XVII die Decembr. anno dom. M.CCCC.XII."

What could

appear more decisive than this? And so persuaded was Gascoign of this being the true period of his ancestor's decease that when he found in the Register of the See of York a copy of the judge's will dated on the Friday next after the feast of Saint Lucy the Virgin, 1419, that is, on the 15th day of December, two days before the day of the month on which he is stated on his monument to have died, he entered on the margin of the York Registry a memorandum to the effect that there must be some mistake in the date of the will, 1419 for 1412. But it was he himself who was mistaken. He had read м.CCCC.XII. when he ought to have read м.CCCC.XIX., a slight difference when we remember how the x was formed. The inscription when he saw it must have been greatly decayed; for several years before when the Heralds visited Yorkshire, in 1584, they were unable to read it. One copy of their notes from the church of Harewood has no more of the inscription on the judge's tomb than to the name of the month, December, in which he died; * while another has the date м. CCCC.XII., but with points under the XII to indicate that this part of the date was uncertain.† Dugdale in his beautiful manuscript, the Monumenta Eboracensia, in the library of the College of Arms, has the inscription M.CCCC.xIx.,-the true date, as is manifest from the date of the will, its place in the Registry at York, and the circumstance that the 17th day of December fell upon a Sunday in that year, and did not fall upon a Sunday in M.CCCC.XII.

The will of the judge was published for the first time in 1836, by the Surtees Society, in their very curious volume entitled Testamenta Eboracensia. Mr. Tyler has availed

* Harl. 1420, f. 244 b.

† Harl. 1394, f. 330.

himself of the assistance which the will affords in determining the question of the time of the judge's death, but he takes no notice of the differing reports of the testimony afforded by the monument. Nor has he traced the misapprehension on this point which has infected the writings of so many critics and historians to its source, though it is one of the most remarkable instances how a mistake, slight, excusable, and, as it appears, trivial, may become considerable, may raise doubts about the most authentic statements, may bring the characters of the most excellent writers into suspicion, and may for a long tract of time pollute the stream of history. Richard Gascoign had mistaken an old text x for an i, an easy mistake in a mouldering inscription. Hence the suspicions and doubts respecting one of the finest scenes of Shakespeare, and hence the world of commentatorship with which the scene is burdened. Hence too the errors of so many critics in history.

Having ventured so far to transgress the rule which I have laid down for the limitation of the province of legitimate criticism on the historical dramas, I shall venture one step further, and introduce a notice of what were the real movements of the king a little before and a little after the battle of Shrewsbury, from an original, unknown, and very authentic source of information, and the rather because questions have been raised on this point, and not determined very conclusively. It will be long before the slow evolution of the information now buried in the mass of our national records will lay before historians that exact and precise information without which it is manifest that history must be, more or less, a romance.

On July 4, 1403, the king left London on his northern march, and was that night at Waltham: he passed through

Hertford, Hitchin, Newenham, Higham, Harborough, Leicester, and on the 12th arrived at Nottingham. It seems to have been when at Nottingham that he received intelligence of the designs of the Percies, for, instead of proceeding northward, he turned his course on the 13th to Derby, where he staid two nights, going on the 15th to Burton-upon-Trent. On the next morning he issued the writ published in the Fœdera, commanding various sheriffs to array the lieges, having received information that Sir Henry Percy had risen and associated himself with the rebels of Wales. He then proceeded to Lichfield, where he remained till the 19th. On that day he removed to the Abbey of Saint Thomas, and on the 20th arrived at Shrewsbury.

He was there on the 21st, 22d, and the morning of the 23d, during which time the battle was fought. He slept at the Abbey of Lilleshull on the 23d, and from thence he proceeded to Stafford, and on the next day to Lichfield. He remained there till the 28th, when he resumed his northern march, going to Burton and Nottingham, whence, passing through Mansfield, Blyth, and Doncaster, he arrived at Pontefract on the 3d of August. He left it on the 7th, on which day he was at Tadcaster, and on the 8th at York.

Again he changed his purpose of marching northward. On August 13th he returned to Pontefract, which place he left on the 16th, passing through Doncaster, Worksop, Nottingham, Leicester, Lutterworth, and Daventry, and arriving at Woodstock on the 23d.

On the 30th he began his march towards the borders of Wales. He was at Worcester from the 2d to the 10th of September, and at Hereford from the 11th to the 23d. He then entered Wales.

I find in the same record which gives us this precise ac

count of the king's movements at this critical period the name of the place at which the battle was struck is Hynsifeld. It occurs thus:-Simon Fysacreley, a boy of the king's pantry, lost his horse "in campis de Hynsifeld prope Salop, die belli tent. in eisdem campis," and has an allowance of 68. 8d. made to him in compensation. But it is time that we return to Shakespeare.

KING HENRY THE FOURTH.

PART THE FIRST.

WHEN Shakespeare had determined to make Prince Henry a prominent dramatic character, it became necessary to call into existence a number of persons to form the circle of his gay associates, and to be participants with him in his riotous excesses. These were to be creatures of the Poet's own mind: for neither history nor tradition had brought down the names of any veritably existent personages who formed his company of low associates, except that there was an opinion noticed by Hall that Sir John Oldcastle, who by his marriage with the heiress of the old line of the Lords Cobham obtained that title and rank, and who was one of the great opponents of the church in that age, had been one of them. We have therefore in this play and the two which follow it characters who are not veritable historical personages, which makes the plays in which they appear unlike the other histories.

Any attempt at referring these characters (except Falstaff) to any existing originals must fail. They are poetical creations only. Perhaps we ought to rejoice that they are so; inasmuch as there has been the greater freedom allowed to the Poet's imagination. He has at least succeeded in a most admirable manner in marking specific differences in a numerous body of persons of the same genus, and in making these peculiarities administer largely to our entertainment.

They did not all make their appearance at once. In the First Part of King Henry the Fourth we have only Bardolph,