tim to hasten to confession. It was in vain that the unfortunate nobleman inquired what offence he had committed worthy of death, or even imprisonment; the mandate for instant execution was imperious, and none dared to interpose a plea for mercy. The nearest priest received the unhappy man's hurried confession, and a log of timber which lay in the yard at the door of the chapel, served for a block, on which the fatal blow was given. The same afternoon, a proclamation appeared, in which it was announced, that Hastings and his friends having conspired" the same day to have slain the lord-protector, and the duke of Buckingham, sitting in the council," had been, " by the help of God," resisted and overcome in the foul attempt. Then followed various animadversions on the late chamberlain's character and conduct as an evil counsellor to Edward IV., not omitting severe comments upon his known connexion with Jane Shore.*

Richard EEE.

DIED A. d. 1485.

RICHARD the Third has been, until of late years, the ame damnée of historians. They have heaped on his memory the darkest accusations, imputed to him nearly every atrocious deed that was perpetrated during his public life, and, to crown this fearful accumulation, they have described his form as foully distorted, and his features as expressive of the deep malignity of his soul. To these representations, the appalling impersonation of villanous hypocrisy to which Shakspeare attached the name of Richard has given a force and verisimilitude against which it appears almost hopeless to hold up a tamer, though truer limning. He has come down to the present day, as the assassin of Henry the Sixth and of his unfortunate son,-as the murderer of Clarence, and as the subtle specious schemer, whose object it was, even during the life of his crowned brother, to prepare a way to the throne, by the deliberate extinction of every life which stood between hin and the royal chair.' For all and each of these charges, the evidence is of an exceedingly questionable character. That Henry was actually murdered, though probable, is not absolutely certain; but on the admission that his death was violent, there still does not appear any ground of substantial testimony for charging the act itself on the duke of Gloucester. That he assisted in the cold-blooded butchery of the youthful Edward of Lancaster is indeed affirmed by writers of repute; yet there is counter-evidence sufficient to throw doubt on the highlycoloured statement which makes princes and nobles the eager murderers of a defenceless boy. Of the death of Clarence, there are the strongest reasons for acquitting him; and it is far more probable that the king was urged on to fratricide by the apprehensions of the queen and her family. It is certainly possible that the bold measures by which he secured first the protectorate, and afterwards the crown, were the result of long premeditation and close intrigue; yet is there abso lutely nothing in the way of proof that should lead to such a conclu

Sir Thomas More

sion; and the balance of probabilities, as well as the peculiar features of the enterprise, would rather induce the belief, that whatever his ambition might have previously hoped, the overt-acts in which it first displayed itself were suggested and governed by the circumstances in which he found himself placed.

6

As crowned king, his administration was just and able. He affected magnificence after the fashion of his deceased brother, though without his fantastical exaggerations. His person and manners-for any thing that appears to the contrary-were pleasing and graceful, though his historians have been pleased to represent a shape, perhaps not altogether symmetrical, as a mere system of distortions, rudely stampt,cheated of feature,—deformed, unfinished,―scarce half made up.' Early in his brief reign, he undertook a royal progress through the kingdom, for the purpose of redressing grievances, correcting abuses, and administering justice; but at York, where he had re-enacted the pompous pageant of his coronation, he was startled by menacing intelligence. The duke of Buckingham, Richard's devoted partizan and bosom-counsellor through the entire business of the usurpation, had been made too powerful not to whisper to himself a hope that, in the scramble for dignities, it might fall to his chance to clutch a sceptre, and when that dream was dissipated by farther reflection, he plotted with the friends of the queen-dowager, to replace young Edward on the throne. But the murderous foresight of Richard had already marred that scheme; the two princes had perished in the tower, at the command of their uncle. Defeated in this plan, Buckingham put forward the earl of Richmond, afterward Henry VII., as the rightful claimant of the kingdom. Richard, brave and active, lost not an hour in hesitation; he immediately assembled troops, and issued a proclamation which, for its cool hypocrisy, may challenge competition. It was something new, even in those strange days, for a king to arraign the private morals of his enemies; yet did he in that marvellous document, in addition to the usual charges of faction and treason, think it worth his while, and worthy of his rank, to abuse his antagonists as 'adulterers and bawds.' His armament and his moral indignation were, however, alike uncalled for, since the event proved that Buckingham had miscalculated his means and opportunity. The elements traversed his intended enterprise; he started from Brecknock, but the Severn was in flood, and the bridges were broken down; his movements were watched, and his halfhearted followers disbanded. The simultaneous risings which were to have aided his efforts by calling off the attention of the royalists, were hasily dispersed, and this ill-combined insurrection terminated in the public execution of Buckingham, and the flight of the other Lancastrian leaders to foreign shores. The king dealt sharply with his foes; such as came within his grasp he sent to the gibbet and the block; and a subservient parliament aided him in visiting the rest with confiscation and attainder. Richard took farther measures for the legitimation of his title, by procuring, under parliamentary forms, the annulment of his brother's marriage with Elizabeth Grey, thus bastardising the issue of that union. Of this measure, it is not easy to discern the expediency; the young princes were dead, and this pertinacious recur.

1 Rymer.

rence to the question of legitimacy, could but revive recollections of little advantage to the individual who had commanded their murder. In other quarters, his policy was wiser: he completed a pacific negotiation with Scotland, and intrigued at the court of Bretagne, where the earl of Richmond and his adherents had found an asylum, but whence they were compelled to withdraw by the subtle and successful machinations of Richard. But a domestic calamity, the death of his only son in April, 1484, gave him a farther opportunity of exercising his characteristic craft. He persuaded his brother's widow, whose children he had put to death, whose character he had aspersed, and whose rank he had taken away, to quit the sanctuary of Westminster, where she had so long found refuge, and with her daughters to appear at court. He even procured her consent to his marriage with her eldest daughter, and both these heartless and ambitious women were elated at the prospect of the unnatural alliance, though aware, it is to be feared, that it could not be effected without foul play to Richard's still living queen. But when the death, probably by poison, of his consort, had removed the main difficulty, the well-grounded remonstrances of his favourite advisers defeated the plan. The indignation of the nation at the marriage of uncle and niece, the confirmation of the general suspicion that it had been preceded and prepared by a convenient murder,-with other important motives powerfully urged, prevailed on the king to abandon his design.

In the mean time, a threatening storm was gathering on the shores of France. Henry, earl of Richmond, had been acknowledged by all the exiles, and by the malcontents of England, as the heir of Lancaster; he had pledged himself to merge the conflicting claims of the two houses, by a marriage, in the event of success, with Elizabeth, the heiress of York, and thus blend the opposite rights; he was assembling troops under the auspices of the king of France, for the invasion of England. In July, 1485, he made good his landing at MilfordHaven; and when he reached Shrewsbury his army amounted to four thousand men, the greater part of whom were Normans. Richard moved on Leicester with a powerful array, but disaffection pervaded its ranks his crimes had destroyed his chance of reigning, and when the armies faced each other on Bosworth field, he found, that while some of his soldiers were openly deserting him, the remainder were either wavering or obviously waiting the event. In this desperate situation, the king made one last personal effort for victory. Perceiving Richmond, surrounded by his officers, at no great distance, Richard charged at full speed upon Henry's guard, cut down his standardbearer, unhorsed another knight, and was aiming a blow at his rival, who neither avoided nor advanced, when numbers rushed between, and the gallant usurper fell fiercely fighting in the melée.

It is not necessary to offer farther illustration of the character of Richard than has been already given. That he has been charged with crimes which he never committed, is more than probable, but wher every deduction has been made, enough will remain to give him high rank among the worst men who have worn a crown. No means, however atrocious, of obtaining his ends, came amiss to him; poison or steel, blood or suffocation, craft or violence, were alike in the perpetrations of this sanguinary hypocrite. In bravery, subtilty, cold-blooded

cruelty and consummate hypocrisy, there is a striking resemblance between his character and that of Aurungzeeb.

II. ECCLESIASTICAL SERIES.

Walter de Merton.

DIED A. D. 1277.

Of the personal history of this excellent bishop little is known. He was the son of William de Merton, archdeacon of Berks, and was born at Merton in Surrey, where also he obtained the rudiments of education in a monastical establishment. In the year 1239, he appears to have been in possession of the family estate, and also of one inherited from his mother, both his parents being now dead. In 1259, he held a prebend in Exeter cathedral, and Browne Willis says, that he was vicar of Potton, in Bedfordshire, at the time of his promotion to the see of Rochester. Other accounts say, that he was first canon of Salisbury, and afterwards rector of Stratton. The custom of the times permitted of his devoting his attention to the profession of the law, although in holy orders, and he appears to have exercised at one and the same time the functions of a divine, a lawyer, and a financier, and that with high credit and reputation. In the court of chancery he became king's clerk, and subsequently protonotary; and, in 1258, he was appointed to the highest judicial office in the kingdom. The barons, indeed, deprived him of the chancellorship in the same year in which it had been conferred on him, but he was restored to office in 1261, and held the seals again in 1274, before his consecration to the bishopric of Rochester. Throughout rather a long life, this prelate distinguished himself by the benevolence of his disposition, and the liberal patronage which he was ever ready to extend to men of letters. In 1261, he founded the hospital of St John for poor and infirm clergy; and soon afterwards he laid the foundation of the college which still bears his name in the university of Oxford. With regard to the latter institution, Wood and others state that the bishop confined his first attention to the erection and endowment of a school at Malden, which was to form a sort of nursery for the university; and that although he made provision for the support of the Malden scholars while attending Oxford, the establishment itself was not removed from Malden to Oxford until the year 1274, when its third and last charter was obtained. The successive charters of this establishment are still preserved in the library, and were consulted as precedents in the founding of Peterhouse, the earliest college of the sister-university. His preference of Oxford is explained by the fact of his having studied some time among the canons regular of Osseney, in the neighbourhood of Oxford. Merton died on the 27th of October, 1277. His death was occasioned by a fall from his horse in fording a river in his diocese. He was interred

in Rochester cathedral, where a beautiful alabaster monument was erected to his memory by the society of Merton college.

Archbishop Peckham.

BORN CIRC. A. d. 1240.—died a. d. 1292.

JOHN PECKHAM, archbishop of Canterbury, in the reign of Edward I., was born in the county of Sussex about the year 1240. He received he rudiments of instruction in a monastery at Lewes, whence he was sent to Oxford, where his name occurs in the registers of Merton college. He was created doctor in divinity at this university, and read public lectures: Pitt says he was professor of divinity. He appears to have visited Paris twice, and to have read lectures in that city also with great applause. From Paris he journeyed to Lyons, where he was presented with a canonry in the cathedral of Lyons, which was held by the archbishops of Canterbury for two centuries after. He then went to Rome, where the pope appointed him palatine lecturer or reader. In 1278, his holiness consecrated him archbishop of Canterbury, on his agreeing to pay 4,000 marks for the appointment. Peckham had nearly forgot his pledge in this instance, but the holy father failed not to remind him of it, and to accompany his message with a gentle hint at excommunication in the event of further delay or non-compliance. Edward, who had not yet determined on breaking his peace with the court of Rome, received the new primate in peace, and, though he thwarted him at first in some things, seems to have at last reposed considerable confidence in him, for in 1282 he was sent in person to effect a reconciliation between the king and the prince of Wales, then at Snowdon, and threatening to concur with the oppressed Welsh in the defence of public liberty. Peckham was a man of cor siderable vigour and independence of mind; shortly after his appoint ment to the primacy, he held a provincial synod at Reading, in which several canons for the better regulation of the church, and especially for securing effect to its sentences of excommunication, were promulgated. In 1281, he held another council at Lambeth, in which several canons were enacted touching the administration of the eucharist. In the same year, he addressed a spirited remonstrance to the king in support of the rights and privileges of the clergy. In this document he complains that the church was grievously injured and oppressed by the civil power, contrary to the decrees of the popes, the canons of councils, and the authority of the orthodox fathers; "in which," says he, there is the supreme authority, the supreme truth, and the supreme sanctity, and no end may be put to disputation unless we submit ourselves to these three great laws." He then goes on to protest, that no oaths which may ever be extorted from him shall constrain him to do any thing against the privileges and rights of the church, and offers to absolve the king from any oath he may have taken that can anywise incite him against the church. Edward, though he paid no heed to the primate's expostulations, allowed him to remain unmolested. In 1286