ters and co-heiresses of Henry, Lord Montacute, first son of Margaret, under a particular settlement; and the reversion being afterwards granted, by Queen Elizabeth, to Katherine, the eldest, she sold the manor to Thomas Fanshaw, Esq. who claimed the manerial rights, and the privilege of a Tuesday market at Ware, which were allowed. He held the office of King's Remembrancer in the Exchequer;

is the production of a correspondent who has been already alluded to, as having made considerable collections towards a History of this County.

Edmond Plantagenet, Earl of Kent, husband of Margaret de Wake, Lady of this manor, was beheaded the nineteenth of March, 1330; 4 Ed. III.

John de Holland, Duke of Exeter, and Richard the Second, two of the sons of Joan Plantagenet, Lady of this manor, (daughter of Edmond and Margaret,) were both put to death under Henry the Fourth, A. D. 1400 and Thomas de Holland, Duke of Surrey, Lord of this manor, son of Thomas, Earl of Kent, and grandson of the said Joan, was murdered at Cirencester the same year.

Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury, husband of Alice de Montacute, Lady of this manor, and mother of the Duke of Surrey, was beheaded at Wakefield in the second of Ed. IV. by order of Margaret of Anjou, the very same day that his son, Sir Thomas Neville, lost his life in battle.

Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick and Salisbury, and Lord of this manor, and John Neville, Marquis of Montacute, his brother, (sons.of Richard, Earl of Salisbury, and Alice,) were both killed at the battle of Barnet, in the eleventh of Ed. IV.

Edward Plantagenet, Prince of Wales, first husband of the youngest daughter of the Earl of Warwick, was murdered by Richard, Duke of Glocester, at Tewkesbury, on the fourth of May, 1471.

George, Duke of Clarence, husband of the eldest daughter of the Earl of Warwick, was murdered in the Tower, the eighteenth of February, in the seventeenth of Ed. IV.

Richard, Duke of Glocester, who became King by the title of Richard the Third, second husband of the youngest daughter of the Earl of Warwick, was killed at the battle of Bosworth, on the twenty-second of June, 1485.

Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, only son of George, Duke of Clarence, and the eldest daughter of the Earl of Warwick, who, af

ter

Exchequer; and dying in 1600, was succeeded by his son, Henry, who was afterwards knighted. Sir Thomas, his eldest son, was made Knight of the Bath at the coronation of Charles the First, in whose cause he was extremely active, as well as his younge brother, Sir Richard Fanshaw, though greatly to the detriment o the family inheritance. After the Restoration, he was created Viscount Fanshaw, of Dromore, in Ireland, and was chosen to re

present

ter the accession of Richard the Third, being then only eight years of age, passed all the remainder of his life in imprisonment, and who therefore could not have offended against any laws to which the benefits received from their protection had rendered him amenable, was beheaded in the Tower, on the fifteenth of November, 1499, under Hen. VII.

Henry Pole, Lord Montacute, (eldest son of Margaret, the only sister of Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick,) was beheaded on the ninth of January, anno 30th of Hen. VIII. on a charge of treason, in designing to place his younger brother, Geoffrey Pole, a clergyman, on the throne: a charge which carries on the face of it so strong an air of improbability, that though one of his brothers is said to have evidenced it against him, it is difficult for the most credulous reader to believe,

And, to close this melancholy train, comes the venerable Margaret Plantagenet, Countess of Salisbury, widow of Sir Richard Pole, Knt. mother of Henry Pole, Lord Montacute, sister of Edward, Earl of Warwick, daughter of George, Duke of Clarence, and last of the Plantagenets. The frivolity of the charges brought against her is truly contemptible and of the judgment of death passed upon her, without evidence, without even the ceremony of trial, our language affords no adequate expression of abhorrence. Nay, even when the sentence was passed upon her by a vote of Parliament, on accusations which she was not permitted to refute, (for she never was heard in her defence,) it seemed as if the King was ashamed of the business, and her execution was delayed from the thirty-first to the thirty-third of Hen. VIII; when, on an alarm of danger from an insurrection in Yorkshire, said to be promoted by her son Reginald, afterwards Cardinal Pole, the cruelty of the King was sharpened by his fears, and he consigned her to the scaffold. This was on the twenty-seventh of May, 1541, in the Tower of London. She was then seventy years of age. She refused to make any sort of confession, and displayed a dignified heroism in her death, which reflected all the lustre of an ancestry of princes, and of soldiers,

present this county in Parliament. His son Thomas, who inherited the estates, sold the manor of Ware to Sir Thomas Byde, second son and heir of John Byde, Citizen and Alderman of London. He was knighted in April, 1661, and was returned to Parliament four times as a representative for the Borough of Hertford; and again in the Convention Parliament, which immediately preceded the Revolution. He died in January, 1704-5: and the manor is now the property of Thomas Hope Byde, Esq. his greatgreat grandson,

At a Tournament held at Ware, in the twenty-fifth of Henry the Third, and which appears to have been proclaimed in despite of the King's prohibition, Gilbert le Mareschal, the potent Earl of Pembroke, was killed by falling from his horse, and being afterwards trampled on: Robert de Say, one of his knights, was also slain in the diversion, and several others were wounded. In 1408, the town was greatly damaged by a Flood: its low situation rendering it very liable to this inconvenience, several weirs and sluices have been raised at different times to remedy it.

There were anciently two religious establishments in this town: one of them was a PRIORY of Benedictines, subordinate to the Abbey of St, Ebrulph, at Utica, in Normandy, to which Hugh de Grentemaisnil granted the Church of Ware, and two carucates of land in this manor: 66 Whereupon," says Tanner, "it became a Cell to that Abbey; and, in process of time, was so well endowed, that, upon the seizure of the Alien Priories by Edward the Third, during the wars with France, this was farmed at 2001. per annum. After the suppression of these foreign houses, this was given, in the third of Henry the Fifth, to the monks at Shene. Henry the Sixth, for some time, annexed it to the Abbey of St. Mary, near Leicester; but it was afterwards restored to Shene, and, as parcel of its possessions, granted, by Henry the Eighth, to Trinity College, in Cambridge." Some remains of the Priory buildings are yet standing at a little distance from the Church, near the banks of the river. They chiefly consist of ancient walls, fitted

up,

Tanner's Notitia.