord the prince, and that I was in his service; when I had leisure I looked upon the said book, and at the last conclude in myself to translate it into the English tongue." The Earl Rivers also clothed the Morale Proverbes of Christine of Pisa' in an English dress. "In this translation," says Walpole, “the earl discovered new talents, turning the work into a poem of two hundred and three lines, the greatest part of which he contrived to make conclude with the letter E, an instance at once of his lordship's application, and of the bad taste of an age which had witticisms and whims to struggle with as well as ignorance." Сах ton, in enumerating the works of this nobleman, mentions a third translation from the French of The booke named Cordyale, or Memorare Novissime,' and 'over that divers balades against the seven dedely synnes.' But the most interesting of all the earl's productions are the stanzas which he composed in the prospect of his execution, when the harsh and unjust mandate of his oppressors was about to consign him to a dishonoured and premature grave. This ballad was printed in the first edition of this ill-fated nobleman's reliques from an imperfect copy preserved by Rous, the defects of which were afterwards supplied by the Fairfax manuscripts in the Sloanian collection We shall here insert it entire for the gratification of the reader, although, as an illustration of English literature, it belongs properly to the literary section of the period now under consideration. Lord Hastings. DIED A. D. 1483. ONE of the most distinguished victims of the protector's ambition was the lord Hastings. The early and honoured friend of Edward IV he had zealously asserted the rights of the young princes while Gloucester was plotting their destruction. This conduct marked him out for the victim of the man whom no considerations of blood, or justice, or humanity, ever turned aside from the pursuits of ambition and selfaggrandisement. As one of Edward's ministers, Hastings had exhibited a more than ordinary amount of talent, united to as great an amount of conscientiousness, perhaps, as the circle of the English court at the time exhibited. It is true that he accepted a pension of two thousand crowns from Louis XI. of France, the meaning of which could not be misunderstood; and that at the concluding of the treaty of Pecquigny, he received from the same monarch a gift of twelve dozen of gilt silver bowls, and twelve dozen not gilt, each of which weighed seventeen nobles; but then this was nothing more than a harmless compliance with the fashion of the times, and the English monarch was too needy and prodigal himself to forbid his favourites any means of making up to themselves what his own treasury could not yield them. Yet, in these corrupt transactions, Hastings showed "some glimmering of a sense of perverted and paradoxical humour." When Cleret, the medium of communication between the subtle monarch and the English ministers, hinted that some formal acknowledgment of the donation might be of use to him in his accountings with the king his master, Hastings gravely answered, "Sir, this gift cometh from the liberal pleasure of the king your master, and not from my request; if it be his determinate will that I should have it, put it into my sleeve; if not, return it; for neither he nor you shall have it to brag that the lordchamberlain of England has been his pensioner." Doubtless the lordchamberlain felt himself to be a highly honourable and virtuous man, in thus refusing to give a receipt for a bribe which his sleeve at the same time gaped wide to receive; his less scrupulous companion accepted the money, and gave receipts for their several gratuities also, which still appear in the French archives; but posterity will probably admire the prudence more than the virtue of the lord-chamberlain in his dealings with pay master Cleret. Handsome in person, and highly accomplished, Hastings soon made himself a prime auxiliary in Edward's profligate amusements; and in doing so, incurred the resentment of the queen, who justly suspected him of encouraging her husband's unbecoming gallantries. In the expedition to France, Hastings bore a distinguished part, and was attended by a select body of gentlemen volunteers, who specially attached themselves to his service, and vowed "to aid and succour him so far forth as law, equity, and conscience, required." Supported by the general feeling in his favour, and at first an object neither of dread 'Holinshed, iii. 312. nor dislike to the ambitious protector, Hastings might have stood his ground in the convulsions which followed Edward's death; but his jealousy and desertion of Rivers proved fatal to himself. He had been engaged in a personal quarrel with Rivers, which drew upon him the severe resentment of the king himself, and nearly endangered his life and estate. From this period he had nursed sentiments of revenge towards his accomplished rival, which the force of circumstances alone had prevented him from gratifying. Edward had seen and marked their animosity, and while on death-bed, had called them into his chamber, exhorted them to mutual forgiveness, and commanded them to embrace in his presence. They obeyed the royal mandate, and exchanged the external tokens of friendship, but the lapse of a few days sufficed to prove how hollow such reluctant professions of reconciliation were. When Elizabeth proposed in council that Rivers and Gray should conduct her young son from Ludlow to the metropolis, Hastings and his friends took alarm. They at once perceived that the command of an army would give the queen and the Wydevilles an immense advantage over their opponents. Where, they asked, was the necessity of an army? Who were the enemies against whom it was to be directed? Did the Wydevilles mean to break the reconciliation they had so recently sworn to observe? An angry altercation ensued: the queen eagerly insisting on the proposed arrangement, and Hastings as determinedly resisting it. At last he declared that he would quit the court and retire to his command at Calais, if the queen persisted in her intentions Elizabeth fearing to provoke a formidable party at so critical a juncture, yielded, and those measures were adopted which, in the issue, placed the queen's party at the mercy of Gloucester. The intelligence of the arrest of Rivers, was received by the lord-chamberlain with a burst of delusive joy. He was directed to communicate intelligence of Gloucester's proceedings at Northampton to the council, and accordingly sent information to the chancellor, Rotherham, archbishop of York. That prelate instantly waited upon the queen, now preparing to take refuge from the impending storm in the sanctuary of Westminster, and informed her that her son was in his uncle's hands; but exhorted her to take courage, for "that he was putte in good hope and out of feare by the message sente him from the lord-chamberlain." "Ah, woo worthe him!" exclaimed the queen, "for hee is one of them that laboureth to destroye me and my bloode." For a time Hastings laboured to support Richard, with a blindness to his real designs amounting to fatuity. Lord Stanley told him that "he misliked these several councils" which Richard held with a private junto of his own, to which neither Hastings, Stanley, nor the archbishops of Canterbury and York, were ever invited; but the chamberlain laughed at his fears, and replied, "My lord, on my life never doute you, for while one man is there which is never thence, never can there be thinges ones minded that should sounde amisse towards me, but it should be in our eares ere it were well out of their mouths." In these words, Hastings alluded to Catesby, a lawyer who had risen to eminence under his patronage, and who was one of the duke's council at Crosby house, from whom he expected to learn all the secrets of that Sir Thomas More. divan. But Catesby was playing a double and a false game, and was one of the first to betray his ancient patron to the duke. He told him of the warm and unshaken attachment which Hastings bore to the young princes, and from that moment the latter was a doomed man. Stanley again warned him of his danger under the similitude of a dream, afraid, perhaps, to trust even Hastings with a more open disclosure of the sentiments which he entertained regarding Richard. He sent a special messenger to him in the dead of the night, beseeching him to take horse instantly and flee from the city, for that he had just had a fearful vision, wherein a boar had attacked himself and his friend, and wounded both of them in the head with his tusks. Hastings could be at no loss to interpret Stanley's vision, for Richard's cognizance was a boar, yet with blind reliance on the duke's protestations, he laughed to scorn the timidity and visionary terrors of his friend, and desired him to give no credit to such vain phantasies, for he was as sure of the man to whom the vision pointed as of his own hand.3 In the same morning on which Hastings had rejected the counsel thus conveyed to him, a friend of the protector waited upon him, desiring his presence in the council chamber. On their way thither, Hastings stopped to converse with an ecclesiastic of his acquaintance whom he happened to meet in the street, until his companion chided his delay, saying, "What, my lord, I pray you come on, whereto talke you so long with that priest, you have no need of a priest yet." Still the infatuated noble remained unconscious of danger, and hastened onwards to the place of meeting. Gloucester entered soon after the arrival of Hastings; his appearance struck the council with surprise and dismay, and they looked in silence at each other and him. His brow was contracted into a dark frown, and for a time he sat biting his lips in suppressed rage, until he suddenly broke silence by inquiring what punishment those persons merited who were now imagining and compassing his death. It was Hastings who first answered the question by exclaiming, that they should be dealt with as traitors. Gloucester then darkly hinted at his intended victims: "That sorceress, my brother's wife !" he exclaimed, plucking up his left sleeve, and exposing the lean and withered arm which it covered, and which was well known to have been a congenital deformity of his person. "Ye shall all see," he continued, "how that sorceress and that witch of her council, Shore's wife, have by their practices wasted my body." The accusation, absurd as it was, boded no good to Hastings, who, after Edward's death, had formed a connexion with his favourite mistress; yet he plucked up courage to reply: "Certainly, my lord, if they have so heinously done, they be worthy of heinous punishment." "What!" rejoined the protector, "dost thou answer me with ifs and ands? I tell thee they have done it, and that I will make good on thy body, traitor!" At these words he struck the table violently with his fist, whereupon, as if at a preconcerted signal, a voice at the door exclaimed 'Treason!' and a body of armed men instantly burst into the hall. Hastings and Stanley, with the prelates of York and Ely, were instantly arrested. The three latter were conveyed away to separate chambers, but Gloucester swore by St Paul, that he would not dine till Hastings' head was off, and commanded his vic Sir Thomas More. |