And, in the imaginary action before Rouen, Sir John Fastolfe, of whose dastardly conduct we had heard so long ago as the funeral of Henry the Fifth, disgraces himself by flight. Neither in the first mention nor in this is the given.

date correctly

We have now the young King Henry at Paris. Talbot is presented; Henry calls to mind the commendations of him which he had heard from Henry the Fifth; and, for his valiant deeds, creates him Earl of Shrewsbury.

The fourth act commences with the coronation of Henry, at Paris, as King of France. Fastolfe enters with a letter from the Duke of Burgundy. Talbot reproaches him with his cowardly flight, which is now correctly assigned to the battle of Patay, and tears the garter from his knee. Henry banishes him, in the choice terms of this play,

"Be packing, therefore, thou that wast a knight ;* and charges the new earl to march against Burgundy, whose letter announces his reconciliation with Charles the Seventh.

Henry the Sixth really went into France in 1431, and was crowned on the 17th of December in that year, long before the death of Bedford, or the de

*Sir H. Nicolas does not believe that Sir John's garter was taken from him.

fection of Burgundy, who was present and assisting at the ceremony. But Talbot did not obtain his well-earned promotion in the peerage till the year 1442,* nor was he present at this coronation, which occurred while he remained a prisoner. The play is also wrong in the enumeration of English lords present. Gloucester staid in England, administering the government. Exeter had died in 1426. York, Suffolk, Warwick, and Cardinal Beaufort are named in the Chronicle. Somerset is not mentioned there, but the then+ duke of that title may, possibly, have been present.

The scene is now transferred to Talbot's camp before Bordeaux; passing over a period of more than twenty years, during which the English lost nearly the whole of their possessions in France; and, carrying the narrative nearly to the point at which the fifth act of the second part of the play commences. Talbot's expedition to Bordeaux occurred in the year 1453; and he went in consequence of an invitation from the citizens, and an intimation that Guienne and Gascony might be re

* John Talbot, Lord Talbot, sixth baron (or twelfth, reckoning the barons by tenure) of that ancient family. The present earl of Shrewsbury is his lineal descendant and male heir.

† John Beaufort, third Earl of Somerset, second of John, eldest natural son of John of Gaunt. Collins. i. 222.

covered. He was admitted without resistance: the stout defiance of the "General," who appeared on the walls of Bordeaux, being an imagination of the poet. He is, however, correct in bringing Charles the Seventh with a strong force, by which he was defeated near Chatillon, and slain, together with his son, John Talbot.* Talbot endeavours to persuade his son to fly, and the young hero insists upon sharing the danger, is suggested by Holinshed.

The scene in which old

It is said that, after he perceived there was no remedy but present loss of the battle, he counselled his son, the Lord Lisle, to save himself by flight, since the same could not redound to any great reproach in him, this being the first journey in which he had been present. Many words he used to persuade him to have saved his life; but, nature so wrought in the son, that neither desire of life nor fear of death, could either cause him to shrink or convey himself out of the danger, and so there manfully ended his life with his said father."t

The incident is dramatic, but the author of this play has not dramatised it well; a part of the

.Sc. 2, 5, 6, 7. Hol., 235; Monstr., 553; Hall, 229. This son was his eldest son by his second wife Margaret, daughter of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, and, by her mother, co-heiress of Lisle. He was created Viscount Lisle. + Hol., 236,

scene is in a jingling rhyme, which, I believe, with Johnson, to have been taken from another work: nor do I believe it to be Shakspeare's.

The Duke of York is introduced † on the plains of Gascony, complaining that, owing to the failure of Somerset in sending him a reinforcement, he is unable to succour Talbot. Somerset is introduced with his force in another part of Gascony, complaining, in his turn, of the rashness of the expedition planned by York and Talbot, and his inability to spare any part of his force, which, however, he at last promises to do, when it is too late, being pressed by Sir William Lucy,§ who goes backwards and forwards between the three commanders with ineffectual messages.

All that I can find respecting this quarrel between York and Somerset, as affecting this campaign, is a short passage in Holinshed.

"When the Duke of York had fastened his chain between these two strong pillars (the Earls of Salisbury

* Bosw., 122.

+ Sc. 3.

Richard Plantagenet, of whom more presently. Sc. 4. The Duke of Somerset was now Edmund, brother to the John before mentioned, who had died in 1443. Nicolas, ii. 592.

§ There was at this time a William Lucy of Charlcote, ancestor to the Sir Thomas Lucy whom Shakspeare is supposed to have ridiculed as Justice Shallow. Burke, iii. 98,

and Warwick), he, with his friends, wrought so effectuously, and handled his business so politicly, that the Duke of Somerset was arrested in the Queen's great chamber, and sent to the Tower of London, where he kept his Christmas without great solemnity: against whom, soon after, in open parliament, were laid divers and heinous articles of high treason, as well for the loss of Normandy, as for the late mischance which happened in Guienne."*

Of this arrest we shall hear in the next play, but I find in parliamentary records, no accusation of Somerset by York subsequent to the year 1451, when he was charged with the loss of Normandy: the Guienne affair had not then occurred. Nor do I find that Somerset was in France at the time of Talbot's death.

After the battle, Sir William Lucy demands the dead bodies of the slain, and especially of Talbot, whom he thus describes :

"The great Alcides of the field,

Valiant Lord Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury;
Created, for his rare success in arms,

Great Earl of Washford,† Waterford, and Valence;

* Hol., 238; year 1454-5.

+ Talbot was created Earl of Wexford and Waterford in 1446. Wexford was sometimes written Washford, even so late as the time of Sir William Temple; see my Memoirs of him, i. 384.