executed, his diligence in collecting materials, and his judgment and integrity in using them. We do not

know who first said that an historian should be of no party;" but whoever he was, we neither envy the originality of his observation, nor agree in its propriety and truth. He who is of no party has formed no opinion, and whoever has himself not formed any judgment on the great points of importance that have come before him ; on the motives, the influence, and the consequences of human conduct, on the principles by which men have been guided, and the ends they have desired to attain, would be but a blind and sorry guide through the varied field of historical information. Facts are of no value, but as they furnish the materials of opinions; what we want in a historian is, that he should represent the circumstances he engages to narrate with veracity, collect them with care and circumspection, and comment on them with temperance, and without any fraudulent and sophistical perversion. With such provisoes, let him hold what opinions he may, it matters not, for the cause of truth will advance, and the great and useful purposes of history will be fulfilled. We have read Mr. Keightley's volume, and we pronounce it to be eminently the best, we almost mean to say, the only compendious History of England that is extant. The author has availed himself of the labours of all his predecessors, and we see little that has escaped his observation. His reflections are candid, sensible, and judicious; his sentiments on controverted points expressed with that propriety and moderation which alone command respect and attention; his style is clear, plain, and suitable to the subject: and we think that a just and sound constitutional feeling pervades the work. All we have to observe on particular points are most trifling indeed.

P. 125. For Farnham in Suffolk, we believe the author ought to have written Fornham St. Genevieve, near Bury St. Edmund's. There is no place called Farnham in the county.

P. 330. "We are told of a dilemma used by the Chancellor Morton on this occasion, which some called his fork, others his crutch." Here Mr. GENT. MAG. VOL. X.

Keightley has followed Hume and others in an error arising from ignorance of an obsolete expression. Crutch is not the proper word, but crotch, which is a fork, and is used in the eastern counties universally in the present day;—a crotch stick, a crotch branch of a tree, the crotch of the human body, are words of daily and hourly occurrence. We have seen this mistake in many histories copied one from another, and it is as well to put an end to it. We do not know the original book from which the phrase is taken; but there crotch and not crutch will undoubtedly be found. Those writers who used the old word, used crotch; those who adopted the late form of expression substituted fork, but they meant one and the same thing.

P. 413. "He now openly aimed at the Queen." This was Queen Katharine Parr: but Mr. Keightley has not previously mentioned her name or marriage, and the reader is at loss to know to whom he alludes. P. 449. "A more humane and enlightened historian.' Why not give his name?

P. 465. We are glad to see Mr. Keightley summing up the character of Gardiner with more candour and far better judgment than most of his predecessors. There was much (not something) in his conduct to respect.

P. 512. We do not quite approve the idiom in the sentence, "but liberty was offered to her if she would resign her crown, or associate her son with her in the government, Murray to have the regency during the prince's minority."

P. 515. "On the moral virtues of the regent," the less said the better: he himself, in his last hours, confessed and lamented the great looseness of his life.

P. 557. "The Queen animated her soldiers," &c. There is reason to suppose that the English soldiers, mostly raw levies, would have been totally unequal to the desperate conflict that would have ensued with the veteran legions of the Prince of Parma and of Spain. And it was the strong confidence in their own military superiority that made the Spaniards approach our shores with all their prepared insignia of victory. Thus the storm that dispersed the Armada was

K

indeed providential; for who could assign a limit to the disasters which would have ensued, had these experienced and warlike troops once landed, under the command of their brave and skilful leaders.

Historie of the Arrivall of Edward IV. in England and the Finall Recouerye of his Kingdomes from Henry VI. A. D. M.CCCC.LXXI. Edited by John Bruce, Esq. F.S. A. [Being the first publication of the Camden Society.] Small 4to.

THE formation of the Camden Society, which we announced in our Magazine for April, p. 407, has been attended with such happy auspicesthe list of its members has filled so rapidly, and at the same time with so many distinguished names, that its present success and its powers of usefulness need no longer be doubted; and all that can be wanting to its entire and permanent prosperity, is a judicious selection and a well-sustained succession of interesting works, to support as nearly as possible the expectations to which its early announcements have given birth.

The first publication of the Society is a short but very important historical narrative, relating to one of the most critical periods that occurred during the struggles of York and Lancaster. The editor, in some introductory observations, has discussed its merits, and pointed out its value, in a most judicious and satisfactory manner. After noticing that the five principal historical authorities for the period under consideration are the Second Continuation of the history of Croyland, the chronicler Fabyan, an anonymous writer in Leland's Collectanea, Polydore Vergil, and Philip de Comines, whose various qualities he describes, Mr. Bruce proceeds to remark :

"The present narrative has higher claims to authority than any of those I have noticed. It was written upon the spot; immediately after the events to which it relates; by some person possessed of full means of knowledge; and it will be seen that it was adopted by Edward IV. as an accurate relation of his achievements. All the other narratives either emanated from partisans of the

adverse faction,' or were written after the subsequent triumph of the House of Lancaster, when it would not have been prudent-perhaps not safe to publish any thing which tended to relieve the Yorkists from the weight of popular odium which attached to the real or supposed crimes of their leaders. We have here an authorised relation put forth by the Yorkists themselves, and giving their own account of the events upon which many of the heavy charges brought against their house' have been founded.

"The author says of himself, that he was a servant of Edward the Fourth, and that he presently saw in effect a great parte of his exploytes, and the resydewe knew by true relation of them that were present at every tyme;'-(p. 1.) and these assertions are corroborated, not merely by the narrative itself, which possesses all the characteristics of a relation of an eye-witness, but in a singular manner also by a communication made to the Society of Antiquaries in the year 1820."

The document here alluded to is preserved in the records of the town of Ghent, and there is no doubt that it is a copy of the communication transmitted by King Edward himself to his friends on the Continent, and that communication proves to be an abridgment (though "lifeless, uninteresting, and almost useless for historical purposes") of the more important work now published.

"If we inquire further whether its contents be of sufficient importance to justify its publication, the result will be it relates have few parallels in history. most satisfactory. The events to which A fugitive and an exile, Edward IV. at the commencement of the year 1471, seemed to have lost all present chance of restoration. The imbecility of the actual monarch was amply compensated by the vigour of the Earl of Warwick, the principal Regent, a nobleman whose importance both parties in the state had by turns seen ample reason to appreciate, and whose present measures gave sufficient indication of the energy with which he was prepared to defend the throne he had raised. The inhabitants of the eastern coast, from the Thames to the borders of Scotland, were raised and arrayed to oppose any hostile landing; the Duke of Clarence, one of Edward's brothers, was bound to the restored dynasty by being associated, according to some of the authorities, with the Earl of Warwick in the regency, by a marriage with War

wick's elder daughter, and by a parliamentary entailment of the crown upon him, in exclusion of his elder brother, in case of failure of the descendants of Henry VI.; and the new order of things was further strengthened, and the three great families of Lancaster, York, and Neville bound together, as it were, with a triple cord, by the union of the Prince of Wales with Warwick's younger daughter, the sister of the Duchess of Clarence. Nor was there wanting that only sure foundation for the throne the affection of the great majority of the people. The simplicity and meek piety of Henry; the generous hospitality of Warwick; the hard fortunes of the youthful Prince of Wales; the licentiousness of Edward the Fourth's life; his undignified marriage; and the unpopularity of his friend Worcester, the butcher of England;' all these circumstances, operating upon various classes of the community, produced a wide-spread feeling in favour of the cause of Henry

VI.

"The aspect of affairs upon the Continent seemed equally encouraging to the House of Lancaster. The Duke of Burgundy, the only prince to whom Edward

could look for support, was little likely to enter warmly into his cause; for, although married to his sister, he was connected by relationship with Henry VI. and was involved in a war with France, which would become doubly perilous if, upon any opposition to the Lancastrian party, the influence of England were thrown into the scale against him.

"Whilst every thing seemed thus secure and prosperous, Queen Margaret and the Prince of Wales prepared to pass

into England. Warwick went to the sea coast to receive them; and, if they had landed at that time, their progress to the capital would have resembled a triumph. Detained on the coast of Normandy from February until April by the unusual boisterousness of the weather, they at length, with some difficulty, secured a landing at Weymouth; and what were the tidings with which they were greeted? That, amidst the tempests by which they had been detained, Edward and a small band of followers had landed in the north amongst a people up in arms to oppose him, but whom he had deceived by false representations of the purpose of his coming; that he had obtained possession of the metropolis and of the person of the King; that Clarence-false, fleeting, perjured Clarence '—had deserted the cause of Lancaster; that a great battle had been fought; and that Warwick, the centre of all their hopes, had been defeated and killed."

From the battle of Barnet, at which the King-maker closed his versatile career, the narrative continues, describing the decisive field of Tewkesbury, the assault of the bastard Fauconberg upon London, and the death of the deposed King Henry, concluding three days after his death with the reception to King Edward's mercy of the rebels in Kent. This was on the 26th of May, and the narrative comprehends altogether a period of nearly three months.

66

Edward had first sailed from Flushing on the 2d of March, and after a perilous passage of twelve days, at length landed with a handful of followers at Ravenspurn, on the north bank of the Humber, even in the same place where sometime the Usurpowr Henry of Derby, aftar called Kynge Henry the IV. landed, after his exile, contrary and to the disobeysance of his sovereigne lorde Kynge Richard the II." A gentleman of Holderness, named Martin at Sea, or De la Mere,* was at the head of the armed forces of Henry, but he failed to make any rethe district, in the name of King sistance, in consequence, as is acknowledged by this Yorkist historian, of Edward and his followers deceptively concealing his purpose of recovering the throne, and asserting that he merely came to claim his hereditary dukedom of York. On similar grounds, the citizens of York and others permitted the invader to pass: the Marquis of Montacute, then lying in the castle of Pomfret, did the same, being even supposed to be secretly favourable to the cause of Edward, though he was the brother of the Earl of Warwick, and shortly after slain with him at Barnet: and what is said of the tenants of the Earl of Northumberland, is particularly curious as illustrative of the feudal dependance of the times :

"Grete partye of [the] noble men and comons in thos parties were towards th'erle of Northumbarland, and would not stire with any lorde or noble man other than with the sayde Earle, or at leaste by his commandement. And, for

*We may remark that in Thompson's Ocellum Promontorium is an engraving of a monument in a neighbouring church, ascribed to this individual, but the style of its architecture is in reality of another age.

soo muche as he sat still, in suche wise that yf the Marques wolde have done his besines to have assembled them in any manier qwarell, neithar for his love, whiche they bare hym non, ne for any commandement of higher auctoritie, they ne wolde in no cawse, ne qwarell, have assisted hym. Wherein it may right well appere, that the said Erle, in this behalfe, dyd the Kynge right gode and notable service, and, as it is deemed in the conceipts of many men, he cowthe nat hav done hym any beter service, ne not thowghe he had openly declared hym selfe extremly parte-takar with the Kynge in his rightwys qwarell, and, for that entent, have gatheryd and assemblyd all the people that he might have made; for, how be it he loved the Kynge trewly and parfectly, as the Kynge thereof had certayne knowledge, and wolde, as of himselfe and all his power, have served hym trwely, yet was it demyd, and lykly it was to be trewe, that many gentlemen, and othar, whiche would have be araysed by him, woulde not so fully and extremly have determyned them selfe in the Kyng's right and qwarell as th'erle wolde have done hymselfe, havynge in theyr freshe remembraunce, how that the Kynge, at the first entrie-winning of his right to the Royme and Crowne of England, had and won a great battaile in those same parties, where there Maistar, th'erlls fathar, was slayne, many of theyr fathars, theyr sonns, theyr britherne, and kynsemen, and othar many of theyr neighbowrs, wherefore, and nat without cawse, it was thowght that they cowthe nat have borne verrey good will, and done theyr best service, to the Kynge, at this tyme, and in this quarell. And so it may be resonably judged that this was a notable good service, and politiquely done, by th❜erle."

The "great battaile" here referred to was that fought at Towton; the mention of which, and the general subject of feudal dependence, leads us to notice a remark of Dr. Whitaker in his History of Craven, that "Lord Clifford must have been accompanied to Towton by the flower of Craven; yet, though one half of the Lancastrian army was cut off, I cannot discover a Craven name among the slain." Lord Clifford was slain the day before the battle by an arrow discharged from an ambush; and Dr. Whitaker also remarks, that "the following night was an interval of busy and anxious preparation, and the event of the battle left the surviving followers of Clifford no leisure to celebrate his obsequies."

But is not the circumstance that this observant historian has pointed out, that the name of no follower of the Cliffords occurs in the lists of the slain, a presumptive proof that the men of Westmerland, when they had lost their leader, no longer deemed it incumbent upon them to join the Lancastrian army, but rather felt it to be their duty to carry homewards the remains of their departed chief?

On the tragic deaths of Edward Prince of Wales, at Tewkesbury, and of King Henry at London, which have given rise to such well-known “historic doubts," and so much consequent discussion, this Yorkist chronicler states,

"Edward, called Prince, was taken fleing to the townewards and slayne in the fielde;"

and of the latter event,

"The certaintie of all whiche [the fatal events at Tewkesbury] came to the knowledge of the sayd Henry, late called Kyng, being in the Tower of London; not havynge, afore that, knowledge of the said matars, he took it to so great dispite, ire, and indignation, that, of pure displeasure and melencoly, he dyed the xxiij. day of the monithe of May."

Mr. Bruce remarks upon these subjects:

:

"The deaths of the Prince of Wales and Henry VI. are popularly considered to constitute deep blots upon the escutcheon of the House of York; and, although the acuteness of some modern writers has a little shaken the general faith in the justice of the share in those deaths attributed to the Duke of Gloucester, it has not at all affected the almost universal belief that those Princes were murdered-and murdered through the instrumentality of the heads of the House of York. * In the notes, I have brought together the statements of the various contemporary authorities relating to the deaths of the Prince and Henry VI.; and the juxta-position will not only be useful to those who are desirous to approximate towards the truth, but, by displaying the contradictions between the existing authorities, will be found to prove the importance of obtaining further information."

With one further extract from the curious narrative before us, we must conclude. The belief in a miraculous interference of heaven in favour of a cause polluted by violence and treachery, if not by unblushing murder, is a