Windsor had been selected as the place of interment. Ere being conveyed to its last resting-place, however, the corpse, covered with cloth of gold, was carried to the Abbey of Westminster under a rich canopy of cloth imperial, supported by four knights, Sir John Howard bearing the banner in front of the procession, and the officers of arms walking around. Mass having been again performed at Westminster, the mortal remains of the warrior-king were placed in a chariot drawn by six horses, and conveyed, by slow stages, along the banks of the Thames. Having been met at the gates of Windsor, and perfumed with odors by the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of Winchester the corpse was borne in solemn procession to the Chapel of St. George, where, placed in the choir, on a hearse blazing with lights and surrounded with banners, it was watched for the night by nobles and esquires. Another mass, more religious solemnities, a few more ceremonies befitting the rank of the deceased, and the last Plantagenet whose obsequies were performed with royal honors was committed to the tomb. CHAPTER XLI. THE DUKE OF GLOUCESTER. Whether Richard the Third, with his hunch back, withered arm, splay feet, goggle eyes, and swarthy countenance, as portrayed by poets and chroniclers of the Tudor period, very closely resembles the Richard of Baynard's Castle and Bosworth Field, is a question which philosophical historians have answered in the negative. The evidence of the old Countess of Desmond, when brought to light by Horace Walpole in 1758, first began to set the world right on this subject. Born about the middle of the fifteenth century, she lived--when the Plantagenets had been displaced by the Tudors, and the Tudors succeeded by the Stuarts--to affirm, in the seventeenth century, that, in her youth, she had danced with Richard at his brother's court, and that he whom historians had, in deference to Tudor prejudices, represented as a monster of ugliness, was in reality the handsomest man in the room except his brother Edward, and that he was very well made. It can not be denied that the Countess of Desmond's description of Richard appears extremely complimentary; and, indeed, it would have been something novel in human nature if this lady of the house of Fitzgerald, in old age and penury, had not been inclined to exaggerate the personal advantages of a Plantagenet prince who, in the days of her youth and hope, had distinguished her by his attention. Evidence, however, exists in abundance to prove that Richard was utterly unlike the deformed ruffian introduced into history by the scribes and sheriffs of London, who plied their pens with an eye to the favor of the Tudors.