THE preservation of those beautiful edifices which were raised by our pious ancestors for the celebration of CHRISTIAN WORSHIP, must be a paramount object of regard with every admirer of our national antiquities; and we conceive that our pages cannot be devoted more usefully than by directing the public mind to those venerable buildings which either time or the ruthless hand of man has reduced to a state of ruin. During the present century, indeed, a great change has been progressively effected with respect to the estimation in which subjects of this kind are held, compared with by-gone times. The people generally have been taught a respect for science; and the merits of our forefathers, as exhibited in their productions, are better known and better appreciated. Still, however, it becomes a duty, wherever the power of imparting information exists, to urge on the already awakened feeling, and by pointin gout those dilapidated buildings which, from the talents displayed in their design and construction, demand to be upheld, contribute to the triumph of art, and increase our aptitude for intellectual pleasures. The Restoration of several decayed edifices within and near London, has recently become a topic of con VOL. I. siderable attention, and subscriptions have been commenced for that purpose. St. Alban's Abbey Church, Waltham Cross, Crosby Hall in Bishopsgate-street, and the "LADYE CHAPEL," which forms the eastend of St. Saviour's Church, Southwark, and of which a view is annexed, in its present state, are the immediate buildings thus proposed to be restored. Descriptive and other particulars of all the above edifices will be given in our succeeding numbers. DISSERTATION ON THE MANNER AND PERIOD OF THE DEATH OF RICHARD II. KING OF ENGLAND BY LORD DOVER. Extracted from the ADDRESS delivered by his Lordship, at the Anniversary Meeting of the Royal Society of Literature, on Friday, May 4th, 1832. It is well known, that the old account of the manner of the death of Richard, which was received implicitly by our historians who wrote during the eighteenth C century, has been now for some time exploded. That account first appeared in print in the additions to Hygden's "Polycronicon," published by Caxton in 1482; from whence it was copied by Fabyan, Hall, and Holinshed. It has also been adopted by Shakspeare, who has perhaps done more than all the others to render it the popular version of the story. It is also to be found in a manuscript of an earlier date than Caxton's publication, which is preserved in the Royal Library at Paris, and entitled, "Relation de la Mort de Richard, Roy d'Angleterre." This manuscript was first quoted by Carte, and has since been made use of by different historians.* This relation is to the effect, that King Richard was murdered by Sir Piers, of Exton, and his assistants, with battle-axes; who pursued him about his prison, striking at him till they had dispatched him, in spite of the heroic resistance of the king, who snatched a battle-axe from one of his assailants, and with it killed no less than four of them. In the year 1634, a pillar was still shown in the room which was supposed to have been the prison of Richard, in Pomfret Castle, which was hacked with the blows of the murderers, as the king fled round it from them.+ In spite, however, of this corroborative tradition, and of the general currency of the tale, Mr. Amyot has satisfactorily shewn, in his able paper on the death of Richard II., inserted in the twentieth volume of the Archæologia, that the story of Sir Piers of Exton rests upon no satisfactory foundation; but that, on the contrary, all the contemporary historians of the death of Richard II. give a totally different account of that event. Of these, Thomas of Walsingham, Thomas Otterbourne, the Monk of Evesham, who wrote the life of Richard, and the continuator of the Chronicle of Croyland, all relate that Richard voluntarily starved himself to death, in a fit of despair, in his prison at Pomfret. To these must also be added, the testimony of Gower the poet, to the same effect, who was not only a contemporary, but had been himself patronized by Richard. There is, however, another version of this tragedy, which relates that his starvation was not voluntary; but inflicted on him by his keepers. That he was, to use the expression of Hardyng the chronicler, who, however, only mentions it as a report, "forhungered.” The Percys, in one of their contests with Henry IV., in their letter of defiance, accuse him of having caused Richard to perish "from hunger, thirst, and cold, * Archæologia, vol. xx, ↑ Archæologia, vol. xxiii. p. 280, note. after fifteen days and nights of sufferings unheard among christians." Archbishop Scroop also, in a subsequent manifesto, repeats the same charge; and Sir John Fortescue has copied the Archbishop's words into a work of his, which is quoted by Stowe, and of which the original is supposed by some to be no longer extant. This accusation of the bitter enemies of Henry, and the hearsay evidence of Hardyng, himself a partisan of Richard and of the Percys, cannot however be considered of sufficient weight to overthrow the concurrent testimony of the trustworthy and contemporary historians, who agree in affirming the voluntary starvation of the king. Nor must we, as Mr. Amyot very justly observes, entirely leave out of the account, the known character for clemency of Henry, which should lead us to imagine him not capable of so atrocious a cruelty, as the one he is here accused of. Of course, upon a subject of so mysterious and secret a nature as the death of Richard, certainty is not to be arrived at; but the probabilities of the case would appear to be very strongly in favour of his voluntary starvation.* Before leaving this part of the subject, it may be as well to remark, that Mr. Amyot mentions, as the most positive disproof than can be given of the tale of Sir Piers of Exton, that when the tomb of King Richard, in Westminster Abbey, was accidentally laid open, the skull of the body contained in it was found entire, and without any marks of violence upon it.+ This testimony, however, becomes of no avail, if, according to Mr. Tytler, the body buried, first at Langley, and then in Westminster Abbey, is not that of King Richard; who, as he affirms, is interred in the Church of the Preaching Friars, at Stirling, in Scotland. This latter hypothesis, however, equally disproves the Exton fable, and this leads us naturally to take a short view of Mr. Tytler's opinion upon the subject. After the publication of Mr. Amyot's paper, in the Archæologia, in 1819, from which I have quoted so largely, the question of the death of King Richard seemed as much set at rest, as the imperfect nature of our knowledge of the transaction would admit of. But in 1829, Mr. Tytler, whose admirable and instructive History of Scotland is well known to all the lovers of historical literature in this country, again * Sir J. Mackintosh, in his excellent History of England, published in Lardner's Cyclopædia, appears, though he delivers no decided opinion, to incline to that of Richard having been starved to death by his keepers. + See Mr. King's Sequel to the Observations on Ancient Castles, Archæologia, vol. vi. (1782). Mr. King is also of opinion that the story of Sir Piers of Exton is fabulous. raised a controversy upon the subject. At the end of the third volume of his history, he has published an elaborate and ingenious essay on the death of Richard II., which has since been answered by Mr. Amyot, in a paper contained in the twenty-third volume of the Archæologia. In confirmation of these authorities, Mr. Tytler cites a French contemporary metrical history of the deposition of Richard II., published in the Archæologia, Vol. XX.; also the various rumours as to the existence of the king, propagated by the different conspirators against the rule of Henry IV.;* and, finally, the testimony of Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, the great supporter of the Wickliffites, or Lollards, who declared when he was seized in 1417, and brought before the Parliament on a charge of heresy, for which, as it is well known, he was burnt alive," that he could acknowledge no judge amongst them, so long as his liege lord, King Richard, was alive in Scotland.” In Mr. Tytler's "Historical Remarks on the death "of Richard II.," the result of which has been since adopted by Sir Walter Scott, in his History of Scotland, and rejected by Sir James Mackintosh, in his History of England, the relation is as follows:-That Richard contrived to effect his escape from Pomfret Castle, though the mode in which he did this is no where stated. That he travelled in disguise to the Scottish isles; and that he was there discovered, in the kitchen of Donald, Lord of the Isles, by a jester, who had been bred up at his court. That Donald, Lord of the Isles, sent him, under the charge of the Lord Montgomery, to Robert III., King of Scotland, by whom he was supported as became his rank, so long as that monarch lived. That he was, after the death of the king, delivered to the Duke of Albany, the go-it. vernor of the kingdom, by whom he was honourably treated. And that he finally died in the castle of Stirling, in the year 1419; and was buried on the north side of the altar, in the church of the Preaching Friars, in the town of that name. This account is given by Bower, or Bowmakar, the continuator of Fordun's Chronicle, and a contemporary historian. It is supported, in some of its particulars, by an anonymous manuscript, without a date, in the Advocates' Library, at Edinburgh, who has been consulted by Mr. Tytler; and also by the hearsay evidence of Andrew Winton, Prior of Lochleven, the metrical chronicler, who, however, concludes his account of the fugitive by saying, that "whether he had been the king or not, there were few who knew for certain." But the strongest evidence in favour of the version of the History of Richard, which has been adopted by Mr. Tytler, is that of certain entries in the accounts of the Chamberlain of Scotland, during the period in question. These occur in the accounts for the years 1408, 1414--15, and 1417; and are all to the effect, that the Lord Governor (the Duke of Albany)" has neither demanded nor received any allowance for the sums expended by him, for the support of Richard, King of England." In the last of these memoranda, the sums he has expended, for the maintenance of the king for eleven years, are computed to have amounted to £733. 6s. 8d.* * Tytler's History of Scotland, vol, iii. This last corroborative circumstance, in which a man, who knew he was about to be put to a cruel death, and who therefore would naturally be inclined to catch at any thing, which might give him a chance of averting his doom, endeavoured to intimidate and puzzle his judges, by asserting that Richard was alive, cannot, upon the face of it, carry much weight with Still less can the rumours to the same effect, put forward by the disaffected to the Lancastrian King, whose interest it so clearly was to have such a tale believed, be received with any confidence. With regard to the French metrical history, which expresses doubts whether, instead of having died by starvation, the king "be not still alive and well, and shut up in their prison," it evidently merely records the reports of the day; while at the same time it gives us some insight into the origin of those reports. For it states, not as a rumour, but as a fact, that the conspirators against Henry, whose disturbances broke out in the winter of 1399 and 1400, and who were headed by the Earls of Kent, Salisbury, and Huntingdon, placed one of Richard's chaplains at their head, by name Maudelain, whose resemblance to the king was very striking; and whom “ they armed as king, and set a very rich crown upon his helm, that it might be believed of a truth, that the king was out of prison."† With regard to the memoranda in the Chamberlain's accounts, on which Mr. Tytler lays so much stress, Mr. Amyot remarks, and as it appears to me very justly, that "the proofs that some person, whoever he may have been, was so detained in custody, required no such confirmation; and it is equally clear, that considerable charges must have been incurred in maintaining him suitably to his supposed rank. No * Mr. Webb's Notes to French Metrical Romance, Archæologia, vol. xx. + Mr. Webb's translation of French Metrical Romance, Archæologia, vol. xx. anonymous manuscript without a date, in the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh, must be considered of doubtful authority, from the probability there is that its assertions were copied from one of the chronicles already cited. Besides, though it mentions the existence of the supposed Richard in Scotland, and his arrival there, it advances no arguments or facts in favour of his being the person he was pretended to be." claim could decently have been advanced, or even | metrical romance, and Andrew Winton, the chronicler, adverted to, for the maintenance of an acknowledged only throw out doubts upon the subject; while the impostor. It may, indeed, admit of a question, whether the fact established by these records, that the Regent neither demanded nor received from the public treasury any reimbursement of these expenses, may not afford an inference, that he had retained his captive for objects of private and personal policy, and that the doubts, which we collect from Winton, to have existed in Scotland, as to the real rank of the captive, might have induced him to refrain from enforcing a demand, which otherwise could not, on public grounds, have been refused.”* The authority of Bower, or Bowmakar, standing as it does thus singly, can hardly be allowed to outweigh the testimonies of Walsingham, Otterbourne, the Monk of Evesham, the Continuator of the Chronicle of Croyland, and Gower the poet, all contemporaries, and who all assert the king's death by voluntary starvation in Pomfret Castle. It remains to remark briefly, upon the strong cor Mr. Amyot, in favour of this latter version of the story of the death of Richard, as contra-distinguished from that adopted by Mr. Tytler. Mr. Amyot then proceeds to argue, that, under the circumstances in which Albany was placed, during the time the supposed king was in his custody, his retaining possession of him, had he been the real Richard, was to the last degree improbable; though it may have been convenient to him to give the public a notion that the impostor at his court was that un-roborative arguments and evidence brought forward by fortunate sovereign. For it must be remembered that, at this time, not only was James, the rightful King of Scotland, a prisoner in England, but also Duke Murdoch, the son of Albany, whom his father would, probably, gladly have received in exchange for his captive, if Henry would have consented to it. On the other hand, it would appear but natural that Henry, if he had believed the real Richard to be still alive, would have consented willingly to any exchange, in order to get him into his own power. So far, however, was this from being the case, that though Archbishop Arundel seems, by a letter, which is preserved in the Cottonian manuscripts, in the British Museum,+ to have advised Henry IV. to insist upon the impostor being given up, it does not appear that the king thought it worth while to do so; as, in his answer to the Archbishop, he does not even allude to the subject. So little indeed was the possession of the supposed Richard deemed of importance by the English government, that when, early in the reign of Henry V., Duke Murdoch was sent back to his father, it was not the pretented royal captive, but Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, who was selected by the English monarch as the prisoner to be exchanged, and who was accordingly delivered up to him. Of the other authorities of Mr. Tytler, the continuation of Fordun is the only contemporary one, who asserts the story of Richard's existence in Scotland with any degree of positiveness. The French * Archæologia, vol. xxiii. p. 283. Mr. Amyot first touches upon the public exposure of the body of Richard in London, previous to his burial at Langley, which is attested by the four following contemporary historians,-Otterbourne, Walsingham, Hardyng, and Froissart; of these, the latter says, that twenty thousand persons came to see the body, which lay for two hours on a litter in Cheapside, with the face uncovered from the forehead down to the throat. In answer to this fact, supported by such various authorities, of whom one (Hardyng) actually saw the body, and which, if allowed, at once oversets the whole story of the king's exile in Scotland, Mr. Tytler has only to produce the doubtful testimony of Creton, the author of the French metrical romance already quoted. Creton expresses a doubt, whether the body was that of the king; and says, that he inclines to believe, that it was that of Maudelain the priest, who resembled Richard; unfortunately, however, for this supposition, Maudelain, as Mr. Amyot observes, had already been beheaded some time previously, for the part he had taken in personating the king during the conspiracy of the Earls of Kent, Salisbury, and Huntingdon. The second point urged by Mr. Amyot, is the solemn removal of the body of Richard from Langley to Westminster Abbey by Henry V., who, upon this * Boethius affirms the same story, namely, of Richard's death + For letter of Archbishop Arundel, and the King's answer, and burial, in Scotland; but he evidently only takes it from the see Archæologia, vol. xxiii, p. 297. authorities mentioned in the text. occasion, according to Otterbourne and Walsingham, "mourned for him as for a father." "It is not," continues Mr. Amyot, "to be credited," (had he not been convinced that it was the real body of Richard) "that he would have sanctioned a mockery, the certain effect of which would have been to revive the compassion of the people for their captive sovereign." Mr. Amyot then adduces the conduct of the Percys and Archbishop Scroop in spreading and strengthening, by their manifestoes, the reports of Richard's death; whereas, had he been really alive, they would undoubtedly have made use of his name, as a great and powerful support to their cause. He also alludes to what must be considered a strong circumstance in favour of the received account of the death of Richard, and of the period when it happened (1400), namely, that his Queen,-Isabella of France, re-married with Charles, Duke of Orleans, in 1406; twelve years before the time assigned for Richard's death, by those who wish to support the idea of his residence in Scotland. It is certainly neither to be supposed, that the Queen would have consented to this second marriage, nor that the French prince would have sought her hand, unless they had both had sufficient proofs of the death of her former husband. Finally, Mr. Amyot urges, as his concluding argument, the little feeling that appears to have been excited upon the subject, during the nineteen years of the supposed detention of Richard in Scotland; the small importance apparently attached to the mysterious prisoner by Henry IV.; and the entire disregard and disbelief of the tale by all the English historians, "from Hall, Stowe, and Holinshed, down to Rapin, Carte, and Lingard." " Mr. Amyot concludes his able dissertation, by professing, with all respect for the talents and research of the Scottish historian, his entire disbelief in the notion of Richard's escape from Pomfret, and subsequent detention in Scotland. In this opinion I feel bound to concur; though at the same time I must allow, that the ingenuity of Mr. Tyler at first, and before I had thoroughly examined the subject, disposed me to lean with some favour to his view of the story. In a matter of such remote history, and occurring in so dark a period, it is impossible on either side to arrive at positive certainty. The best that can be hoped for in such a research is, by comparing different statements, and weighing various authorities, to decide at length upon adopting that account, which appears to possess the greatest degree of probability, and to be liable to the fewest objections. * Archæologia, vol. xxiii. That some interesting evidence on this historica question might be obtained, by fully opening the tomb of King Richard, in Westminster Abbey, is extremely probable; for though both Gough and King speak of examining the skull of that ill-fated Sovereign, there appears cause to believe them in error. 66 Henry the Fourth, as we learn from various authorities, was exceedingly anxious that a knowledge of Richard's decease should be generally promulgated, and for that purpose, according to the "Chronicle of Dunstable," (Vide MS. in Bibl. Harl. fol. 164.) "he lette sere him in a lynnen clothe, save his visage," which was left opyn that men myght see and knowe his personne;"—and had him brought to London, where he was exposed to public view, during three days, in St. Paul's Cathedral. There also, his exequies were solemnized in the King's own presence; after which his body was conveyed to Langley, in Hertfordshire, and buried in the Church of the Friars Preachers. Fabian says, ("Chronicle," p. 577) "Anone as Kynge Henry [the Fifth] was crowned, and ye solemnitye of the feest of Easter was passyd, he sent vnto the Fryers of Langley, and caused the corps of Kynge Richarde to be taken out of ye earth, and so with reaverence and solempnnytie to be conveyed vnto Westmynster, and vpon the south syde of Seynt Edwardes Shryne there honourably to be buryed by Queen Anne his wyfe, which there before tyme was entered." The There can be no doubt but that the tomb was constructed during Richard's sovereignty, the original indentures for its erection being still extant.* Sub-basement, which faces to the south aisle, is ornamented with six large radiated quatrefoils, on which were formerly shields of arms, affixed at the centres. These shields were stolen many years ago, and “through the holes left by that removal some coffin boards and bones were to be seen." The latter were supposed to be those of Richard and his Queen; and Mr. Gough states, in his Sepulchral Monuments, that "he examined both the skulls pretty closely, but could find on the King's no mark of St. Piers's pole-axe.+ Now this examination does not by any means decide the historical point to which it was intended to apply; for the sub-basement of the tomb descends nearly four feet below the level of the pavement of St. Edward's Chapel, on which the tomb itself stands. |