prison. Reports were spread that he had died of apoplexy, and his body was exhibited to public view to show that it bore no marks of violence; but suspicion whispered that there had been foul play in the business. "Some," says old Hall, "judged him to be strangled: others write that he was stiffled or smouldered between twoo fether beddes." No legal inquiry was instituted into the circumstances of his death, nor does such seem to have been demanded. His friends made several efforts to clear his memory from the stain of treason, but the king remained obstinate; the bill was repeatedly thrown out, and a great part of his estates were conferred on Suffolk and his adherents.

This ill-fated prince was the Mæcenas of his age, and to his encouragement of literature England is deeply indebted. He is supposed to have been the founder of the Bodleian library, and under the patronage which he so readily extended to men of letters, many learned foreigners were induced to settle in England, bringing with them the arts and learning of the west and south. His vices were many, but he also possessed some splendid virtues, which cast a redeeming lustre over his character; his kindliness of disposition won for him the epithet of the good;' while his undeviating and impartial justice procured him the still more honourable appellation of the father of his country.'

Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury.

BORN A. D. 1372.-died a. D. 1453.

THIS distinguished warrior-second son to Richard Lord Talbotwas born at Blechmore in Shropshire, in the reign of Richard II. He married Maud, the eldest of the two daughters and co-heiresses of Sir Thomas Neville. In the first year of Henry V. he was committed to the tower, but the nature of his offence is not upon record, and he appears to have been but a short time in confinement. He was present at the siege of Caen in 1417, and afterwards distinguished himself at the successive sieges of Rouen, Mans, and Pontoroso. At the evermemorable siege of Orleans, Talbot displayed such resistless valour that his courage became proverbial even with the enemy. On the capture of the earl of Suffolk, Talbot succeeded to the command of the English forces, and retired towards Paris, but was overtaken at Patay. On this occasion, Sir John Fastolfe advised Talbot to continue his retreat as expeditiously as possible, but the latter refused to show his back to the enemy, and was in consequence made prisoner, after a sharp action, with the loss of twelve hundred men. After a tedious captivity of three years and a half, the duke of Bedford found means to have him exchanged for Xaintrailles, a French officer of great reputation. He now again hastened to the field, and took several fortified places with his accustomed skill and bravery. The capture of Pontoise was effected by him in a singular manner. In the beginning of 1437, the weather was so extremely cold, that the generals on both sides suspended military operations. But Talbot having collected a body of troops, and caused them to put white clothes or shirts over their other clothes, in order that they might not be easily distinguished from the snow with which the ground was then covered, brought them by a

night march up to the walls of Pontoise, and making an unexpected attack upon the garrison, made himself master of that important place. His next conquests were Harfleur, Tankerville, Crotoy, Longueville, Carles, and Manille; for all which important services he was advanced to the dignity of earl of Shrewsbury, in May, 1442. He was afterwards appointed to the command in Ireland, with the title of earl of Wexford. But his presence was soon found indispensable for carrying on the war in France. His promptitude and valour protracted the fall of Rouen a brief space. Perceiving that the French had gained a rampart which had been entrusted to the charge of the citizens, he rushed to the spot, precipitated himself upon the assailants, hurling the foremost of them into the ditch beneath, and having repelled the enemy, put the treacherous sentinels to the sword. In 1452, we find the veteran warrior-now in his eightieth year—again taking the field, and performing his usual wonders. Landing with four thou sand men, and supported by the good-will of the Gascons, he advanced upon Bourdeaux, whereupon the French garrison, frightened, as Fuller quaintly observes, by the bare fame of his approach, fled from the spot. Chatillon, in Perigord, having surrendered soon afterwards to his arms, Charles despatched a formidable force to recover it, and Talbot hastened to sustain his capture. By the celerity of his movements he surprised and cut to pieces a French detachment; but on approaching the body of the enemy he found it advantageously posted and wellprepared to sustain his attack, being strongly entrenched and provided with a field of artillery. Undismayed, however, by the fearful odds, and flushed by his recent success, the veteran hazarded an assault, and was so gallantly supported by his men, that for a time the balance of victory hung in suspense. But a shot having struck down their general, and Count Penthievre coming up at the critical moment with fresh troops, the English gave way and retreated on all sides. Talbot was first buried at Rouen in France, but his body was afterwards removed to Whitchurch in Shropshire. He has been called the English Achilles,' and seems to have merited the title, if indomitable valour and nearly uniform success in his personal encounters might confer it

Sir John Fastolfe.

BORN CIRC. A. D. 1378.-DIED A. D. 1459.

SIR JOHN FASTOLFE, whose name has obtained so whimsical a species of immortality from the unwarrantable liberty taken with it by our great dramatist, was descended from an ancient and honourable English family in the county of Norfolk. Being left a minor, he became the ward of Thomas Mowbray, duke of Norfolk. On the accession of Henry IV., he entered the service of the duke of Clarence, whom he accompanied to Ireland. During his residence in that country, he married the widow of Sir Stephen Scroope. He commenced his military career in Henry the Fifth's expedition against France, and won his spurs by his honourable services in the war which followed. For having retaken the town of Meulent from the French, he was created a banneret, and entrusted with an extensive lieutenancy; and shortly

afterwards was honoured with a knight-companionship of the garter, having been adjudged more worthy of that high honour than Sir John Radcliffe, his gallant companion-in-arms. Monstrelet has affirmed, that for subsequent cowardice, the duke of Bedford deprived the new knightcompanion of his garter, but this is altogether a misrepresentation of facts. Fastolfe never was tried for any charge, and, therefore, could not be degraded; he never ceased to enjoy the confidence of the duke ; nor, if he had, was it in the duke's power to deprive him of what was the gift of his sovereign; and as to the alleged piece of misconduct, his retreat, namely at Patay, when Talbot and Hungerford were taken prisoners, the movement by which he saved himself from sharing their fate, has been pronounced by good judges to have been a very masterly display of military science, and not less worthy of praise than any of those actions by which he had previously earned the reputation of a brave and skilful officer. In 1431, Sir John accompanied the regent into France, and was soon afterwards despatched on an embassy to the council of Basle. When Richard, duke of York, succeeded to the command in Normandy, he evinced his sense of Fastolfe's merits and services by bestowing upon him an annual pension of £20.

At length, after having borne arms in the service of his country, during a period of above forty years, he retired in 1440 to his ancestral estates in England, and settled at Caister in Norfolk, where he built a very splendid castle, which he rendered the scene of much hospitality and magnificence. The Paston letters have thrown considerable light on Sir John's private history and character, of which Miss Roberts has diligently availed herself, in her memoirs of the rival houses of York and Lancaster. From the quotations inserted in that work, it would appear that while Fastolfe proved himself a liberal master and a bounteous patron of the clergy, he did not disdain to avail himself of some of those questionable means of increasing his worldly estates, which the manners and customs of the age allowed. One of the Paston letters displays his eager anxiety to procure the wardship of a young heir, and the management of the minor's estate; and in another, Fastolfe, though loaded with wealth and honours, the result of his French campaigns, speaks of his services as never yet guerdoned, or rewarded.' Yet this poor, unrewarded veteran died possessed of sixteen manors, landed estates in forty-nine different places, and coined money to the value of about £40,000 of our present currency!1 It was his well-known wealth, probably, that suggested to Queen Margaret and her ministers the charge of treason against our knight on the occasion of Cade's rebellion. The attempt, however, failed, and Sir John was allowed to spend his declining years in peace. He died, after a lingering illness, in 1459. His funeral obsequies were celebrated with much pomp at Norfolk, where he was buried in the abbey-church of St Bennett.

Archæologia, vol. xxi.

Sir Thomas Lyttleton.

DIED A. D. 1481.

THE circumstances under which England was placed by her early wars and internal dissensions, laid the foundation for that complicated legal system which has brought into action so many powerful and accomplished minds. The subject of the present sketch has an ample right to be ranked as the head of the numerous band of excellent men who have laboured to regulate and explain this system, the evidences he has left of his knowledge and ability having stood the test of professional examination through many generations of active inquirers. This distinguished lawyer was born about the beginning of the fifteenth century, and was the eldest son of Henry Westcote, Esq., and Elizabeth, the daughter and sole heiress of Thomas Luttleton or Lyttleton, a person of great wealth at Frankley in Worcestershire, and according to whose will his daughter's eldest son was to take the name and bear the arms of Lyttleton. It is not known in which university Sir Thomas was educated, but having completed his studies, he became a member of the Inner Temple, and was some time after appointed to the honourable office of reader. The ability which he displayed at this early period of his career introduced him to the notice of Henry the Sixth, and he was created steward or judge of the palace or marshalsea. In the May of 1454, he obtained the rank of king's sergeant, and was made one of the judges of the northern circuit.

The period in which he had to exercise these important functions was one of almost unequalled disorder and turbulence. It was not long after his appointment to the bench that that fearful struggle began between the houses of York and Lancaster, which converted their quarrel into a war, and caused the ruin of the noblest and most wealthy families in the kingdom. Did no other testimony remain to prove the worth and integrity of Sir Thomas Lyttleton's character, the fact that throughout these troubles he was equally respected by both parties, would be sufficient for that purpose. The high legal situation he occupied, made it incumbent on him not to interfere in matters which might either disturb his own steadiness of judgment, or render his de cisions the subject of suspicion. That he did not, is clear from the circumstance which has been stated, and we accordingly find, that when Edward the Fourth ascended the throne, he was among the first whom the new monarch received into favour, and was allowed to retain the offices which had been bestowed upon him by the unfortunate Henry. In the year 1466, he was made one of the judges of the common pleas, and took the Northamptonshire circuit. About the same time, also, he received another mark of royal favour in the shape of a writ directed to the commissioners of customs for the ports of London, Bristol, and Kingston-upon-Hull, whereby they were ordered to pay him a hundred and ten marks per annum to support his dignity, a hundred and six shillings eleven pence halfpenny to buy him a furred robe, and sixty-six shillings and sixpence more for another robe, technically called Linura. About nine years after, he was made a knight of the

Bath, and while exercising his important duties as a judge, undertook. for the instruction of one of his sons, his celebrated work on the Institutes of the Laws of England-a treatise of which it was eloquently said by Sir Edward Coke, "that it is a work of as absolute perfection in its kind, and as free from error as any he had ever known to be written of any human learning;" and that it is "the ornament of the common law, and the most perfect and absolute work that ever was written in any human science."

It is supposed that this treatise was finished but a short time previous to his death, which occurred on the twenty-third of August 1481, the day after his last testament was dated. He left three sons, the issue of his marriage with the daughter of Sir Philip Chetwin, and the honourable reputation he had acquired was worthily kept up by the learning and dignity which long characterized his family. His funeral took place in Worcester cathedral, where a monument was raised to his memory, and the parish-churches of Frankley and Hales-Owen were adorned with his portrait. "There," remarks his learned commentator, "the grave and reverend countenance of the outward man may be seen, but he hath left this book as a figure of that higher and nobler part, that is, of the excellent and rare endowments of his mind, especially in the profound knowledge of the fundamental laws of this realm. He that diligently reads this his excellent work, shall behold the child and figure of his mind, which the more often he beholds in the visual line, and well observes him, the more shall he justly admire the judgment of our author and increase his own." But the greatest praise, perhaps, which a writer or commentator ever passed upon an author, is that contained in this declaration of Sir Edward: " Before I entered into any of these parts of our institutes, I, acknowledging myne own weakness and want of judgment to undertake so great works, directed my humble suit and prayer to the author of all goodness and wisdom, out of the Book of Wisdom: Oh, Father and God of mercy, give me wisdom, the assistant of thy seates: Oh, send her out of thy holy heavens, and from the seate of thy greatness, that she may be present with me, and labour with me, that I may know what is pleasing unto thee.'" The deference paid to the rules laid down in this work by the most enlightened lawyers of different periods, confirms all that Sir EdIward has said on its merits. It is recorded, that four of the greatest judges in the reign of James the First, that is, Sir Henry Hobart, and the judges Warburton, Wynch, and Nichols, upon giving their opinion on a disputed point, publicly declared, that "they owed so great reverence to Lyttleton, that they would not have his case disputed or questioned." But it is not simply for the legal knowledge displayed in this celebrated work that the author merits the high fame he has acquired, he was learned not merely in all the branches of his profession, but in every species of literature that could strengthen or enlarge his

In order to show the little respect which was as yet felt for the English language by the lawyers of this period, it may be mentioned, that the Institutions' were written in French. It also appears, that the work was not published till a considerable time after it was written, both the author and his son Richard, for whom it was composed, being dead before it was given to the public. The first edition of it was published at Rouen, but as few books were sent to press at that early period but such as were generally esteemed, it is probable that it had already acquired great popularity by circulation in manuscript before it appeared in print.