Note 14 — Chapter IV

Ralph Cromwell, fourth Baron Cromwell, who was Lord Treasurer for Henry VI., and was the builder of Tattershall Castle, died childless in 1455. His sister Maud married Sir Richard Stanhope and had a daughter Maud, whose husband Sir Humphrey Bourchier, third son of Henry Bourchier Earl of Essex, by the Princess Isabel Plantagenet (aunt of Edward IV.), took the title of Lord Cromwell jure uxoris. This Lord Cromwell seems to have been a student of law as well as a soldier. There is a manuscript copy of the statutes of Edward III. in the Hunterian Library of Glasgow University which once belonged to him. At the beginning there is the following entry: 'Eximii et preclari militis liber, Johannis Markham capitalis just, de B. Regis, Liber Humfredi Bourchier dmus Cromwell ex dono supradicti'; and at the end: 'This boke is mine Humphrey Bourchier Lord Cromwell by the gift of the right noble and famous judge Sir John Markham Chief Justice of the King's Bench.'