husband were thrown into the Tower, where, it is generally believed, the unfortunate Henry was murdered by the Duke of Gloucester (afterwards Richard III). Margaret, after being five years in the Tower, was ransomed by the King of France for fifty thousand

crowns.

Edward the Fourth now kept unmolested possession of the throne. His reign presents no feature worthy of particular notice, with the exception of the introduction of the art of printing into England, which took place in 1471, by one Caxton, a mercer; the first printing press was set up in Islip's chapel, Westminster abbey, under the patronage of the abbot.

King Edward died at Westminster, on the 9th of April, 1483, and was interred in St. George's Chapel, Windsor, near the unfortunate Henry, his predecessor, whose tomb speaks a moral lesson to the spectator.

"Here o'er the ill-fated king the marble weeps,
And fast beside him once fear'd Edward sleeps ;
Whom not the extended Albion could contain,
From old Belerium to the northern main ;
The grave unites, where e'en the great find rest,
And blended lie the oppressor and the oppress'd."

XVII.

EDWARD THE FIFTH.

THIS unfortunate young king reigned only two months and thirteen days.

He was the eldest son of Edward the Fourth, and

was born in 1470. When his father died he was at Ludlow, but being sent for to London, he, on the 4th of May, received the oaths of the principal nobility; and his uncle, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, was made protector of the kingdom. He prevailed upon the queen-mother to deliver up to him her youngest son, the Duke of York, the young king's brother, and sent them both to the Tower, under pretence of their waiting there till all was prepared for the coronation. Richard now proceeded to rid himself of those who might hinder the accomplishment of his design. He despatched orders to behead Lord Rivers and others, whom he had imprisoned in Pontefract Castle; and then summoned a council in the Tower, which was attended among others by Lord Hastings, a nobleman who had shown a disposition to oppose his intentions. While the council was sitting, he pretended he had discovered a plot against his life, ordered several of the members to be arrested, and Lord Hastings, whom he accused of sorcery, to be immediately beheaded; swearing that he would not dine till he had seen his head. Hastings was accordingly hurried out to the little green in front of the Tower chapel, and beheaded on a log of wood that lay in the way. Meanwhile, by the assistance of the Duke of Buckingham, Sir John Shaw, Lord Mayor of London, and Dr. Shaw his brother, he had the two young princes declared illegitimate, and then caused himself to be acknowledged King of England, pretending to accept the crown with reluctance. The queen and Jane Shore were accused of sorcery; the latter was taken into custody, but released on doing penance. Sir Roger Brackenbury, lieutenant of the Tower, refusing

to comply with Richard's cruel designs, he, for one night only, gave the command of that fortress to Sir James Tyrell, and he, as it is said, procured two villains, named Forrest and Dighton, who in the dead of the night entered the chamber where the king and his brother lay asleep, and smothered them in the bed clothes. The bones of these unhappy children were discovered in the reign of Charles the Second, and buried in Westminster Abbey, where a monument to their memory is still to be seen.

XVIII.

CHARACTER OF RICHARD THE THIRD.

RICHARD THE THIRD was, through the whole course of his life, restrained by no principle of justice or humanity; and it appears that he endeavoured to maintain the crown by the same fraud and violence which he had made use of to obtain it.

He certainly possessed an uncommon solidity of judgment, a natural fund of eloquence, the most acute penetration, and such courage as no danger could dismay. He was dark, silent, and reserved; and such a complete master of dissimulation, that it was impossible to dive into his real sentiments, when he wished to conceal his designs. He is represented as having been small of stature, cloudy and forbidding in aspect, and so much deformed, that he was surnamed Crook-back; but this is doubtful; some writers say, on the contrary,

that he was tall, dignified, and handsome. He was the last king of the Plantagenet race.

HISTORICAL EVENTS.

THE BATTLE OF BOSWORTH FIELD.-Richard having broken his promises to the Duke of Buckingham, who had been chiefly instrumental in placing him on the throne, that nobleman took up arms against him, in order to assist Henry, Earl of Richmond, the last branch of the House of Lancaster, to obtain the crown; but Buckingham being betrayed to the king's officers at Shrewsbury, by a man who had been his servant, for the sake of a great reward offered for his apprehension, he was carried to Salisbury, and beheaded without any legal process. However, the Earl of Richmond obtaining assistance from the Duke of Brittany, soon made his appearance in Wales, with about two thousand men, which shortly increased to five thousand, and with this small army he engaged the king's forces, consisting of sixteen thousand men, at Bosworth, in Leicestershire. The battle was fought on the 22nd of August, 1485, on a large flat piece of ground about three miles from the town. Lord Stanley, who commanded a body of troops in Richard's army, was privately in the interest of Richmond; and no sooner was the battle begun, than Stanley suddenly turned round with his men, and attacked the flank of Richard's army, which could not withstand the shock. Richard seeing all was lost, rushed into the middle of the enemy, and fell, fighting with the fury of a maniac. After the battle, his body was found, stripped, and covered with wounds and dirt. It was thrown across a horse and

carried to Leicester, and interred in the Grey-friars church, without the least ceremony. Thus fell Richard the Third, in the thirty-fourth year of his age, after an infamous reign of two years. He was the only English monarch since the conquest, that fell in battle, and the second who fought in his crown. Henry the Fifth appeared in his at Agincourt, which was the means of saving his life, by sustaining a stroke with a battle-axe, which cleft it. Richard's falling off in the engagement, was taken up and secreted in a bush, where it was discovered by Sir Reginald Bray, and placed upon Henry's head in the field. Hence arises the device of a crown in a hawthorn bush, at each end of Henry's tomb in Westminster Abbey.

ADVANCEMENT OF CIVILISATION. Thus ended the royal line of the Plantagenets, which commenced with Henry the Second, and possessed the English throne for three hundred and thirty years. During the earlier part of that period, England advanced in commerce, and the arts of civilised life. It is said, that in Edward the Third's reign, there were thirty thousand students in the University of Oxford. During the wars between the Houses of York and Lancaster, every pursuit was abandoned but that of arms; and the people again became fierce and barbarous. The art of printing, introduced into England by the celebrated William Caxton, became one means, under Providence, of spreading abroad that religious light, which led eventually to the Reformation. The writings of Wickliffe and others, exposing the errors and corruptions of the Church of Rome, were widely circulated; and, as men became more enlightened, they grew weary of a church and a system, supported by superstition and intolerance.