From the four points of virtue, equal built:
Judgment secured, the glory of his hands:

And from his bounty blot out what may rise
Of comic mirth to Falstoffe's prejudice.*

The testimonies to the same point by Fuller, both in his Church History and his Worthies, are too well known to require to be repeated. Speed speaks generally of the "stageplayers" having abused the memory of Sir John Oldcastle, without naming Shakespeare in particular.

After all, the distinction is so slight that the question is not very material, whether Shakespeare banished Oldcastle from the stage as the representative of a riotous and disorderly companion of Prince Henry, or whether he wrote a play in which Oldcastle appeared in that character, and then on subsequent advice or suggestion withdrew the name of Oldcastle and substituted that of Falstaff. One thing is certain, that about the time when this play of Henry the Fourth was first acted, say 1596 or 1597, Oldcastle disappeared in a great measure, though it seems not entirely, from the stage as the name of a disreputable royster, and Falstaff took his place. Not long after appeared a serious play, entitled, The Life and Death of the good Lord Cobham, which was printed in 1600 with the name of Shakespeare as the author in the title page. This play was however not admitted as his when Hemings and Condell published the collected edition of his plays in 1623.

It may seem that there was an indecorum in representing Sir John Oldcastle in so disreputable a light in the times when the Reformation had fully established itself, of which it was

* This manuscript once belonged to Oldys. It was lately in the library of Mr. B. H. Bright, at whose sale it passed to the Rev. Mr. Corser, of Stand, near Manchester, who has obliged me with many extracts from it touching Oldcastle and Falstaff. There are a few extracts from it by Oldys in Harl. MS. 6,933.

then the custom to regard him as one of the harbingers. If it could be shewn that the character of Oldcastle existed as very feebly pourtrayed in the play of the Famous Victories, in dramatic compositions of a date before the Reformation was beginning, we might see a very probable reason for it in attempts of the church to raise a prejudice against one who But it had been one of its (supposed) greatest enemies. will have been observed that James assigns a more particular reason for the withdrawing the name of Oldcastle: certain personages descended from the title" objecting to this use of his name.

For the illustration of this, and to correct certain crude writings respecting it, a few genealogical particulars may here be given. The ancient line of the Cobhams, one of the longest and most illustrious in the kingdom, ended in John Lord Cobham, who died a very old man in the ninth year of King Henry the Fourth. His heir was a granddaughter named Joan, the daughter of a daughter who had married Sir John de la Pole. Joan Lady Cobham was the wife of five husbands in succession; (1) Sir John or Robert de Havenhall, (2) Sir Reginald Braybrooke, (3) Sir Nicholas Hawbeck, (4) Sir John Oldcastle, and (5) Sir John Harpenden. All the children of Lady Cobham died young, except Joan, the daughter of Sir Reginald Braybrooke. This lady married Sir Thomas Brooke, and from this marriage originated a second race of Lords Cobham, extinguished by attainder in the reign of James the First. William Lord Cobham died in 1597, being then Lord Chamberlain of the Household, an office which would give the weight of authority to any wish he might express for the forbearing to bring into contempt upon the stage any person so nearly connected with his house as Sir John Oldcastle, if the holding that office by him did not itself suggest the propriety of withdrawing it.

When the name of Oldcastle was no longer to be profaned, why Shakespeare should have selected Falstaff for the name of the person who was to be chief among the riotous confederates of the Prince, and to whom the attributes heretofore Oldcastle's were to be transferred, needs probably no more recondite reason than that there is something slightly ludicrous in the name, and therefore in some degree corresponding to the character he represented. The name might be suggested to him, as before intimated, by its appearance in the church of St. Helen, Bishopsgate, at that period the parish church of the Poet. The probability is, that he thought as little of the veritable Fastolf of the time as he did of any Bardolf, Peto, or Poins, when he gave those names to the minor characters in the group. Yet was the character of the genuine Fastolf a little sullied, and, if Sir John Fenn's interpretation of a very obscure passage in one of the Paston Letters be correct, there were in the genuine Fastolf some features not wholly dissimilar from those of the Falstaff of Shakespeare. It was said of him, as Sir John Fenn translates the passage, that he was a "boaster, and that it was necessary to beware of him, as those who eat at his table were often deceived by him to their cost."* We write the name of the historical personage, " Fastolf," and it is convenient to do so to keep up the distinction between him and the dramatic character, but the name was sometimes written "Falstaff" by Shakespeare's contemporaries, and that was probably the ordinary mode of pronouncing it. The name may be observed was extinct in the time of Queen Elizabeth, and there was no great person particularly interested in maintaining the reputation of the genuine Fastolf.

it

By laying the scene of much of the irregular behaviour of Falstaff, the Prince, and their companions at a tavern in East Cheap, it is clear that Shakespeare had in view the

*Original Letters of the Paston Family, vol. iii. p. 234.

historical fact that two or more of the sons of King Henry the Fourth were concerned in some disgraceful irregularities in that particular street. It was Shakespeare, however, who gave the sign of a Boar's Head to the tavern, and it is probably nothing more than a mere accidental coincidence that the genuine Fastolf had a house known by the name of the Boar's Head; it was not, however, in East Cheap but the Borough. It is mentioned in one of the Paston Letters; and it is further remarkable that Philip Henslow, whose name is closely connected with theatrical affairs in the time of Shakespeare, bequeaths in 1616 his messuage called the Boar's Head on the Bankside, which he purchased of one Devenish Raymond.*

* The will of Henslow has not been used in dramatic history. He describes himself as "of the parish of Saint Saviour's, Southwark, Esquire;" and directs that he shall be buried in the church. He gives to Agnes Henslow, his wife, all his lands and tenements for life; and on her death, the messuage called the Boar's Head, to Anne Henslow, alias Parson, now the wife of William Parson; lands in the same parish to Philip Henslow, his godson, son of John Henslow, waterman; lands on the Bank-side to his sister Mary Walters alias Adlington, and on her death to his godson Philip Henslow : and, still subject to the life of Agnes Henslow, to his brother William Henslow, "all that my messuage, mansion-house, and lease called the Bear-Garden, with all the tenements and appurtenances thereto belonging, which I hold and enjoy by virtue of a lease from the Lord Bishop of Winchester." He gives an annuity of thirty pounds to his sister Margaret Caxon; mourning-gowns to forty poor of the liberty of the Clink; and forty shillings to Mr. James Archer, to preach at his funeral. His wife is appointed executrix; and he names for overseers his loving son Mr. Edward Alleyne, Esquire, Mr. Robert Bromfield, Mr. William Austin, and Mr. Roger Cole. The date is January 6, 1615; and administration was granted to the widow on the very next day. The Edward Alleyne mentioned in the will is of course the Edward Alleyne, proprietor of the Fortune Theatre and the founder of Dulwich College, of whom much is to be found in the Biographia, and in all the works connected with the history of dramatic literature, and in several publications of the Shakespeare Society. They all represent him as born in the parish of St. Botolf, Bishopsgate; but I know not that it has been remarked, that in the register of burials in that parish occurs the following entry, "1570, Sep. 13, Edward Allein, Poet to the Queen." The addition is very remarkable; and, as the father of the actor was named Edward, this is probably he. In Birch's Manuscripts at the Museum, No. 2,221 of Ayscough's Cata

There was, however, a veritable Boar's Head Tavern in East Cheap in the time of Shakespeare. The vintner who kept it was Thomas Wright, a Shrewsbury man, who would doubtless find his account, as other persons have since done, in having his house advertised at the theatres. "Marry, I would further entreat our poet to be in league with the mistress of the ordinary; because from her, upon condition that he will but rhyme knights and young gentlemen to her house, and maintain the table in good fooling, he may easily make up his mouth at her cost gratis." (Gull's Horn Book, 4to. 1609, p. 24.) Even now, the house which has succeeded to it, for Shakespeare's Boar's Head would perish in the Fire, is often visited in consequence of its connection with the name of Falstaff. The site of the Mermaid at which Shakespeare, Jonson, Beaumont, and other poets of the time, were accustomed to meet, is not so well ascertained, there being several taverns in London at the time having the Mermaid for the sign.*

I. 1. K. HENRY.

Whose arms were moulded in their mother's womb

To chase these pagans, in those holy fields

Over whose acres walked those blessed feet

Which, fourteen hundred years ago, were nailed,

For our advantage, on the bitter cross.

logue, is a copy of a memorandum by Alleyne of many of his theatrical speculations. There is a valuable notice of Alleyne and his foundations in Dodsworth's Manuscripts at Oxford, vol. cxxix. f. 219 b.

* There was a Mermaid Tavern in Shoe Lane, in Bread Street, in Friday Street, and on Cornhill. "Mr. Johnson, at the Mermaid, in Bread Street, vintner," occurs as a creditor, for 178. in a schedule annexed to the will of Albian Butler, of Clifford's Inn, gentleman, in 1603. A Mermaid Tavern, in Paternoster Row, was burnt down in the Great Fire, of which Anthony Clarke was then the tenant, who, in the depositions before the Commissioners, deposes that it was formerly a dark and back house of small custom, but that the Prerogative Office was kept near unto it, and that, the said office being removed, it is not likely to be well accustomed for a long time after it be built."