Note 22 — Chapter II

Mr. Gairdner mentions that there is a MS. City Chronicle among the Cottonian MSS. (Vitell. A. xvi. f. 133), which states that Henry's body was brought to St. Paul's on Ascension Eve (May 22), 'who was slain, as it was said, by the Duke of Gloucester.' In MS. Arundel, 28, in the British Museum, there is an old Chronicle, on a fly-leaf of which, at the end, there are some jottings relating to Edward IV.'s time in a contemporary hand, and among others—'eodem die decessit Henricus sextus,' meaning the day of Edward's arrival in London. A MS. in Heralds' College (printed by Mr. Gairdner) dates the death 'in vigilia Ascencionis Dominicæ'; a MS. at Oxford (Laud, 674) gives the same date; a MS. in the Royal Library at the British Museum says: 'Obitus Regis Henriei Sexti, gui obiit inter vicesimum primum diem Maii et xxiim diem Maii.' Henry's obit is set down May 22. None of these documents have any date. Their statements about May 21 are the same as those of Warkworth or Fabyan, from whom they must have been derived. But Warkworth and Fabyan are proved to be wrong by the evidence of the accounts for Henry's maintenance: and by the evidence of Polydore Virgil, as well as by the letter at Bruges.