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PREFACE.

THE following Sermon having now lain two hundred years without an edition, and thereby become as scarce as Manuscripts, I thought it a duty owing that excellent person described in it, to give it a second edition: and I have often wondered, that amongst so many hundreds, I may say thousands, as have eat her bread, no grateful hand has been yet found to do her right, especially, since the task has been made so easy by Bishop Fisher, by so well describing her virtues in this Sermon. But lest any deserved or seeming obloquy should fall upon her Foundations by such neglect, I shall endeavour to remove or obviate the objection, by renewing her exequies at this distance; and though enough has been said upon the occasion already, yet I shall take the liberty, to add somewhat of my own2, especially concerning her Foundations: and

It was 'compyled by ye reuerent fader in god Johan Fyssher bysshop of Rochestre,' an. 1509 (see the Lady Margaret's Epitaph); and soon after 'Enprynted at London in Flete strete at the sygne of the sonne by Wynkyn de Worde,' without date, quarto. Baker's reprint appeared in 1708.

2 Baker has incorporated this Preface with his History of St John's College; and it there forms very nearly the whole of his account of the College, under the two first

if in speaking of her, I reflect some right upon her Confessor, that excellent Bishop, so deeply concerned in most of her charities, I suppose, it will be thought no more than justice done him, by that which follows.

Margaret Countess of Richmond was daughter of John Beaufort Duke of Somerset, grandson of John of Gaunt, and so descended from Edward the Third; consort of Edmund Tudor Earl of Rich

Masters. The History is nearly, word for word, the same as the Preface, from the account of the Lady Margaret, p. 2. to that of Dr Shorton, p. 49.

1 John Beaufort, son of John Earl of Somerset (by Margaret daughter of Thomas Holland Earl of Kent) the eldest son of John of Gaunt by Catherine Swinford. He succeeded his elder brother Henry, who died young, in the Earldom, 6 Hen. V.; was created Duke of Somerset and Earl of Kendal, 21 Hen. VI.; and died May 27, 1444. He is generally supposed to have destroyed himself, being accused of treason and forbid the court, which his great spirit could not brook. The mother of the Lady Margaret was Margaret Beauchamp, daughter of Sir John Beauchamp of Bletsoe Knt. and sister and heir to John Beauchamp; the relict of Sir Oliver St John Knt. [Sandford's Geneal. Hist. p. 317. and Dugdale's Baronage, Vol. II. p. 123.]

2 Edmund de Hadham, eldest son of Owen Tudor, by Catherine Queen of England Dowager to Hen. V., and daughter to Charles VI. of France; created, an. 31 Hen. VI., Earl of Richmond, and to have place in Parliament next after Dukes. He died, an. 35 Hen. VI., and was buried in the Grey Fryers Church at Carmarthen; from whence his remains, upon the suppression of that abbey, were removed to the middle of the choir of St David's Cathedral; and deposited under an alter tomb, with this Epitaph on the verge: Under this Marble-stone here

mond, son of Catharine of France, and so allied to the crown of France; and mother of Henry the Seventh king of England, from whom all our kings of England, as from his elder daughter Margaret, who bore her name, all the kings of Scotland, are ever since descended. And though she herself was never a queen, yet her son, if he had any lineal title to the crown, as he derived it from her, so at her death, she had thirty *kings and queens allied to *Fun. Serm. her, within the fourth degree, either of blood or affinity; and since her death, she has been allied in her posterity, to thirty more.

But titles, as they were things she did not value, so I shall make them no part of her character; I shall confine myself to her private virtues and public charities, which were the only crowns, she affected to wear.

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Her first design was, of a perpetual public Lecture in divinity; this she instituted in the eighteenth year of her son's reign on the 3 feast of the nativity Cart. Funof the blessed Virgin, and by the original founda- archiva tion, appointed John Fisher, S.T.P. her first Reader, who was succeeded therein by Dr Cosin Master of Benet, as he was by William Burgoign Regr afterwards Master of Peter-House, and he by Eras

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inclosed resteth the Bones of the Noble Lord, Edmund Earl of Richmund, Father and Brother to Kings; the which departed out of this World in the year of our Lord God, 1456. the third of the month of November; on whose soul Almighty Jesu have mercy, Amen.' [See Sandford's Geneal. Hist. p. 284. and Dugdale, Vol. II. p. 237.]

3 i. e. Sept. 8, 1502.

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mus, a name that needeth no titles. She likewise gave rules and statutes for the choice of her Reader, and for the discharge and performance of the duties of his place, and endowed her Lecture with twenty marks per ann. payable by the Abbot and Convent of Westminster, which House she had endowed with revenues, to the value of 87 lib. per ann.'.

The same day and year, she instituted the like Reader at Oxford, with allowance of the same salary, and almost under the same rules, with that at Cambridge; and nominated and appointed one John Roper, S.T.P. to be her first Reader there.

In the twentieth year of the same reign, Oct. 30, she founded a perpetual public Preacher at Cambridge, with stipend of 10 lib. per ann. payable by the Abbot and Convent of Westminster, whose duty was to preach, at least six sermons every year, at several churches (specified in the foundation) in the dioceses of London, Ely, and Lincoln; and one John Fawn, S.T.B. is appointed her first Preacher, by the original foundation.

This is that John Fawn, who has been styled President of the University, a title that has been wondered at, but not explained. The meaning, I suppose, was this; This John Fawn was Vice-Chancellor ann. 1514, (for Fuller and the tables he follows are mistaken) the same year Bishop Fisher resigned the Chancellorship, and at the Bishop's desire, and with his advice, Wolsey Bishop of Lincoln

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See her Will in the Appendix.

Liter.

was chosen Chancellor: during the vacancy, and till Wolsey should accept, Fawn did rather preside, than properly could be styled Vice-Chancellor of the University, and therefore in their letters to Wol-Regr. sey, as a greater compliment to that great man, Fawn styles himself only President of the University, till the Chancellor elect should give him leave to be his deputy. But these compliments were lost, for Wolsey, notwithstanding the great and almost

2 The following is the commencement, and a part of the letters:-Honorificentissimo D'no Thomæ Lincoln' Præsuli, Regis nostri Elemosinario Dignissimo, Joannes Fawne, Universitatis Cant. Presidens, cum toto Regentium et Non-Regentium contubernio S. in D. Semp. Quantum gaudii ex his tuis honoribus dignitatibusque, cepere Docti omnes, Pater ornatissime, non possumus literis explicare; nec quidem ab re; quandoquidem et literatissimus, et bonarum literarum studiosissimus, uno omnium consensu prædicaris.

..Quis prudentiam et Doctrinam tuam, quis justitiam et liberalitatem, quis reliquas virtutes ignorat? Quibus gratissimus jucundissimusque es summis, privatis, et infimis; quibus nos quoque allecti, te nostrum Cancellarium, nostrum Patronum, nostrum denique decus et Ornamentum delegimus; sub quo bonæ Artes, et ingenua studia floreant niteantque; in quo maxime celebrando omnes Literati suos labores, suasque vigilias ponere debeant. Cantabrig: nono. Cal. Jun. Anno 1514.

.........

Wolsey, in his answer dated the 2nd of June, and addressed venerabili cætui et Congregationi Regentium et Non-Regentium Universitatis Cantabrig.' says,......Detulistis mihi ultro eos Honores, qui apud vos sunt supremi et honorificentissimi, cum nondum quicquam tale de vestra universitate meruerim.

Sed Reverendissimus (sunt verba Roffensis in altera Epistola) noluit accipere.

The letters may be seen at length in Fiddes's Life of Wolsey, Collect. p. 50.

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