was with him in Wales, appears much more probable. He says, "he was imprisoned in Pomfrait Castle, where xv dayes and nightes they vexed him with continuall hunger, thirst, and cold, and finally bereft him of his life, with such a kind of death as never before that time was knowen in England, saith Sir John Fortiscute," probably in his Declaration touching the title of the House of Yorke, a work yet, I believe, somewhere existing in Ms. Sir John Fortescue was called to the bar a few years after the death of Richard: living therefore so near the time, his testimony is of the highest weight. And with him Harding, who is supposed to have been at the battle of Shrewsbury in 1403, con"Chron. curs, "Men sayd for-hungered he was.' 1543, fol. 199, So also Walsingham, who wrote in the time of Henry V. and Polydore Vergil.

The Percies in the Manifesto which they published against King Henry IV. in the third yeare of his reign, the day before the battle of Shrewsbury, expressly charge him with having "carried his sovereign lord traiterously within the castell of Pomfret, without the consent or the judgement of the lordes of the realm, by the space of fiftene daies and so many nightes, (which is horrible among Christian people to be heard,) with hunger, thirst and cold to perishe." Had the story of Sir Pierce of Exton been true, it undoubtedly must have reached them. Their not mentioning it is decisive.

If, however, we are to give credit to Sir John Hayward, this controverted point will not admit of dispute; for in The First part of the Life and Reign of King Henry IV. 4to. 1599. after relating the story of King Richard's VOL. VIII.

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sination, he very gravely tells us, that "after being felled to the ground, he with a faint and feeble voice groaned forth these words: "My great grandfather Edward II." &c. Mr. Hume in his entertaining, but often superficial, History of England, has not been weak enough to insert this fictitious dying speech. He might, however, have inserted it with as much propriety as an abridgement of the oration of the Bishop of Carlisle, on the deposition of the King being propounded in parliament, which Hayward feigned in imitation of Livy, grounding himself on a few sentences preserved in our old Chronicles, which he has expanded into thirteen quarto pages. The writers of the Parliamentary History have in this matter been as careless as Mr. Hume. MALONE.

The representation here given of the King's death is perfectly agreeable to Hall and Holinshed. But the fact was otherwise. He refused food for several days, and died of abstinence and a broken heart. See Walsingham, Otterbourne, the Monk of Evesham, the continuator of the History of Croyland, and the anonymous Godstow Chronicle. KITSON.

P. 203, 1. 6. The heads of Salisbury, Spencer, Blunt, and Kent:] So the folio. The quarto reads of Oxford, Salisbury, Blunt, and Kent. It appears from the histories of this reign that the reading of the folio is right. MALONE.

P. 203, 1. 24-29. The grand conspirator, Abbot of Westminster, &c.] This Abbot of Westminster was William de Colchester. The relation here given of his death, after Holinshed's Chronicle, is untrue, as he survived the King many years; and though called

"the grand conspirator," it is very doubtful whether he had any concern in the conspiracy; at least nothing was proved against him. RITSON. P. 203, last 1. but one. Carlisle, this is your doom: &c.] This Prelate was committed to the Tower, but on the intercession of his friends, obtained leave to change his prison for Westminster-Abbey. In order to deprive him of his see, the Pope, at the King's instance, translated him to a bishoprick in partibus infidelium; and the only preferment he could ever after obtain, was a rectory in Gloucestershire. He died in 1409. RITSON.

This play is extracted from the Chronicle of Holinshed, in which many passages may be found which Shakspeare has, with very little alteration, transplanted into his scenes: particularly a speech of the Bishop of Carlisle, in defence of King Richard's unalienable right, and immunity from human jurisdiction.

Jonson who, in his Catiline and Sejarus, has inserted many speeches from the Roman historians, was perhaps induced to that practice by the example of Shakspeare, who had condescended sometimes to copy more ignoble writers. But Shakspeare had more of his own than Jonson; and, if he sometimes was willing to spare his labour, showed by what he performed at other times, that his extracts were made by choice or idleness rather than necessity.

This play is one of those which Shakspeare has apparently revised; but as success in works of invention is not always proportionate to labour, it is not finished at last with the happy

force of some other of his tragedies, nor can be said much to affect the passions, or enlarge the understanding. JOHNSON.

The notion that Shakspeare revised this play, though it has long prevailed, appears to me extremely doubtful; or, to speak more plainly, I do not believe it. See further on this subject in An Attempt to ascertain the order of his plays. MALONE.

END OF THE EIGHTH VOLUME.