sibly to fix the precise time of the coronation, but in reality to ascertain which of the lords were in earnest to have young Edward for their king. The first attack on Elizabeth took place at this council-table, when Gloucester, after finding Hastings incorruptible in his fealty to the heirs of Edward IV., broke out into a strain of invective against him, as leagued with that "witch, dame Gray, called his brother's wife, who, in conjunction with Jane Shore, had by their sorceries withered his arm." He showed his arm, which all present well knew had been long in that state. Hastings, being about to deny any alliance with the queen or the powers of darkness, was rudely interrupted, dragged forth to the Tower-yard, and beheaded, without trial, before Gloucester's dinner was served. The same morning Hastings had exulted much on hearing the news that lord Richard Gray, the queen's son, and earl Rivers, her brother, whom he especially hated, had been put to death at Pontefract.'

From that moment Elizabeth found her worst anticipations. more than realized. The next blow was the attempt made at St. Paul's-cross, by Dr. Shaw, to prove her marriage invalid and her children illegitimate. This man, however, overshot his mark, by attacking Cicely of York," Richard's mother: he repeated the scandals her son Clarence had cast upon her name, and reaped no fruits but disgrace for his blundering malice. Soon afterwards, the faction of the duke of Gloucester presented a petition to prevent the crown from falling to the issue of "the pretended marriage between king Edward and Elizabeth Gray, made without the assent of the lords of the land, and by the sorcery of the said Elizabeth and her mother Jaquetta (as the public voice is through the land),

1 Dr. Lingard has proved, by the date of the will of earl Rivers, made at Sheriff-Hutton June 23, that they had, for some purpose, been misinformed.

* All Richard's private councils were held at the dower-residence of his mother. at Baynard's-Castle, where she was then abiding. He wrote to her accounts of Lost of his proceedings, (see Walpole's Historic Doubts,) and, from the tenour of his letters, there is little doubt but what she favoured his usurpation. Shaw's Ittack was that of an officious partisan, eager to be busy before he had sufficient information of what was required from him. He was brother to Richard's frand, the lord mayor.-See Archæologia on the subject of Cicely of York. Thomas Hayward, the dramatist, affirms that Dr. Shaw was chaplain and confessor to Edward IV.

privily and secretly in a chamber, without proclamation by banns according to the laudable custom of the church of Eng land; the said king Edward being married and troth-plight a long time before to one Eleanor Butler, daughter to the old earl of Shrewsbury." A forced recognition of Richard as king, in the hall of Crosby-house, his town residence, followed the presentation of this petition, and from that day, June 26th. the son of Elizabeth Woodville was considered as deposed. The coronation of Richard III. took place ten days after.

Among the gloomy range of fortresses belonging to the Tower, tradition has pointed out the Portcullis tower as the scene of the murder of the young princes. The royal children were probably removed to this building when their uncle came to take possession of the regal apartments in the Tower on the 4th of July." "Forthwith the two young princes were both shut up, and all their people removed but only one. called Black Will, or Will Slaughter, who was set to serve them, and four keepers to guard them. The young king was heard to say, sighingly, 'I would mine uncle would let me have my life, though he taketh my crown.' After which time the prince never tied his points, nor any thing attended to himself; but, with that young babe his brother, lingered in thought an heaviness till the traitorous deed delivered them from wretchedness."

During Richard's progress to the north, he roused sir James Tyrrel from his pallet bed in his guard-chamber one night at Warwick, and sent him to destroy the royal children.' Sir

1 Neither this petition, nor the copy of it in the act of parliament, casts a sur on the character of dame Eleanor Talbot, afterwards Butler: it was probably a marriage in early youth. Eleanor has been an enigma to the genealogy d Talbot; but Milies, in his Catalogue of Honour, clearly identifies her, (p. 743) She was daughter to the brave son of the great earl of Shrewsbury, young Joba Talbot, as he is called by Shakspeare, and of his first wife Joan Chedder, who k him only daughters. Her eldest sister married John Mowbray, third duke of Norfolk. Eleanor married Thomas Butler, lord of Sudely, and seems to have lived and died a stainless character; she was a great benefactress to St. Bennet's college, Cambridge. Her niece, Anne Talbot, likewise married a lord Sudely which has occasioned some mistakes.

2 Hall, after sir T. More, p. 375, whose words, somewhat modernised a abbreviated, have been followed.

Later discoveries have shown that Tyrrel was vice-constable of England undr Edward IV., and that he was commonly employed by his master to put illeg executions into effect, much after the mode of Louis XI.'s familiar, Tristan.

Robert Brakenbury refused to co-operate, but gave up the keys of the Tower for one night to the usurper's emissary. "Then sir James Tyrrel devised that the princes should be murdered in bed, to the execution whereof he appropriated Miles Forest, one of their keepers, a fellow flesh-bred in murder; and to him he joined one John Dighton, his own horse-keeper, a big, broad, square knave. All their other attendants being removed from them, and the harmless children in bed, these men came into their chamber, and suddenly lapping them in the clothes, smothered and stifled them till thoroughly dead: then laying out their bodies in the bed, they fetched sir James to see them, who caused the murderers to bury them at the stairfoot, deep in the ground, under a heap of stones. Then rode sir James in great haste to king Richard, and showed him the manner of the murder, who gave him great thanks, but allowed not their burial in so vile a corner, but would have them buried in consecrated ground. Sir Robert Brakenbury's priest then took them up, and where he buried them was never known,' for he died directly afterwards. But when," continues sir Thomas More, "the news was first brought to the unfortunate mother, yet being in sanctuary, that her two sons were murdered, it struck to her heart like the sharp dart of death: she was so suddenly amazed, that she swooned and fell to the ground, and there lay in great agony, yet like to a dead corpse. And after she was revived and came to her memory again, she

1 Sir Thomas More has, in these accounts, followed the deposition of the criminals who perpetrated the dark deed. Tyrrel was condemned so late as 1499, for some minor Yorkist plot, and gave this information before his execution in 1502. His evidence, and that of his satellites, was fully corroborated by the bones discovered under the stairs of the Record-office, in 1664, which office was no other than the chapel within the Tower; a spot which embraced the two requisite objects of concealment and consecration. The murderous usurper, whose first pang of enscience originated in the unchristian manner of the burial of his victims, ordered them to be exhumed from under the stairs where they were first put, and laid in a hallowed place. The priest of the Tower found no spot equally sacred and secret as the entrance to his own chapel, in which service was then performed every day. The desecration of the chapel, and the change of its name to that of the Record-office, have prevented historians from identifying it as a ensecrated spot, perfectly agreeing with Richard's directions. Henry VII., who could only gain intelligence of the first burial, vainly searched for the bodies, ne the priest of the Tower, who could have directed him, had died soon after he transferred the bodies, and the secret died with him, till the alteration of the chapel into a depôt for papers revealed it in the reign of Charles II.

wept and sobbed, and with pitiful screeches filled the whole mansion. Her breast she beat, her fair hair she tare and pulled in pieces, and calling by name her sweet babes, accounted herself mad when she delivered her younger son out of sanctuary, for his uncle to put him to death. After long lamentation, she kneeled down and cried to God to take vengeance, who,' she said, 'she nothing doubted would remember it;' and when, in a few months, Richard unexpectedly lost his only son, the child for whose advancement he had steeped his soul in crime, Englishmen declared that the imprecations of the agonized mother had been heard."

The wretched queen's health sank under the load of intense anguish inflicted by these murders, which had been preceded by the illegal execution of her son, lord Richard Gray, and of her chivalric brother, at Pontefract. She was visited in sanctuary by a priest-physician, Dr. Lewis, who likewise attended Margaret Beaufort, mother to Henry Tudor, earl of Richmond, then an exile in Bretagne. The plan of uniting the princess Elizabeth with this last scion of the house of Lancaster, was first suggested to the desolate queen by Dr. Lewis. She eagerly embraced the proposition, and the good physician becoming, by means of daily visits, the medium of negotiation between the two mothers, the queen finally agreed to recognise Henry Tudor as king of England, if he were able to dispossess the usurper and obtain the hand of her daughter. Buckingham, having been disgusted by Richard, his partner in crime, rose in arms. The queen's son, Dorset, (who had escaped out of sanctuary by the agency of his friend Lovel, one of the tyrant's ministers,) raised an insurrection in Yorkshire with the queen's valiant brother, sir Edward Woodville; but, on Buckingham's defeat, fled to Paris, where he continued the treaty for the marriage of his half-sister the princess-royal, and Henry Tudor.

After the utter failure of Buckingham's insurrection, ElizaThis dreadful scene is noted by sir Thomas More as happening during Richard III.'s absence at York, were he was re-crowned in September 1484. 2 Hall, pp. 390-392. His priesthood is proved by the appellation Sir.' It must have given him peculiar facilities for conferring with Elizabeth in the abbey of Westminster.

8

3 Grandson to Katherine of Valois, queen of Henry V. See her biography.

beth was reduced to despair, and finally was forced to leave sanctuary, and surrender herself and daughters into the hands of the usurper, March 1484. For this step she has been blamed severely by those who have not taken a clear and close view of the difficulties of her situation. She had probably, in the course of ten months, exhausted her own means, and tired the hospitality of the monks at Westminster. Moreover, though the king could not lawfully infringe the liberties of sanctuary, he could cut off supplies of food, and starve out the inmates,' for he kept a guard round the abbey. To use the words of a contemporary,-" During the queen's stay at Westminster-abbey, the church and monastery were enclosed like a camp, and strictly guarded by soldiers under one 'Nuffield;' and none were suffered to go in or out without especial warrant, lest, as Richard III. feared, the princesses should be conveyed away by sea." Notwithstanding this terrible restraint, Elizabeth would not leave her retreat without exacting a solemn oath, guaranteeing the safety of her children from Richard, which the usurper took in the presence of the lord mayor and aldermen, as well as the lords of the council. The terms of Elizabeth's surrender are peculiarly bitter; for it is evident that she and her daughters not only descended into the rank of mere private gentlewomen, but she herself was held in personal restraint, since the annuity of seven hundred marks allotted by act of parliament for her subsistence, was to be paid, not to her, but to John Nesfield, squire of the body to king Richard, "for the finding, exhibition, and attendance of dame Elizabeth Gray, (late calling herself queen of England.)" Thus Elizabeth had not a servant she could call her own, for this myrmidon of king Richard's was to find her, not only with food and clothes, but attendance.

After leaving sanctuary, some obscure apartments in the palace of Westminster are supposed to have been the place of her abode. From thence she wrote to her son Dorset at

'Hubert de Burgh was nearly starved to death by Henry III. There have been instances of actual starvation.

* Westmonasterium, vol. ii. p. 34. Nuffield is the same as Nesfield in the Parliamentary History.

3 Parliamentary Rolls, quoted in Drake's Parl. Hist.