RICHARD BEACCHAMP. 193
Amy Robsart ! how instinctively turns the heart to thee, and to the fearful secrets of Cumnor Hall. Near the southern wall of the chapel are entombed the re mains of his infant son, " the noble Impe, Robert of Dudley, Baron of Denbigh," and heir presumptive to the earldom of Warwick. In the centre is the monu ment of its founder, Richard Beauchamp, the great Earl of Warwick, who held oiRces of the highest trust and power under Henry the Fourth and Fifth, and conducted the education of Henry the Sixth. During the exercise of his office, as Regent of France, he died at Rouen, in 1 439, and his body was brought over in a stone coffin for interment here. The monument dis plays his recumbent statue in fine brass, clad in a full suit of plate armor. In a curious old biography of him, it is told how " erle Richard by the auctoritie of the hole parliament was maister to king Henrie the Cth, and so he contynowed till the yonge king was 1 G yere of age." A drawing in the same book repre sents him in his robes and coronet, taking the infant monarch from his nurse s arms, the Queen and Bishop of Winchester standing by with sorrowful countenances. The round, unthinking face of the boy expresses no sympathy in their regret; though he probably soon learned to realize the contrast between the delights of the royal nursery, and the training of his stately tutor, who, we learn frorn^ history, insisted peremptorily on the privilege of inflicting personal chastisement, and subjected his pupil to many severe restrictions. This iron rule pressed heavily upon the weak mind of the 13
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