of the county of Leicester, on a little brook called the Swift, which is a tributary of the Avon. It is most famous as the town of which Wickliffe the Reformer was rector, where he died, and was buried in 1385, though his remains were afterwards disinterred, burnt, and the ashes cast into the Swift by his malignant enemies.

xi. 8. Tamworth.] A town and parliamentary borough, partly in the county of Stafford, and partly in Warwickshire. It is on the River Tame. It is, perhaps, most famous as the borough for which Sir Robert Peel was member. Percy has a ballad, "King Edward and the Tanner, of Tamworth."

11. Marks.] The mark was a weight used in several countries for various commodities, especially gold and silver. A French or Dutch mark was about equal to half a pound. The word was used in England to denote a coin, value 13s. 4d. Names of weights often pass into names of coins. Cf. "pound."

13. Largesse.] A French word (Latin largitia), signifying liberality. It was a cry which greeted the distribution of money among heralds, or sometimes among the people on grand occasions. "The heralds, like the minstrels, were a race allowed to have great claims upon the liberality of the knights, of whose feats they kept a record, and proclaimed them aloud, as in the text, upon suitable occasions."-S.

xii. 8. Cottiswold.] The Cottiswold Hills in Gloucestershire. On termination, vide "wold" in Gloss.

17. Crests were often given in commemoration of great achievements. 19. The ceremony of degradation of the vanquished. The whole story of this tourney will be found below. Cf. II. xxviii., V. xxi.-ii.

xiii. 2. "Were accuracy of any consequence in a fictitious narrative, this castellan's name ought to have been William; for William Heron of Ford was husband to the famous Lady Ford, whose syren charms are said to have cost our James IV. so dear. Moreover, the said William Heron was, at the time supposed, a prisoner in Scotland, being surrendered by Henry VIII., on account of his share in the slaughter of Sir Robert Ker of Cessford. His wife, represented in the text as residing at the Court of Scotland, was, in fact, living in her own castle at Ford."-S.

11. This verse seems to be due to a hoax, played upon the author of "Marmion" by his friend Mr. Robert Surtees of Mainsforth, author of the "History of Antiquities of the County Palatine of Durham." Mr. Surtees pretended that it was an old Northumbrian ballad, "taken down from the recitation of a woman eighty years of age, mother of one of the miners of Alston Moor, by an agent for the lead-mines there." Scott gave the whole poem in his notes to "Marmion," and also in the "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," with some explanations by Mr. Surtees. The reason of the success in the deception is to be found in the fact that the events mentioned in the ballad are supported by historical and contemporary evidence.

1

The following are the notes of Mr. Surtees :

"Willimoteswick, the chief seat of the ancient family of Ridley, is situated two miles above the confluence of the Allon and Tyne. It is a house of strength, as appears from one oblong tower, still in tolerable preservation. It has been long in possession of the Blacket family. Hardriding Dick is not an epithet referring to horsemanship, but means Richard Ridley of Hardriding, the seat of another family of that name, which in the time of Charles I. was sold, on account of expenses incurred by the loyalty of the proprietor, the immediate ancestor of Sir Matthew Ridley. Ridley, the bishop and martyr, was, according to some authorities, born at Hardriding, where a chair was preserved, called the Bishop's Chair. Others, and particularly his biographer and namesake, Dr. Glocester Ridley, assign the honour of the martyr's birth to Willimoteswick. Will of the Wa' seems to be William Ridley of Walltown, so called from its situation on the great Roman Wall. Thirlwall Castle, whence the clan of Thirlwalls derived their name, is situated on the small river of Tipple, near the western boundary of Northumberland. It is near the wall, and takes its name from the rampart having been thirled, i.e. pierced or breached, in its vicinity. Featherston Castle lies south of the Tyne, towards Alston Moor. Albany Featherstonhaugh, the chief of that ancient family, made a figure in the reign of Edward VI. A feud did certainly exist between the Ridleys and Featherstons, productive of such consequences as the ballad narrates:-24 Oct. 22do Henrici 8vi. (1530). Inquisitio capt. apud Hautwhistle, sup. visum corpus Alexandri Featherston, Gen. apud Grensilhaugh felonice interfecti, 22 Oct. per Nicolaum Ridley de Unthanke, Gen. Hugon Ridle, Nicolaum Ridle, et alios ejusdem nominis.' Nor were the Featherstons without their revenge; for, 36to Henrici 8vi (1544), we have- Utlagatio Nicolai Fetherston, ac Thome Nyxson, &c. &c. pro homicidio Will. Ridle de Morate.""

xiii. 16. Deadman's-shaw.] Another reading is "Deadmanshaugh." Haugh, according to Ogilvy, is a Scotch word, connected with German hag, an enclosed meadow, and means low-lying ground, properly on the border of a river, and such as is sometimes overflowed. So hay in Devon, Bonhay, and Shil-hay on the Exe. Whereas shaw is from the Saxon scuwa, a shade. It means a thicket of trees, a small shady wood. Chaucer uses it "Gaillard he was as goldfinch in the shawe." It is still used in Staffordshire, and is frequent in the composition of names, as Aldershaw, Gentleshaw.

xiv. 7. Giust.] Generally written joust, a mock combat on horseback. "A joust of arms" (Tennyson). From the French joûte, anciently jouste-same root as our "jostle." The Italians call it giostra. From Lat. juxta. "Mon champ joûte au sien."

11. Saint George.] The patron saint of England. He was a Cappadocian of low origin, born in the fourth century. He became Bishop of Alexandria; but his whole life is so full of cruelty and fraud, that we can but wonder how he came into the Calendar of Saints.

XV. 3. Wassail-bowl.] A great vessel out of which the Saxons used to pledge each other's health at public entertainments. The custom is still kept up in parts of England, especially at Christmas-time. It has been derived from Anglo-Saxon, waes-hál=either (1) "Be well"; or (2) health-liquor. See a ballad by Wace in Masson's "Lyre Française,” p. 323.

10. Raby towers.] The Castle of Raby, nineteen miles from Durham, was formerly the seat of the Earls of Westmoreland. It now belongs to the Duke of Cleveland.

xvi. 8. Lindisfarne.] Vide infra, note II. i. 10.

xvii. 1. Note the construction. It means, "the taunt being unrecked." This may be called the nominative absolute, and may be compared with the Greek nominativus pendens and genitive absolute, and with the Latin ablative absolute. The following are instances:-III. xiv. 3; xvi. 3. VI. xxii. 32; xxiii. 10; xxix. 1. Cf. also Tennyson, "Locksley Hall," line 4, and "Idylls of the King," p. 8:

"There on a day, he sitting high in hall,

Before him came a forester of Dean."

And again, p. 83. And Shakespeare, " Henry VIII." (1. i. 79).

10. Queen Margaret.] Vide infra, note V. x. 27.

12. Falcon on our glove.] Before being started in pursuit of game, falcons were carried on the hand, with a hood over their heads.

13. Leash.] From Latin laqueus, through French laisse, a leathern thong, by which falcons were held. It was afterwards applied to bands for holding any animals. It is also used by sportsmen in a technical sense for a couple and a half of hounds-three hounds. Cf. Shakespeare, "Henry V." prol. line 6 :

"And at his heels,

Leashed in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire
Crouch for employment."

xviii. 10. Perkin Warbeck, or Peter Osbec, was the son of a merchant of the city of Tournay, in Flanders, who, in the reign of Henry VII., pretended to be Richard Duke of York, second son of King Edward IV., who, with his brother, King Edward V., had been murdered in the Tower. He was well received for a time in various quarters: first in Ireland, then at the French Court by Charles VIII., then by the sister of Edward IV., Elizabeth Duchess of Burgundy, who gave him the name of the White Rose of England. In 1496 he was received honourably in Scotland, where King James IV. gave him a relation of his own in marriage, the beautiful Lady Catherine Gordon. Then Perkin Warbeck, proclaiming himself King Richard IV., with King James in person, crossed the Border; but the invasion achieved no greater result than a little plunder. It was in retaliation for this that the Earl of Surrey, at the head of a considerable army, marched

into Berwickshire, but retreated after the capture and destruction of the unimportant fortress of Ayton. A truce soon put an end to the war; and Perkin Warbeck, after a final effort in Cornwall, was induced to surrender. Being imprisoned in the Tower, he was accused of entering into a plot with Edward, Earl of Warwick, the last of the Plantagenets, for which offence he was hanged at Tyburn. This was the second imposture in the reign of Henry VII. (Cf. note, V. xxi. 17.)

xviii. 14.] Ford mentions this "Perkin Warbeck."

attack on Ayton in his drama of

xix. 4. Dunbar.] A famous old royal burgh and port at the mouth of the Firth of Forth. It is about thirty miles distant from both Edinburgh and Berwick.

5. Saint Bothan's.] A convent in the north-east of Berwickshire, founded by Ada, daughter of King William the Lion. It seems to be a mistake to speak of the monks, as this was solely a convent of Cistercian nuns. It fell, with other like institutions, at the Reformation; but the parish in which it stood is still known as Abbey St. Bathans. The personality of the Saint is a greater difficulty, as, according to the "Statistical Account of Scotland" (vol. ii. p. 106), there are four saints with similar names; of whom the most probable is St. Baithen, cousin of St. Columba, and his successor as Abbot of Iona. He employed much of his time in propagating the doctrines of Christianity in Scotland, and in establishing churches there. Cf. VI. xv. 17, where he seems to be invoked as the patron-saint of ignorance.

Lauderdale.] The western part of Berwickshire.

7. Greenlaw.] Capital town of Berwickshire.

8.] "A phrase, by which the Borderers jocularly intimated the burning a house. When the Maxwells, in 1685, burned the castle of Lochwood, they said they did so to give the Lady Johnstone light to set her hood.' Nor was the phrase inapplicable; for in a letter, to which I have mislaid the reference, the Earl of Northumberland writes to the King and Council that he dressed himself at midnight, at Warkworth, by the blaze of the neighbouring villages burned by the Scottish marauders."-S.

xx. 4. Forayers.] Foray is the same word as forage. It signifies, first, "food for cattle"; whence the meaning of the verb, " to collect food for cattle." From the manner in which soldiers generally did this, it came to mean ravage. Derivation, uncertain. Dr. Johnson derives it from Lat. foris, abroad; others connect it with voro, devour. It is more probably connected with fodder, and from an Anglo-Saxon root.

15. Pardoner.] The term for those persons who, before the Reformation, in every Christian country, retailed both the Pope's indulgences, which were permissions to sin, or to omit duties before the act, and his

L

absolutions, which were releases from the consequences after the act. Luther attacked them openly in Germany, whilst Chaucer and Lyndsay, by their poetry, had made them contemptible in England and Scotland. The Pardoner is a frequent character in the old "Moralities." In Sir David Lyndsay's drama, the "Satyre of the Three Estaitis," one is introduced with the appropriate nickname of "Robin Rome-raker." Chaucer introduces a Pardoner as one of the company of pilgrims which assembled at the "Tabard," Southwark, and went together to the shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury. (Vide Morris's "Chaucer," p. 21.)

xxi. 5.] "At Berwick, Norham, and other Border fortresses of importance, pursuivants usually resided, whose inviolable character rendered them the only persons that could, with perfect assurance of safety, be sent on necessary embassies into Scotland."-S.

7. A Bishop.] Hugh Pudsey, Bishop of Durham. (Cf. note on I. i. 1.) 17. Shoreswood.] Village near Norham.

21. Tilmouth.] A village, as its name shows, at the mouth of the Till, a little tributary of the Tweed. There are still to be seen the ruins of St. Cuthbert's Chapel, where the stone coffin of St. Cuthbert was preserved. (Cf. II. xiv. 17.)

25. Holy-Rood.] The palace of the Scottish Kings at Edinburgh, so called from the chapel being dedicated to the Holy Rood, or Cross. "Rood" we have in "rood-screen," " rood-loft," in cathedrals, as at Exeter. "By God's rood!" was a not uncommon mediæval oath.

29. Saint Bede.] The Venerable Bede (A.D. 673-735), a monk of Jarrow, and the earliest English Church historian. He wrote "Lives of the Saints," and "Ecclesiastical History of the Nations of the Angles." The title "Venerable" is from the monkish inscription on his tomb, in the Galilee Chapel of Durham Cathedral:

"Hac sunt in fossa Bedæ venerabilis ossa."

The sixth word is said to have been added by an angel, when the composer, tired of the effort to fill the gap, had dropped asleep.

xxii. 8. Tables.] An ancient game, something like backgammon. xxiii. 1. Palmer.] A pilgrim to the Holy Land. They were so called because they usually carried staves of palm, at once a souvenir and an evidence of their journey. "A 'palmer,' opposed to a 'pilgrim,' was one who made it his sole business to visit different holy shrines, travelling incessantly, and subsisting by charity; whereas the pilgrim retired to his usual home and occupations, when he had paid his devotions at the particular spot which was the object of his pilgrimage."-S. An old writer (Blount's "Glossography") gives the difference still more fully:-"A pilgrim and a palmer differed thus: a pilgrim had some dwelling-the palmer none; the pilgrim travelled to some certain place -the palmer to all, not one in particular; the pilgrim might bear his own charges--the palmer must profess wilful poverty; the pilgrim might