[47a] Edward Prince of Wales was the only child of King Henry VI. and Queen Margaret (usually called Margaret of Anjou). He was born in the King’s palace at Westminster, on the 13th of October, 1453, in the thirty-first year of Henry VI., and was created Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester on the 16th of March, in the thirty-second year of his lather’s reign. At the age of seventeen he was affianced in France to Anne Neville, the second daughter of Richard Earl of Warwick, called the King-Maker. The murder of Prince Edward, immediately after the battle of Tewkesbury in 1471, will be noticed in Chapter VII. After his death, Anne, his widow, was married to Richard Duke of Gloucester, afterwards King Richard III.
[47b] Catalogue of Nobility, by Ralph Brooke. The Grey Friars Monastery was in the north-east quarter of the town, but is now demolished, and most of its site is built upon; but it stood in that part of the town which now lies between Newland and Victoria Streets, and to the eastward of the upper end of Grey Friars Street and of Lady’s Lane: a small portion of an ancient wall, with buttresses, and some little remains of masonry, built up in the walls of the adjoining houses, are now visible, contiguous to a deep hollow or depression, which lies on the northward side of Victoria Street, and formed part of the monastic edifice. Its site has also been identified by stone coffins discovered near there, in excavating the soil for building purposes.
[48a] Catalogue of Nobility, by Ralph Brooke.
[48b] The Hospital of St. John in Bridge Street, is one of the old charitable institutions which is still kept up. The ancient edifice, with its handsome rose window, and its curious little chapel, are well worth a visit.
[48c] Leland states:—“There was a great bataille faught in Henry the 6th tyme at Northampton on the Hille withoute the southe Gate, where is a right goodly Crosse, caullid as I remembre the Quene’s Crosse, and many Walschmen were drounid yn Avon Ryver at this conflict. Many of them that were slayn were buried at De la pray: and sum at St. Johns Hospitale.”—Leland’s Itinerary, vol. i. fo. 9 [10]. The battle was certainly fought at the southward side of the town, and near Queen Eleanor’s Cross, yet there seems to be some want of care on Leland’s part, in stating that the battle was fought on a hill near the cross. Although not far from the cross, the place where it was fought is not a hill, although the ground has a gradual ascent from the river and Delapré Abbey, up to the cross, which stands rather elevated, and is a conspicuous object from the abbey, and its park and grounds. Again, he is evidently incorrect in mentioning the river Avon, instead of the river Nen or Nene.
[48d] The descent of the Duke of Buckingham from King Edward III. was as follows:—Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford, a nobleman of immense possessions, had two daughters, his coheiresses. Eleanor, the eldest daughter, married Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, sixth son of King Edward III. Thomas Duke of Gloucester had by her, amongst other issue, a daughter Anne, whose first husband Edmund Stafford, fifth Earl of Stafford, was slain at the battle of Shrewsbury. They had a son, Humphrey, first Duke of Buckingham, who married Anne, daughter of Ralph Neville, first Earl of Westmoreland, and was slain at the battle of Northampton. Their eldest son was Humphrey Earl of Stafford, who married Margaret, daughter of Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, and was slain at the first battle of Saint Alban’s. Their son Henry Stafford, second Duke of Buckingham, married Katherine, daughter of Richard Wideville or Wodeville, Earl of Rivers, and was executed in the first year of Richard III. Besides the descent of Henry Stafford, second Duke of Buckingham, from Edward III., as above mentioned, he was also descended from him, through his (the Duke of Buckingham’s) mother, Margaret Beaufort, from John Beaufort, Earl of Somerset (son of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, fourth son of Edward III.), by Katherine Swinford, but born before their marriage, in which defect of a legitimate title, by his maternal descent, his case resembled that of King Henry VII. The Duke of Buckingham, however, from one or both of those sources of descent, probably flattered himself with the hope of one day being King of England; and it has been very reasonably suggested, that it was fortunate for the Earl of Richmond, afterwards King Henry VII., that his first expedition and attempt to land in England, was a total failure, and terminated in the execution of the Duke of Buckingham; for if that powerful and ambitious nobleman had succeeded in deposing Richard III., it is very probable that he would have attempted to have seized the throne, in his own right.
Mary, the second daughter of Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford, married Henry Earl of Derby, afterwards King Henry IV.; and it should be here observed, that the Duke of Buckingham was entitled, by descent from Eleanor, eldest daughter of the Earl of Hereford, to at least half of his great possessions. After the line of Henry IV. had become extinct, the other half was vested in Edward IV. and his heirs; but Buckingham considered himself entitled to it, as heir at law of Mary, the second daughter of the Earl of Hereford. Shakespeare seldom wrote without a meaning, and from what is above stated, his object in the drama of Richard III. will be at once apparent, in causing the Duke of Gloucester to offer the following inducement to the Duke of Buckingham to support his claim to the throne:—
“And look when I am King, claim thou of me
The earldom of Hereford, and all the moveables
Whereof the King, my brother, was possessed.”Shakespeare’s King Richard III., act iii. scene 1.
It seems probable that in Shakespeare’s time the word “moveables” was not used in the same sense in which we now use it, for at present that word would be considered strangely inapplicable to lands, castles, manors, &c.
[49] Historians have not always agreed, respecting the place where the Duke of Buckingham was executed: some have stated that the execution took place at Salisbury, and others at Shrewsbury. It is certain that he was captured in Shropshire. The most authentic of the old historical writers, however, state, and apparently upon good grounds, that he was sent a prisoner to Salisbury, where Richard III. then was; and that he was beheaded upon a new scaffold in the open market-place of Salisbury, on the 2nd of November, 1483.—See Fabyan Hall, Holinshed, Grafton, Speed, and Stow.