SHORE, Jane, the celebrated concubine of the licentious King Edward IV. was the wife of Mr Matthew Shore, a goldsmith in Lombard-street, London. Kings are seldom unsuccessful in their amorous pursuits; therefore there was nothing wonderful in Mrs Shore's removing from Lombard-street to shine at court as the royal favourite. Historians represent her as extremely beautiful, remarkably cheerful, and of most uncommon generosity. The king, it is said, was no less captivated with her temper than with her person: she never made use of her influence over him to the prejudice of any person; and if ever she importuned him, it was in favour of the unfortunate. After the death of Edward,
she attached herself to the lord Hastings; and when Richard III. cut off that nobleman as an obstacle to his ambitious schemes, Jane Shore was arrested as an accomplice, on the ridiculous accusation of witchcraft. This, however, terminated only in a public penance; excepting that Richard rifled her of all her little property: but whatever severity might have been exercised towards her, it appears that she was alive, though sufficiently wretched, under the reign of Henry VIII. when Sir Thomas More saw her poor, old, and shrivelled, without the least trace of her former beauty. Mr Rowe, in his tragedy of Jane Shore, has adopted the popular story related in the old historical ballad, of her perishing by hunger in a ditch where Shoreditch now stands. But Stow assures us that street was so named before her time.