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Edward III., pledged his crown and jewels to the merchants of Flanders, in the seventeenth year of his reign, to supply his expenses in the French wars; and soon after the accession of his grandson, Richard II., they were placed in the hands of the Bishop of London and the Earl of Arundel as security for a loan of ten thousand pounds which that monarch had borrowed from John Philpot and other merchants of London. Shakspeare makes Bolingbroke's adherents assert that the proud rebel returned to England to "redeem from broking pawn the blemished crown." Richard was obliged to pawn his favourite jewels, his "white harts."
In the "Archaeologia" (vol. x. page 241), there is a long inventory of the crown jewels, taken, 3 Edward III., from a record in the Exchequer. Among the miscellaneous articles in this inventory are the culinary objects already mentioned (page 145). In another inventory we have also "I frying panne, I sklife (slice), and I ladell d'argent." Spits, gridirons, and other kitchen furniture, are not omitted in the jewel inventory of Henry V. (Rot. Parl. iv. 210.) |
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Precious Stones Vol 11
>> The Crown Jewels of Edward III and Richard II
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