VII. Horace Walpole possessed amongst his collection of pictures at Strawberry Hill three paintings in which he claimed there were portraits of Duke Humphrey. The first was a representation of the marriage of Henry VI., and Walpole thought that it was probably designed for the King, but executed after his death. The King and Queen stand in the front of the picture, and behind the former is a nobleman, bald headed, with a beard, and wearing a furred mantle. The workmanship throughout shows considerable power and expression, and would seem to be of a later date than is supposed. (Walpole, Anecdotes of Painting in England, London, 1876, i. 34, 35; Catalogues of Strawberry Hill Sale, p. 197.) The second picture was once part of the doors of a shrine in the Abbey of St. Edmundsbury, which Walpole had sawed into four panels. According to his judgment two of the panels bear portraits of Cardinal Beaufort and Archbishop Kemp; the third may represent St. Joseph in adoration, or more probably the donor, the fourth is described as a portrait of Duke Humphrey of Gloucester, and corresponds exactly in dress and appearance with the figure said to be a likeness of the same Duke in the ‘Marriage of Henry VI.’ The third and fourth panels ‘are so good that they are in the style of the school of the Caracci. They at least were painted by some Italian; the draperies have large folds, and one wonders how they could be executed in the reign of Henry VI.’ (Walpole’s Letters, Mrs. Paget Toynbee’s edition, xi. 183, 184; Catalogue of Strawberry Hill Sale, p. 211.) Probably neither of these pictures was painted in the reign of Henry VI. The King would not have wished to have the uncle whom he had been taught to hate introduced into a picture of his marriage, nor would a contemporary have painted Cardinal Beaufort, Kemp, and Gloucester on adjoining panels. Far more probably the marriage picture represents the union of the houses of Lancaster and York in the persons of Henry VII. and his wife Elizabeth, an event fraught with far more significance than the one suggested by Walpole, and the shrine is most likely of much the same date. However, Walpole’s theory had been universally accepted, and prints of the figure from the panel of St. Edmundsbury were made, as being an authentic likeness of the Duke of Gloucester (Ackerman’s History of Oxford (London, 1814), ii. 272; Collections for the History of Hertfordshire, by N. Solomon, i. 87: Extra illustrated copy of Wood’s History and Antiquities of the University of Oxford in the Bodleian, MS. Top. Oxon., c. 16, p. 914). George Perfect Harding also painted one of his well-known water-colour portraits from this panel, and it is now in the possession of Miss C. Agnes Rooper, Per Selwood, Gervis Road, Bournemouth. It is to be noticed that the likeness between the two so-called portraits of Gloucester is not so exact as Walpole would have us think, for whereas, in the marriage of Henry VI., he is represented with a beard, in the panel he is clean shaven. This last, though probably not contemporary, seems to possess some indications that it represents the same face as the Arras manuscript, but at a later stage of life. Also it was quite possible that when personal rivalries had been forgotten in the lapse of years, the monks of Bury might erect a memorial to one of their patrons, along with others who had not been his friends during his life. Nevertheless, we cannot generalise as to Humphrey’s appearance from this portrait, which, to say the least, has a doubtful authenticity. The third picture of the Strawberry Hill collection, said to contain a portrait of the Duke of Gloucester, was once an altar-piece at Shene, and was probably painted for Henry VII. It represents Henry V. and his three brothers, together with his wife and other ladies, but the faces have no individuality, and are too conventional to be taken as portraits. These three pictures were sold to two different buyers at the Strawberry Hill sale. The ‘Marriage of Henry VI.’ and the panels from St. Edmundsbury were bought by the Duke of Sutherland, while the picture of Henry V. and his family went to the Earl of Waldegrave (Catalogue of the Strawberry Hill Sale).
VIII. In St. Mary’s Hall, Coventry, there is an Arras tapestry, which hangs below the north window. It is divided into six compartments, the two centre ones containing allegorical figures, and in the upper ones to left and right certain saints are represented. In the remaining two compartments a king and queen kneel before desks with their suite in attendance. The king and queen are supposed to be Henry VI. and his wife. Behind the king stands a bearded figure, which ‘is with no small reason supposed to be the good Duke of Gloucester’ (Thomas Sharp, Dissertation on the Pageants or Mysteries at Coventry (Coventry, 1825); The Coventry Guide (Coventry, 1824), p. 46; The History of the Antiquities of the City of Coventry, No. vi. pp. 187, 188; Handbook of the Arts of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, by M. Jules Labarte (London, 1855), p. 90. An illustration of the tapestry is to be found in this last). However, the workmanship of this tapestry tends to prove that it dates from Tudor rather than Lancastrian times, and in all likelihood it was made to celebrate the visit of Henry VII. and his Queen to Coventry, not that of Henry VI. and Margaret. Both these monarchs and their consorts were members of the Guild of the Holy Trinity in that city.
APPENDIX F
A LEGEND OF GLOUCESTER’S DEATH
Amongst seventeenth-century chroniclers there are many accounts as to the way in which Gloucester was murdered, the most popular of which, perhaps, is the one that he was smothered to death between two pillows. A contemporary Frenchman gives a different version, which has an extraordinary resemblance to the stories which surround the death of George, Duke of Clarence, in 1478. This occurs in a rhymed account by George Chastellain of the unusual and interesting events which happened in his days and runs as follows:
‘Par fortune semestre
Veis à l’œil viviment
Le Grant duc de Glocestre
Meurdrir piteusement;
En vin plain une cuve