NOTE V.
PAGE 128 (302).--_Song, at the Feast of Brougham Castle_. Henry Lord
Clifford, &c. &c., who is the subject of this Poem, was the son of
John, Lord Clifford, who was slain at Towton Field, which John, Lord
Clifford, as is known to the Reader of English History, was the
person who after the battle of Wakefield slew, in the pursuit, the
young Earl of Rutland, Son of the Duke of York who had fallen in the
battle, "in part of revenge" (say the Authors of the History of
Cumberland and Westmorland); "for the Earl's Father had slain his."
A deed which worthily blemished the author (saith Speed); But who, as
he adds, "dare promise any thing temperate of himself in the heat of
martial fury? chiefly, when it was resolved not to leave any branch
of the York line standing; for so one maketh this Lord to speak."
This, no doubt, I would observe by the bye, was an action
sufficiently in the vindictive spirit of the times, and yet not
altogether so bad as represented; for the Earl was no child, as
some writers would have him, but able to bear arms, being sixteen or
seventeen years of age, as is evident from this (say the Memoirs of
the Countess of Pembroke, who was laudably anxious to wipe away, as
far as could be, this stigma from the illustrious name to which she
was born); that he was the next Child to King Edward the Fourth,
which his mother had by Richard Duke of York, and that King was then
eighteen years of age: and for the small distance betwixt her
Children, see Austin Vincent in his book of Nobility, page 622,
where he writes of them all.
Pages:
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73