The Life and Death of Jane Shore, Concubine to Edward IV/Chapter 8
CHAP. VIII.
Jane Shore cheated of her Jewels by Mrs. Blague; of her doing Pennance in the Streets; with the Punishment of a Baker for relieving her; and her Dying Lamentation.
Jane Shore had no sooner notice of the death of Lord Hastings her paramour, but she perceived, a storm was falling on her own head, and therefore she thought it necessary to provide in time, and so she carried her jewels to her old confident Mrs. Blague, entreating her to conceal them for her. But she, like a faithless woman, when Jane came and asked for them, not only denied them, but giving any succour; when in the greatest need she came to crave alms, the thirst her out of doors, threatening to have her whipped for her impudence.
Richard, by means aforesaid, having got to the crown, and to make himself fair by other sins, though he was a monster of nature, publickly declaring his mother to be a whore, his brother and his children to be bastards, caused his queen to be imprisoned, and would have wedded his niece. He ordered our Jane Shore to be apprehended, stipped off all she had, and to do pennance, by several times walking in a white sheet, and then walk bare-footed and bare-headed in her shift, before the procession with a cross and a wax taper in her hand, through Cheapside, which she did, looking so lovely in her blushes, that many pitied her; and also stripping all her friends and relations of whatever they had, pretending they had got it by her means from the crown, in king Edward's reign; which with the disgrace their only daughter was fallen into, caused her parents death.
Richard, not content with this, put on a severe proclamation to this effect: That on pain of death and confiscation of goods, no one should harbour her in their houses, or relieve them with food or raiment; so that she went wandering up and down to find her food on bushes and dunghills, where some friends she had raised would throw bones with more meat than ordinary, and crusts of stale bread in the places where she generally haunted. And a baker, who had been condemned to die for a riot in king Edward's reign, and saved by her means, as he saw her pass along, in gratitude for her kindness, trundled a penny loaf after her, which she thankfully took up and blessed him with tears in her eyes. But some malicious neighbour informing against him, he was taken up and hanged for disobeying king Richard's proclamation; which so terrified others, that they durst not relieve her with any thing, so that in miserable rags almost naked, she went about a most shocking spectacle, wringing her hands, and bemoaning her unhappy circumstances.
Thus she continued till the battle of Bosworth Field, wherein Richard was slain by Henry Earl of Richmond, who succeeded him by the name of Henry the Seventh; in which reign she hoped for better days; but fortune raised her another adversary, for he married Elizabeth eldest daughter to Edward the fourth, and King Edward's Queen, who mortally hated her, then bearing a great sway, she procured another proclamation to the same effect; and so he wandered up and down in as poor and miserable a condition as before: till growing old, and utterly friendless, she finished her life in a ditch, which was from that time called Shore's ditch, adjoining to Bishopsgate Street.
Thus you may see the rise and fall of this once stately, and then unhappy woman, with whose dying Lamentation I shall now conclude.
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