Memoir of Margaret, Countess of Richmond and Derby. By the
late Charles Henry Cooper. (Deighton, Bell, and Co. ; Bell and Sons.)—
This is an early work of Mr. Cooper, the learned author of the "Athena) Cantabrigienses," left by him in MS., and published by the joint liberality of the two colleges of Lady Margaret's foundation, St. John's and Christ's.
The mother of tho Tudor Sovereigns is a personage of some importance in English history, and this picture, from which we may be sure Mr. Cooper's antiquarian diligence suffered no detail to be omitted, of her character and manner of life is full of interest. She was, indeed, no ordinary woman,—generous to a degree which contrasts very strangely with the parsimony of her son, possessed of culture not merely beyond the average of her sex, which would not have been much, but beyond all but a few of her contemporaries, and pious with a true fervency of devotion. Hundreds of curious facts about English life at the time come out in the course of the history. All who love to inquire into these carious pictures of the past, will welcome the work, and it will have a special interest for the many who have enjoyed more or less directly the results of the great Countess's bounty. Her benefactions indeed were splendid, —two colleges at Cambridge ; two professorships of divinity, one at each University ; a foundation of cantorists at Westminster, and smaller gifts, especially to the school of Wimborne. A. passage from the original statutes of Christ's College is so curiously characteristic of the literary style of the period, that we must quote it :—" Magister sive Custom caput est; decani duo brachia ; senescallus at prmfectus cistm communis, manus dun ; scholares socii, solids et potiora corporis ipsius mombra ; lector, membrum generationi novas sobolis deputatum ; scholares disci- puli, sominarium amplissimum ; famuli postremo mercede condncti, velut infimi pedes."
Previous page
