Lord Mayor, and a speech by Buckingham, delivered a day or two later, prepared the minds of the citizens for hearing that the protector had seized his nephew's crown. A rabble of five thousand men from Wales and Yorkshire, who assembled in rusty armour in Finsbury Field, gave a military sanction to the usurpation of the duke, who became king June 26. on the 26th of June. He grounded his claim on the allegations, that his brother Edward had stood contracted in marriage to Dame Eleanor Butler, a daughter of Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, long before he married Elizabeth Grey; that therefore the second marriage was null, and its issue illegitimate; and that Clarence having been attainted, he, Richard, was heir to the crown.

Richard the Third began his reign with a royal progress through the centre and the north of England. He delighted in finery, and lost no opportunity of blazing in velvet and gold before the eyes of his subjects. While he was engaged in this progress, a horrid whisper began to circulate through the land. It was said that the young princes-Edward the Fifth and his brother the Duke of York-were dead. A groan of execration burst from the people at the news. A few clung to the hope that the tragic story was untrue; but most persons believed it, and believed also-though there was no proof-that Richard had caused his nephews to be murdered. Floating rumours spoke of a ship at the Tower wharf which bore the children to some foreign port; and on such slight foundations great conspiracies built themselves in the following reign.*

Before this dark story began to colour the English mind, Richard had received word of a spreading plot, in which Buckingham took a leading share. The rumour proved true. No very satisfactory account can be given of the causes of Buckingham's disaffection. A refusal of the lands of Hereford was

* In the reign of Charles II. (1674) men, digging below an old stair in the Tower, found the bones of two small human bodies, which were thought to be the remains of the princes. King Charles had them buried in the Chapel of Henry VII.

the ostensible ground. At all events Buckingham, who had long been wearing what he called "a painted countenance," left Richard at Gloucester, and went into Wales to collect material for a war. As soon as Richard knew that Buckingham had begun warlike preparations, he filled all the passes leading from Wales to England with armed men. Meanwhile the rebel duke had sent over to Brittany, where the exiled Earl of Richmond* lay, urging him to make a descent on southern England, in support of the rising in Wales. Outbreaks at Exeter, Salisbury, Rochester, and other places were also arranged. Buckingham forgot nothing except the uncertainty of autumn weather among the hills. A rain of ten days melted his plot to nothing, flooding the Severn so high that he could not cross. His Welshmen left him. He fled to Ralph Banaster at Shrewsbury, on whose friendship he thought he could rely. But Banaster betrayed him to the Sheriff of Shropshire. Nov. 2, He was carried to Salisbury, and there beheaded on a new scaffold in the market-place (Nov. 2, 1483). mond, who had sailed across from Brittany, and lay at anchor in Plymouth Sound, shook out his sails when he heard the news, and went back to Vannes, to bide his time.

1483

Rich

The troubles of King Richard now grew rapidly to a head. His son Edward, in whom his heart had centred all its hopes, died after a short illness in 1484. At the Christmas revels of that year two ladies appeared in modish dresses of similar shape and colour. They were Queen Anne and the Princess Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Edward the Fourth. The gossips of the court and city took note of this little circumstance, and gave it a meaning which the sudden death of Anne, a little later, seemed to confirm. We have no proof that Richard caused her to die; but there is little doubt that he would probably have married his niece, in order to prevent her union with

'Henry Tudor. He was the grandson of Owen Tudor and Queen Catherine, widow of Henry V. His uncle the Earl of Pembroke, exiled after being defeated at Mortimer's Cross (1461), carried the lad about with him in Brittany.

Richmond, had not Ratcliffe and Catesby spoken boldly out and forced him to make a public declaration disclaiming the immoral project. He had nothing for it now but to prepare and wait for the inevitable conflict.

Aug. 1,

1485

Richard cast from him the last remnant of his popularity when he revived Benevolences or forced loans, which his brother had invented in 1473, but which Parliament had abolished in January 1484. The nobles did not then care how soon Richmond came to release them from the screw. Deep and wide the plot spread among the leaders of the English aristocracy ; but the secret defection of Lord Stanley, a rich land-owner in Cheshire, did more to weaken Richard's cause than any other loss. Sailing from Harfleur to Dalle on Milford Haven with a force of a few thousand men, Richmond landed on the Welsh soil to which his ancestry and his name endeared him. He was then thirty years of age-of a quick gray eye and flowing yellow hair, full of life, and bent, if possible, on wearing the English crown. Moving with rapid and stealthy steps toward Shrewsbury, he gladly saw the banner of a noted Welsh soldier, Rice ap Thomas, whom he specially dreaded, advancing to join his ranks. From Shrewsbury to Stafford, from Stafford to Lichfield, from Lichfield to Tamworth, from Tamworth to the decisive field of Bosworth, the army of Richmond proceeded. Richard, who had taken his first stand at the central position of Nottingham, partly surprised by his rival's secret swiftness of approach, and partly wrapped in contempt of a man who possessed no warlike training, delayed until it was too late the necessary preparations for the impending struggle. The army therefore, on whose valour or fidelity his hopes of victory rested, was huge indeed in size, but certainly was not sound in heart. The battle took place on Redmore Plain.* Richard placed his archers in the central van,

* Market-Bosworth is in Leicestershire, thirteen miles west of the county town. Redmore Plain, the scene of the battle, lies a mile to the south.

with a solid square of infantry behind, and cavalry spreading out in wings on either side. A crown glittered on his Aug. 22. helmet as he rode along the lines of his three-andtwenty thousand men. Richmond did his best to spread out his little force of five thousand in an imposing front. A large morass lay between the armies; of this the earl took advantage to defend his flank. After some opening archerypractice and cannonade, Stanley charged the royal lines; and Northumberland, with one-third of Richard's force, drew out from the battle and stood still. The remainder of the fight resolved itself into a desperate and gallant dash of Richard on the knot of men that encircled Richmond. He strove, sword in hand, to hew his way through the living rampart that defended Henry Tudor. It was vain. The flash of his sword, as it rose and fell, played like lightning in the centre of the press; but at last he sank under many wounds.

The victor went to spend the night in Leicester. A little later, there came in from the sodden field a naked corpse, flung over a horse's back, and covered with gore and clay. This was Richard's entry; a humble grave in the Gray Friars' Church received his insulted body. Richard the Third was a true Plantagenet; better, if anything, than the average specimens of his race. He had the characteristic virtues and failings of that princely line.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE PASTON LETTERS.

Old letters-The Pastons-The "Good Judge "- Mems. of a mother-A courtship-Death of Sir John-List of a library.

A

NUMBER of letters, written to or by the Pastons, who

ranked among the highest county families in Norfolk during many centuries, have come down to modern days, escaping that final blaze which often seals the fate of such documents. In these we have an historical treasure beyond price, for they afford us glimpses of the inner English life at a time when the sword was too busy in the land to permit the labours of the pen. * The foreign paper, with its various and often whimsical water-marks; the age-yellowed ink; the strange contortions of the writing; the wild, unsettled spelling; † the strings, passed through a hole cut in the folded sheets and then secured with wax; and the old-fashioned ways of beginning,— all speak to us of a time long departed and somewhat grotesque in its daily dress. Yet, in spite of accidental changes, the human heart beats on with changeless pulse. In the rude and antiquated Paston Letters men seek to borrow money, mothers scold their idle or scampish sons, gay bachelors joke each other

*No paper was made in England until the reign of Henry the Seventh, when John Tate the younger set up a mill at Hartford. His mark was an eight-pointed star, radiating from a double circle.

We find a curious example of this in a letter of Sir John Paston's: "What hyght the arche is to the gronde off ye Ilde (aisle) and how hye the grounde off the Qwyr (choir) is hyer then the grownde of ye Ilde." Here we have ground spelled in three diff rent ways in a couple of lines.