Page:Henry VI Part 2 (1923) Yale.djvu/142

130 land allowed.' (Vickers, Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, p. 290.) The charge is found in the chroniclers, and has been suggested earlier in the play (I. iii. 185 f.).

 ''Welcome, Lord Somerset. What news from France? Som. That all your interest in those territories Is utterly bereft you: all is lost.'' This reports correctly Somerset's disastrous management of affairs in France from the time of his violation of the truce in March, 1449, till his return to England in October, 1450. The events alluded to are about three years later than Gloucester's death, and about three years earlier than the death of Talbot (July, 1458), which is depicted in the First Part.

 Cold news for me; for I had hope of France, As firmly as I hope for fertile England. These lines are repeated from I. i. 238, 239. Holinshed reports that Somerset's ignominious conduct in France 'kindled so great a rancor in the duke's [York's] heart and stomach, that he neuer left persecuting the duke of Summerset, vntill he had brought him to his fatall end and confusion.' In fact, York seems, however, not to have been the persecutor.

 I do arrest thee of high treason here. The circumstances of Gloucester's arrival in Bury and his arrest are given by Vickers, op. cit., p. 292 f.: 'It was eleven o'clock in the morning when Gloucester rode into the city by the south gate, and passing through the "horsemarket," turned to his left into the Northgate Ward. Here he passed through a mean street, and as he rode along, he asked a passerby, by what name the alley was known. "Forsoothe, my Lord, hit is called the Dede [dead] Lane," came the answer. Then the inborn superstition of "the Good Duke" asserted itself; so with an old prophecy he had read ringing in his ears, and a word of pious resignation on his lips, he rode on to the "North Spytyll" outside the Northgate, otherwise called