upon the point, as will be seen by her valuable letter on the subject to her kinsman Mr. Dean Hastings.* From her benevolent heart and bounteous spirit want ever found relief, adversity consolation, and distressed and unfriended talents protection. Under this last point of view, her Ladyship's patronage of the unfortunate Dermody deserves mention, as exhibiting her character in a truly amiable light."+

LETTERS

from the COUNTESS OF MOIRA TO BISHOP PERCY.

"Moira House, Dublin, May 20, 1782. "The Bishop of Dromore must excuse Lady Moira for troubling his Lordship with those dates she threatened him with, for invalidating the only good thing his Lordship was candid enough to acknowledge he had ever heard of the first Henry Tudor. Though she avows the most historic candour to guide her pen, yet she allows so much of the old leaven of true Yorkist antipathy to prevail in her breast, that she acknowledges she should feel a satisfaction in destroying a single meritorious idea that his Lordship might entertain of a Tudor. For which purpose, Lady Moira desires his Lordship to consider, that when that dubious personage, now universally called Perkin Warbeck, was to be sacrificed by the Scotch monarch to his kinsman (by the line of John of Gaunt and Catherine Swinford) the English King, a marriage was

*Hereafter printed in this volume, p. 19.

+ See Mr. Bell's "Huntingdon Peerage," p. 147, where Lady Moira's generous conduct towards Dermody is fully detailed, with two interesting letters to the unfortunate youth, whom she had placed under the care of the Rev. H. Boyd, the translator of Dante. Also a printed Ode, and another poem, addressed to the Countess by Dermody. These will also be found in Mr. Raymond's life of Dermody prefixed to his Works.

projected; Margaret, who was born in 1489, was sent into Scotland in 1503, in the fourteenth year of her age; Mary Tudor was born in 1498, and, being at that period but five years old, it is not probable she should be a competitor with her sister for even a royal husband. Louis the Twelfth came to the crown of France in 1498, got divorced from the daughter of Louis the Eleventh, and married Anne of Bretagne, widow of his predecessor, within the year, or soon after; therefore at the time Margaret was married into Scotland there could not be a prospect of a marriage with France, which did not take place till 1515; and Anne of Bretagne being several years younger than Louis the Twelfth, the probability was, that she should have survived him, and, without bestowing upon Henry Tudor a preternatural degree of penetration, his conduct in this marriage of his daughter with James the Fourth must be attributed to that source which produces often more successful events than the most refined policy, viz. mere chance.

"In respect to the second point, to which Lady Moira, like a dutiful and affectionate niece, thought not proper to agree, she presents his Lordship with her reasons of dissent, grounded on argument. Lady Moira has never been able to meet with any account of the family of Sir Roger Halys, whose daughter Alice was married to Thomas of Brotherton (eldest son of Edward the First by his second wife. Margaret of France), but is persuaded that Alice brought to her husband the rights and claims that were held by the Bigod Earls of Norfolk; and the daughter of Thomas Brotherton was Countess of Norfolk, and at the coronation of Richard the Second did exhibit her petition for the Marshalship of England, to be executed by her deputy; which proves the title and claims went by female descent. Elizabeth her daughter was married to Lord Mowbray, whose son on the death of his grandmother was Earl of Norfolk and Earl Marshal of England. Anne Mowbray, daughter and heiress of John Mowbray, third Duke of that family, was married to Richard Duke of York, second son of Edward the Fourth. Upon his being affianced to this lady he had the titles of Earl of Nottingham and Warren and Duke of Norfolk conferred on him; but, in whatever manner the form might be, she does conclude it was according to the established rule used on a man's becoming possessed of a title in jure uxoris, when some

form of creation and acknowledgment passed the offices to give him due right over her lands and vassals. If the grant was made in that manner it became void by the death of the young heiress, which happened shortly after the celebration of their nuptials, the bridegroom not being five years of age, and the bride not much older, at the time of that ceremony. If the grant was made in consequence of an act of Parliament obtained which cut off the entail of the property, and turned the course of honour from the house of Howard, it was a tyrannical and unjust deed, which justice demanded to be cancelled. If, according to the common practice of those days, Prince Richard's claims ended with the life of Lady Anne Mowbray, King Richard but permitted justice to be fulfilled. Edward the Fourth, where his interest was engaged, has in another instance shown that he was not attentive to the claims of others. Elizabeth, seventh daughter of Edward the First, married Humphry de Bohun, Earl of Hereford, Essex, &c. Constable of England; their great-grandson had two daughters,

Eleanor de Bohun, eldest daughter, married Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester.

Edmond 5th Earl of Stafford Anne Plantagenet.

Humphrey Duke of Buckingham.

Humphrey Earl Stafford.

Henry Duke of Buckingham.

Mary, younger sister, was the first wife of Henry

IV.

T

Henry V.

Henry VI.

Half of the immense possessions of Bohun Earl of Hereford had fallen to the crown when Henry the Fourth seized it; but on the death of Henry the Sixth they ought to have reverted to Henry Duke of Buckingham. Nevertheless (though that Duke was Edward's brotherin-law, having married Lady Katharine Woodvile, the Queen's sister, and was most nearly related to him by his mother) he never would relinquish them. On Richard's coming to the throne, it appears he immediately gave them where they were due. Shakespear, amidst the falsehoods he delivers concerning that prince, makes the refusal of these possessions the foundation of Buckingham's quarrel with Richard; but that that is false is proved by record. Edward the Fourth also deprived his cousin, Lord George

Neville, son of the Marquess Montagu, of the dukedom of Bedford, under pretence that he was not sufficiently rich to maintain that dignity. Richard restored him to that rank which his brother had unjustly divested him of; and his conduct towards the house of Howard, being a point of equal justice with those already mentioned, cannot be admitted as a proof that Richard Duke of York was then dead. It can only be admitted as a proof that, if he bore the titles after the death of his wife, it was adjudged to be the right of the Lord Howard to bear them, and not that of the widower of Lady Anne Mowbray, Duchess of Norfolk, &c.

"As Lady Moira writes only from a very few papers she happens to have in town, and from memory, she cannot be as diffusive in instances of those who bore for a transient space the titles of the heiresses they married as she wishes, and as may seem requisite to illustrate her sentiments concerning the last point in question."

66

"Moira House, Dublin, June 9th, 1782. Lady Moira's compliments to the Bishop of Dromore, and returns him many thanks for his Lordship's very obliging remembrance of her; the pedigree she shall lay up with great care, and preserve with particular regard, as having been an employment of a leisure hour of his Lordship. Dugdale has chosen to give a pedigree of her family as he has thought proper, and has contradicted himself to make it according to his pleasure; Gwillim has given it from its right origin; the son by a second wife. (Lady Isabella Despenser, daughter of the elder favourite the Earl of Winchester) of John Lord Hastings and Abergavenny, was the ancestor that Dugdale makes an unknown Thomas, between whose death and a father's he has given him, called Hugh, he has placed a period of a hundred years. The old barony of Hastings was adjudged, on the failure of the male line of the eldest branch (who became Earls of Pembroke by John Lord Hastings's first marriage with Isabella of Valence), to the descendants of the female of the whole blood, in preference to the male line of the half blood; and, after a long and expensive suit in the Earl Marshal's Court, the title was given to the De Greys, and borne by the Earl of Kent, though now carried again out of that family by a female; and the

Hastings' descended from the second bed, were ordered to carry a difference in their arms, importing they were not the chief branch, on which they unblazoned their arms, retaining however their liveries, which marked the old blazon. Ralph (who was then heir of that line), in spite of the Earl Marshal's decree, assumed the title of Lord Hastings, and is mentioned as such by all the old historians, and in one of Shakespear's plays of Henry the Fourth (Mr. Hume has untitled him, why it cannot easily be guessed); this dissatisfied Lord united himself, to gain redress, to Lord Percy's interest, and being taken prisoner was beheaded. It was his nephew who was King Edward the Fourth's favourite, and as the Greys betrayed Henry the Sixth, and made their terms for it, a new creation of the same title was the only favour Lord Hastings obtained; but as Elizabeth favoured the Greys, and the Earl of Kent married one of her sisters, the quarrels and dislike that subsisted between William Lord Hastings and the Queen and her kindred were unextinguishable.

"Lady Moira flatters herself with being able to acquire much information from the Bishop of Dromore, in a pursuit she has a natural inclination to follow, and in which she has found many hours of amusement, though in the course of her residence in Ireland she scarcely ever met with any person who had a similar turn. When the Bishop of Dromore is so obliging to favour them with his company in the North, Lady Moira will show his Lordship several memorandums she has taken out relative to genealogical inquiries. Lady Moira wrote out a few pages on the subject of the debate that passed between his Lordship and her, but wished to have written them out again; as she has not leisure to do it to-day, and wishes to acknowledge her sense of his Lordship's attention as soon as possible, she sends them as they are, and, as she allows for his Lordship's being a Lancastrian, she hopes his Lordship will give her equal permission as a Yorkist."

"Montalto, Aug. 16th, 1783.

"I hope your Lordship is persuaded that all this family have been excessively mortified in not being able to wait on your Lordship and Mrs. and Miss Percy; after the very obliging proof you gave of coinciding with our wishes to be friendly neighbours, the apparent neglect