***

very liberal ; disdainful to his kin, and dreadful to his lovers; preferring money before friendship; many things beginning and few performing, saving in malice and mischief; his insatiable covetousness and hope of long life made him both to forget God, his prince, and himself. Of (the getting of his goods, both by power legantine and spiritual bribery, I will not speak; but the keeping of them, which he chiefly gathered for ambitious purpose, was both loss to his natural prince and native country: for his hidden riches might have well holpen the King, and his secret treasure might have relieved the commonalty when money was scant and charges great. Of this Catholick clerk such were the deeds, that with King and each estate else (saith Polidor) the lighter was the loss, because, as for his hat, he was a prelate proud enough,

so for a bishop was there a better soon set in his room.” Hall, whom Holinshed has not in this instance copied so servilely as usual, goes further towards justifying one remarkable passage in the play

“ John Baker, his privy counsellor and his chaplain, wrote, that he, lying on his death-bed, said these words :- Why should I die having so much riches ? if the whole realm would save my life I am able either by policy to get it, or by riches to buy it. Fie! will not death be hired, nor will money do nothing? When my nephew of Bedford died, I thought myself half up the whole, but when I saw my other nephew of Gloucester deceased, then I thought myself able to be equal with kings, and so thought to increase my treasure in hope to have worn a triple crown." +

I know not where John Baker's account is to be found. This passage was probably the origin of the passage in Shakspeare, or rather in " the Contention,” in which Beaufort raves about purchasing life. But if the authority of John Baker, who does not spare his master, is good for anything, it is good for negativing the delirious confession of Gloucester's murder—for which confession, indeed, or even for the imputation of murder, I find no authority anywhere; nor has Whethamstede, Hardyng, or even Fabyan, a word about the death-bed, or any character of the Cardinal. The monk of Croyland is the only contemporary who says anything, and he (whose character of an ecclesiastic is to be taken with allowance) only tells us that he was eminent for “ probity and wisdom, as well as for riches and glory.”I

I presume that the exposure of a rich, haughty, and unscrupulous Cardinal was a popular topic at the court of the daughter of Anne Boleyn.

The fourth act commences with a mysterious transaction—the murder of the Duke of Suffolk. The poet represents this execution as done by pirates, who refuse to take ransom from Suffolk (though accepted from the other prisoners), by reason of his public offences (among which, however, Gloucester's murder is not included). And the executioner is Walter Whitmore, whose name reminds Suffolk of the prophecy in the first act, that he should die by water. This is not according to Holinshed

Intending to transport bimself over to France, he was encountered with

* Hol. 212.

† Hall, 210. Lingard (p. 124) reasonably questions the probability of this project in a man of eighty. Řad it been entertained, we should probably have heard of it elsewhere.

Cont. Croyl., 521.

a ship of war, appertaining to the Duke of Exeter, constable of the Tower of London, called the Nicolas of the Tower. The captain of this bark with small fight entered into the Duke's ship, and perceiving his person present brought him to Dover-road, and there, on the one side of a cock-boat, caused his head to be stricken off, and left his body with the head lying there on the sand—which corps being there found by a chaplain of his, was conveyed to Wingfield College, in Suffolk, and there buried.";

A letter in the Paston collection, perfect authority as to the belief of the day, tells the story more particularly :

Right worshipful Sir,- I recommend me to you, and am right sorry of that I shall say, and have so washed this little bill with sorrowful tears, that uneths (scarcely) ye shall read it. As on Monday next after May-day (4th May) there came tidings to London that on Thursday before (30th of April) the Duke of Suffolk came unto the coasts of Kent full near Dover with his two ships and a little spinner; the which spinner he sent with certain letters by certain of his trusted men unto Calais-ward, to know how he should be received, and with him met a ship called Nicolas of the Tower, with other ships waiting on him, and by them that were in the spinner the master of the Nicolas had knowledge of the Duke's coming. When he espied the Duke's ships, he sent full his boat to weet what they were, and the Duke himself spoke to them, and said he was, by the King's commandment, sent to Calais-ward, &c.; and they said he must speak with their master; and so he, with two or three of his men, went forth with them in their boat to the Nicolas, and when he came, the master bade him Wel. come, traitor, as men say. And further, the master desired to weet if the shipmen would hold with the Duke, and they sent word they would not in no wise, and so he was in the Nicolas till Saturday next following. Some say he wrote much things to be delivered to the King, but that is not verily known; some say he had his confessor with him, &c.; and some say he was arruigned in the ship in their manner, upon the impeachments, and found guilty, &c.

“ Also he asked the name of the ship, and when he knew it, he remembered Stacy, that said, if he might escape the danger of the Tower he would be safe, and then his heart failed him, for he thought he was deceived. And in the sight of all his men he was drawn out of the great ship into the boat, and there was an axe, and a stock, and one of the leudest of the ship bade him lay down his head, and he should be fairly fought with, and die on a sword ; and took a rusty sword and smote off his head within half-a-dozen strokes, and took away his gown of russet, and his doublet of velvet mailed, and laid his body on the sands of Dover, and some say his head was set on a pole by it, and his men sit on the land by great circumstance and pray. And the sheriff of Kent doth watch the body, and sent his under-sheriff to the judges to weet what to do; and also to the King, what shall be done. Further I wot not, but thus far is it, if the process be erroneous let his counsel reverse it, &c.''t

Mrs. Lennox observes that " Shakspeare probably borrowed his story from the same tale that furnished him with the loves of Suffolk and the Queen.”I. The truth is that Shakspeare's version, and that of more authentic history, are equally mysterious. Mackintosh says that there was in the killing of Suffolk “some butcherly mimicking of an execution of public justice.”—Paston's correspondent clearly so viewed the transaction. Is it possible that Suffolk-whom this account represents as hovering on the coast of Kent, and who was detained, I think, until after

66

a communication might have been had with the court *-can have been executed as a banished man unlawfully returning? I give this as a mere floating conjecture, and have no confidence in it; and indeed few weeks, perhaps few days, elapsed between the banishment and this catastrophe. It has been suggested + that the Nicolas was sent by the Duke of York, on purpose to intercept and destroy Suffolk; but this is also a mere conjecture. It must be noted that the contemporary account does not say that the ship belonged to the Duke of Exeter.

It is remarkable that the Paston letter not only mentions a rumour that the Duke was "arraigned in the ship, after their manner” (possibly by Admiralty law), but speaks of reversing the process, by a legal proceeding, if erroneous. How the process of beheading was to be reversed I do not exactly know.

This strange business suggests still one more remark. The Paston account refers, as the play does, to a prophecy and a quibble, but instead of Water and Walter, it is the Tower, and the ship called Nicholas of the Tower, that excite the apprehensions of the Duke.

We have now | the insurrection of Jack Cade, who had already been thus announced by the Duke of York

for a minister of my intent,
I have seduced a headstrong Kentishman,
John Cade of Ashford,
To make commotion, as full well he can,
Under the title of John Mortimer.
In Ireland have I seen this stubborn Cade
Oppose himself against a troop of kerns,
And fought so long, till that his thighs, with darts,
Were almost like a sharp-quill’d porcupine.
This devil here shall be my substitute ;
For that John Mortimer, which now is dead,
In face, in gait, in speech, he doth resemble :
By this I shall perceive the Commons' mind,
How they affect the house and claim of York.
Say, he be taken, rack'd, and tortured:
I know no pain they can inflict upon him,
Will make him say, I moved him to those arms.
Say, that he thrive (as 'tis great like he will),
Why, then, from Ireland come I with my strength,
And reap the harvest which that rascal sow'd.
For, Humphrey being dead, as he shall be,

And Henry set aside, the next for me.” According to this introduction, Cade was a soldier of approved valour; and though this is not plainly said by Holinshed, it is rather to bé gathered from his chronicle, than that he was a clothier, as he is represented in the scene before us. That scene, as well as all those in which Cade is introduced, is highly characteristic of a rising of low and ignorant men, at war with property and learning, setting at nought the principles of political economy, and hoping to make all men equal, and to abolish every tax. I will bring together various passages :

* It is distinctly stated that the sheriff made a communication after the execution ; but it appears that Suffolk was on board the Nicholas for two or three days.

† Fenn's notes on the Paston letter. | Act iv., Sc. 2.

Act iii. Sc. I.

“ Geo. I tell thee, Jack Cade, the clothier, means to dress the commonwealth, and turn it, and set a new nap upon it.

John. So he had need, for it is threadbare. Well! I say it was never merry world in England since gentlemen came up. Geo. The King

council are no good workmen. John. True; and yet it is said, Labour in your vocation; which is as much as to say, Let the magistrates be labouring men, and therefore should we be magistrates.

Geo. Thou hast hit it; there's no better sign of a brave mind than a hard hand.

Dick. The first thing we do, let us kill all the lawyers.

Cade. Nay, that I mean to do. Is not this a lamentable thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb should be made parchment, that parchment being scribbled over should undo a man? Some say the bee stings; but I say 'tis the bees’-wax, for I did but seal once to a thing, and I was never mine own man since.

Cade (to the Clerk of Chatham). Dost thou use to write thy name ? or hast thou a mark to thyself like an honest plain-dealing man?

Clerk. Sir, I thank God, I have been so well brought up, that I can write my name. All. He hath confessed! Away with him! he's a villain and a traitor !

Cade. Away with him, I say ! hang him with his pen and ink-horn about his neck.

Cade. Henceforward all things shall be in common."

This view of Cade and his schemes is amplified from the old play, and is very consistent with the political notions of Shakspeare. But it is not conformable to Holinshed, whose narrative in this instance consists of public and apparently authentic documents.* Except in one passage (quoted by Malone +) in which Cade is said to have undertaken that no more fifteenths or other taxes should be imposed, there is nothing which supports Shakspeare's representations of the grievances set forth by Cade. And that passage which is not taken from any document, contemplates this “ economical reform as resulting from a better administration of the government.

“The Captain, assembling a great number of tall personages, assured them that the enterprize was honourable both to God and the King, and profitable to the whole realm. For if, either by force or policy, they might get the King and Queen into their hands, he would cause them to be honourably used, and take such order for the punishing and reforming of the misdemeanours of their bad counsellors, that neither fifteens should hereafter be demanded, nor once any impositions nor taxes spoken of.” 1:

Here is a too sanguine view of the effects of reform; but the truth is, that, although, if Holinshed § be correct, Cade, or his people, when in possession of London, committed disorders of all sorts, incompatible with regular government, their demands, as they appear in the petitions presented to the King in council, were not the demands of ignorant levellers.

They said that the king purposed to punish the men of Kent for the murder of the duke of Suffolk, of which they were not guilty ; they complained that the king gave away his revenue, and lived upon the Commons (that is, upon taxes) ; they set forth many abuses in the administration of the law and the collection of the revenue, some general and some local. How far these complaints were well founded, we cannot now judge, but they are all plausible and constitutional. Two of the articles are remarkable:

“ 3, Item. That the lords of his royal blood are put from his daily presence, and other mean persons of lower nature exalted, and made chief of his Privy Council, the which stoppeth matters of wrongs done in the realm from his excellent audience, and may not be redressed as law will, but if bribes and gifts be messengers to the hands of the said Council.

“ 13. Item, The people of the said shire of Kent may not have their free election in the choosing knights of the shire; but letters have been sent from divers estates to the great rulers of all the country, the which enforceth their tenants and other people by force to choose other persons than the common will is.”

The precise nature of the interference or intimidation complained of in this 13th article does not appear, nor is it much to our present purpose; but the 4th article certainly does not complain that the king's counsellors are not men of a hard hand,” but rather that such hands are apt to take bribes.

These complaints were accompanied by several requests :

“ 2. Item. Desireth the said captain (Cade called himself the captain of Kent) that the king will avoid all the false progeny and affinity of the Duke of Suffolk, the which hath been openly known, and they to be punished after the custom and law of this land, and to take about his noble person the true lords of his royal blood of this his realm, that is to say, the high and mighty prince the Duke of York, late exiled from our sovereign lord's presence * (by The motion and stirring of the traitorous and false disposed the Duke of Suffolk and his affinity), and the mighty princes the Dukes of Exeter, Buckingham, and Norfolk," and all the earls and barons of this land; and then shall he be the richest king Christian."

“ 3. Item. Desireth the said captain and commons, punishment unto the false traitors, the which contrived and imagined the death of the high mightful and excellent prince the Duke of Gloucester ; the which is too much to rehearse; the which Duke was proclaimed as traitor. Upon the which quarrel we purpose all to live and die upon that it is false."

4. “ Item. The Duke of Exeter, our holy father the Cardinal, the noble prince Duke of Warwick, and, also, the realm of France, the Duchy of Normandy, Gascony, and'Aquitaine, Anjou and Maine, were delivered, and lost by the means of the said traitors.”

Be it observed, that the same parties complain of injury done to Duke Humphrey and to the Cardinal!

The connexion between this rising in Kent, and the designs of the Duke of York is equally obscure, whether we take the play or the histories. We have just seen that the rebels desired the king to call him to