One of the original documents of which this volume preserves a record, is still in existence, and exhibited in one of the show-cases of the Manuscript Department at the British Museum,a as presenting at one view the sign-manual of the young king, and that of his uncle the protector. It is the letter under the signet appointing Edmund Holt to be keeper of the gaol at Nottingham (printed at p. 15). It is signed at the top with the king's initials, R. E., and at the foot R. Gloucestre. The wax of the seal is gone, but the ring of woven parchment which inclosed it remains. It is indorsed, “An Iniūccion tavoyde tholde Gaoler and anew to come in his place." A still more interesting relic of the period before us is preserved in the Cottonian MS. Vespasian F. XIII. It is a square piece of parchment bearing the three autographs of the king and the dukes of Gloucester and Buckingham, thus disposed b Edwardus quintus Loyaulte me lie Richard Gloucestre Souente me souène Harre Bokingham. Under what circumstances these lines were written, it is more easy to conjecture than to decide: but we may readily imagine that it was done very shortly after the dukes had joined the king- This document, now the Addit. Charter, No. 5987, was purchased of T. Rodd 11 Feb. 1843, having come from Mr. G. Baker's sale, Lot 14. A similar document was possessed by Thane the bookseller, and he engraved from it the autograph of the protector placed under the portrait of Edward V. in his "Autography." b The first of which is engraved in Plate 4, and the two latter in Plate 2, of Fac-similes of Autographs, by J. C. Smith, edited by J. G. Nichols, 4to. 1829. CAMD. SOC. e perhaps in their first efforts to ingratiate themselves in his affections. The name of Gloucester is written in a more formal and clerk-like style than his usual signature.a A MS. of Wickliffe's New Testament, in the possession of Thomas Banister, esq. of the Inner Temple, is inscribed on its first page with a motto somewhat resembling the former A nous me ly This has been examined by Sir Frederic Madden and attributed by him (in the Oxford edition of Wycliffe's Bible, 1850,) to the hand of the duke of Gloucester. "His It is, we may presume, to the parchment slip first described that Sir George Buck alludes in his Life of Richard, where he says, loyalty being a most constant expression in his motto Loyaulte me lie, which I have seen written by his own hands and subscribed Richard Gloucester." a Of which other specimens will be found in the work last mentioned, Plates 2, 3, 4. A book in the Harleian collection, No. 49, being the romance of Tristan de Leonnois, is inscribed Iste liber constat Ricardo Duci Gloucestrie. and on the same page is written Sans remevyr The latter is certainly the autograph of the queen of Henry VII. but the former inscription is probably not the autograph of Richard. SPEECHES PREPARED FOR THE OPENING OF PARLIAMENT, BY THE LORD CHANCELLOR, JOHN RUSSELL, BISHOP OF LINCOLN. Parliament was usually opened, in the fifteenth century, in one of the chambers of the royal palace of Westminster, in the presence of the King; when a Speech, or introductory discourse, declaring the causes of its assembly, was delivered, not as now by the sovereign in person, but by the lord chancellor. As that high functionary was always a prelate of the church, his exhortation naturally assumed a religious complexion: he started from a text of holy scripture," and supported his arguments by many quotations from the same source; at the same time intermingling both historical parallels and political maxims from the whole range of literature, sacred and profane, with which he was familiar. Many of these discourses are described, and their arguments briefly epitomised, upon the rolls of parliament; but perhaps no other entire specimens have been preserved than those which are now presented to the reader. Their author was John Russell, bishop of Lincoln. He had been a Throughout the fifteenth century (as well as before) this is uniformly the case, until in 1496 we are told that cardinal Morton, then chancellor, took for his exordium a certain well-known history of the Romans after the battle of Cannæ.-Rot. Parl. vi. 509. b John Russell, a native of Winchester and a scholar of New college, Oxford, doctor of civil law, archdeacon of Berkshire from 1472 or from 1465, a prebendary of St. Paul's 1474, consecrated bishop of Rochester Sept. 20, 1476, translated to Lincoln Sept. 9, 1480. He was the first perpetual chancellor of the university of Oxford, the office having been previously annual. He died at his manor of Nettleham Jan. 30, 1494-5; and was buried in his cathedral church. His biography will be found in Wood's Hist, and Antiq. Oxon. ii. 413; Newcourt's Repertorium Londin. i. 179; Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors; and Foss's Lives of the Judges, iv. 476. By Newcourt and some others he is erroneously stated to have had the tuition of king Edward the Fifth, an error arising from confusing him with his predecessor in the see of Rochester of the same Christian name, doctor John Alcock. An early rhetorical production of doctor Russell has attained considerable celebrity in literary history, from its having been supposed, but probably erroneously, to have been one of the earliest productions of the press of Caxton. It is the Latin "pro preferred by the protector to the office of chancellor, in the place of archbishop Rotherham, who had given offence to the protector by his fainthearted attempt to place the great seal in the possession of the queen. Doctor Russell had for nine years before been the keeper of the privy seal. He first appears in the character of chancellor on the 2d June, 1483. He is characterised by Sir Thomas More as a wise manne and a good, and of much experience, and one of the best learned men, undoubtedly, that England had in hys time." positio" which he addressed to Charles duke of Burgundy in 1470, when he was one of the commissioners sent by Edward IV. to present the order of the garter to that prince. This was printed, probably at Bruges, in the same types which were subsequently used by Caxton in this country; and the only known copy is now in the library at Althorp, having been purchased by Earl Spencer at the sale of the Whiteknights collection in 1819, for the large sum of 120 guineas, though consisting of only 5 small quarto pages. The oration is reprinted at length in the first volume of Dibdin's edition of Ames's Typographical Antiquities. The autograph letter which king Richard III. addressed to lord chancellor Russell from Lincoln on the 12th Oct. 1483, when he required the great seal during the insurrection of the duke of Buckingham, has been published in fac-simile by the Messrs. Netherclift in their collection of One Hundred Autograph Letters, 1849, 4to. from the original in the Tower of London. In the Cottonian collection, Vesp. E. XII. is a MS. of the Poems of Walter Mape, which is inscribed by Russell's hand, " Le Ruscelluy Je suis. Jo. Lincoln. 1482." Of this inscription a fac-simile is published in Nichols's Autographs, 1829, plate 3. The same motto, surrounding the bishop's device of a throstle, and also accompanied with roses, both in allusion to his name, still remains on the bosses of the great dining-room and the gateway of Buckden palace (see an engraving in the Gentleman's Magazine for March, 1841). His arms were, Azure, two chevronels between three roses or as they appear on his monument. The epitaph, in which he is made to offer an epitome of his biography, is as follows: Qui sum, quæ mihi sors fuerat narrabo. Johannes Ecclesias duas suscepi pontificales; Roffa sacrum primum, Lincolnia condit in unum. Anno milleno e quater quater atque viceno, Bis septem junctis vitalia lumina claudo. They are preserved, intermingled with some Latin sermons, probably by the same author, in the MS. Cotton. Vitellius E. x. and from their present disarranged state it has not been easy to determine whether they formed two or three discourses. In the original catalogue of the Cottonian collection they are entered as three pieces, but in the more recent one as two only. The truth appears to be that the earlier composition, that prepared for the parliament of Edward the Fifth, is complete; whilst the later one, prepared for the parliament of Richard the Third, is in detached fragments, portions of which were rejected and rewritten, by the author. The first unfinished portion of the second speech occurs at ff. 141-144 of the volume. At f. 145 commences a Latin sermon, said to have been preached in the chapter-house at Rochester, on the election of a prior. Doctor Russell was bishop of Rochester from 1476 to 1480, during which time this may have been writen. Parts of it, at ff. 150 b, 151, and afterwards, appear to be in the author's handwriting, the rest being copied by a transcriber. Next follow several other Latin sermons, on to fol. 169. At f. 170 commences the intended speech to the parliament of Edward the Fifth, and it continues to f. 176. It is immediately followed by the speech which the author actually delivered to the parliament of Richard the Third, which is printed hereafter. The authorship of the earlier speech is proved by its being in the same handwriting as that of the later, which is identified by the parliament roll (as will be shown hereafter); and the occasion for which it was prepared is proved by internal evidence and by other circumstances which have been already investigated in some preceding remarks (p. xx.) SPEECH PREPARED FOR THE CONVOCATION. By a remarkable coincidence the Speech which was prepared for an intended Convocation of the Clergy at the commencement of the reign of Edward V.,* but also prepared in vain, is likewise preserved in the Cottonian * It was to have been holden, it appears, on the tenth day after the death of Edward IV. It must have been for a later occasion that the summons in p. 13 was issued. |