was called ‘an hypocrite and a crouchback.’ But the deformity could scarcely have been very marked in one who performed such feats upon the battlefield, nor does it appear distinctly in any contemporary portrait, though there are not a few. Of these several are of the same type, and perhaps by the same artist, as those in the royal collection at Windsor and the National Portrait Gallery. They exhibit an anxious-looking face, with features capable, no doubt, of very varied expression, but scarcely the look of transparent malice and deceit attributed to him by Polydore Vergil, or the warlike, hard-favoured visage with which he is credited by Sir Thomas More.
[More's Hist. of Richard III; Polydore Vergil's Historia Anglica; Hall's Chron.; Fabyan's Chron.; Hist. Croylandensis Continuatio in Fulman. The above are the original literary sources of information, to which may be added for details, W. Wyrcester, Annales; Fragment relating to Edward IV, at end of Th. Sprotti Chronica, ed. Hearne; Three Fifteenth-Century Chronicles, Warkworth's Chron., Plumpton Correspondence, Documents relating to the Collegiate Church of Middleham, and Restoration of King Edward IV, all published by the Camden Soc.; Jehan de Wavrin's Anchiennes Cronicques, ed. Dupont; Paston Letters, ed. Gairdner; Devon's Issue Rolls; Davies's York Records; Calendarium Rotulorum Patentium (Record Comm.); Report IX of Deputy Keeper of Public Records; Dugdale's Baronage, and Sandford's Genealogical Hist.; Archæologia, lv. 159 sq. Of more modern biographies and criticisms it is important to note Buck's Richard III in Kennett's Complete Hist. of England, Walpole's Historic Doubts (1768), Gairdner's Life and Reign of Richard III, Legge's The Unpopular King, and Ramsay's York and Lancaster. Buck, Walpole, and Legge, together with Miss Halstead, whose two volumes on Richard III are now rather out of date, plead for a more favourable view of Richard's character.]
RICHARD, Earl of Cornwall and King of the Romans (1209–1272), second son of King John and Isabella of Angoulême, who subsequently married Hugh of Lusignan, was born at Winchester on Monday, 5 Jan. 1209 (Ann. Bermondsey, p. 451; Ann. Waverley, p. 264). He was christened Richard in memory of his uncle, Richard I. In February 1214 he accompanied his father and mother on John's unlucky expedition to Poitou (Ralph Coggeshall, p. 168). After John's death, on 19 Oct. 1216, Geoffrey de Marisco [q. v.], justiciar of Ireland, offered Richard and his mother a safe refuge in Ireland, which was, however, civilly declined by the council of Henry III, Richard's elder brother (Fœdera, i. 145; cf. Gilbert, Viceroys of Ireland, p. 80). Early in the new reign Richard became governor of Chilham Castle in Kent, and lord of the great honour of Wallingford (Dugdale, Baronage, i. 761). Richard now seems to have spent much of his time at Corfe Castle, Dorset, under the charge of its governor, Peter de Mauley [q. v.], King John's Poitevin favourite. Here he received his early education. On 7 May 1220 Peter de Mauley was ordered to bring Richard from Wallingford to Westminster (Fœdera, i. 160) to witness his brother's coronation.
In 1221 Richard received the honour of Eye. Early in 1223 he lay sick at Lambeth (Rot. Lit. Claus. i. 540). In July of the same year he went on pilgrimage to Canterbury with his brother-in-law, Alexander II, king of Scots (ib. i. 554). In the late summer Richard accompanied his brother on his invasion of the Welsh border (ib. i. 605). To his honour of Eye was now added half of the estates of Henry of Pagham, a follower of Falkes de Breauté (ib. i. 605, 621).
Richard's active career began in 1225, when he was sixteen years old. The pacification of England had now so far advanced that a great effort was resolved upon to win back the Aquitanian heritage of the English kings which had been almost altogether lost under King John. Richard was chosen as the nominal leader of the expedition destined for France. On 2 Feb. 1225 Henry III girt him with the knightly sword (Oxenedes, p. 152). On 13 Feb. Richard was granted the wealthy earldom of Cornwall, then in the king's hands (Rot. Lit. Claus. ii. 16; Rot. Hund. i. 56), to which were added in November the Cornish tin mines in possession of his mother, Queen Isabella (Pauli, Geschichte von England, iii. 555). It is probable that he was invested at the same time with the county of Poitou, so that he might call upon the allegiance of the Poitevins as their lawful lord against the aggressions of Louis VIII (Wykes, p. 68; Koch, Richard von Cornwall, i. 14–15). His uncle, the veteran William Longsword, earl of Salisbury [q. v.], and Philip of Albigny were appointed his chief counsellors. On 23 March Count Richard sailed with a considerable army. He landed at Bordeaux, where he was enthusiastically received. Richard easily captured St. Macaire and Bazas, the outposts of French influence, and on 2 May he wrote a brief letter to Henry III, boasting that all Gascony, save one town and one noble, was reduced to his obedience (Fœdera, i. 178). The one resisting town, La Réole, was now subdued, after a long, fierce, and often interrupted struggle, while the winning over of Bergerac, through the timely defection of
