of queen Elizabeth; so that it continued in use not full fifty years. This the occasion thereof; king Henry the Eighth, as his in-comes, so his out-goings, were greater than any English king's since the Conquest. And it belongs not to me to question the cause of either. Sure it is, as he was always taking he was always wanting; and the shower of abbey-lands being soon over his drought for money was as great as ever before. This made him resolve on the debasing thereof, testons especially (a coin worth sixpence, corruptly called tester); so that their intrinsic value was not worth above three shillings and four pence the ounce, to the present profit of the sovereign, and future loss of the subjects. Yea, so allayed they were with copper (which common people confound with brass), and looked so red therewith, that (as my author saith) "they blushed for shame, as conscious of their own corruption."* King Edward the Sixth and queen Mary earnestly endeavoured the reduction of money to the true standard (and indeed the coin of their stamping is not bad in itself); but could not compass the calling in of all base money, partly through the shortness of their reigns, and partly through the difficulty of the design. This, by politic degrees, was effected by queen Elizabeth, with no great prejudice to the then present age, and grand advantage to all posterity, as is justly mentioned on her monument in Westminster. "Send verdingales to Broad Gatest in Oxford."‡] This will acquaint us with the female habit of former ages, used not only by the gadding Dinahs of that age but by most sober Sarahs of the same, so cogent is a common custom. With these verdingales the gowns of women beneath their waists were pent-housed out far beyond their bodies; so that posterity will wonder to what purpose those bucklers of pasteboard were employed. Some deduce the name from the Belgic verd-gard (derived, they say, from virg a virgin, and garder to keep and preserve); as used to secure modesty, and keep wantons at distance. Others more truly fetch it from vertu and galle; because the scab and bane thereof, the first inventress thereof being known for a light house-wife, who, under the pretence of modesty, sought to cover her shame and the fruits of her wantonness. These by degrees grew so great, that their wearers could not enter (except going sidelong) at any ordinary door; which gave J. Heywood, ibidem, num. 64. † Pembroke College, in Oxford, which originally belonged to the priory of St. Frideswide, was for a long time known by the name of Segrim, or corruptly, Segreve Hall; and afterwards received the name of Broad-gates, from the wide form of its entrance, "Aula cum latâ portà, or Aula latè portensis." (Chalmer's History of the Colleges, &c. of Oxford, 1810, vol. 11. p. 417.)--Ed. J. Heywood, in his Five Hundred Epigrams, num. 63. the occasion to this proverb. But these verdingales have been disused this forty years; whether because women were convinced in their consciences of the vanity of this, or allured in their fancies with the novelty of other fashions, I will not determine. "Chronica si penses, cum pugnent Oxonienses When Oxford scholars fall to fight, England will with war be fir'd."] I confess Oxonienses may import the broils betwixt the townsmen of Oxford, or townsmen and scholars; but I conceive it properly to intend the contests betwixt scholars and scholars ; which were observed predictional, as if their animosities were the index of the volume of the land. Such who have time may exactly trace the truth hereof through our English histories. Sure I am, there were shrewd bickerings betwixt the southern and northern men in Oxford in the reign of king Henry the Third, not long before the bloody war of the barons did begin. The like happened twice under king Richard the Second, which seemed to be the van-courier of the fatal fights betwixt Lancaster and York. However, this observation holds not negatively; all being peaceable in that place, and no broils at Oxford sounding the alarum to our late civil dissensions. PRINCES. RICHARD, Son to king Henry the Second and queen Eleanor, was (the sixth king since the Conquest, but second native of England) born in the city of Oxford, anno 1157. Whilst a prince, he was undutiful to his father; or, to qualify the matter, over-dutiful to his mother, whose domestic quarrels he always espoused. To expiate his offence, when king, he, with Philip king of France, undertook a voyage to the Holy Land, where, through the treachery or Templary cowardice of the Greeks, diversity of the climate, distance of the place, and differences betwixt Christian princes, much time was spent, a mass of money expended, many lives lost, some honour achieved, but little profit produced. Going to Palestine he suffered shipwreck and many mischiefs on the coast of Cyprus; coming for England through Germany, he was tossed with a worse land tempest, being (in pursuance of an old grudge betwixt them) taken prisoner by Leopoldus duke of Austria. Yet this Cour de Lion, or Lionhearted king (for so was he commonly called) was no less lion (though now in a grate) than when at liberty, abating nothing of his high spirit in his behaviour. The duke did not undervalue this his royal prisoner, prizing his person at ten years' purchase, according to the [then] yearly revenue of the English Crown. This ransom of a hundred thousand pounds being paid, he came home; first reformed himself, and then mended many abuses in the land; and had done more, had not an unfortunate arrow, shot out of a besieged castle in France, put a period to his life, anno Domini 1199. EDMUND, youngest son to king Edward the First by queen Margaret, was born at Woodstock, Aug 5, 1301. He was afterwards created earl of Kent, and was tutor to his nephew king Edward the Third; in whose reign falling into the tempest of false, injurious, and wicked envy, he was beheaded, for that he never dissembled his natural brotherly affection toward his brother deposed, and went about when he was (God wot) murdered before (not knowing so much) to enlarge him out of prison, persuaded thereunto by such as covertly practised his destruction. He suffered at Winchester, the nineteenth of March, in the fourth of Edward the Third. EDWARD, eldest son of king Edward the Third, was born at Woodstock in this county, and bred under his father (never abler teacher met with an apter scholar) in martial discipline. He was afterwards termed the black prince; not so called from his complexion, which was fair enough (save when sunburnt in his Spanish expedition); not from his conditions, which were courteous (the constant attender of valour); but from his achievements, dismal and black, as they appeared to the eyes of his enemies, whom he constantly overcame. But grant him black in himself, he had the fairest lady to his wife this land and that age did afford; viz. Joane countess of Salisbury and Kent, which, though formerly twice a widow, was the third time married unto him. This is she whose Garter (which now flourisheth again) hath lasted longer than all the wardrobes of the kings and queens in England since the Conquest, continued in the knighthood of that order. This prince died, before his father, at Canterbury, in the 46th year of his age, anno Domini 1376; whose maiden success attended him to the grave, as never foiled in any undertakings. Had he survived to old age, in all probabilities the wars between York and Lancaster had been ended before begun; I mean, prevented in him, being a person of merit and spirit, and in seniority before any suspicion of such divisions. He left two sons; Edward, who died at seven years of age, and Richard, afterwards king, second of that name; both born in France, and therefore not coming within the compass of our catalogue. THOMAS of Woodstock, youngest son of king Edward the Third and queen Philippa, was surnamed of Woodstock, from the place of his nativity. He was afterward earl of Buckingham and duke of Gloucester; created by his nephew king Rich ard the Second, who summoned him to the Parliament ch by the title of The King's loving Uncle. He married Isabel, one of the co-heirs of Humphrey Bohun earl of Essex, in whose right he became constable of England; a dangerous place, when it met with an unruly manager thereof. But this Thomas was only guilty of ill-tempered loyalty, loving the king well, but his own humours better; rather wilful than hurtful; and presuming on the old maxim, "Patruus est loco parentis," (an uncle is in the place of a father.) He observed the king too nearly, and checked him too sharply; whereupon he was conveyed to Calais, and there strangled; by whose death king Richard, being freed from the causeless fear of an uncle, became exposed to the cunning plots of his cousin german Henry duke of Lancaster, who at last deposed him. This Thomas founded a fair college at Pleshy in Essex, where his body was first buried with all solemnity, and afterward translated to Westminster. ANNE BEAUCHAMP was born at Caversham in this county.* Let her pass for a princess (though not formally) reductively, seeing so much of history dependeth on her; as, 2. Elevated.-1. Being daughter (and in fine sole heir) to Richard Beauchamp, that most martial earl of Warwick. Married to Richard Nevil earl of Sarisbury and Warwick; commonly called The Make-king; and may not she then, by a courteous proportion, be termed The Make-queen? 3. In her own and husband's right she was possessed of one hundred and fourteen manors in several shires. 4. Isabel, her eldest daughter, was married to George duke of Clarence; and Anne, her younger, to Edward prince of Wales, son of Henry the Sixth, and afterwards to king Richard the Third. Depressed.-1. Her husband being killed at Barnet fight, all of her land by act of Parliament was settled on her two daughters, as if she had been dead in nature. 2. Being attainted (on her husband's score) she was forced to fly to the Sanctuary at Beaulieu in Hampshire. 3. Hence she got herself privately into the north, and there lived a long time in a mean condition. 4. Her want was increased after the death of her two daughters, who may be presumed formerly to have secretly supplied her. I am not certainly informed when a full period was put by death to these her sad calamities. SAINTS. St. FRIDESWIDE was born in the city of Oxford, being daughter to Didan the duke thereof. It happened that one Algarus, a noble young man, solicited her to yield to his lust, from whom she miraculously escaped, he being of a sudden struck blind. If so, she had better success than as good a • Dugdale, in his Illustration of Warwickshire, p 334. + Polydore Vergil, 1. v. Histor. Breviar. sec. usum Sarum. MS. Robert Buck. virgin, the daughter to a greater and better father; I mean, Thamar daughter of king David, not so strangely secured from the lust of her brother.* She was afterwards made abbess of a monastery, erected by her father in the same city, which since is become part of Christchurch, where her body lieth buried. It happened in the first of queen Elizabeth, that the scholars of Oxford took up the body of the wife of Peter Martyr, who formerly had been disgracefully buried in a dunghill, and interred it in the tomb with the dust of St. Frides wide. Sanders addeth, that they wrote this inscription (which he calleth impium epitaphium): "Hic requiescit Religio cum Superstitione:+" though, the words being capable of a favourable sense on his side, he need not have been so angry. However, we will rub up our old poetry, and bestow another upon them. In tumulo fuerat Petri qua Martyris uxor, "Entomb'd with Frideswide, deem'd a sainted maid, And reason good, for women chaste in mind The best of virgins come no whit behind. Should Popery return, (which God forefend!) Yet was there more than eight hundred years betwixt their. several deaths; Saint Frideswide dying anno 739, and is remembered in the Romish calendar on the nineteenth day of October. St. EDWOLD was younger brother to St. Edmund, king of the East-Angles, so cruelly martyred by the Danes; and, after his death, that kingdom not only descended to him by right, but also by his subjects' importunity was pressed upon him. But he declined both, preferring rather a solitary life and heavenly contemplation; in pursuance whereof, he retired to Dorchester in this county, and to a monastery called Corn-house therein, where he was interred, and had in great veneration for his reputed miracles after his death, which happened anno Domini 871. St. EDWARD the CONFESSOR was born at Islip in this county, and became afterwards king of England, sitting on the throne for many years, with much peace and prosperity ;§ famous for the first founding of Westminster Abbey, and many other worthy achievements. • 2 Sam. xiii. 14. + Sanders, de Schismate Anglicanâ, 1. iii. p. 344. Gul. Malmesbury de Pont. Angl. hac die Herbert. in Fest. S. S. § Speed's Chronicle, in the Life of this King. |