Documents Relating to the Foundation and Antiquities of the Collegiate Church of Middleham, in the County of York with an Historical Introduction, and (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1847. Excerpt: ... INTRODUCTION. Former publications of the Camden Society have brought before our notice Richard Duke of Gloucester, as continually engaged in the intrigues of a court or the storms of civil war, while for four centuries both his person and character have been the theme of almost universal vituperation. Into these subjects it is not the province of the editor of the present volume to enter; and, in truth, there is now the less occasion for it, since the volumes of Miss Halsted have appeared in the field of literature. This talented and zealous writer has adduced a host of authorities, apparently proving that his personal deformity existed but in the libels of an opposing faction, perpetuated in the pages of the poet and the novelist; while at the same time her researches seem to throw such light over the darker shades in his chequered career, as to induce the strongest presumption that he was not guilty of, or accessory to, those startling crimes which have been charged to his account. The limits, however, of the brief introduction allotted to this work, compel us to turn our attention from scenes of battle and of blood to other, and to us more interesting portions of his history. When, on the partition f of Warwick's vast domains between the sister heiresses, the lordship and manor of Middleham, with its ancestral castle, became the fair heritage of Gloucester in Historic of the Arrival of Edward IV.; Warkworth's Chronicle; and Polydore Vergil; heing Nos. I. X. and XXVIII. of the Camden Society's publications, t A.D. 1473. CAMD. SOC. Ii right of his wife, the Lady Anne Neville, it assumed an extraordinary interest in his eyes. It may have been the beauty and fertility of the region in which it lay, still rendering Wensleydale an object of attraction to t...