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"I saw the individual in question in a positively door-nail condition, not ten minutes ago; and I can scarcely believe my senses

"Mr. Paunch-are you dead?”

No reply.

"Because, if you are, be so kind as to say so-like a man. Seeing is by no means believing in this exceptional case. I should be an ass, indeed, if I were to say I am all ears; but I listen attentively for your own testimony as to whether you are what you appear to be, or not."

"No, that's certain," replied Sir John, throwing down his body (I now quote the chronicler textually). "I am not a double man. There is Percy: if your father will do me any honour, so; if not, let him kill the next Percy himself. I look to be either earl or duke, I can assure you."

The Prince of Wales scratched his ear, and looked very uncomfortable. The Prince of Lancaster eyed his brother with an unmistakeable expression of opinion that the latter was the greatest humbug in the family- which was saying a good deal.

"Why," Prince Henry stammered awkwardly, addressing himself to Sir John Falstaff,-"Percy I killed myself, and saw thee dead."

Prince John of Lancaster whistled a popular melody in a low key.

Sir John Falstaff lifted up his hands, and exclaimed —

"Didst thou? Lord, Lord, how this world is given to lying! I grant you I was down, and out of breath; and so was he: but we rose both at an instant, and fought a long hour by Shrewsbury clock. If I may be believed, so; if not, let them that should reward valour take the sin upon their own heads. I'll take it upon my death, I gave him this wound in the thigh: if the man were alive and would deny it, I would make him eat a piece of my sword."

Prince John of Lancaster continued to whistle, and implied that the story was, to say the least, singular. It was evident he was inclined to attach more credit to the representations of Sir John Falstaff than to those of his elder brother. You see, they had been at school together. No man is a hero in the eyes of the valet who takes off his boots when he is not in a condition to remove them himself; or in those of the little brother whom he has fleeced, fagged, and bullied at a public college.

Appearances were certainly against the Prince of Wales, and he was, at any rate, philosopher enough to make the best of the difficulty. For once, the conqueror of Agincourt-Englishman and warrior as he was-knew and confessed himself beaten. He felt that in this particular contest Sir John Falstaff had got decidedly the best of him, and morally yielded his sword with princely grace.

He contented himself with remarking to the Prince of Lancaster,

"This is the strangest fellow, brother John."

And then, addressing Falstaff,

"Come, bring your luggage nobly on your back.

For my part, if a lie may do thee grace,

I'll gild it with the happiest terms I have."

At this juncture a retreat was sounded, proving that the fortune of war had decided in favour of the Royalist faction. The two princes hastened to their father's tent, Sir John Falstaff following, with the body of Hotspur on his back, soliloquising as follows:

"I'll follow, as they say, for reward. He that rewards me, Heaven reward him! If I do grow great, I'll grow less; for I'll purge, and leave sack, and live cleanly as a nobleman should do."

The above is the Shakspearian account, and- -as I have already stated— in consistency I am bound to adopt it. But what I want to know is this,why, if the Prince of Wales really killed Hotspur, the paid chroniclers of the period have not reported it? I admit I can come to no definite conclusion upon the subject, and will confine myself to the expression of an opinion that the death of Hotspur is still an open question, -with the supplementary reminder that Sir John Falstaff, being only a private gentleman of limited means, could not hope for the historic recognition of an honour disputed with him by the heir-apparent of England. And-to come to the point at once -I really believe that Sir John Falstaff did kill Hotspur, and that his royal patron bore him a grudge on that account to his dying day. It is the only logical explanation of Henry the Fifth's notorious ingratitude to his former boon companion, whom it would have been so easy and natural for him to load with honours.

The Earl of Douglas, as we have seen, was punished by being sent back to Scotland. Sir John Falstaff, contrary to his reasonable expectations, was not made either Duke or Earl, in recompense of an achievement for which, whether really performed by him or no, he at least obtained credit in the opinion of many impartial persons. Herein we find not merely an illustration of the proverbial ingratitude of monarchs, but also one, by implication, of the personal jealousy of Prince Henry towards Sir John Falstaff, whom, as the sequel will show, the Prince of Wales treated with the most pointed malignity from the date of the Shrewsbury action to that of the knight's death.

I will merely remark that Henry Plantagenet-fifth English king of that name—was not a man to do anything without a motive.

What Sir John Falstaff really gained by his glorious victory of Shrewsbury shall be seen in future chapters. It will be found that he was not a loser

SIR JOHN FALSTAFF ON HONOUR.

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by the transaction. I will conclude the present chapter by a quotation from our knight's expressed opinions before entering the field of battle

"Honour pricks me on. Yea, but how if honour pricks me off when I

come on? How then? Can honour set to a leg? No. Or an arm? No. "Or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honour hath no skill in surgery "then? No. What is honour? A word.

What is that word honour? He that died o' Wednesday?

"Air; a trim reckoning! Who hath it? "Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. Is it insensible, then? "Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? "Detraction will not suffer it ;-therefore, I'll none of it.

Honour is a

I think the above observations prove that Sir John Falstaff knew rather more about honour than most people of his time, and therefore deserves a prominent position amongst the honourable men of the age he lived in.

94

BOOK THE FOURTH.

1410-1413.

I.

OF THE SIGNAL VICTORY GAINED BY SIR JOHN FALSTAFF OVER THE LORD CHIEF JUSTICE OF ENGLAND.

THERE is reason to believe that Sir John Falstaff remained for some months in the north-west of England, doubtless employed in pursuit of the scattered remnants of the rebel forces. Some considerable time must have elapsed from the date of the battle of Shrewsbury to that of his next appearance in London of which we have any positive record. Sir John was most favourably received on his return to the metropolis, where he was more than compensated for the ingratitude of the court by the hospitable treatment of the citizens, at whose expense he and his retainers feasted in great profusion for many weeks, solely on the strength of the glowing accounts received (never mind from what source) of our knight's achievements in Shropshire.

But a warrior like Sir John may not long rest on his laurels. A new enemy had to be faced, arising in an unexpected quarter.

The

One of the most eminent men of the reign of Henry the Fourth (after Sir John Falstaff) was William Gascoigne, Knight and Chief Justice of England. The biography of this wise and excellent judge will be found in Master Fuller's work upon English Worthies; a book which would be irreproachable but for the culpable and glaring omission of a personage so eminently entitled to prominence in such a collection as the hero of these pages. anecdote of Sir William's courageous committal of the Prince of Wales for contempt of court-in the celebrated criminal action of the King versus Bardolph-is too well known to need recapitulation here. It is true that, bearing as it does on two of the most conspicuous characters in this narrative, some slight discussion might be opportunely employed on the occurrence; for instance, as to the nature of the offence which originally got our rubicund friend "into trouble," and what was the real extent of the magnanimity displayed by the Prince, on the one hand, and the Lord Chief Justice, on the other. It

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would be valuable to the cause of historic truth to make quite certain whether the whole affair was, or was not, what, in the parlance of modern criminal jurisprudence, is called a "put up concern" between the two distinguished actors, having for its object a harvest of mutual popularity. The fact that Bardolph was at liberty in an incredibly short space of time after the event, lends a slight colour of such suspicion as I have hinted at to the transaction; but the rights of the matter are involved in such hopeless obscurity as to render all investigation on the subject worse than idle.

Though in the enjoyment of much and well-merited court favour, and public approbation, and being a man of modest integrity, it is still not unnatural or inexcusable that Sir William Gascoigne should feel some little jealousy of the more brilliant attainments and more enviable renown of a warrior, statesman, wit, and scholar like Sir John Falstaff.

The weakness of envy is perhaps the most difficult of all Adam's legacy for the best of us to rid ourselves of. History, ancient and modern, abounds in illustrations of the tenacity of this vice, even in the noblest natures. Dionysius the elder, and the great Cardinal Richelieu, though the one an absolute monarch of the fairest island in Greek colonised Europe, and the other the virtual master of the most warlike and polished realm of the seventeenth century, were both jealous of the pettiest scribblers of their respective days. The author of "The Vicar of Wakefield," and "The Citizen of the World," could not see a mountebank throw a summerset but he must risk the scattering of his valuable brains in an attempt to do the same thing better. To seek an illustration nearer our own time, have we not the celebrated little boy of the United States of America, who, though he had carried away the prizes for writing and arithmetic, committed suicide because an inferior mathematician of his own class defeated him in the correct spelling of "phthisic!"?

Is it then a great wonder that the Lord Chief Justice of England (an office which, after all, was then of little more importance than that of a police magistrate of the present day) should have felt envious of a man so vastly his superior in every way (except in the trifling matters of solvency and conventional honesty), as Sir John Falstaff, and should have sought to annoy his brilliant rival by every means in his power; of which, considering the official position of the one man, and the habits of the other, there could have been no scarcity?

Amongst other illustrations of what must be called petty persecution—(for, in a work of this serious description, things should receive their right names without respect to persons)—on the part of Sir William Gascoigne towards Sir John Falstaff, it may be mentioned that the former chose to consider