wall, at the east end of the chancel. His widow, the lady Margaret, survived him fifteen years; dying July 3, 1439. An extract from her will is interesting, as illustrating the nature, in those days, of the payment, which we now call mortuary: "I bequeath, according to custom, my best beast." This was generally the most valuable horse, in the possession of persons of rank; led caparisoned, and bearing the military weapons of the deceased, before the corpse, at the funeral; and, afterwards, delivered up as a mortuary. The exchange for a money payment took place in the reign of Henry VIII, in consequence of its being found oppressive to the yeomanry, and poorer inhabitants of a parish, to be obliged to yield up for a mortuary, a valuable portion of their property. The lady Margaret bequeathed, also, one cup of gilt silver, for the use of the high altar in the Priory; and £40 for the purchase of lead, to repair the dormitory and refectory. The conditions of this legacy were, that two monks should be provided, to pray, daily, for a period of five years, for her own soul, the souls of her benefactors, and all the faithful departed; one priest in each of the chapels of St. Nicholas and St. Sythe, attached to the Priory. There was a further legacy to be applied in ornamenting the chapel of St Mary; on condition, that in their daily service, for five years, the Prior and the fraternity should use a collect, beginning, "Lord, of thy goodness, have mercy upon the soul of thine handmaid and servant:" and for longer than five years, if, from a motive of love, they were inclined to continue it. Of the altar tomb to her memory, which, at the suppression of the Priory, was removed to Bottesford chancel; only the top slab of freestone remains, with her figure in the dress of the period: it is now placed on the floor, at the west corner of the south aisle.

JOHN DE ROS succeeded, in 1414, to the title and possessions of his father, being then seventeen years of age.

In

1421, six years after the glorious battle of Agincourt, he, and his brother William, were slain, with the Duke of Clarence, governor of Normandy for his brother Henry V, the Duke of Exeter, and several other Englishmen of distinguished rank, at a place within four miles of Beaufort Castle. This unfortunate event was occasioned, chiefly, through the treacherous suggestion of a person in the army of the Duke of Clarence, to leave his archers behind; and to the valour of the Scotch mercenary auxiliaries, in the service of the Dauphin, under the Earl of Buchan, who slew the Duke of Clarence, with his own hand. His monument was removed, with others, from the Priory, to Bottesford Church; and was placed against the wall of the chancel, on the north side of the altar. He married Margaret, daughter and heir of Philip Despenser,* a grand-daughter of Mortimer, Earl of March; or, according to some, daughter and heir to Philip Wentworth. On the death of her husband, John de Ros, she married Sir Roger Wentworth, knight; by whom she had one son; and died April 20, 1479.

John Lord Ros having died without issue, THOMAS, his next brother, succeeded; and for his valour in the disastrous wars in France, by which, during the minority of Henry VI, the English dominion was wholly subverted, received the distinction of knighthood. He had summons to parliament, 7 Henry VI. He married Eleanor, daughter of Richard de Beauchamp,† Earl of Warwick; and by her he had issue, three sons; Thomas, his successor, born September 9, 1427; Richard, born March 8, 1428-9; and Edmund, who was an idiot. In a charter, dated April 23, 1430, 8 Henry VI, after enumerating the benefactions to the Priory of Belvoir, by the Todenis, Albinis, and the members of his own family; Thomas, Lord Ros, confirmed these grants. He died Aug. Despenser. Arms-Quarterly, argent and gules, 2 and 3 quarters fretty or; over all, a bend sable.

Beauchamp. Arms-Gules, a fess between 6 cross-croslets, or,

18, 1431; leaving his son and successor not quite four years old.

During the minority of THOMAS, LORD Ros, his great uncle, Sir Robert Ros, knight, was deputed by the king, in 1443, to perform the office of chamberlain to Archbishop Stafford, on the day of his installation, at Canterbury; an office, which of right belonged to the Lord Ros, from his tenure of the manor of Hethfield, in Kent. The fee for this service, was the furniture of the room, and the basin and towel. The manor, and the tenure on which it was held, came to the Ros family, from the marriage of an ancestor with Margaret Badlesmere. Thomas Lord Ros was, when only eighteen years of age, put by the king, into full possession of his father's estates. He was styled Baron Ros, of Hamlake, Trusbut, and Belvoir; and summoned to parliament, from 27 to 38 Henry VI. He married Philippa, eldest daughter of John de Tiptoft,* aunt to Edward, Earl of Worcester, and co-heir of one-third part of his lands; by whom he had issue, Edmund, born 1446; Eleanor, 1449; Isabel, 1451; Joan, 1454; and Margaret, July 1, 1459. Having been faithful to Henry VI, amidst all the fluctuations of that ill-fated monarch's reign; he was rewarded with certain commercial privileges, consisting, chiefly, in an entire remission of the customary duties on exported wool. In 1456, he had permission to go on a pilgrimage beyond sea: and in 1460, the king settled on him, as in part, a recompense for the great expenses and losses incurred in his service, an annuity of £40, arising out of certain manors, forfeited by the Earl of Salisbury. In the same year, being with the king at York, when the melancholy news arrived, of the overthrow of the Lancastrian party, at Towton field, he accompanied his sovereign to Berwick. For his fidelity to the house of Lancaster, he was, with all his * Tiptoft. Arms—Argent, a saltier engrailed gules.

adherents, attainted in parliament, Nov. 4, 1461. Rapin says, he was beheaded; and Dugdale, that he died at Newcastle, in the same year. His widow was re-married to

Edward Grimston.

The house of York being now finally triumphant over the Lancastrian party, Edward IV. rewarded his adherents, with the confiscated property of his opponents. Of the former, Sir Robert Constable, of Flamburgh, received the manor of Harsan, in Yorkshire; William Hungerford, the manor and advowson of Braunston, in Northamptonshire; Henry Bouchier, Earl of Essex, the manor and advowson of Chingford, in Essex. But the fairest portion of the magnificent possessions of Thomas, Lord Ros, was granted to William, Lord Hastings, commonly called the bastard. This person was permitted to hold of the king, and his heirs, by homage only, the honour, castle, and lordship of Belvoir, with the park, and all its members; consisting of Woolsthorp, Barkston, Plungar, Redmile, Harby, Bottesford, Normanton, and Easthorpe; with the advowsons of their several churches, and the rent called Castleguard, throughout England, at that time an appurtenance of this Castle.

The possession of the Castle, was not, however, rendered, without a struggle on the part of an attached friend of the Lord Ros. When Lord Hastings came for the purpose of surveying his new possession, and contemplated residence, at Belvoir, Mr. Harrington, described by Leland, “as a man of power thereabouts, and a friend to the Lord Ros," suddenly attacked, and drove away the intruder. Exasperated at this unexpected opposition, Lord Hastings afterwards came with a strong force, and with a bitterness of scarcely intelligible, so injured the noble mansion, which had now become his own, that the Castle fell to ruin. The timber of the roof being despoiled of the lead, with which it was covered, rotted away; and the soil between the walls,

rage

at the last, grew full of elders: in which state the Castle remained, till it was partially rebuilt by the first Earl of Rutland, and completed by the second. The Lord Hastings carried the lead, he had thus obtained, to Ashby-de-laZouch, where, in the phrase of Leland, "he much builded." The spirit of spoliation seems to have extended to Stoke Albany, a goodly manor place of the Ros family; and part of the materials thus acquired, were also carried to Ashbyde-la-Zouch.

EDMUND, LORD Ros, in consequence of his father's attainder, and his own fidelity to the house of Lancaster, was, when very young, obliged to go beyond the seas. Under Henry VII, who united the contending houses of York and Lancaster, the attainder was reversed; and Edmund, Lord Ros, was, for the most part, re-instated in his ancestral property: the portion at Belvoir having been in the possession of the Hastings family, for more than twenty years. In the petition to parliament, presented by Lord Ros, November, 1483, his claims are stated with great moderation; and his sufferings for his loyalty to Henry VI, do not lead him to any severe reflections upon the party, through which they had happened, though his own party was now triumphant. The prayer of the petition was granted, with certain reserves of property, to different members of his family, which had been made in past time; and a resumption of which, might have been attended with some degree of injustice. About nine years afterwards, Sir Thomas Lovel, who had married Isabel, sister to Edmund, Lord Ros, presented a petition to parliament, representing his noble relative, as "not of sufficient discretion to guide himself and his livelihood; nor able to serve his sovereign after his duty" and praying "that he might have the guidance and governance of the said Edmund," and of all his property. An act of parliament was accordingly passed,