Notes and Queries, Number 41, August 10, 1850

Notes and Queries, Number 41, August 10, 1850
Various

Various

Notes and Queries, Number 41, August 10, 1850

NOTES

SIR WILLIAM GASCOIGNE

Although you and I no doubt unite in the admiration, which all our fellow-countrymen profess, and some of them feel, for our immortal bard, yet I do not think that our zeal as Shakspearians will extend so far as to receive him as an unquestionable authority for the facts introduced into his historical plays. The utmost, I apprehend, that we should admit is, that they represent the tradition of the time in which he wrote, and even that admission we should modify by the allowance, to which every poet is entitled, of certain changes adopted for dramatic effect, and with the object of enhancing our interest in the character he is delineating.

Two facts in his Second Part of Henry IV, always referred to in connection with each other, notwithstanding the ingenious remarks on them made by Mr. Tyler in his History of Henry V., are still accepted, and principally by general readers, on Shakspeare's authority, as undoubtedly true. The one is the incident of Prince Henry's committal to prison by Chief Justice Gascoigne; and the other is the magnanimous conduct of the Prince on his accession to the throne, in continuing the Chief Justice in the office, which he had shown himself so well able to support.

The first I have no desire to controvert, especially as it has been selected as one of the illustrations of our history in the House of Lords. Frequent allusion is made to it in the play. Falstaff's page says to his master, on seeing the Chief Justice:

"Sir, here comes the nobleman that committed the prince for striking him about Bardolph."

And Falstaff in the same scene thus addresses Gascoigne:

"For the box of the ear that the prince gave you,—he gave it like a rude prince, and you took it like a sensible lord. I have checked him for it, and the young lion repents."

And Gascoigne, when Henry refers to the incident in these words:

"How might a prince of my great hopes forget
So great indignities you laid upon me?
What! rate, rebuke, and roughly send to prison
The immediate heir of England! Was this easy?
May this be wash'd in Lethe, and forgotten?"

thus justifies himself to the king:

"I then did use the person of your father;
The image of his power lay then in me:
And in the administration of his law,
Whiles I was busy for the commonwealth,
Your highness pleased to forget my place,—
The majesty and power of law and justice,
The image of the king whom I presented,—
And, struck me in my very seat of judgment;
Whereon, as an offender to your father,
I gave bold way to my authority,
And did commit you."

Now this is a relation that we are well content, although unsupported by contemporaneous authority, to receive on tradition; because in the nature of the circumstances we cannot expect to find any authentic evidence of the occurrence. But we should never think of citing these passages as fixing the fact of the blow, as chronicled by Hall, in opposition to the milder representation of the story as told by Sir Thomas Elliott in "The Governour." The bard makes that selection between the two versions which best suits the scene he is depicting.

We cannot, however, be so easily satisfied with the second fact,—the reappointment of Gascoigne,—thus asserted by Shakspeare when making Henry say:

"You did commit me;
For which, I do commit into your hand
The unstain'd sword that you have us'd to bear;
With this remembrance,—that you use the same
With the like bold, just, and impartial spirit,
As you have done 'gainst me."

We require better evidence for this than tradition, because, if true, better evidence can be adduced. A noble writer has very recently declared that he can "prove to demonstration that Sir William Gascoigne survived Henry IV. several years, and actually filled the office of Chief Justice of the King's Bench under Henry V." As to the first of these points he implicitly follows Mr. Tyler's history, who proves that Gascoigne died in December 1419, in the seventh year of the fifth Henry's reign; but as to the second point, deserting his authority and omitting the dates introduced in it, he entirely fails in supporting his assertion. The assertion, however, having been made in so recent a work, it becomes important to investigate its truth.

The only fact that gives an apparent authenticity to the story is that Gascoigne was summoned to the first parliament of Henry V. as "Chief Justice of our Lord the King." When we recollect, however, that this summons was dated on March 22, 1413, the day following the king's accession, we must see that his Majesty could have had little more time than to command a parliament to be summoned; that the officer who made out the writs would naturally direct them to those peers, judges, and others who were summoned to the preceding parliament; and that the proper title of Gascoigne was Chief Justice until he was actually superseded. This evidence, therefore, is anything but conclusive, and in fact gives very little assistance in deciding the point at issue.

It is well known that Sir William Hankford was Gascoigne's successor as Chief Justice of the King's Bench, and the real question is, when he became so. Dugdale states that the date of his patent was January 29, 1414, ten months after King Henry's accession; and if this were so, the presumption would follow that Gascoigne continued Chief Justice till that time. Let us see whether facts support this presumption.

Now, Hankford was a Judge of the Common Pleas at the end of the previous reign; but he was omitted when his brethren of that court received their new patents from Henry V., which were not issued till May 2, a day or two before Easter Term. And yet we find the name of Hankford in the Year-book reports of both that and Trinity Term; and we find it, not as acting in the Common Pleas, but as ruling in the King's Bench.

Further, although Gascoigne was summoned to the first parliament on March 22, yet on its meeting on May 15, he was not present;—added to which, his usual position, as first named legal trier of petitions, was filled by Sir William Hankford, placed too in precedence of Sir William Thirning, the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas.

These facts, so contradictory to Dugdale's date, rendered it necessary to refer to the roll. This, by the kindness of Mr. Duffus Hardy (who certainly can never be called the "streict-laced" gaoler of the records, alluded to in your fourth number, Vol. i., p. 60.), has been inspected; and the result is that the date of Hankford's appointment, instead of being January 29, 1414, as stated by Dugdale, turns out to be March 29, 1413; just eight days after King Henry's accession, and ten days previous to his coronation.

The peculiar period chosen for this act, and its precipitancy in contrast with the delay in issuing the new patents to the other judges, tend strongly, I am afraid, to deprive us of the "flattering unction" of supposing that it resulted from Gascoigne's choice, rather than Henry's mandate. Nor is the royal warrant of November 1414, 2 Henry V. (twenty months afterwards), granting him four bucks and four does yearly, during his life, out of the forest of Pontefract, a sufficient proof of favour to countervail the impression created by his early removal.

With these facts before us, King Henry's supposed generosity in renominating Gascoigne can no longer be credited. But, even presuming that none of these facts had been discovered, I must own myself surprised that any one could maintain that Gascoigne was ever Chief Justice to Hen. V., with two existing records before him, both containing conclusive proof to the contrary.

The first is the entry on the Issue Roll of July, 1413, of a payment made of an arrear of Gascoigne's salary and pension, in which he is called "late Chief Justice of the Bench of Lord Henry, father of the present King."

The second is the inscription on his monument in Harwood Church in Yorkshire, where he is described as "nuper capit. justio. de banco Hen. nuper regis angliæ quarti."

I think I may fairly ask whether it is possible to suppose that in either of these records, particularly the latter, he would have been docked his title, had he ever been Chief Justice of the reigning king?

Allow me to take this opportunity of thanking L.B.L. for his extracts from the Hospitaller's Survey (Vol. ii., p. 123.), which are most interesting, and, to use a modern word, very suggestive.

    Edward Foss.

Street-End House, near Canterbury.

AN OLD GUY?

No one would at present think of any other answer to a Query as to the meaning of this term than that the phrase originated with the scarecrows and stuffed apings of humanity with which the rising generation enlivens our streets on every fifth of November, and dins in our ears the cry, "Please to remember the guy," and that it alludes to the Christian name of the culprit, Guido. Have, however, any of your readers met this title, or any allusion to it, in any writer previously to 1605? and may its attribution to the supposed framer of the Gunpowder Plot only have been the accidental appropriation of an earlier term of popular reproach, and which had become so since the conversion of the nation to Christianity? This naturally heaped contumely and insult upon every thing relating to the Druids, and the heathen superstitions of the earlier inhabitants.

Amongst others, Guy was a term by which, no doubt, the Druids were very early designated, and is cognate, with the Italian Guido and our own Guide, to the Latin cuidare, which would give it great appropriativeness when applied to the offices of teachers and leaders, with which these lordly flamens were invested. Narrowly connected with their rites, the term has descended to the present day, as is decidedly shown in the French name of the mistletoe, le Gui, and as denoting the priesthood. The common cry of the children at Christmas in France, au gui l'an neuf, marks the winter solstice, and their most solemn festival; so ai-guil-lac, as the name of new year's gifts, so necessary and expensive to a Frenchman, which they particularly bear in the diocese of Chartres, can only be explained by referring it to the same origin. In the French vocabulary at present this word, as I have before observed, is restricted to the mistletoe, the viscum album of Linnæus: but in Germany we have pretty much the same conversion of a favourite druidical plant, the trefoil, or shamrock, and the cinquefoil; both of them go in Bavaria and many other parts of Germany under the name of Truten-fuss, or Druid's foot, and are thought potent charms in guarding fields and cattle from harm; but there too, as with us, possibly the oldest title of guy, the term Druid, has grown into a name of the greatest disgrace: "Trute, Trute, Saudreck," "Druid, Druid, sow dirt," is an insulting phrase reserved for the highest ebullitions of a peasant's rage in Schwaben and Franken.

Whilst on the subject of the mistletoe, I cannot forbear to mark the coincidences that run through the popular notions of a country in all ages. Pliny, in his very exact account of the druidical rites, tells us, when the archdruid mounted the oak to cut the sacred parasite with a golden pruning-hook, two other priests stood below to catch it in a white linen cloth, extremely cautious lest it should fall to earth. One is almost tempted to fancy that Shakspeare was describing a similar scene when he makes Hecate say

"Upon the corner of the moon,
There hangs a vap'rous drop profound,
I'll catch it ere it come to ground."

In a very excellent note to Dr. Giles' translation of Richard of Cirencester, p. 432., he adduces the opinion of Dr. Daubeny, of Oxford, that as the mistletoe is now so rarely found in Europe on oaks, it had been exterminated with the other druidical rites on the introduction of Christianity. I am not sufficiently botanist to determine how far it is possible to destroy the natural habitat of a plant propagated by extrinsic means, and should be more inclined to account for the difference then and now by supposing that the Druids may have known the secret of inoculating a desirable oak with the seeds where birds had not done so, and practised it when necessary.

P.S. Since writing the above, I recollect that the Latin verse,