1377 Richard II., only child of Edward the Black Prince, was crowned at Westminster. He did not inherit the warlike genius or the talents of his father and grandfather, but seems to have been of a mild, amiable disposition, and may truly be said, in the words of Shakspeare, to have been “a man more sinned against than sinning.”
1546 Ann Askew, a young lady of great merit and beauty, (connected with most of the ladies of the court, and with the Queen, Catharine Parr,) was burned at Smithfield, for denying the doctrine of the real presence.
1800 Died, at his seat near Southampton, Bryan Edwards, the Author of the History of the West Indies.
WEDNESDAY, 17th.
1674 The remains of the two Princes, Edward V. and his Brother, were discovered in the Tower, and, by order of Charles II., removed to Westminster Abbey.
1761 Peter III., husband of Catherine II., was murdered. The unfortunate Emperor was strangled with a towel, and the next day his body was exposed to the populace, and his death attributed to that disease we now call cholera.
THURSDAY, 18th.
371 B. C. The Battle of Leuctra, in which the Lacedemonians were defeated, and their general, Cleombrotus, slain.
1100 Death of Godfrey de Bouillon, the most celebrated leader among the princes and nobles who went on the first crusade: when Jerusalem was taken, he was unanimously chosen king.
1374 Petrarch, one of the earliest, as well as the most elegant, among the Italian poets, whose romantic attachment to the beautiful Laura has rendered his name familiar, even to those who are wholly ignorant of Italian literature, was found dead in his library on the seventieth anniversary of his birth.