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MARGARET,

COUNTESS OF RICHMOND AND DERBY,

THE mother of Henry the seventh, to whom she seems to have willingly ceded her no right to the crown, while she employed herself in founding colleges, and in acts of more real devotion and goodness than generally attend so much superstition. While she was yet young, and a rich heiress, the great duke of Suffolk, minister to Henry the sixth, or rather to queen Margaret, solicited her in marriage for his son, though the king himself wooed her for his halfbrother Edmund. On so nice a point, the good young lady advised with an elderly gentlewo

2 As a thick quarto a volume has been published within these few years, of such illustrious women as have contributed to the republic of letters, I shall be very brief on this head, having little to add to what that author has said.

$ [Mr. Ballard has printed a copy of Latin verses, which contain an accurate account of her collegiate foundations. See Memoirs, p. 21. Mr. Gyll, in a manuscript note, says she was a justice of peace.]

4 [Duke of Bokingham, MS. coll. Jo. Funeral Sermon in Marg. 8. Gyll.]

■ Memoirs of several Ladies of Great Britain who have been celebrated for their writings, &c. by George Ballard, 1752.

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mau, who thinking it too great a decision to take upon herself, recommended her to St. Nicholas, who whipping on some episcopal robes, appeared to her, and declared in favour of Edmund. The old gentlewoman, I suppose, was dead, and St. Nicholas out of the way; for we hear nothing of the lady Margaret consulting either of them on the choice of two other husbands after the death of earl Edmund, by whom she had king Henry. Sir Henry Stafford, the second, bequeathed to his son-in-law "a trappur of four new horse harnish of velvet ;" and his mother, the duchess of Buckingham, in consideration of lady Margaret's great affection for literature, gave her the following legacy by her will: "To my daughter Richmond, a book of English, being a legend of saints; a book of French, called Lucun; another book of French of the epistles and gospels and a primmer with clasps of silver gilt, covered with purple velvet.""

Her virtues are exceedingly celebrated: "Her humility was such that she would often say, on condition that the princes of Christendom would combine themselves and march against the common enemy the Turks, she would most willingly attend them, and be their

› Dugdale.

laundress in the camp." And for her chastity, the rev. Mr. Baker, who republished bishop Fisher's funeral sermon on her, informs us, “ that in her last husband's days, she obtained a license of him to live chaste, whereupon she took upon her the vow of celibacy;" a boon as seldom requested, I believe, of a third husband, as it probably would be easily granted. This princess published

"The Mirroure of Golde for the sinfull Soule, translated from a French translation of a Book called, Speculum aureum Peccatorum." Emprynted at London, in Flet-strete, at the signe of St. George, by Richard Pynson, 4to. with cuts on vellum. 7

"Translation of the fourth Book of Dr. J. Gerson's Treatise of the Imitation and following the blessed Life of our most merciful Saviour Christ;" 8

6 Camden's Remains, p. 271. edit. 1651.

7 Ballard, p. 16. [The copy so printed was in the possession of Mr. West.]

[Herbert has given the title and colophon of this book from a copy in his own possession: "Here beginethe the forthe boke of the folowinge Jesu Cryst, and of the contēpnige of the world. Imprinted at the cōmaūdement of the most excellent pryncess Margarete, moder vnto our souereyne lorde kinge Henry the VII. coūtes of Richemout and Darby. And by the same pryncess i was translated out of Frenche into Englisshe in

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