"Weep not for Mortimer
That scorns the world and, as a traveler,
Goes to discover countries yet unknown."
It was his great-grandson, Edmund de Mortimer, who, by marriage with the daughter of Prince Lionel, third son of Edward III, gave that other Edmund Mortimer, his descendant, a better title to the throne than that of Henry IV. This last of the Mortimers was until his death the apparently listless centre of continual conspiracies. When he gave up his ineffectual ghost, his estates passed to his nephew, the vigorous Duke of York, who fixed his chief residence at Ludlow Castle. As the York rebellion gathered force and the Wars of the Roses set in, this neighbourhood became a centre of hostilities. The Lancastrians, in their hour of triumph, wreaked furious vengeance on Ludlow, but Edward IV, on his accession, consoled the town with a liberal charter and selected it as the residence of his sons, the Little Princes of the Tower. It is pleasant to think that before their swift fate came upon them they had a few years of happy childhood playing on the greensward of those spacious courts, perched up with their lesson books in the stone window-seats, and praying their innocent prayers within the arcaded walls of that circular Norman chapel, built on the model of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and praised by Churchyard as
"So bravely wrought, so fayre and finely fram'd,
That to world's end the beauty may endure."
Another princely association, hardly less pathetic, haunts these arched portals and embattled towers. The heir of Henry VII, Prince Arthur, in whom the greatness of Britain's legendary hero was to live again, passed his delicate childhood here, and here, shortly after his marriage to Catherine of Arragon, died suddenly on a spring day of 1502, a lad of sixteen summers. An unknown contemporary tells how letters were hastily despatched from Ludlow to His Majesty's Council, and they, seeking the gentlest bearer of such grievous news, "sent for the King's ghostly father.... He in the morning of the Tuesday following, somewhat before the time accustomed, knocked at the King's chamber door; and when the King understood it was his Confessor, he commanded to let him in. The Confessor then commanded all those there present to avoid, and after due salutation began to say, Si bona de manu Dei suscepimus, mala autem quare non sustineamus? and so showed his Grace that his dearest son was departed to God. When his Grace understood that sorrowful heavy tidings, he sent for the Queen, saying that he and his Queen would take the painful sorrows together. After that she was come, and saw the King her lord and that natural and painful sorrow, as I have heard say, she with full great and constant comfortable words besought his Grace that he would, first after God, remember the weal of his own noble person, the comfort of his realm and of her ... over that how that God had left him yet a fair prince, two fair princesses; and that God is where he was.... Then the King thanked her of her good comfort. After that she was departed and come to her own chamber, natural and motherly remembrance of that great loss smote her so sorrowful to the heart, that those that were about her were fain to send for the King to comfort her."
We saw on a Sunday, in the beautiful Church of St. Lawrence, a dole of bread for the poor, a row of twelve goodly loaves set out on a Tudor monument which is believed to commemorate Prince Arthur, and possibly to cover the ashes of his boyish heart, although the body was buried in Worcester Cathedral, where his chantry stands at the right of the High Altar.
Among the tombs in the rich-windowed choir is one whose inscription reads:
"Heare lyethe the bodye of Ambrozia Sydney, iiii doughter of the Right Honourable Syr Henry Sydney, Knight of the moste noble order of the Garter, Lord President of the Counsell of Wales, etc. And of Lady Mary his wyef, doughter of the famous Duke of Northumberland, who dyed in Ludlow Castell, ye 22nd of Februarie, 1574."
We paused there a moment in reverence to Sir Philip Sidney's mother, "a full fair lady" who lost her beauty by nursing Queen Elizabeth, from whom she took the contagion, through an attack of smallpox, and afterwards "chose rather to hide herself from the curious eyes of a delicate time than come upon the stage of the world with any manner of disparagement."
The last Lord Marcher before the Restoration was the Earl of Bridgwater, whose appointment was most gloriously celebrated by the creation of Milton's "Comus," presented on Michaelmas Night, 1634, in the Great Hall of the castle. The first to hold the office—thenceforth only nominal—after the Restoration was the Earl of Carberry, whose seneschal was one Samuel Butler, a steward who may or may not have kept good accounts, but who used his pen to effective purpose in writing, in a chamber over the gate, the first portion of "Hudibras."