Treating of the period 1440 to 1500, Mr. Hallam says of the Paston Letters:-"They are all written in the reigns of Henry VI. and Edward IV., except a few as late as Henry VII., by different members of a wealthy and respectable, but not noble, English family; and are, therefore, pictures of the life of the English gentry in that age. We are merely concerned with their evidence as to the state of literature. And this, upon the whole, is more favourable than, from the want of authorship in those reigns, we should be led to anticipate. It is plain that several members of the family, male and female, wrote, not only grammatically, but with a fluency and facility, an epistolary expertness, which implies the habitual use of the pen."

Only two autographs of Queen Elizabeth Woodville are known to be extant. One is the signature of a letter,† and the other is attached to a letter-patent. The former reproves Sir William Stonor for hunting and slaying her deer in the forest and chace of Barnwood and Excell; the latter relates to her tenants, Henry and Alice Grey, probably kinsfolk of her first husband, who had been impleaded in the King's Court.

JULIANA PRIORESS OF SOPEWELL.

Juliana, daughter of Sir James Berners, of Berners Roding, in the county of Essex, and sister to Richard Lord Berners, was, in the year 1460, and for many years afterwards, Prioress of Sopewell Nunnery. She is said to have been a learned and accomplished woman, and appears in the fore-front of our English authoresses on the

*Lit. Eur.,' vol. i., p. 165, ed. iv.

Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies,' vol. i., p. 110.

strength of her claim to the compilation and translation of certain treatises upon hawking, hunting, fishing, and armoury. They were first printed in 1468, at the neighbouring monastery of St. Albans, and again in 1496 by Wynkyn de Worde. The treatise on hunting is in rhyme, which makes no approach to poetry. The coarseness of her details does discredit alike to her character as gentlewoman and as a nun.

Although the sports of the field were generally prohibited to the religious orders, yet, on various pretexts, special exemptions were granted, and wealthy monks and nuns went out as well equipped to hunt and hawk as any of their lay compeers. It may, therefore, be concluded that Juliana, the Prioress of Sopewell, was practically well acquainted with the subjects on which she wrote.

Previous to the year 1500 several women of illustrious rank, although not personally known as scholars or authoresses, proved their true appreciation of the advantages of learning by founding colleges and halls at the Universities.

During the reigns of King Henry III. and King Edward I., and between the years 1263 and 1284, Balliol College, Oxford, was founded by John Balliol, of Bernard Castle, and by Devorguilla his wife, the grand-parents of John Balliol, afterwards King of Scotland. Granger mentions a mezzotinto engraving from a portrait in the Oxford Gallery which bears her name, but really represents Jenny Reeks, an apothecary's daughter.

In the year 1340 Queen's College, Oxford, was founded by Robert Eglesfield, chaplain and confessor to Queen Philippa, consort of King Edward III., and avowedly with her Majesty's "favour and assistance." Granger mentions a whole-length mezzotinto engraving of her,

taken from a painting at Queen's College, Oxford, the face being derived from an ancient stone head of this queen over the back gate of the college.

In the same year Clare Hall, Cambridge, was founded by Richard Badew, who, not being rich enough to fulfil his intention, was munificently aided by Elizabeth de Clare, Countess of Ulster, the third sister and co-heir of Gilbert Earl of Clare. Granger mentions a mezzotinto engraving of this countess, "E. Tabula in Aulâ Clarensi.'

In 1347 Mary St. Paul, Countess of Pembroke, founded Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. She was that bride of melancholy notoriety whose gallant bridegroom, Audemar de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, was accidentally slain in a tilting-match upon the wedding-day. Immediately and for ever sequestrating herself from the world, the widowed Countess devoted her subsequent life to prayer and to acts of piety and charity. Granger mentions a mezzotinto engraving of her, without alluding to any original por

trait.

Queen's College, Cambridge, was founded in 1446 by Queen Margaret of Anjou, the consort of King Henry VI., and re-founded in 1465 by Queen Elizabeth Woodville, the consort of King Edward IV., thus blending the rival roses. Granger mentions a portrait of Queen Margaret in the refectory of the College, and two engravings of her, besides a figure in Montfaucon's Monumens de la Monarchie Françoise,' but doubts the genuineness of all. He mentions only one engraving of Queen Elizabeth Woodville.

CHAPTER II.

A.D. 1500-1550.

Margaret Countess of Richmond- Remarks on the period - Queen Anne Boleyn The daughters of Sir Thomas More - Margaret Gigs - Anne Askew Queen Catherine Parr - Frances Lady Abergavenny.

"The tender lark will find a time to fly,

And fearful hare to run a quiet race;
He that high growth on cedars did bestow,
Gave also lowly mushrooms leave to grow."

ROBERT SOUTHWELL.

MARGARET COUNTESS OF RICHMOND.

MARGARET BEAUFORT was esteemed in many particulars the model woman of her time. She was born in the year 1440, at Bletshoe, in Bedfordshire-the only child and heiress of John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, and of his wife Margaret Beauchamp, daughter of Lord Beauchamp, of Powick. By her first husband, Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond, she became the mother of her only child, afterwards King Henry VII. Her second husband was Sir Henry Stafford, and her third Thomas Lord Stanley, subsequently created Earl of Derby.

She naturally possessed great mental sagacity; she made herself thoroughly acquainted with the English and French languages, and slightly with the Latin. She translated from the French the fourth book of Gerson's Treatise on the Imitation of our Saviour,' and from a French translation the Speculum aureum Peccatorum.'

She also, by her royal "son's command and authority," says Horace Walpole, "made the orders, yet extant, for great estates of ladies and noblewomen, for their precedence, attires, and wearing of barbes at funerals over the chin and under the same." Many devotional books were avowedly printed at her desire, and probably at her

expense.

6

The only two letters of hers known to be extant are printed among those of Royal and Illustrious Ladies' in the first volume of Mrs. Everett Green's collection. It is remarkable that, although she never attained to regal dignity, she signed her name "Margaret R."-an indication of pretentious vanity. The first of those letters is a mere order, and goes straight and briefly to its purpose; the second is addressed to King Henry VII., and indicates an ambitious and crafty mind-the caressing tone of the mother being artfully blended with the submissiveness of the "servant and beadwoman." Until age brought death into obvious proximity, she was a busy woman of the world, and then she put on the dress and habits of a religious recluse. Like many other royal personages, she excelled in ornamental needlework; and it is said that King James I., in his progresses, constantly visited Bletshoe, and called for a sight of the specimens of her art which were preserved there.*

The "venerable Margaret" eulogised by Gray † founded the Divinity Lectureships of Oxford and of Cambridge, and re-founded the Colleges called Christ's (1505) and St. John's (1511) in the last-mentioned University. She also founded a free-school at Wymbourn, in Dorsetshire.

*Wilford, p. 552.

"Leaning from her golden cloud,

The venerable Margaret see."-Ode for Music.