CLARENCE AND ITS ROYAL DUKES.

_(To the Editor.)_


Clarentia, or Clarence, now Clare, a town in Suffolk, seated on a
creek of the river Stour, is of more antiquity than beauty; but has
long been celebrated for men of great fame, who have borne the titles
of earls and dukes. It has the remains of a noble castle, of great
strength and considerable extent and fortification (perhaps some of
your readers could favour you with a drawing and history of it); and
ruins of a collegiate church. It had once a monastery of canons, of
the order of St. Augustine, or of St. Benedict, founded in the year
1248, by Richard Clare, Earl of Gloucester. This house was a cell to
the Abbey of Becaherliven, in Normandy, but was made indigenous by
King Henry II., who gave it to the Abbey of St. Peter, at Westminster.
In after time, King John changed it into a college of a dean and
secular canons. At the suppression, its revenues were 324_l._ a
year.

Seated on the banks of Stour river is a priory of the Benedictine
order, translated thither from the castle, by Richard De Tonebridge,
Earl of Clare, about the year 1315. Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March,
converted it into a collegiate church. Elizabeth, the wife of Lionell,
Duke of Clarence, was buried in the chancel of this priory, 1363; as
was also the duke.

The first duke was the third son of King Edward III. He created his