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crusade against the Hussites in Bohemia. [See BEDFORD, 

 DUKB OF.] 



In 1429 Cardinal Beaufort succeeded in destroying the 

 power of his rival Gloucester, by having the young king 

 crowned, and by inducing the parliament to declare on the 

 occasion that the office of protector, filled by the duke, 

 was, ipso facto, at an end. From being at the head of the 

 council of regency, Gloucester was thus reduced to his rank 

 as a peer. From this time till his death the councils of the 

 cardinal predominated in the administration. 



A powerful party, however, headed by the Duke of Glou- 

 cester, opposed itself to the administration of the car- 

 dinal. The spirit of the age was averse to the rule of 

 ecclesiastical statesmen ; and the House of Commons in 

 particular had directed its attention to the question of church 

 reform, as essential to good government. In a meeting of 

 peers, in 1431, it was proposed that, as the dignity of car- 

 dinal was, by the law of the land, incompatible with the 

 possession of a bishopric in England, Beaufort should be 

 removed from the see of Winchester, and compelled to re- 

 fund its revenues from the day that he had accepted the 

 cardinal's hat. Gloucester followed up this motion with a 

 series of charges, to the effect that Beaufort had incurred 

 the penalties of praomunire in having accepted the papal 

 hull, contrary to the express prohibition of the late king, and 

 Vad exempted himself as legate from the jurisdiction of the 

 see of Canterbury. The same charges were renewed in a 

 more formal manner by Gloucester in 1434. (The articles 

 are given at length in Rapin and the Parliamentary Hiitory 

 from Hall.) He accused the cardinal, also, of having 

 amassed wealth by dishonest means, of having usurped 

 the functions of sovereignty, appointing embassies, and re- 

 leasing prisoners on his own authority, and estranging from 

 the person of the young king his relatives and the council 

 of the regency. That these charges were founded on truth 

 is evident from the fact that two acts of parliament were 

 passed, one in 1432, the other in 1437, indemnifying Beau- 

 fort against the penalties of praomunire, and pardoning him 

 for all crimes committed up to the 20th of July in the last- 

 named year. The arrest and probable murder of Gloucester 

 are usually ascribed to his fierce and courageous denunciation 

 of the ecclesiastical counsellors of the king. Gloucester's 

 death took place on the 28th of February, 1447. 



The cardinal survived his great rival but six weeks. 

 His death-bed has been painted in immortal colours by 

 Shakspeare (Henri/ VI. Part 2), but the imagination of 

 the poet has supplied the darkest features of the picture. 

 Shakspeare represents him as expiring in an agony of 

 despair: 



Lord Cardinal, if thou think'st on heaven's bliss, 

 Hold up thy hand, make signal of thy hope. 

 He dies, aud makes no sign.' 



But we know from the authority, Hall, which Shakspeare 

 has followed in the less harrowing details of the scene, that 

 the cardinal's worldliness was confined to expressing his 

 regret that money could not purchase life, and that death 

 should have cut him off at the moment when his rival to 

 the great object of his ambition (the popedom) had been 

 removed. Hall's version is given on the authority of one 

 Baker, the cardinal's chaplain : and the last words are, ' I 

 pray you all to pray for me.' His will, moreover, to which 

 two codicils are attached, on the 7th and 9th of April (he 

 died on the 1 Ith), is still extant (Nichols's Royal and Noble 

 Wills, p. 311), indicating a state of feeling more worthy of 

 a Christian prelate. His great wealth was distributed, ac- 

 cording to the provisions of his will, in charitable donations. 

 Not less than 40001. was allotted for the relief of the indi- 

 gent prisoners in Newgate, Ludgate, the Fleet, Marshalsea, 

 King's Bench, and the prison attached to the Southwark 

 manor of the diocese of Winchester ; and the hospital of 

 St. Cross at Winchester still exists as a monument of his 

 munificence. Cardinal Beaufort was buried in the beautiful 

 chantry which bears his name in Winchester Cathedral. 



(Hall's Chronicles; Turner's Modern Hittnry nf Eng- 

 land; Uapin's History; Lingard s History ; and Milner's 

 History of Winchester. In the two last-named works the 

 reader will find a much more favourable account of the 

 last moments nf the cardinal, given on the authority of an 

 eye-witness, in the Continuation nf 'the History nf Cropland, 

 than we have adopted in the text.) 



BEAUFORT, MARGARET, COUNTESS OF RICH- 

 MOND AND DERBY, is entitled to honourable mention 

 as an eminent patroness of literature, after the manner of 



the age in which she lived. She was of royal descent, being 

 the daughter and heiress of John Beaufort, DuUe of Sotner> 

 set, grandson of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, third 

 son of Edward III. This descent was not strictly legitimate, 

 the name of Beaufort having been first given' by John of 

 Gaunt to his natural children by Catherine Swynford, who 

 were legitimated by act of parliament under Richard II. 

 Margaret Beaufort was born in 1441 ; and was thrice married, 

 first to Edmund Tudor, half brother to Henry VI., created 

 Earl of Richmond, by whom she had one son, afterwards 

 Henry VII. : secondly to Sir Henry Stafford, a younger 

 branch of the ducal house of Buckingham ; thirdly' to Lord 

 Stanley, afterwards E.irl of Derby. By the two last mar- 

 riages she had no issue. She died in 1509, and is buried at 

 Westminster, where her tomb may be seen in the south 

 aisle of Henry Vllth's Chapel. 



The Countess of Richmond was rich, pious, charitable, 

 and generous. Her attention to the formal observances of 

 religion prescribed by the Papal church was strict even to 

 rigour. To her bounty Christ's College, Cambridge, founded 

 in 1505, and St. John's College, Cambridge, projected and 

 endowed by her, but not chartered till 151 l,owe their exist- 

 ence. The latter, however, was deprived of the greater por- 

 tion of its revenues, that which consisted of the foundress's 

 estates, by Henry VIII., who sued for and recovered them 

 as heir-at-law ; and the wealth which this distinguished col- 

 lege now enjoys is chiefly due to the liberality of later bene- 

 factors. The Countess of Richmond also established a pro- 

 fessorship of divinity, with a salary of 20 marks, in each 

 university; the holders of which are called Lady Margaret's 

 professors. Their incomes have been increased, at Cambridge 

 by the annexation of the rectorial tithes of Terrington in 

 Norfolk, by James I. ; and at Oxford, by the revenues of a 

 prebendal stall in Worcester Cathedral. The Countess of 

 Richmond also appointed a public preacher at Cambridge, 

 salary 10/., whose duties are now confined to the delivery of 

 one Latin sermon yearly. 



Walpole has given this noble lady a place in his Cata- 

 logue of Royal and Noble Authors, as the translator of two 

 books : I . The Mirroure of Golde to the Sinfuil Soul, trans- 

 lated from a French translation of the Speculum Aureum 

 Peccatorum, printed by W. de Worde in 1522; 2. Trans- 

 lation of the fourth book of Dr. J. Gerson's Treatise on the 

 Imitation and Following the Blessed Life of our Most 

 Merciful Saviour Christ, printed at the end of Dr. William 

 Atkinson's translation of the three first books Pynson, 

 1504. The following treatises are said to have been pub- 

 lished by her desire or encouragement: 



Scala Perfeccionis, Englysshed, the I^adder of Perfec- 

 tion, by Walter Hilton W. de Worde, 1494. fol. 



Treatise concernynge the Seven Penetencyall Psalmes, 

 by Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, printed by W. de Worde in 

 1509, and Pynson, 1510. 4to. 



The Ship of Fooles of this World, translated by Henry 

 Watson into prose, and printed by W. de Worde, 1517. 4to. 



Bishop Fisher preached her funeral sermon, entitled 

 A Mornynge Remembraunce, printed by W. de Worde, and 

 reprinted in 1708, with a biographical preface by the Rev. 

 Mr. Baker. (Walpole's Catalogue, continued by Park, 

 180C ; and Kippis's Biog. Britannica.) 



BEAUFORT, LOUIS DE, was born of a French fa 

 mily, settled in Germany or Holland, as far as we may pre- 

 sume from the scanty information we can find of his early 

 life. He was for a time tutor to the young prince of Hesse 

 Homburg; but he became known to the learned world by his 

 Dissertation sur I Incertitude des Cinq Premiers Sii-cles de 

 I'Histoire Romaine, 8vo. 1 738. He was one of the first modern 

 writers who carried the spirit of critical investigation into the 

 narrative of the first five centuries of the Roman common- 

 wealth ; he showed that both Livy and Dionysius could not 

 oe implicitly trusted, and that it required a process of very 

 acute and careful discrimination to separate the truth from 

 the legendary fables of early Roman history. Among other 

 things he maintained that Porsenna did really conquer 

 Rome after the expulsion of Tarquinius. Niebuhr remarks, 

 when speaking of Beaufort's dissertation (vol. i. p. 539, 

 note), ' that the critical examination of this war is the most 

 successful part of that remarkable little work.' His next 

 work was La Republique Romaine, uu Plan General de 

 FAncien Gouvernement de Rome, 1 vols. 4to. La II aye, 

 1 766. The author treats at length and systematically of the 

 institutions of that celebrated republic, of its senate, its 

 p-ipulus and plebs, its comitia, its consuls and tribunes, of 



NO. 218. 



[THE PENNY CYCLOPEDIA.] 



VOL. IV. P 



