Page:Henry VI Part 3 (1923) Yale.djvu/141

King Henry the Sixth lows the present scene five. The reviser's transposition is a dramatic improvement.

 brother Rivers. The queen's oldest brother, Anthony Woodville, Lord Rivers. It was he who married the heiress of Lord Scales. Cf. IV. i. 51-53.

 blood-sucking sighs. Alluding to an old belief that sighing exhausted the blood. See note on 2 Henry VI, III. ii. 60, 61.

 I'll hence forthwith unto the sanctuary, To save at least the heir of Edward's right. After Edward's flight from England to Holland, 'his wife queene Elizabeth tooke sanctuarie at Westminster, and there, in great penurie, forsaken of all hir friends, was deliuered of a faire son called Edward.' (Holinshed.) The date of the prince's birth was November, 1470.

 Two distinct events are combined in this account of Edward's escape from Warwick, as in scene three two separate overthrows of Edward by Warwick have been merged (cf. note on IV. iii. 22 S. d.). Edward's release from surveillance at Middleham Castle occurred, with Warwick's consent, in September, 1469; his precipitate flight to Holland took place just a year later, when Warwick returned to England, September, 1470, at the head of the Lancastrian forces. The stratagem by which Edward is rescued in this scene is apocryphal, but is found in the chroniclers.

 it is young Henry, Earl of Richmond. The future King Henry VII. He was the grandson of Katharine of France, widow of Henry V, by her second husband, Owen Tudor. The story of Henry VI's prophecy concerning the boy (who was thirteen years old at the time of this scene) is found in Holinshed. It is an evident fabrication, devised in compliment to the Tudor dynasty.