journalist in his love of detail) about the way in which his friend's
fame began to spread, and the pilgrims to journey to his shrine. It
would have been of interest to trace the first stages in the
unauthorised cult of one as yet uncanonised. What is left of the book is
the record of only the last week in Master Richard's life and of his
death under peculiar circumstances at Westminster in the bed-chamber
of the King.

It is impossible to know for certain who was this king, but I am
inclined to believe that it was Henry VI., the founder of Eton College
and King's College, Cambridge, whose life ended in such tragedy towards
the close of the fifteenth century. His Queen is not mentioned from
beginning to end, and for this and other reasons I am inclined to
particularise still more, and conjecture that the period of which the
book treats must be prior to the year 1445 A.D., when the King married
at the age of twenty-three.

Supposing that these conjectures are right, the cardinal spoken of in
the book would be Cardinal Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, and cousin
of the King.

All this, however, must be doubtful, since the translator of the
original English or Latin appears to have omitted with scrupulous care
the names of all personages occurring in the narrative, with one or two
unimportant exceptions. We do not even know in what part of the country
Sir John Chaldfield held his living, but it appears to have been within
thirty or forty miles of London. We must excuse the foreign scribe,
however; probably the English names were unintelligible and barbarous to
his perceptions; and appeared unimportant, too, compared to the interest
of the mystical and spiritual experiences recorded in the book.