Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 28.djvu/253

Humphrey arrest and worry might well have brought about a fatal paralytic stroke (, p. 188;, Chron. pp. 33-4; , p. 619). Fox's contem'porary narrative of the parliament at Bury, the best and fullest account of his last days, says no word of foul play (English Chron. ed. Davies, pp. 116-18; cf. however ib. p. 63). Abroad it was believed that he had been strangled (, i. 118;, i. 190), and the Duke of York was regarded as his murderer, but this is improbable. In the next generation still wilder tales were told (, Œuvres, vii. 87, 192, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove; cf.,p.597,ed.1569). But the fact that Suffolk was never formally charged with the murder in the long list of crimes brought up against him when he fell is almost conclusive as to his innocence.

Gloucester left no issue by Jacqueline or Eleanor. Two bastards of his are mentioned: Arthur, already referred to, and Antigone, who married Henry Grey, earl of Tankerville (, p. 319;, iii. 511). A portrait of Gloucester from the Oriel College MS. of Capgrave's `Commentary on Genesis' is engraved in Doyle's 'Official Baronage,' ii. 22. Another picture, from a window in old Greenwich church, is engraved in the Catalogue of Manuscripts in the Bodleian, 1697. He is usually described as handsome.

Gloucester was a man of great and restless energy, hot-tempered and impulsive, of gracious and popular manners, eloquent, plausible, and affable. His title of the 'good duke' is due, not to his moral virtues, but to the applause of the men of letters whom he patronised and the popular notion that he was a patriot. Shakespeare's portrait of him hands down the popular tradition, and nearly all the chroniclers, foreign and native, praise him; but the broad facts of his life show him unprincipled, factious, and blindly selfish. Dr. Pauli compares him to John of Gaunt, but the political aspect of his career rather suggests analogies with Thomas of Woodstock.

Though no believer in popular miracles, Gloucester adhered to the orthodox traditions of his family, and was the patron and visitor of monasteries, the friend of churchmen, the hunter of heretics. Lydgate boasted that Humphrey maintained the church with such energy 'that in this land no Lollard dare abide.' He transferred some alien priories in his hands to swell the endowments of Eton (, p. 447), and invented ingenious devices to enable the monks of St. Albans, to whom he granted St. Nicholas priory, Pembroke, to evade the statute of mortmain ( i. 92;, Monasticon, ii. 201, 243). He was a great collector of ecclesiastical ornaments and jewels, some of which came after his death to Eton (, pp. 25, 27; Ecclesiologist, xx. 304-15, xxi. 1-4). Though avaricious, he was a liberal giver. He was a real student and lover of literature, and an indefatigable collector of books. His reading was very wide (Beckington Correspondence, i. 290). His chief studies were in the Latin poets and orators, medicine and astronomy, Latin versions of Plato and Aristotle, and Italian poetry, including Dante, Petrarch, and especially Boccaccio. The catalogue of his books presented to Oxford best indicates the range of his tastes (, Munimenta Academica, pp. 758-72). His only Greek book was a vocabulary.

Humphrey's donations first gave the university of Oxford an important library of its own. So early as 1411 his gifts begin. Acting through his physician, Gilbert Kymer (Munimenta Academica, p. 758), he gave 129 volumes in 1439. The masters thanked him, and ordered his commemoration as one of their greatest benefactors (ib. pp. 326-30). Other gifts followed, until the university in 1444 resolved to move their books from the convocation house on the north side of St. Mary's Church, and build a new library as an upper story of the divinity school, which had been begun in 1426, and towards the building of which Humphrey had already contributed. The masters offered the duke the title of founder (, Annals of the Bodleian Library, p. 7, 2nd edit.), and obtained from him a promise of a contribution of 100l. towards the work, together with all the rest of his books. In 1446 the university elected Kymer chancellor for a second time at Humphrey's recommendation (, Fasti Oxon. p. 51, ed. Gutch). But Gloucester died intestate, and his gift was obtained in 1450 after considerable difficulty (ib. p.8; cf., p.322). The central part of the reading-room of the Bodleian Library, now called DukeHumphrey's Library, was finished by the munificence of Thomas Kemp, bishop of London. But the contents were dispersed in the days of Edward VI, and only three volumes of the duke's collection now remain in the Bodleian; others exist at Oriel, St. John's, and Corpus Christi Colleges, and sixseven [sic] are in the British Museum (ib. p.323; cf., Annals of the Bodleian Library, pp. 6-13, 2nd edit.; and , Letters of Eminent Literary Men, pp. 357-8, Camden Soc.) Some are also in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, and a metrical translation of Palladius `de re rustica,' now at Wentworth Woodhouse, contains a curious prologue describing the contents of Humphrey's library (Anthenæum, 17 Nov. 1888, p. 664). 