Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 3.djvu/156

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NOTES AND QUERIES,

s. in. FEB. is, 1005.

Tudor, maintained the honour of England. The poet Charles, Duke of Orleans, was for five-and-twenty years a captive in England. The nephew of Charles VI., he had married in 1408 his cousin Isabel, the virgin widow of our llichard II. Through his mother, Valentina Visconti, he laid claim to the Duchy of Milan, and bequeathed his costly pretensions in this quarter to his son, by Mary of Cleves, afterwards Louis XII. of France. John, Duke of Bourbon, first cousin -to Charles VI., to whom Shakespeare gives the line " Let 's die in honour : once more back again," died a prisoner in 1433, and was buried in London at Christ Church, Xewgate.

The English slain are given by Shake- speare, word for word from Holinshed, as Edward, Duke of York, the Earl of Suffolk, Sir Richard Ketly (Kikelie in Holinshed), Davy Gam, Esquire, "and, of all other men, but five-and-twentie." The Sarum list gives only York and Suffolk, "and no more of the .leaders, and about fifteen others of gentle blood (et circa xv. de aliis personis valet- torum)." French authorities estimate the .English loss variously from 300 to the 1,600 of Monstrelet. The Duke of York, who com- manded the right wing, had grown very corpulent, and was struck down by Alencon. Henry, stooping to succour his cousin, was assailed by the French prince, who struck off the king's jewelled diadem. This Duke of York is the Edward of Norwich, Earl of 'Rutland and Duke of Aumerle (Albemarle), who appears in 'Richard II.' as the faithful -friend of that unhappy prince. This duke was the elder brother of Richard, Earl of Cambridge, grandfather of Edward IV. and Richard III., whom Henry had executed for high treason before embarking for France. ' Their mother was Isabella, daughter of Peter -the Cruel, King of Castille, whose elder sister Constance carried her claim to the crowns of Castille and Leon to her husband, . John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. Suffolk is Michael de la Pole, the third earl, and was only in his twenty-second year. He was succeeded in his title by his brother William, afterwards first Duke of Suffolk, whom Shakespeare makes the lover of Queen Mar- garet. Thomas Beaufort, Duke of Exeter, Henry's uncle of the half-blood, describes the manner of their deaths to the king :

The pretty and sweet manner of it forc'd

Those waters from me which I would have stopp'd ;

.But I had not so much of man in me,

And all my mother came into mine eyes

And gave me up to tears.

He makes York, who lies "larding the

plain" like a nobler Falstaff, "all haggled over," die with his wounded arm over the neck of the already lifeless Suffolk (IV. vi.). This touching episode is not to be found in Holinshed. Davy Gam, being sent by Henry, before the battle, to ascertain the strength of the enemy, reported : " May it please you, my liege, there are enough to be killed, enough to be taken prisoners, and enough to be run away." He was himself to be num- bered among the slain, but not before he had saved his king's life in " this glorious and well-foughten field." Owen Tudor is also said to have saved Henry's life on this occa- sion ; he certainly espoused his master's widow, Katherine of France, and became by hergrandfatherof Henry VII. The chroniclers describe the battle whereat, to quote Mont- joy's words,

Our vulgar drench their peasant limbs In blood of princes ;

but Shakespeare makes the men who fight for and against his hero- king live and move before us. The battle inspired Michael Drayton to write a famous ballad ; and a modern poet, Mr. William Watson, in ' The Father of the Forest, 1 beautifully says of Henry :

The roystering prince, that afterward Belied his madcap youth, and proved

A greatly simple warrior lord,

Such as our warrior fathers loved

Lives he not still? for Shakespeare sings

The last of our adventurer kings.

His battles o'er, he takes his ease,

Ulory put by, and sceptred toil. Round him the carven centuries

Like forest branches arch and coil. In that dim fane he is not sure Who lost or won at Azincour !

When the lovely Gothic gateway-tower of Queen's College, Oxford (facing St. Edmund Hall), was destroyed, early in the eighteenth century, a singularly happy inscription was removed also. This recorded in Latin the fact that " Henry V., conqueror of his enemies and of himself, was once the great inhabitant of this little chamber." A. R. BAYLEY.

CLOCKS STOPPED AT DEATH. The anniver- sary of the death of Queen Victoria recalled lately to the mind of the writer an episode in his experience which had an interesting sequel. On the day of Queen Victoria's funeral he photographed Balmoral, the Queen's Highland home, showing the clock in the tower with the hands pointing to the hour at which on 22 January she had passed away, now four years ago. The photograph was taken in the midst of a blinding snow-