RICHARD PLANTAGENET. 



RICHARD DE BURY. 



ft) 



daughter of his sister the Duchess of Suffolk, to James III.' a eldest 

 son, the Duke of llothsay, afterwards James IV. (a transaction however 

 which did not issue iu an actual marriage). But at home the aspect 

 of things was now becoming more unsatisfactory every hour. He 

 durst not venture in the state of the public mind to call a parliament, 

 and he found himself at once without money and nearly without an 

 adherent upoii whose fidelity he could depend. One after another of 

 the most eminent of those who had hitherto stood by him fled to France 

 to join the Earl of Richmond. At last, on the 7th of August Henry 

 landed at Milford Haven ; and on the 21st of the same month the result 

 of the battle of Bosworth deprived Richard at once of his crown and 

 his life. [HENRY VII.] 



Richard left at least one natural son, known by the name of John of 

 Gloucester, who, although yet a minor at his father's death, had been 

 already appointed governor of Calais. There is also a romantic story 

 told of a Richard Plantagenet, who died in the parish of Eastwell in 

 Kent, in 1550, an old man of eighty -two, after a life spent as a working 

 bricklayer, and who asserted that he v/as present at Bosworth Field, 

 where Richard informed him he was his son ; but this legend rests on 

 the slightest authority. A natural daughter, named Katherine, is 

 assigned to Richard, who was to have been married to the Earl of 

 Huntingdon, but who died in 1484, before she had reached the age 

 agreed upon. The Duchess of York, the mother of Edward IV. and 

 Richard III., we may here notice, survived all these events, not dying 

 till 1495. 



Both the character of Richard III. and many of the events of his 

 reign have been subjects of dispute among modern writers, some of 

 whom have gone the length of attempting to make out that all the 

 crimes imputed to him are the mere fabrications of his enemies. Much 

 to this effect that Horace Walpole has advanced in his famous 'Historic 

 Doubts,' and later writers have repeated, had been anticipated by Sir 

 George Buck, in his ' Life and Reign of Richard III.,' published so 

 long ago as the middle of the 17th century. Buck's work however 

 also contains a considerable quantity of matter not elsewhere pre- 

 served, at least in a printed form. The chief original historian of 

 this reign is Sir Thomas More, in his unfinished tract, entitled ' A 

 History of the Pitiful Life and Unfortunate Death of Edward V. and 

 the Duke of York his brother; with the Troublesome and Tyrannical 

 Government of the Usurpation of Richard III., and his miserable End.' 

 There are the Latin annalists, John Rouss, or Rosse, and the continuator 

 of the ' History of Croyland.' 



RICHARD PLANTAGENET, Earl of Cornwall, and titular King 

 of the Romans and Emperor of Germany, was the second son of John, 

 king of England, and was born January 5, 1208. He was created Earl 

 of Cornwall by his brother Henry III. in 1226 ; and he figures as one 

 of the leading personages throughout that turbulent and distracted 

 reign, showing generally much moderation and good sense in his 

 endeavours to assuage the contentions between the king and the barons, 

 with whom he occasionally sided against the more outrageous excesses 

 of the royal authority, although, as might be expected, without any 

 participation in the design of abridging the ancient prerogatives of the 

 crown, and not without a natural regard in other respects to the 

 interests created by his position. Although he showed some military 

 talent on more than one occasion, his abilities on the whole seem to 

 have been, like his politics, moderate, and of a middle character ; he 

 had no pretensions to a brilliant or commanding intellect, but he was 

 at least as far removed from the weak-mindedness of the king his 

 brother, generally evincing in his public conduct at least good sense 

 and discretion, as well as a calm and conciliatory temper. It was a 

 consequence of this moral and intellectual constitution however that, 

 if he had no great vices, he should also be without great virtues ; and 

 that the reigning principle of his character should be a cold selfishness, 

 which, though it might shrink from any course of violent aggression 

 upon the rights of others, would yet be active in seeking all safe 

 advantages ; ant), iu that pursuit, would be in danger of sometimes 

 tripping or overreaching itself, notwithstanding all its clear-sightedness 

 and habitual caution. Richard, moreover, if he had no lofty or daring 

 ambition, seems to have had a considerable share of vanity, which 

 also would be apt to assist in betraying him in certain circumstances. 

 If we take these considerations along with us, it will be easy to under- 

 stand his career. After having first joined the barons who attempted 

 to check the royal despotism, and afterwards more than once interposed 

 successfully as a mediator between them and the king, we find him 

 entirely separating himself from their latter and more decided pro- 

 ceedings ; and, in the final struggle with De Montfort and his associates, 

 which put in jeopardy even the possession of the crown by his family, 

 resisting the insurgents as keenly as Prince Edward himself. The 

 most remarkable incident however of Richard's history is his election 

 as King of the Romans in 1256. This honour he is believed to have 

 owed entirely to his great wealth, which enabled him to bribe several 

 of the electors; but it is matter of dispute whether, after all, the 

 majority of votes was really given to him, or, at another election a few 

 weeks after, to his competitor, Alphonso, king of Castile. Richard is 

 commonly reckoned among the German emperors next after William, 

 count of Holland, the successor of Conrad IV. ; but some historians 

 distinguish the whole period from the death of Conrad in 1254, to the 

 accession of Rodolph I. in 1273, by the name of the Grand Interregnum. 

 Richard was crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle, and occasionally exercised 



such of the imperial rights as could be exercised by a stroke of the 

 pen or the expenditure of a little sealing-wax ; but he never enjoyed 

 any real authority iu Germany, nor indeed did he show himself much 

 in that country. He was taken prisoner by De Montfort, along with 

 the king his brother, at the battle of Lewes, in May 1 264, and was 

 confined in Kenilworth Castle for more than a year. He died in his 

 house at Berkhampstead, on the 2nd of April 1272. 



Richard was thrice married : first, in 1230, to Isabel, daughter of the 

 great Earl of Pembroke, and widow of the Earl of Gloucester, who 

 died in 1240; secondly, in 1243, to Sanchia of Provence, a sister of 

 his brother's wife, Queen Eleanor, who died in 1261 ; thirdly, in 1267, 

 to a German lady, Beatrice, daughter of TheoJoric de Falkmoute, and 

 niece of Conrad, archbishop of Cologne, who survived him. Of five 

 children which he had by his first wife, and two by his second, all died 

 without issue. His second, and then eldest, sou Henry, was assassinated 

 in the church of St. Lawrence at Viterbo in Italy, by Simon and Guy, 

 the two sous of De Montfort, on the 3rd of March 1271. The earls of 

 Berkeley claim to be descended from a natural daughter of Richard, 

 earl of Cornwall, Isabel, who married Maurice de Berkeley, the father 

 of the first Baron Berkeley. 



RICHARD DE BURY was bora in 1 287, upon the estate of his 

 father, Sir Richard Angerville, or in Bury St. Edmunds; but it is 

 probable that the predilection which occasioned his taking the name 

 of that place arose from his having received the first rudiments of 

 scholastic education there from his uncle, John de Willoughby, a 

 clergyman. When sufficiently qualified he was sent to Oxford, where 

 he continued to study till he received the appointment of tutor to 

 Prince Edward (afterwards Edward III.), with the office of receiver of 

 his revenues in Wales. This situation enabled him to afford assistance 

 to his royal pupil in the hour of adversity, for when Edward fled with 

 his mother to Paris, and was distressed for want of money, De Bury 

 secretly hastened to succour him, taking with him a large sum in gold, 

 which he had collected while in office ; but his flight being discovered, 

 he was pursued by the king's lieutenant, with a band of twenty-four 

 horsemen, even to Paris, where he narrowly escaped detection by being 

 concealed during seven days in the belfry of the convent of Friars 

 Minors. When Edward came to the throne the fidelity of his tutor 

 was rewarded by a rapid advancement to dignities both in church and 

 state. He was first made cofferer to the king, then treasurer of the 

 wardrobe and clerk of the privy seal ; he also visited Rome twice as 

 legate to Pope John XXII., and on both occasions was treated with 

 great honour and distinction, being made one of the pope's principal 

 chaplains, and presented with a bull nominating him to the first see 

 that should become vacant in England. He made himself remarkable 

 on his second journey by the splendour of his retinue : when he went 

 into the presence of the pope and his cardinals he was uniformly 

 attended by twenty-six clerks and thirty-six esquires, all attired in the 

 most sumptuous manner. His expenses for the journey amounted to 

 500 marks. Whence the means were derived may be seen in the list 

 of his appointments, which, besides the above-named, were, during the 

 first six jears of Edward's reign, two rectories, six prebendal stalls, 

 the archdeaconries of Salisbury and Northampton, the canonry of 

 Weston, and the deanery of Wells. 



While at Paris, on his return from Rome, he received intelligence 

 that the bishopric of Durham was vacant, and that the king had written 

 to the pope requesting his presentation to that see. It happened that 

 the right of election was vested in the prior and chapter of Durham, 

 who, notwithstanding they had also a letter from the king, proceeded 

 to elect Robert de Graystanes, a monk and subprior of Durham, who 

 was confirmed and consecrated by the Archbishop of York, as Bishop 

 Godwin says, with more haste than good speed, for the temporalities 

 were at the king's disposal, and he withheld them till he received the 

 pope's answer, which happened to be dated one day prior to the election 

 of Graystanes, and confirmatory of the appointment of De Bury. Upon 

 this Graystanes was deposed, and De Bury consecrated by the Arch- 

 bishop of Canterbury, on the 19th of December 1333. 



The ready submission to this infringement of the right of appoint- 

 ment by all the parties concerned, has been severely remarked upon 

 by those who were not interested in it. In 1334 De Bury was made 

 chancellor and high treasurer of England. Within the three following 

 years he was thrice at Paris as ambassador to the king of France upon 

 the subject of Edward's claim to the crown of that kingdom, and in 

 the same character he visited Antwerp and Brabant. He had been 

 installed at Durham by proxy, and had once visited the see, but in 

 1337 he did homage to the Archbishop of York. It does not appear 

 when he resigned any of his political appointments, but he probably 

 did not pass much of his time in his diocese till after 1338. When he 

 had leisure, we find him deeply involved in pursuits far more congenial 

 to his taste and suitable to his sacred office than politics. Accident 

 made him a statesman, but he was a scholar from habit and natural 

 inclination. In early youth he delighted in the society of learned 

 men, but of books " in which wisdom is contained " he was an enthu- 

 siastic lover and the most distinguished collector of his age. Fortu- 

 nately for him the king encouraged this disposition, and allowed him 

 to use the influence of office in the promotion of his views. He 

 purchased freely in his travels and at home, where he made himself 

 acquainted with every collection, public and private. Moreover, he 

 gays, when it became commonly reported that books, especially old 



