XXI.—The Earl of Warwick's Virelai
The career of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, from 1401 to 1439 is hardly to be equalled in the annals of chivalry, even by that earlier Richard, Cœur-de-Lion It is no part of this introductory note to his Virelai, to rehearse in detail the extraordinary events of his long life of travel, adventure, warfare, and diplomacy. Mr. James Gairdner's life of the hero tells the story of his chief exploits, and those to whom Dugdale's Warwickshire is accessible may read it in detail. But to come upon a literary personality in the fifteenth century is so rare a thing, and the character of Richard Beauchamp is so happy an example of a true knight of the Middle Ages, that these few notes upon him and his family, most of them not in Gairdner's article, will not come amiss to the student of the period.