As for the rest of the acts of King Edward they concern not much the City of London. He entertained the Mayor and Aldermen at a hunt; he also sent the Lady Mayoress six fat bucks and a tun of wine, of which they made a great feast at Drapers’ Hall; he murdered his brother, the Duke of Clarence; he invaded France and came back again;—one must needs speak of his mistress, Jane Shore;—and he borrowed a great deal of money which he did not repay. The history of the King’s mistresses should hardly claim a place in the history of London. There are, however, one or two of these favourites who, in some way inexplicable, have captured the imagination of the people, and have won their sympathies. Why do we think more of Jane Shore than of Alice Perrers? Why, out of the long list of frail beauties about the court of Charles II., do we fix our eyes upon Nell Gwynne and neglect the rest? Certain it is that, not only in her own lifetime but also long afterwards, Jane Shore was remembered with kindliness and pity. Everybody knows her story: she was the wife of a London citizen, a goldsmith; she attracted the attention of the man who is commonly believed to have been the handsomest man in the country, as he was certainly the most dissolute. If, however, the portrait of Edward IV. in the possession of the Society of Antiquaries is to be trusted, his beauty did not lie in his face; it must have been his stature and his strength which gave him this reputation. When he died, Jane Shore, whose husband had cast her off, fell into the power of Hastings or of the Marquis of Dorset. When Hastings was beheaded, Richard endeavoured to convict her of witchcraft, probably he had some private reason for personal malice against Jane Shore. This attempt failing, he accused her of unchastity, which was not to be denied. She was taken to the Bishop’s Palace there clothed in a white sheet, a wax taper was placed in her hand, and she was led to the Cathedral beside the Palace, where she offered the taper, and to Paul’s Cross, where she made confession of her sins. One is glad to think that the poor creature had so short a distance to walk in this deplorable guise. Some, as Stow says, may think this woman “too slight a thing” to be written of: yet who can read the words of the grave Sir Thomas More, and still think so? And one cannot read the words of Stow himself without feeling that it was no common woman who could thus draw all hearts to her; who could leave behind her the memory of so many good deeds; who expiated a youth of such splendid sin by an old age of such terrible poverty and neglect. Here are the words of Sir Thomas More:—