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misrepresentation. Henry was cruel to the barons, who withstood his will, but his stern enforcement of the law in behalf of the English people won for him the title "Lion of Justice."

50 his tribute's right: a token of feudal allegiance.

50 your father's foot did slip: an allusion to the story that William the Norman stumbled when first he set foot on English ground and fell prostrate. With great presence of mind he caught up a handful of earth as a sign of ownership, and so converted the bad omen into an augury of success.

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The Prince's sister: his half-sister, the Countess of Perche.

When the Body of Christ goes down the street: when the sacramental bread, or wafer, is borne in priestly procession.

57 And he wept and mourned. Prince William was the son of Matilda, the niece of Edgar Atheling, and therefore descended from King Alfred. Born in England, he was loved by the people as an English prince.

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Glocester: Robert, Earl of Glocester, Matilda's half-brother.

62 yon towers: the castle of Lincoln which had recently been in Stephen's hands.

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The Empress.

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Matilda was the widow of the Emperor Henry V.

secular splendours. Becket was a plain merchant's son, but he lived in great state. Once he went to Paris on an embassy and the people were much impressed by the magnificence of his retinue. They said, "If this be the chancellor of England, what must the king be?" 64 the man shall seal. The council of Northampton was held in 1164. All the clergy present save Becket had signed the Constitutions of Clarendon, defining the relations of church and state. The signature of the Archbishop of Canterbury, primate of England, was essential to their validity. Thomas was finally induced to sign the document, but he would not affix the official seal. In fear of his life he fled to France, and spent the next six years in the attempt to induce King Henry to withdraw from his decision.

64 My burgher's son. Thomas was the son of Gilbert Becket, a citizen of London.

65 the nineteen winters of King Stephen.

horrors of the civil war is not exaggerated.

Henry's account of the
The chronicler relates:

"When the castles were made, they (the barons) filled them with

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devils and evil men. Then took they those men that they imagined had any property, both by night and by day, peasant men and women, and put them in prison for their gold and silver and tortured them with most terrible torture."

went abroad thro' all my counties. Henry II. spent much time journeying from place to place and visiting the courts in order to make sure that his laws were enforced without fear or favor.

your courts. The ecclesiastical courts could not award the death penalty. The king wished that, after a priest had been unfrocked, he should be made over to the civil courts for punishment. To this the church would not consent.

certain wholesome usages. The king had caused the customs observed by Henry I. to be ascertained and reduced to writing. They formed the basis of the Constitutions of Clarendon.

"The meeting of the kings." Henry was holding conference with Louis VII. of France at Montmirail when the archbishop came before the two kings and, throwing himself at his sovereign's feet, offered to submit all disputed questions to his discretion “saving God's honour and my order."

The friends we were. People said of the two men in the year before the quarrel that they had "but one heart and one mind."

When he, my lord: Philip Augustus, King of France and suzerain of the kings of England. He had joined Richard in a crusade for the deliverance of Jerusalem. The two kings swore to defend each the other's realm as he would his own. Yet Philip took advantage of Richard's captivity and invaded Normandy. Moreover, he intrigued with John, Richard's ambitious younger brother, to prevent the royal prisoner's release.

Of Pensavin and Chail. The land of the troubadours, lyric poets of medieval France.

Our vice-king John. John was the most vicious and the best hated of all the kings of England.

Sheriff of Nottingham: the king's representative in the county court. He had been false to his trust.

palmer: a pilgrim who passed his life in journeying from shrine to shrine, living on charity. Palmers were so called from the palm-branch, carried in token that they had visited the Holy Land.

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"It's good habit that makes a man." The Earl of Huntingdon was accustomed to fine raiment, and he pulls wry faces as he disguises himself in the old tramp's patched clothes, with the numerous bags attached. The earl had not realized before how much handsome clothing does for a man's sense of personal dignity.

Elinor Henry II.'s queen and a woman of remarkable strength of character. She had maintained order in England during the absence of Richard, and on his return effected a reconciliation between the brothers. She now takes the part of John against Geoffrey's son.

Faulconbridge: a merry nobleman connected with the royal family. In the play he embodies the spirit of English patriotism.

82 hoarding abbots. John plundered monasteries to secure funds with which to carry on his many wars.

82 Imprison'd angels. John makes a common Elizabethan pun. The angel was a gold coin, worth about two dollars and a half, having on one side a figure of the archangel Michael piercing the prostrate dragon.

82 Bell, book, and candle: used by the priest in performing the ceremony of excommunication. John was actually excommunicated by the pope six years later.

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Hubert. Shakespeare follows old chronicles in making Hubert de Burgh the king's instrument in the plot to murder Arthur.

83 too full of gawds. In the clear daylight, filled with all bright and beautiful sights, John cannot speak his hideous secret. This blacksouled king, who cannot understand what laughter is, instils the suggestion of murder like creeping poison into Hubert's mind.

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brooded: brooding; as vigilant as a bird on brood over her young. Within the arras. The heavy tapestries that draped mediæval walls afforded excellent hiding-places.

want pleading. Two tongues would not be enough to plead for a pair of eyes.

undeserved extremes: torture of the innocent. The fire, made to give comfortable warmth, grieves that it should be asked to cause burning agony.

Prince Henry. Afterward Henry III. In reality the prince was only nine years old at the time of his father's death.

There is so hot a summer in my bosom. One tradition has it that

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John's fever was brought on by a surfeit of peaches and beer. He fell ill in the Cistercian Abbey at Swineshead, but died at Newark. Shakespeare follows here another tradition to the effect that John, the plunderer of abbeys, was poisoned by a monk.

93 in the Washes all unwarily. The forces John relied upon to withstand the Dauphin were overwhelmed by the tide while fording the Welland, a river flowing into the Wash.

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the King's own sister: Eleanor, who was married to Earl Simon (1238), much to the indignation of the English nobles.

95 England's prince. When Prince Edward, the heir apparent, was christened (1239), Earl Simon stood as godfather.

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the King, at pinch. In 1244, Henry summoned Simon to aid him in France, and Leicester stood by the king to the great damage of his own interests. In 1248, the king besought de Montfort to undertake the government of Gascony, and Simon, "not wishing that the king should suffer for aught that I could do for him," assumed the difficult task.

Kenilworth. This famous castle, dating from about 1120, passed after the day of the de Montforts to John of Gaunt. It afterward became a royal possession, and was given by Elizabeth to the Earl of Leicester. (See Scott's "Kenilworth.") The stately pile was demolished by the Roundheads, but its ruins still attract multitudes of visitors.

The lightning in the skies. One day when Henry III. was being rowed along the Thames, he was forced by a sudden thunderstorm to take refuge in Durham Palace, where, to his surprise, he was received by the Earl of Leicester. Said the king, "I fear thunder and lightning not a little, Lord Simon, but I fear you more than all the thunder and lightning in the world." "Fear your enemies, my Lord King," replied the earl, "those who flatter you to your ruin, not me, your constant and faithful friend."

96 I will die under ban. Before the battle of Lewes, de Montfort

said, "Though all should forsake me, I will stand firm with my four sons, in the just cause to which my faith is pledged, nor will I fear to risk the fortunes of war."

96 The people loved the proud French lord. The Londoners held with Earl Simon against the king, and sent fifteen thousand men to the force, with which the earl won the battle of Lewes. Representa

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tives of the Commons were summoned for the first time to the Parliament he held at Westminster (1265).

He had taught to war. When Earl Simon saw Prince Edward's troops moving to meet him at Evesham, he said, "By the arm of St. James, they come on in fine fashion, but it was from me that they learned it."

Evesham's battle-gloom. Although the battle took place early in the morning, the skies were so clouded with storm that the combatants fought in semi-darkness.

97 the traitor. This charge was brought against Wallace at his trial; but he was no traitor, since he fought for his country against a would-be conqueror.

97 laurel wreath: placed on the head of the captive in mockery of his supposed ambition to be king. The English believed that Wallace had said he would yet wear a crown in Westminster Hall.

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Wallace. In the address to his men quoted by the contemporary chronicler, Bruce made no allusion to Wallace. As a matter of fact, he fought against Wallace at Falkirk.

Plantagenet: the nickname of Geoffrey of Anjou, father of Henry II., and the name borne by all the English sovereigns of that race. As John was the worst, so Edward II. was weakest of the line.

De Argentine: Sir Giles. He fought on after the retreat of the English and fell upon the field.

Edward Bruce: the brother of Robert and later king of Ireland. No spears were there the shock to let. The Scotch foot-soldiers, massed in solid battalions with spears pointing outward, were as awkward to handle as a porcupine.

No stakes to turn the charge were set. By Bruce's order, stakes were driven into the ground over which the English cavalry must pass. Ailsa Rock: a beautiful crag, rising abruptly from the sea off the coast of Ayrshire. The peasants believed that the multitudes of seafowl nesting on this mighty crag were transformed fairies who, at the coming of Christianity, had fled the islands.

104 Carrick spearmen. Carrick was the ancestral estate of the Bruce family.

107 Might have enforc'd me to have swum: a grammatical error still too common.

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