queen; the Earl of Essex, her brother-in-law; and the Viscount Welles, her son-in-law. And that night began the dirge. But neither at the dirge were the twelve poor men clad in black, but a dozen divers* old men, and they held old torches and torches' ends. And the next morning one of the canons, called Master Vaughan, sung Our Lady mass, at which the Lord Dorset offered a piece of gold; he kneeled at the hearse's head. The ladies came not to the mass of requiem, and the lords sat about in the quire. My Lady Anne came to offer the mass-penny, and her officers at arms went before her; she offered the penny at the head of the queen, wherefore she had the carpet and the cushion. And the Viscount Welles took his (wife's) offering, and Dame Katherine Gray bare the Lady Anne's train. Every one of the king's daughters offered. The Marquis of Dorset offered, a piece of gold, and all the lords at their pleasure. The poor knights of Windsor, dean, canons, yeomen, and officers-at-arms all offered; and after mass the Lord Marquis paid the cost of the funeral.” †

The coffin of Elizabeth Widville was discovered about the same time as her husband's; and two other small coffins were found, one containing the body of the third son, George, who died in infancy; and the other, the remains of the Princess Mary, who died at the age of fifteen, from whose coffin, through a narrow chink, it is said, there protruded a lock of pale gold hair, a touching remnant of departed beauty surviving the lapse of three long centuries.

That is, dressed in the many-coloured garments of poverty.

+ Arundel MSS., 30. Miss Strickland's "Lives of the Queens of England," vol. iii., p. 359.

From the period of the accession of Richard III. to the close of the fifteenth century, nothing of interest in connection with the castle remains to be noticed, except the erection of a building of no great extent on the north side of the main edifice, and extending just beyond the kitchen entrance. "Of two lofty oriels, on the complicated plan in fashion at that period, which originally decorated the north front; one has disappeared, and the other has suffered great wrong. The interior front has been also materially altered by Sir Jeffry Wyatville, but with a judgment that has left its character unimpaired.” *

During the fifteenth century, many stirring scenes and circumstances of poetic and moral interest mark the history of Windsor Castle, but it lacks the dazzling chivalry and pomp which poured such a stream of gorgeous radiance over its walls and courts and towers in the former century. Chivalry was dying away, a few fitful flashes only, now and then burst from its smouldering embers. Tournaments were less common than formerly. The introduction of fire-arms, and the civil wars between the houses of York and Lancaster, if not the growth of a better taste, contributed to produce a rapid decline in those chivalrous entertainments which had engrossed so much attention in the time of Edward III.

Society in England was certainly advancing. Commerce, which had budded during the fourteenth century, now yielded considerable fruit; and the influence of the revival of literature was felt to some extent. Those liberties too, which had been growing up in a former age, seem now to have attained greater * Introduction to "Illustrations of Windsor Castle."

consistency and power, and to have been more highly valued. In Windsor, for instance, we find that though no parliamentary return was made from the 7th of Edward II. to the 25th of Henry VI.; after that period, the towns-people regularly availed themselves of their electoral privileges. A fresh breeze of the spirit of political liberty would appear to have fanned the bosoms of the inhabitants, and to have awakened them to the exercise of their dormant rights. "It were a strange misrepresentation of history," says Mr. Hallam, "to assert that the constitution had attained anything like a perfect state in the fifteenth century; but I know not whether there are any essential privileges of our countrymen, any fundamental securities against arbitrary power, so far as they depended on positive institution, which may not be traced to the time when the house of Plantagenet filled the throne."

But during the fifteenth century preparations were making for a new order of things. Illustrious individuals were, in that age, raised up by Providence, who, under the divine blessing, were to produce throughout the world, the greatest and most beneficial revolution which ever occurred since the introduction of Christianity. Look at yonder artizan in the city of Mentz, inventing moveable types, and busily employed in his workshop in performing the mysteries of his new-found art. And look at yonder stranger walking on the shores of Andalusia, watching the setting sun, and speculating upon the unknown region then enlightened by its beams; and at length, under the patronage of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, going forth to discover, and then returning again to proclaim, the existence of a new world. And

WINDSOR IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

then mark that humble cottage at Eisleben, inhabited by a miner and his family, and see that little boy playing by the door and singing, for he is cheerful and loves music; in his little frank and generous heart there is folded up an energy that is, ere long, to shoot like an electric flash over Europe and the world. You know these men-Guttenberg! Columbus! Luther! They lived far distant from each other, were born at distant intervals, and never met in this world; but they were all men of the fifteenth century; three greater never lived, and that Providence should send them within that space was an act of infinite bounty. Though we see them now apart, though personally they were unknown to each other, the potent influences their master-spirits exerted we shall presently witness, blended together, and tending to one grand result. They are three fountains, but they flow into a common stream; one river watering every land, one ocean girdling the globe. We shall see the swelling flood as we stand amidst the scenes of Windsor in the sixteenth century.

Windsor in the Sixteenth Century.

CHAPTER IV.

HE opening of the sixteenth century found Henry VII. occupying the throne of England, occasionally residing at Windsor, and maintaining the pomp and pageantry of the Order

of the Garter. It was there that, in the year

1506, he received Philip the Fair, the husband of the imbecile Joanna, Queen of Castile, and bestowed on him the honour of knighthood. Numerous allusions are made by Ashmole to the ceremonial of his installation, which seems to have been conducted with unusual splendour. The herald, with due solemnity, relates the affair, and introduces, in black letter, the following quaint quotation, containing an account of the furniture of the castle:"To wit, of the gret rich cobbord, which continually stode in the gret hall, which was all gilt plate, or of the gret and rich beds of estate, hangings of rich cloth of gold, or of the rich and sumptuous clothes of arras, with divers clothes of estate, both in the king's loggings, and in the King of Castile's loggings,