Rumours to the effect that young Edward's father's marriage with the Lady Grey, the young King's mother, had been illegal now had a noble circulation. 'Twas whispered in the court, and gossipped o'er. 'Twas the sole story on the tradesman's lips. The urchin in the street had heard it told, and each ear did either credit or despise the tale, that Edward, the father of our present King, had been united by the bonds of wedlock with the Lady Eleanor Talbot, daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury, previous to his union with the Lady Grey. This tale, 'tis scarce necessary for me to say, was but one of many similar inventions of Richard to throw discredit on the rightful Sovereign, and thus help him to reach that awful height to which he was determined to climb. As my friend and I were one day passing the great Church of St. Paul, we were attracted by a surging crowd of people trying, as best they might, to see some poor soul who had just finished doing penance in a sheet of white, and who now stood, in pitiful abashment, upon the church's steps. Behold her as she stands there, an object of curiosity and derision. Hear the coarse jests of the vulgar rabble, who, in their delight at the sight of fallen power, hurl at her defenseless ears all the filthy epithets in the vocabulary of the indecent. Compare her authority of yesterday with her degradation of to-day. Not one of those who were helped to power and greatness, by this woman, now speak one word of sympathy or regret. Such a scene should find in Hell more fitting surroundings for its tragic action. So could I imagine the condemned souls revel and domineer when a Prince of Darkness hath been reduced to a lower level. Another triumph for the Protector. This is Jane Shore, the mistress of the late lamented Edward. Gloucester, the better to deceive the people, and make them to believe in his purity and religious ardour, compelled this poor woman, whose sole crime against the state was that her Creator had given her such beauty as to cause the amorous Edward to cast a longing eye upon her--which, with that fiery Sovereign, was ever the prologue to a history of a woman's loss of character--to thus do penance, draped in a sheet, before the insulting eyes of the scum of the city's population. "Look at the shameless hussy standing, with bowed head, as though she cared a hair for all this gentle penance. See how she stands, blushing, as a properer dame might do," said a heartless wretch, dressed in the garb of a gentleman. Harleston stooped and, taking up a stone, he handed it to this fellow, with these words:--'There, my fine fellow, hurl thou this pebble at the woman there. 'Tis much to be regretted, sir, that thou didst not live in the days of Christ. He asked for such an one as thou to hurl the stone at Mary Magdalene."[1] "And who art thou, sir, to criticise my words?"