Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 04.djvu/35

Beauchamp Our Lady, which was built by his executors under his will.

We have not related all the deeds of this hero of chivalry. The most characteristic were collected a generation later by John Rous, chaplain of the chantry founded by this earl at Guy's Cliff in Warwickshire, and illustrated by pencil drawings of high artistic merit. The manuscript containing them is still preserved in the Cottonian Library; the drawings have been engraved by Strutt (Manners and Customs vol. ii. pl. vii-lix), and the narrative they illustrate has been embodied in Dugdale's notice of this earl. It is to be regretted that the drawings and the narrative have never been published together. They are certainly a most interesting product of the art and literature of the middle ages, exhibiting our earl as the mirror of courtesy and refinement in many things of which we have not taken notice; among others, his declining to be the bearer of the Emperor Sigismund's precious gift to Henry V — the heart of St. George — when he knew that the emperor intended to come to England himself, suggesting that it would be more acceptable to his master if presented by the emperor in person.

Besides the manuscript just referred to and the chapel built by his executors, there is one other memorial of this earl still abiding in the curious stone image of Guy of Warwick exhibited to visitors to Guy's Cliff. It was executed and placed there by his orders. It certainly does not suggest that he was a very discriminating patron of art: of which, indeed, there is little appearance otherwise; for it was his father that built Guy's Tower in Warwick Castle, and his executors that built the chapel at Warwick in which his bones repose.

The earl was twice married. His first wife was Elizabeth, daughter and heir of Thomas, Lord Berkley, by whom he had three daughters. His second, whom he married by papal dispensation, was Isabella, widow of his cousin, Richard Beauchamp, earl of Worcester, who was slain at Meaux in 1422. It was by this second marriage that he had his son and heir, Henry [see ].

[Dugdale's Baronage; Dugdale's Warwickshire, i. 408-11; Cotton MS. Julius, E iv.; Walsingham's Historia Anglicana and Ypodigma Neustriæ; Fabyan; Hall; Gregory, in Gairdner's Historical Collections of a London Citizen; Leland's Itinerary, vi. 89; Paston Letters, No. 18; Rymer, ix.-x.]

 BEAUCHAMP, RICHARD (1430?–1481), bishop of Salisbury and chancellor of the order of the Garter, was the son of Sir Walter Beauchamp [q. v.] and brother of William Beauchamp, Lord St. Amand. Of the date of his birth there is no record, but it was probably about the year 1430. For his elder brother, Lord St. Amand, first received summons to parliament in 1449 by reason of his marriage with the heiress of the old barons of St. Amand; and as early marriages were the rule in those days, he was probably not much over one-and-twenty when he took his seat in the House of Lords. Nothing, however, is known about Richard Beauchamp previous to the year 1448, when, being at that time archdeacon of Suffolk, he was nominated bishop of Hereford by Pope Nicolas V on 4 Dec. His consecration took place on 9 Feb. following. But he had only remained in this see a year and a half when he was translated by papal bull, dated 14 Aug. 1450, to Salisbury, and received restitution of the temporalities on 1 Oct. In 1452 his name appears for the first time in the register of the Garter as performing divine service at a chapter of the order at Windsor, which he did also in 1457 and 1459. It would thus appear that he acted occasionally as chaplain to the order long before he became their chancellor; for, as Anstis observes, he could not have claimed to officiate at Windsor as diocesan, the college being exempt from his jurisdiction. On 10 Oct. 1475 he was appointed chancellor of the order by patent of King Edward IV, the office being created in order to provide a more convenient custodian for the common seal of the brotherhood, which by the statutes was to be kept only by one of its members, who should be in attendance upon the king's person. From this time till his death he was present at most, if not all, the chapters of the Garter; and in 1478 the deanery of Windsor was given him, to hold along with his bishopric. He was installed on 4 March. He moreover procured the incorporation of the dean and canons of St. George's Chapel, Windsor, which was granted by patent of 6 Dec. 19 Edw. IV (1479). He died on 16 Oct. 1481, of what illness does not appear, and is said to be buried at Windsor. His will was proved on 8 Feb. 1482.

[Godwin; Le Neve's Fasti; Anstis's Register of the Order of the Garter; Ashmole's History of the Garter, 89.]

 BEAUCHAMP, ROBERT (d. 1252), judge, was a minor at the death of his father, Robert de Beauchamp, lord of Hatch, Somerset, in 1211-12. Adhering to John, he was appointed constable of Oxford and sheriff of the county towards the close 