V. RICH. III. BOOK have taken such a zealous care of his family afterwards. To the widowed duchess of Buckingham REIGN OF he gave an annuity of 200 marcs." 73 He sent her permission to come, with her servants and children, to London." He gave a safeguard to Florence, the wife of Alexander Cheyney; and expressed in it, that "for her good and virtuous disposition, he had taken her into his protection, and granted to her the custody of her husband's lands and property, tho, being confederated with certain rebels and traitors, he had intended and compassed the utter destruction of the king's person. "75 He ordered the officers and tenants of the estates, which had been settled on lady Rivers, as her jointure, to pay to her all their rents and duties; 76 and he took off the sequestration he had put on the lands of an outlaw, that his wife might have the benefit of them." He seems, by their number, to have taken pleasure in doing acts of good nature and courtesy to the female sex. He settled annuities on many widows, and other ladies.78 paid one, the arrears of a pension given to her by Edward IV. tho future kings rarely heed their predecessors debts or bounties. He granted to lady Dynham four tons of wine yearly.80 He confirmed an annual allowance, which he had made as duke of Gloucester; 81 and settled a small one on the widow of an herald; 2 and a larger one on the sister of lord Lovel.83 All these were acts of kindness, which, if he had been of that malicious, envious and brutal nature, 79 82 77 Ib. 77. 75 Ib. 126. He 78 For many of these, see Harl. MS. pp. 37, 41, 46, 58, 71, 76, 179, &c. &c. 79 Ib. 205. 62 Ib. 91. 80 Ib. 89. 63 Ib. $1 Ib. 200. 89 86 88 I. RICH. III. which has been ascribed to him, he would not have CHAP. performed. A gift to the monks of an abbey burnt down; 84 and to a merchant, towards his losses in REIGN OF trade; 85 a protection for requiring alms to a man, whose dwelling-house and property, with his thirteen tenements, had been all consumed by fire, to his utter undoing; and his recommendation of him, as having kept a good household, by which many poor creatures had been refreshed; so his payment of Buckingham's debts; 87 and of the bishop of Exeter's, who pursued him with hostility to his last hour; and his commission to the hermit of the chapel of Reculver, that had been ordained for the burial of those who should perish by storms, to receive alms to rebuild its roof; the grant of an annuity, for good service done to his father: 90-all these attentions display a temper of the same good feelings which we desire to see in every well-directed mind. There is nothing of the common, cruel, crook-backed Richard about them. It is clear that he had a heart and sympathies much like our own, tho at one interval he forgot their claims. It is a petty circumstance, but it tends to the same point, of shewing that he possessed a common nature of urbanity with the rest of his species, that he did not neglect the custom then in use, of presenting his friends with new year's gifts." He may have been wrathful, as More intimates," which we may understand to mean, that he was irritable, peremptory and impatient of delay, hesitation or opposition to his plans or of his wishes; 85 Ib. 101. 86 Ib. 148. Harl. MS. p. 153. 67 Ib. 64, 97. 88 Ib 208. "There is a warrant to pay alderman Shaw 200 marcs, for certene newe yeres giftes, bought of him, against the fest of Cristymesse.' Ib. P. 148. More, p. 154. BOOK V. REIGN OF and excitability, and this temper, arising from energy may have constituted that feritas naturæ, that fierceness of nature, which has been charged upon him. RICH. III. But if the imperfections and exacerbations of human sensibility are crimes, who is there that is unsinning? It is a remarkable instance of the jaundiced eye, king Henry with which even the laudable actions of this king Windsor. have been wilfully contemplated, that altho one con He buries the Sixth at temporary historian, who was no flatterer of him, 93 Rous, p. 218. 95 94 See before, p. 24. 95 In their address to the pope, to remove Henry VI. to Westminster, they say of Richard, on his re-interment, 'in quem feritas naturæ, animæque malignitas, omnem pietatem atque humanitatem penitus extinxerat." Wilk. Concil. 3. p. 635. 96 Ib. 98 I. RICH. III. from the common access of the public, and not fit for CHAP. the sepulchre of so great a king. These gross inconsistencies shew, that the most calumnious mis- REIGN OF representations pursued even the most honorable actions of this defamed sovereign. It was magnanimous in Richard, after the slanderous imputations he had suffered about Henry's death, to bring the subject again full before the contemplation of the nation by his state removal and funeral, after the old king had been thirteen years in his royal grave; and it is inconceivable how even party rage could distort a royal interment at Windsor, a place of high celebrity and great public resort, into an envious desire of committing the corpse to oblivion and neglect. It was an act of generous attention to the convenience of his people, that altho Edward IV. had for his own hunting gratification annexed a great circuit of country to the forest of Wichwood, and appropriated it to his own use, yet Richard, notwithstanding his attachment to the chase, to please the people, disforested it, and threw it open to the public." But his popular actions procured him no favor from the lordly aristocracy, which sought only the continuance of its own oppressive bondage. sonal Among the amusements of Richard's leisure hours, His perhe seems to have been attached to music; but to have tastes and gratified his taste for it by exertions of authority pleasures. more suitable to that age than to our own. 97 Wilk. Concil. 3. p. 635. He 98 This same document, written in 1494, gives important evidence, that Richard did not, in their opinion, kill king Henry. For tho they strive, obviously, by their epithets, to blacken him; yet, instead of charging this murder upon him, they expressly impute it to Edward IV. Their words are, that Henry, in miseranda fata concesserat jussu Edwardi, tunc Angliæ regis.' Ib. 99 Rous, 216. V. RICH. III. BOOK empowered one of the gentlemen of his chapel, "to take and seize for the king, all such singing men and REIGN OF children, expert in the science of music, as he could find, and think able to do the king service, in all places in the kingdom, whether cathedrals, colleges, chapels, monasteries, or any other franchised places, except Windsor." 100 Such an arbitrary order as this, may shew his passion for this fascinating art, but must have offended wherever it was executed. He was visited by minstrels from foreign countries, and to several other minstrels he gave annuities; 101 and also, perhaps, from his fondness for their sonorous state music, to several trumpeters. 102 Falconry and hawking appear to have been favorite pastimes to him. There is a grant to the master of the king's hawks, and the keeper of the mews near Charing Cross; 103 and he issued a commission to take at reasonable price, such goshawks, tarcells, falcons, lanerettes and other hawks, as could be gotten in Wales or its marches, as should be necessary for the king's disports. A similar warrant was applied to the same object in England; 105 he dispatched a person to parts beyond the sea, to purvey hawks for him; 106 and he had a sergeant of the falcons in England.107 104 Hunting was also his amusement; we find his 100 Harl. MS. p. 189. 101 As, to Robert Green, minstrel, ten marcs; the same to J. Hawkyns, Harl. MS. p. 46. Two minstrels had come from the duke of Austria, p. 190; and two from the duke of Bavaria, p. 210. 102 Three of them are mentioned, to each of whom he gave a yearly payment of ten marcs. Harl. MS. pp. 78, 96, 104. 103 Harl. MS. p. 53. 104 Ib. p. 214. It is dated 27 March 1485. 107 The grant of this is in the same MS. p. 103. |