INTRODUCTION. FORMER publications* of the Camden Society have brought before our notice Richard Duke of Gloucester, as continually engaged in the intrigues of a court or the storms of civil war, while for four centuries both his person and character have been the theme of almost universal vituperation. Into these subjects it is not the province of the editor of the present volume to enter; and, in truth, there is now the less occasion for it, since the volumes of Miss Halsted have appeared in the field of literature. This talented and zealous writer has adduced a host of authorities, apparently proving that his personal deformity existed but in the libels of an opposing faction, perpetuated in the pages of the poet and the novelist; while at the same time her researches seem to throw such light over the darker shades in his chequered career, as to induce the strongest presumption that he was not guilty of, or accessory to, those startling crimes which have been charged to his account. The limits, however, of the brief introduction allotted to this work, compel us to turn our attention from scenes of battle and of blood to other, and to us more interesting portions of his history. When, on the partition † of Warwick's vast domains between the sister heiresses, the lordship and manor of Middleham, with its ancestral castle, became the fair heritage of Gloucester in * Historie of the Arrival of Edward IV.; Warkworth's Chronicle; and Polydore Vergil; being Nos. I. X. and XXVIII. of the Camden Society's publications. + A.D. 1473. CAMD. Soc. B right of his wife,* the Lady Anne Neville, it assumed an extraordinary interest in his eyes. It may have been the beauty and fertility of the region in which it lay, still rendering Wensleydale an object of attraction to the lover of God's handiworks,-it may have been the reminiscences † of his earlier days, when within its feudal walls he first learnt the art of war from the princely Warwick, or whispered the soft breathings of affection into the ear of his gentle daughter: it may have been all or any of these; but certain it is, that, though the pomp and circumstance of state, or the high duties of his vice-regal station, may have compelled him the while to unfurl his banner, and reside within the time-worn walls of Pontefract, ‡ yet ever and anon did he escape from these to Middleham, "the centre and the home of his domestic affections." Here then it was that the royal Gloucester resolved to establish a foundation, which might for ever attest his reverence for the honour and glory of God. To quote the language of that indefatigable historian § to whom we have already alluded, "It was not alone the restoration of castles and strongholds that occupied Gloucester's attention, and called forth his munificence; to his honour let it be recorded, that religion, || and the worship of God * Halsted's Richard III. vol. i. p. 298. + Strickland's Queens of England, vol. iii. pp. 432, 433. Richard Duke of Gloucester, made high constable of England 29 Feb. 1472, resided at Pontefract as chief seneschal of the king's duchy of Lancaster in the north parts. -Plumpton Correspondence, p. 26, note. § Halsted's Richard III. vol. i. pp. 300, 301. || The Harleian Collection contains a memorable instance of Richard's horror of sacrilege in a letter, "whereby the king (calling to remembraunce the dreadfulle sentence of the churche of God, yeven ayenst alle those personnes which wilfully attempt to usurp unto themselffes, ayenst good conscience, possessions or other things of right belonging to God and his said churche, and the gret perille of soule whiche may ensue by the same), commands that 20 acres and more of pasture within the parke of Pountfret, which was taken from the priour and convent of Pountfreit about the 10th yere of K. Edw. the IVth, in temples consecrated to his service, was fully as much the object of his active zeal and attention as the repair of those defensive fabrics that suited his warlike temperament. Whitaker states, in his most interesting History of Richmondshire, that that county abounds with memorials of this prince's bounty to charities and religious-houses.' 'He seems,' adds this able writer, to have divided his residence for a considerable time between his castle here (Middleham), and that of Skipton. He bestoweth liberally on the monks of Coverham* and the parish of Skipton, for the repair of their respective churches:' but under the walls of his own castle, his favourite Middleham, he meditated greater things, and greater things he did indeed accomplish." During Gloucester's sojourn in the metropolis, and even amid the splendour of that "festive scene, which had induced his visit to the court of Edward IV.," the solemnization of the marriage of his infant nephew the Duke of York with the heiress of the house of Norfolk, the Lady Anne Mowbray, he seems to have turned his attention to the project which had long-occupied his mind, of amplifying the parish church of Middleham, by founding and incorporating there a college for a dean and six secular priests. The royal wedding occurred on the 15th of January, 1477, and on the 21st day of February, in the same year, Richard's exertions were crowned with success; and "a licence" was granted by King Edward, "for erecting the church of Middleham into a college."+ be restored unto them. Yoven the 2d day of Octobre, an. primo." MSS. Harl. 433, fol. 121. See also Miss Halsted's admirable remarks on this document, Richard III. vol. ii. pp. 174, 175. * Gloucester obtained, in 1475, the reversion of the manor of Coverdale (vide Rot. Par.), a district in close local connexion with the Middleham domain. + Middleham Charters, Appendix A. |