246 RICHARD III. AT BAYNARD'S CASTLE. widowed mother, Cicely Neville, Duchess of York. Hither, for security he brought his wife and children from their prison-sanctuary at Westminster in April, 1471. Here he slept that night, and the next day kept Good Friday with proper solemnity. Two days afterwards, on Easter Sunday, he defeated Warwick at the battle of Barnet. Here, under his mother's roof, Richard Duke of Gloucester held his councils in the interval between his brother's death and his own usurpation of the supreme authority, and here he was waited upon by his creature the Duke of Buckingham and the citizens who vociferously called upon him to assume the crown. Shakspeare has again thrown an undying interest over the site of Baynard's Castle. Richard, with great apparent reluctance, presents himself at a gallery above, supported by a bishop on each side of him :— "Glouc. Alas why would you heap this care on me? [Exeunt Buckingham and Citizens. Glouc. Will you enforce me to a world of cares? [Exit Catesby. [Re-enter Buckingham and the rest. PROCESSION OF HENRY THE EIGHTH. Cousin of Buckingham, and sage grave men, Mayor. God bless your grace! we see it, and will say it. 247 King Richard III., act iii., sc. 7. It was in the "high chamber next the chapel, in the dwelling of Cicely Duchess of York, called Baynard's Castle, Thames Street," that, on the day of Richard's coronation, the Great Seal was surrendered into his hands. Henry the Seventh frequently resided in Baynard's Castle after his accession to the throne; indeed, he would seem to have been extremely partial to the spot, inasmuch as we find him, in 1501, almost entirely rebuilding it; "not embattled, nor so strongly fortified, castle-like, but far more beautiful and commodious, for the entertainment of any prince or great estate." Here he received the ambassadors from the King of the Romans, and here he lodged Philip of Austria during his visit to this country. Shortly after the marriage of Prince Henry, afterwards Henry the Eighth, with Catherine of Aragon, we find them conducted by water in great state from Baynard's Castle to the royal palace at Westminster. "The Mayor and Commonalty of London," says Hall, "in barges garnished with standards, streamers, and penons of their device, gave them their attendance: and there, in the palace, were such martial feats, such valiant jousts, such vigorous tourneys, such fierce fight at the barriers, as before that time was of no man had 248 WILLIAM, FIRST EARL OF PEMBROKE. in remembrance. Of this royal triumph, Lord Edward, Duke of Buckingham, was chief challenger, and Lord Thomas Grey, Marquis of Dorset, was chief defender; which, with their aids and companions, bare themselves so valiantly, that they obtained great laud and honour." In the reign of Edward the Sixth, Baynard's Castle became the residence of Sir William Sydney, Chamberlain to the youthful monarch. In the same reign it passed into the hands of William Herbert, first Earl of Pembroke, who lived here in a style of extraordinary magnificence, and whose Countess, Anne, sister of Queen Catherine Parr, breathed her last here in 1551. At Baynard's Castle her lord was residing at the time of King Edward's death, on which occasion, notwithstanding the proverbial wariness of his character, he was induced to sign the famous document acknowledging the claims of Lady Jane Grey. He soon, however, repented of the step which he had taken, and was one of the first to leave the beautiful and accomplished maiden to her melancholy fate, and to proclaim his legitimate sovereign, Queen Mary. Active in his loyalty, as he had been in his treason, he assembled the partizans of royalty under his roof in Baynard's Castle, and it was from under its portal that they sallied forth to proclaim the title of Queen Mary to the throne. The Earl figured in all the Court pageants of the time. He was selected to wait on King Philip on his landing at Portsmouth; was present at his marriage with Queen Mary at Winchester, in 1564, and three months afterwards, on the occasion of the assembling of the first Parliament under the new King and Queen, he proceeded, on entering London, to his mansion of Baynard's Castle, followed by "a retinue of two thousand horsemen in velvet coats, with three laces of gold and gold chains, besides sixty gentlemen in blue coats, SINGULAR PREDICTIONS. 249 with his badge of the green dragon." The Earl survived to figure at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, who appointed him her Master of the Horse, and on one occasion did him the honour to sup with him at Baynard's Castle. At ten o'clock at night, after having partaken of a sumptuous entertainment, he handed his royal mistress by torchlight to the river-side, where she entered her state barge to the sound of music, and amidst the blaze of fireworks; and thus returned to Whitehall, surrounded by a swarm of attendant boats, and cheered by the acclamations of the loyal citizens of London. The successor of Earl William in the occupancy of Baynard's Castle, was his son Henry, the second Earl, who resided here with his Countess,-"Sydney's sister, Pembroke's mother." Here also resided their accomplished and high-minded son, William, the third Earl, who united wit and gallantry with integrity and the most refined tastethe most courtly breeding with the kindest nature. The death of Earl William took place in Baynard's Castle, on the 10th of April, 1630, and was attended by some rather remarkable circumstances. It had been foretold by his tutor, Sandford, and also by the mad prophetess, Lady Davies, whose predictions caused Archbishop Laud so much discomfort, that he either would not complete, or would die on the anniversary of, his fiftieth birthday. That these predictions were actually fulfilled, appears by the following curious passage in Lord Clarendon's "History of the Rebellion." "A short story may not be unfitly inserted; it being frequently mentioned by a person of known integrity, who, at that time, being on his way to London, met at Maidenhead some persons of quality-of relation or dependence upon the Earl of Pembroke. At supper one of them drank a health to the Lord Steward; upon which another of them said, that he believed his lord was at that time very merry, for he had now outlived the day which his tutor Sandford had prognosticated upon his nativity that he would not outlive; but he had done it now, for that was his birthday, which had completed his age to fifty years. The next morning, by the time they came to Colebrook, they met with the news of his death." The Earl, it appears, had engaged himself to sup with the Countess of Bedford, at whose table, on the fatal day, he not only appeared to be in excellent health and spirits, but remarked that he would never again trust a woman's prophecy. A few hours afterwards he was attacked by apoplexy, and died during the night. Granger, to make the story more remarkable, relates that when the Earl's body was opened in order to be embalmed, the first incision was no sooner made, than the corpse lifted up its hand, to the great terror of those who witnessed the phenomenon. The last of our sovereigns whose name is associated with Baynard's Castle was Charles the Second, in whose company we find the first Earl of Sandwich supping here on the 19th of June, 1660. "My lord," writes Pepys on that day, "went at night with the King to Baynard's Castle to supper;" and again, on the following day, Pepys writes-" With my lord, who lay long in bed this day, because he came home late from supper with the King." Baynard's Castle was destroyed in the great fire. Its name, however, is still preserved in Baynard Castle Ward. Westward of the site of Baynard's Castle is Puddle Dock, which doubtless derives its name from one "Puddle," whom Stow incidentally mentions as having kept a wharf in this neighbourhood. Which place we'll make bold with to call it our Abydos, BEN JONSON's Bartholomew Fair. |