[141] This was a “S. Richard, king and confessour, sonne to Lotharius king of Kent, who, for the love of Christ, taking upon him a long peregrination, went to Rome for devotion to that sea, and in his way homward, died at Luca, about the year of Christ, seaven hundred and fifty, where his body is kept untill this day with great veneration, in the oratory and chappell of S. Frigidian, and adorned with an epitaph both in verse and prose” (English Martyrologe, 1608).
There were other saints of the same name, as Richard de la Wich, bishop of Chichester, canonised in 1262; and Richard, bishop of St. Andrews in Calabria. See Drayton’s Polyolbion, song 24.
[142] Leue. W. Sende us. C.
[143] Loke. W. C.
[144] Grete. W. get. C.
[145] Thou. PCC.
[146] Uterysdale. O. CC. Wierysdale is the name of a forest in Lancashire: though it appears, in a subsequent part of this poem, that the knight’s castle was in Nottinghamshire.
[147] Sute. C.
[148] I up pyght. W. up ypyght. C.
[149] Fere. W. in fere. C.