in Northumberland, he attended the king into those parts, and was a chief commander at the siege of Alnwick castle; soon after which he was elected into the order of the garter. In the tenth of the same reign he defeated the Dukes of Clarence and Warwick in a skirmish near Southampton, and prevented their seizing a great ship called the Trinity belonging to the latter. He attended the king into Holland on the change of the scene, returned with him, and had a great share in his victories, and was constituted governor of Calais, and captain-general of all the king's forces by sea and land. He had before been sent embassador to negociate a marriage between the king's sister and the Duke of Burgundy; and in the same character concluded a treaty between King Edward and the Duke of Bretagne. On Prince Edward being created Prince of Wales, he was appointed his governor, and had a grant of the office of chief butler of England; and was even on the point of attaining the high honour of espousing the Scottish princess, sister of King James the Third; the bishop of Rochester, lord privy seal, and Sir Edward Widville, being dispatched into Scotland to perfect that marriage[1].
A remarkable event of this earl's life was a personal victory he gained in a tournament over Antony Count de la Roche, called the Bastard of Burgundy, natural son of Duke Philip the Good. This illustrious encounter was performed in a solemn and magnificent tilt held for that purpose in Smithfield: Our earl was the challenger; and from the date of the year, and affinity of the person challenged, this ceremony was probably in honour of the afore-mentioned marriage of the lady Margaret the king's sister, with Charles the Hardy, last Duke of Burgundy. Nothing could be better adapted to the humour of the age, and to the union of that hero and virago, than a single combat between two of their near relations. In the Biographia Britannica is a long account, extracted from a curious manuscript, of this tournament, for which letters of safe conduct were granted by the king, as appears from Rymer's Fœdera; the title of which are, 'Pro bastardo Burgundiæ super punctis armorum perficiendis.' At these justs the Earl of Worcester (before-mentioned) presided as lord high constable, and attested the queen's giving The flower of Souvenance to the Lord Scales, as a charge to undertake the enterprize, and his delivery of it to Chester-herald, that he might carry it over to be touched by the Bastard, in token of his accepting the challenge. This prize was a collar of gold with the rich flower of Souvenance enamelled, and was fastened above the earl's knee by some of the queen's ladies on the Wednesday after the feast of the Resurrection. The Bastard, attended by four hundred lords, knights, squires, and heralds, landed at Gravesend; and
- ↑ The queen had before projected to marry him to that great heiress Mary of Burgundy, who at the same time was sought by Clarence; a circumstance that must have heightened that prince's aversion to the queen and her family.
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