offered up, the corpse was borne to its last resting-place near the high altar. The grave then closed over the remains of Arthur Tudor, and all the bright hopes with which he had been regarded by those who felt his amiability and appreciated his intelligence.

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EDWARD PLANTAGENET,

EARL OF WARWICK.

ON the day before Richard the Third had the crown of St. Edward placed upon his brow in the Abbey of Westminster, the usurper, according to an ancient custom, partially revived in our own time, rode in state from the Tower, attended by eighty-five knights and nobles. Among these was a fair boy, recognised by the multitude as Earl of Warwick, and regarded with interest as grandson of "The Stout Earl," whose praise had, a few years earlier, been on every tongue; whose prowess had been sung through every street; and whose mansion had been hospitably open to all comers.

When England was on the eve of that revolution which exiled the fourth Edward for a time to the territories of Burgundy, his brother George, Duke of Clarence, was inspired with an ardent love for a daughter of the great Warwick. Though the court was adverse to the match, Clarence, defying the opposition of the King and the Woodvilles, espoused Isabel Neville at Calais: and after her great father

had fallen at Barnet, he was created Earl of Warwick. According to Dugdale, Clarence's son, Edward Plantagenet drew his first breath at the Castle of Warwick on the 21st of February, 1474, though some writers tell that his birth took place at sea when "the Kingmaker" escaped with his family to France.

The misfortunes of this Prince began soon after his birth. While he was a child, his mother Isabel Neville died, under such circumstances that a female attendant was tried and executed on the charge of having poisoned her. Ere the dust had time to gather upon Isabel's coffin, Clarence endeavoured to supply her place with Mary of Burgundy, daughter and heiress of Charles the Rash, who had fallen in battle with the Swiss. King Edward refused to hear of an alliance that might have enabled Clarence "to employ the power of Burgundy to win the crown," and jealous dissensions arose between the brothers. The consequences are well known. Clarence was accused of treason, tried, condemned, committed to the Tower, and never seen again; and the popular belief was, that his brother had caused him to be drowned in a butt of malmsey.

When Edward Plantagenet thus became an orphan, and succeeded to the title of Warwick, he was little more than three years of age. Freedom he cannot be said to have ever afterwards tasted. Kept in custody at the Castle of York by the fourth Edward, and given as a ward to the Marquis of Dorset. Elizabeth Wood

ville's son, he was treated with cruelty and neglect. However, he enjoyed one ray of hope when Richard ascended the throne. When the usurper made his celebrated progress to York, and knighted his son, the Prince of Wales, he conferred the same distinction on his little nephew; and when the Prince of Wales was no more, Warwick found himself recognised as heir to throne, and, as such, took his seat at the royal table. But after Richard's queen, the Anne Neville of other days, had gone where the weary are at rest, Warwick's position changed for the worse. Soon after his aunt's death the earl was sent as a state prisoner to Sheriff Hutton, in Yorkshire, and while in that manor-house had as companion his fair cousin Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Edward. After Richard's fall they were removed to London; Elizabeth to share the throne won for Henry Tudor on the field of Bosworth, Warwick to be shut up in the Tower, and subjected to closer restraint than he had yet experienced. Every change that took place made the condition of this Prince poor more deplorable. Well may the chronicler remark that "he was born to perpetual calamity."

Almost ere the only Plantagenet known to have escaped the destruction of his race had been immured in the Tower, people became discontented with their Welsh sovereign. Henry, in fact, offended them by his suspicions, when, after Bosworth, he entered London in triumph. Instead of riding on horseback, like an English king, he came in a clumsy carriage, so carefully

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shut up that nobody could see him. The citizens deemed this a bad omen, and they were still more displeased when he instituted a band of tall men to protect his person; whereas English kings never deemed it necessary to have a single guard. People began to grumble, to call to memory that the old royal race was not wholly extinct, and to speak with tender sympathy of the Earl of Warwick.

But where was the Earl? That was a question which few could answer; indeed his removal from Sheriff Hutton had been effected with such secresy, and his existence was involved in such mystery, that many believed he had been privately put to death. Suddenly, however, the young Plantagenet became an object of immense interest with the public; for the rumour ran that he had escaped from the Tower and landed in Dublin under the care of a priest; that he had, as heir of York, been well received by the Ear. of Kildare; that his beauty had quite captivated the inhabitants; that the story of his wrongs had enlisted the sympathy of foreign courts; that the Duchess of Burgundy had sent two thousand men to support his claims; that he had been crowned in Dublin as Edward the Sixth; and that, after the ceremony, he had been carried on the shoulders of a tall Irish chieftain from the cathedral to the castle, while the multitude hailed lim as King. Henry, on recovering from his surprise at all this, took the best means of proving this riva to be a more thorough impostor than himself.