e are a pair
of boots, a pair of gloves, and a spoon. The boots are of fine brown
Spanish leather, lined with deer-skin, tanned with the fur on; about the
ankles is a kind of wadding under the lining, to keep out wet. They have
been fastened by buttons from the ankle to the knee; the feet are
remarkably small (little more than eight inches long); the toes round,
and the soles, where they join to the heel, contracted to less than an
inch in diameter.

The gloves are of the same material, and have the same lining; they
reach up, like women's gloves, to the elbow; but have been occasionally
turned down, with deer-skin outward. The hands are exactly proportioned
to the feet, and not larger than those of a middle-sized woman. In an
age when the habits of the great, in peace as well as war, required
perpetual exertions of bodily strength, this unhappy prince must have
been equally contemptible from corporeal and from mental imbecility.[54]

A well adjoining to Bolton Hall still retains his name. He is said to
have ordered it to be dug and walled round for a bath; and it is much
venerated by the country people to this day, who fancy that many
remarkable cures have been wrought there.

It is not generally recorded that the science of alchemy was much
encouraged by the royal visionary. Though he had commissioned three
adepts to make the precious metals, and had not received any returns,
his credulity remained unshaken, and he issued a pompous grant in favour
of three other alchemists, who boasted that they could not only
transmute metals, but could impart perpetual youth, with unimpaired
powers both of mind and body, by means of a specific called the _Mother
and Queen of Medicines, the Celestial Glory, the Quintessence or Elixir
of Life._ In favour of these "three lovers of the truth, and haters of
deception," as they styled themselves, Henry dispensed with the law
passed by his grandfather, Henry IV., against the undue multiplication
of gold and silver, and empowered them to transmute the precious metals.
This extraordinary commission had the sanction of Parliament; and two
out of the three adepts were the heads of Lancashire families--viz., Sir
Thomas Ashton of Ashton, and Sir Edmund Trafford of Trafford. These
worthy knights obtained a patent for changing metals, 24 Hen. VI. The
philosophers, probably imposing upon themselves as well as others, kept
the king's expectation wound up to the highest pitch; and in the
following