marks of favour conferred upon his rival, pursued a course of bitter hostility towards the absent prelate, and obtained several orders in council of a nature well calculated to deprive Beaufort of the king's favour. But his better influence prevailed, and, whether consciously guilty or not of the offences laid to his charge, we find him on the 26th of July 1437, obtaining a full pardon under the great seal, for all offences by him committed from the creation of the world up to that date. In 1442, Gloucester, unwearied in his hostility towards the cardinal, exhibited fresh articles of impeachment against him. The king referred the matter to his council; but no decisive steps were taken in consequence, and the prosecution died away.

The rivalry of Beaufort and Gloucester only terminated with their lives, for the bishop survived his rival not above a month.

He died on the 14th of June, 1447, and was buried in the cathedral church of Winchester. The greater part of his immense fortune he bequeathed to religious and charitable purposes; and if Harpsfield is to be credited, one of his donations consisted of the enormous sum of £400,000 to the prisons of London! His character was that of a haughty and ambitious but skilful statesman; deeply accomplished in all the mysteries of state intrigue, and little scrupulous in availing himself of every turn of fortune for his own personal aggrandizement. His talents were evidently of a high order; and he always possessed great influence in the lower house of parliament. Various accounts have been given of the secret cause of dislike which from the first existed betwixt Beaufort and Gloucester; perhaps the simplest, which traces their bitter enmity to political rivalry alone, is the most correct. Beaufort has been charged with procuring the murder of his rival; and on this alleged fact Shakspeare has founded the terrific death-bed scene in the second part of his Henry the Sixth.

Bishop Waynflete.

BORN A. D. 1395 (?).—died a. d. 1486.

in

Ir is not clear whether Patten or Barbour was the proper family name of this eminent prelate. The appellation of Waynflete was taken from the place of his birth, in Lincolnshire, and was first assumed when he went into orders. "It was a fashion," says Holinshed, those days, from a learned spirituall man to take awaie the father's surname (were it never so worshipfull or ancient) and give him for it the name of the towne he was borne in." His father appears to have followed the profession, so highly respectable in those days, of a barbersurgeon. Chandler is indeed anxious to prove that the bishop's father was a gentleman by birth; but we neither sympathise with the anxiety of the learned biographer, nor are we satisfied with his proofs on this point. The exact year of William's birth is not known. It appears from the registers of the see of Lincoln that he was made a sub-deacon in January, 1420, and a priest in 1426. We may conjecture, therefore, that he was born towards the close of the 14th century.

He was educated at Wykeham's school at Winchester, of which he was afterwards appointed master by Beaufort, bishop of Winchester.

His first ecclesiastical preferment was the mastership of St Mary Magdalene s leper-hospital near Winchester, of which the ruins are still visible. From his early connection with this establishment probably arose his attachment to the name, which he afterwards bestowed on his hall and college in Oxford. The ability he displayed in his mastership at Winchester, and the influence of Bekyngton, formerly his school-fellow, and now a rising man at the court of Henry VI., procured for him the mastership, and subsequently the provostship, of the king's new school at Eton. This situation had, in the case of Stamberry, the first provost, led to a bishopric, and was destined again to effect a like elevation in Waynflete's favour. On the death of Cardinal Beaufort, in 1447, Waynflete obtained from the king the congé d'élire addressed to the chapter of Winchester, and was elected accordingly. Budden, who published a life of Waynflete in Latin, in 1602, drops a hint with respect to this and other preferments, that Waynflete "did not, perhaps, entirely abstain from availing himself of the power of illustrious persons." However this may be, his more recent biographer assures us, that when the ecclesiastical deputation from Winchester waited upon him to announce his election, "from sincere reluctance, or a decent compliance with the fashion of the times, he protested often and with tears, and could not be prevailed on to undertake the important office to which he was called, until they found him about sun-set, in the church of St Mary; when he consented, saying, he would no longer resist the Divine will." Waynflete held the see of Winchester throughout the remainder of his long life.

In 1448 he obtained a royal grant empowering him to found and endow a hall at Oxford, which university was then in a very depressed state. In 1450, when the rebellion of Jack Cade burst forth, Waynflete retired to the nunnery of Holywell; but on being summoned to confer with his sovereign at Canterbury, on the best means of quelling the insurrection, he instantly complied, and advised the issuing of a proclamation offering pardon to all concerned in the rising except Cade himself, in consequence of which the rebels dispersed, leaving their leader to his fate. Soon after this, our prelate, in conjunction with the bishop of Ely, acted as commissioners betwixt the king and Richard, duke of York, when that nobleman took up arms. In October, 1453, Waynflete baptized the young prince of Wales, afterwards Edward IV. In October, 1456, after having been much employed in affairs of state, he was advanced to the dignity of lord-high-chancellor, in the room of Bourchier, archbishop of Canterbury, which office, however, he prudently resigned in July, 1460, before the fatal wreck of his royal master's fortunes in the battle of Northampton. His resignation nas been attributed to very unworthy motives, and he has been occasionally represented as trimming, in this and other instances, betwixt the rival parties of York and Lancaster; but Henry himself, in a letter which he wrote to Pope Pius II., while in the custody of the Yorkists, expressly acquits his chancellor of all blame, and bears ample and voluntary testimony to the fidelity and skill with which Waynflete had at all times served him. That Waynflete conducted himself with consummate prudence throughout one of the most difficult and disastrous periods of English history is clear, for he not only retained the confidence of his own Lancastrian party, but commanded the respect of the York

ists, and even appears to have been in favour with Edward IV., who confirmed the grants made to his college, and added licenses of mortmain.

Bishop Waynflete died of a short but violent illness on the 11th o August, 1486, and was interred with great funeral pomp in Winchester cathedral, in a magnificent sepulchral chapel which had been prepared for the purpose during his own lifetime, and which is kept in the finest preservation by the society of Magdalene college. His will bequeaths "his soul to Almighty God, the Virgin, Mary Magdalene, and the patron-saints of his cathedral;" and, among sundry other arrangements, enjoins on his executors "to cause five thousand masses, in honour of the five wounds of Christ, and the five joys of the Virgin Mary, to be celebrated on the day of his burial, the trental of his obit, and other days, as soon as possible, for his soul, and the souls of his parents and friends." Waynflete was one of the prelates who sat in judgment upon Dr Reginald Pococke, bishop of Chichester, whose religious opinions had given offence to the church. On this occasion, the court was unanimous in condemning Pococke's doctrines, and enjoining him to recant and abjure them; he was also ordered to remain in confinement in his own house, and his writings were directed to be burnt; but in all these proceedings, Mr Lewis affirms, the archbishop Bourchier took a much more active share than Waynflete, though then filling the office of chancellor. Of the bishop's sincere attachment to the Romish church there can be no doubt; but it has been justly remarked, that he did perhaps as much mischief to the popish cause by his zeal in the pro motion of learning, as all his other labours did it good. From the college founded and endowed by him at Oxford, not a few powerful abettors of the Reformation were sent forth.

III.-LITERARY SERIES.

Henry Bracton.

FLOR. CIRC. A. D. 1250.

THIS distinguished lawyer is said, by the most eminent antiquaries, to have been a native of Devonshire, and to have descended from a family of high respectability. The date of his birth is not stated, but he is known to have studied at Oxford, and to have gained considerable reputation there for learning and ability. The law was that branch of knowledge which promised, in the age when he lived, the greatest rewards for diligence and ability, and to that accordingly be devoted himself. It was not, however, from skill in the civil law alone that wealth or distinction was now to be acquired in England, and when Hist. Eccles. p. 643.

Rymer's Food. p. 670.

he took his degree of doctor, he was eminently versed in the common law, as well as in the more ancient branches of the science. Full of professional erudition, and accomplished in all the learning of the period, he in due time removed to London, where his abilities quickly brought him into general notice, and recommended him to the patronage of Henry the Third. The monarch finding how valuable his services might be rendered in the conduct of the state, used every means to retain him near his person, and for that purpose granted him the use of the earl of Darby's house, till the heirs of that deceased nobleman should occupy it themselves. In the twenty-ninth year of his reign, he still further manifested the respect with which he regarded him, by appointing him to the office of justiciary-itinerant. In this capacity he evinced a prudence and discernment which at length raised him to the eminent station of chief-justice, which he held above twenty years. The most unmingled praise is accorded him for the virtues as well as talent which he exhibited in the exercise of his functions, while occupying this important office. He so tempered, it is said, his justice and authority with equity and integrity, that he was one of the chief pil lars of the commonwealth, in which he allowed no one to offend without punishment, and no one to do well without being rewarded.

As an author, he is celebrated for having produced a work of great learning, entitled 'De Consuetudinibus Anglicanis,' or 'De Consuetudinibus et Legibus Angliæ.' According to Bishop Nicholson, this production, like that of Lyttleton, was not printed till a considerable period after it had been received in the world as a valuable addition to the stock of legal literature. So numerous, indeed, were the manuscript copies which had been taken, that it was with the utmost difficulty the persons who undertook to edit it for the press could satisfy themselves in preparing the copy. Bishop Nicholson remarks that he must be pardoned his easy admission of the pope's supremacy, and his sometimes naturalizing the canon as well as civil law, when we consider the time wherein he wrote, that it was done after King John had made a formal conveyance of his realm to the see of Rome, and when the greatest part of Europe was entirely under the pope's dominion. The passages that savour strong of the iniquity and vassalage of those unhappy days, are not many; and there is that disagreeable obliquity in them from the description of our true English government, that they are readily discerned to be preternatural and monstrous Some idea may be formed of the work from these observations of the bishop. They also serve to point out the important use which might be made of such early treatises in the study of English history, and, consequently, the place which Bracton and other writers of a similar kind ought to occupy, even in a literary point of view, among the authors of the country.

The period of Bracton's death is equally uncertain with that of his birth, nor is it known where he was buried, or what became of his family. His work has been frequently appealed to in times of political excitement. Milton, in his celebrated Defensio pro populo Anglicans,' quotes largely from it, to prove that when the king attempts to govern by his will and not by the law, he ceases to possess authority. A similar use, it is said, was made of the work by Bradshaw, when as president of the high court of justice he addressed the judges of Charles

the First. It is plain, however, from passages in the work expressed in language of equal force, that it was only to the most evident violation of the tenor by which the king reigns, that the opinions alluded to re fer.

In those places where mention is made of the royal prerogative, he speaks of it in the usual language of the times when he wrote. It may, therefore, be justly inferred that, imperfectly as the theory of government might then be understood by the generality of people, this eminent civilian had formed very correct notions of the true balance which ought to be preserved between the several branches of the legis lature.

Robert of Gloucester.

FLOR. CIRC. A. D. 1260.

THE origin and earliest condition of the language and the poetic terature of England form a subject full of interest and attraction for the antiquarian and the philologist, but do not offer much to engage the attention of the lover of poetry for its own sake. Before the commencement of the 14th century we had a few versifiers, but hardly any poet. The Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester, who probably flourished about the year 1260, is the first long work in verse which can properly be considered as written in the English dialect, at that time a barbarous and unregulated medley of Saxon and Norman, and hardly in truth fit for the purposes of composition at all. The poem in question is nothing more than a metrical version of the famous Latin history of Geoffrey of Monmouth, which had been previously translated in like manner into Norman-French verse by Wace of Jersey, and into a species of degenerated Saxon by Layamon. There does not appear to be much in any one of these three popular imitations of the fabulous annalist indicative of any thing like poetic inspiration; nor can we speak in greatly more flattering terins of the subsequent production of Robert Mannyng, or De Brunne, a fourth translator from the same favourite original, who is conjectured to have written about the close of the 13th century, and the most remarkable characteristic of whose compositions is merely an apparent ease and fluency of versification, which, however, it is agreeable to remark, were it only as evidencing the somewhat improved state to which the language had even already attained.

Few or no materials exist to throw any light on the personal history of Robert of Gloucester, or on that of many of his contemporaries. Neither Bale nor Pits, those two laborious biographers of the fathers of our literature, make any mention of him. Selden has determined that he lived in the reign of Edward I. Other antiquaries have also discovered that he was a monk of Gloucester, and the learned Thomas Hearne supposes that he was sent to Oxford by the directors of the great abbey of Gloucester, to take care of the youth whom they placed in that university. The same writer says that he seems to have occupied an old house on the west side of the Stockwell-street, and on the site of which was afterwards built Worcester college, originally called Gloucester ball Much labour has been expended in endeavours to discover the