ary.

The feudal castles disappeared, and new and more airy architecture
succeeded them. A better class of furniture also followed; but it was
very thinly scattered through the rooms, and a person on rising from his
bed in the night would have some difficulty in falling over anything.
Tidies on the chairs were unknown, and there was only tapestry enough to
get along with in a sort of hand-to-mouth way.

CHAPTER XVII.

BIOGRAPHY OF RICHARD III.: BEING AN ALLEGORICAL PANEGYRIC OF THE
INCONTROVERTIBLE MACHINATIONS OF AN EGOTISTICAL USURPER.

[Illustration: RICHARD III.]

We will now write out a few personal recollections of Richard III. This
great monarch, of whom so much has been said pro and con,--but mostly
con,--was born at Fotheringhay Castle, October 2, 1452, in the presence
of his parents and a physician whose name has at this moment escaped the
treacherous memory of the historian.

Richard was the son of Richard, Duke of York, and Cecily Neville,
daughter of the Earl of Westmoreland, his father being the legitimate
heir to the throne by descent in the female line, so he was the head of
the Yorkists in the War of the Roses.

Richard's father, the Duke of York, while struggling one day with Henry
VI., the royal jackass that flourished in 1460, prior to the conquest
of the Fool-Killer, had the misfortune, while trying to wrest the throne
from Henry, to get himself amputated at the second joint. He was brought
home in two pieces, and ceased to draw a salary as a duke from that on.
This cast a gloom over Richard, and inspired in his breast a strong
desire to cut off the heads of a few casual acquaintances.

He was but eight years of age at this time, and was taken prisoner and
sent to Utrecht, Holland. He was returned in good order the following
year. His elder brother Edward having become king, under the title of
Edward IV., Richard was then made Duke of Gloucester, Lord High Admiral,
Knight of the Garter, and Earl of Balmoral.

It was at this time that he made the celebrated _bon-mot_ relative to
dogs as pets.

Having been out the evening before attending a watermelon recital in the
country, and having contributed a portion of his clothing to a
barbed-wire fence and the balance to an open-faced Waterbury bull-dog,
some one asked him what he thought of the dog as a pet.

Richard drew himself up to his full height, and said that, as a rule, he
favored the dog as a pet, but that the man who got too i