“In the Chyrch Yard were many of the Bones of men that were killid at Palmesunday feld buried.
“They lay afore in 5 Pittes, yet appering half a mile of by North in Saxton Feldes.”
[123a] Their numbers show it to be quite impossible, that they could have any relation to some bones, which Leland and Stow mention, as having been removed by Mr. Hungate, from the field of Towton. The quantity of the latter must have been insignificant.
[123b] Lel. Itinerary, vol. vi. fo. 17 [p. 16]. Stow, fo. 416.
[123c] In the engraving it is called by mistake, “at Towton,” instead of “at Saxton.”
[125a] Drake’s Eboracum, p. 111.
[125b] This is evidently an error. It is remarkable that Dr. Whitaker calls it in that place the 20th of March, but the 29th in an engraving of the lid of the tomb, introduced almost immediately before.
[125c] Whitaker’s Loidis and Elmete (History of Leeds), vol. i. p. 156. Dr. Whitaker states, that in this reading he was greatly assisted by the following copy of the inscription which he had obtained from Hopkinson’s MSS., as it was partly read and partly guessed at, by a transcriber, about the time of Charles I.:—
HIC JACET RANULPHUS DNS. DE DACRE ET GREYSTOCKE, HEROS, MILES STRENUUS
QUI OBIIT IN BELLO PRO REGE SUO HENRICO SEXTO ANNO MCCCCLXI, VIDELICET
DOMINICA PALMARUM CUJUS ANIME P’PITIETUR DEUS. AMEN.
Dr. Whitaker also states his conviction that the word “heros” is a mistake for “verus,” and that “strenuus,” for which there has been no room in the line, has been another guess for the former epithet, “a true knight,” being the genuine language of chivalry.—Ibid., p. 156.
[127a] Such, for example, amongst others, as the murders of the Earl of Rutland, Edward Prince of Wales, Lord Hastings, &c. &c.