Page:Henry VI Part 2 (1923) Yale.djvu/139

King Henry the Sixth as one, spoken by Gloucester. Theobald made the change.

 Saint Alban's shrine. The town and abbey of St. Albans, twenty-two miles north of London, are named after the first Christian martyr in Britain, Saint Alban, who was put to death there, A. D. 304. The sham miracle is narrated by Sir Thomas More on the authority of his father. It was copied from More into Grafton's Chronicle, but not into those of Halle and Holinshed.

 who said, 'Simon, come.' Theobald has been generally followed in emending Simon to Simpcox, but the latter is merely a derivative of Simon, through Sim-cock (Simon boy). It is more in keeping with the saint's dignity to employ the Biblical name in its purity.

 This Edmund, in the reign of Bolingbroke, As I have read, laid claim unto the crown; And but for Owen Glendower, had been king, Who kept him in captivity till he died. Here, as in 1 Henry IV, I. iii. 145, and in 1 Henry VI, II. v., the name Edmund Mortimer causes confusion. The Edmund Mortimer (5th Earl of March), who figured in the reign of Bolingbroke as heir to the throne, was (as York says in lines 43, 44) York's mother's brother. He did not die either in captivity to Glendower, as here stated, or in the Tower of London, as 1 Henry VI represents. The Edmund Mortimer captured by Glendower was uncle of the other Edmund, being younger brother to Roger, fourth Earl of March. The erroneous statement that Glendower 'kept him in captivity till he died,' which contradicts Shakespeare's treatment of the situation in 1 Henry IV, seems due to a further confusion of Sir Edmund Mortimer with another prisoner of Glendower, Lord Grey of Ruthin, whom the chroniclers report to have been kept a captive till his death. The Contention version of this scene gives