enigma. There is, however, a quaint old custom, founded by Eglesfield, still in use in Oxford, at Queen's college, which perhaps explains it. The bursar, on New-year's day, presents to each of the students of Queen's college a needle and thread, adding this exordium,

"Take this, and be thrifty."

What the fellows of Queen's do now with these useful imple ments we know not; in the time of prince Hal they certainly stuck them on their collars, in readiness to mend any holes that might occur in their garments. The prince went to court wearing the needles he had received from his bursar, it being the anniversary of their presentation on New-year's day;' he likewise wore the student's gown, which at the same time reminded his sire that he had not forgotten the lessons of thriftiness inculcated at college. Thus apparelled, he advanced into the hall of Westminster-palace, and leaving all his company, because the weather was cold, "round about the coal fire" in the centre of the hall, he advanced singly to pay his duty to his father, who was with his attendants at the upper end. After due salutation, he implored a private audience of his sire. Henry IV. made a sign to his attendants to carry him in his chair, for he could not walk, into his private chamber; when the prince of Wales, falling on his knees, presented his dagger to his father, and requested him to pierce him to the heart, if he deemed that it contained any feeling but duty and loyalty towards him. Henry IV. melted into tears, and a thorough explanation and reconciliation took place between the father and the son. The last sad scene between Henry IV. and his heir, so beautifully dramatised by Shakspeare, is, as shown in the preceding memoir, a very faithful detail of incidents recorded by ancient chroniclers.

1 Messrs. Brayley and Britton coincide with our views of this event, but they have not noted the confirming circumstance of the anniversary.

*Not Westminster-hall, but the room called the white-hall, (lately the house of lords,) which was the state reception-room of Westminster-palace. The bedchamber of the king, and the bedchamber of the queen, opened into it; and, on occasions of grand festivals, the whole suite was thrown open. The prince's bedchamber was near it, and was the royal robing-room until the late house of lords was burnt.

After the death of his royal sire, Henry V. did not establish himself in the sovereignty without a short but fierce civil war, which partly assumed a religious character, and partly was founded on the report that king Richard II. was alive and ready to claim his own. These reports were assuredly the secret motive of the exhumation of Richard's body, outwardly attributed by Henry V. to his respect for the memory of his kinsman, but in reality a deep-laid measure of state policy. This tragic scene was one of the peculiar features of that era; and the manner in which it was conducted finds no parallel, excepting in the appalling exhumation of Agnes de Castro. Richard's mouldering corpse was raised from its obscure resting-place at Langley, and seated in a rich chair of state,' adorned with regal ornaments. Henry V. walked next to his dead kinsman, and all his court followed; and, thus royally escorted, the corpse of the hapless Richard was conveyed to Westminster-abbey, and laid, with solemn pomp, in the tomb he had prepared for himself by the side of his beloved Anne of Bohemia. "The very next day," says the London Chronicle, "there was a grand cursing of sir John Oldcastle at St. Paul's-cross," who had been accused of raising the reports that Richard was in existence.

When these agitations had subsided, Henry V. renewed his application for the hand of the princess Katherine. At the same time he demanded with her an enormous dowry. If the king of France had been disposed to give him his daughter, it was scarcely possible he could bestow with her two millions of crowns, the bridal portion demanded by Henry, together with the restoration of Normandy and all the southern provinces, once the inheritance of Eleanora of Aquitaine. There was a secret misgiving on the part of the French, lest the ambitious heir of Lancaster should make use of an alliance with one of their princesses, to strengthen the claim of the Plantagenets to the throne of France; yet Charles VI. would have given Katherine to Henry with a dowry of 450,000 crowns. This the English hero refused with disdain. Henry desired no better than a feasible excuse to invade France; he

1 Weever's Funeral Monuments.

2 See the life of Eleanora, vol. i.

therefore resolved to win Katherine the Fair at the point of the sword, together with all the gold and provinces he demanded with her hand.

Henry's first care was to sell or pawn all the valuables he possessed, in order to raise funds for the French expedition, on which he had set his ambitious mind. Extended empire, rich plunder, and the hand of the beautiful young Katherine of Valois were the attainments on which all the energies of his ardent character were centered. The annals of the ancient nobility or gentry of England can bear witness to the extraordinary methods the Plantagenet kings took, to induce their feudal muster to tarry beyond the forty days they were bound to appear in arms by their tenures. Among other possessions of the royal family, the magnificent crown belonging to Henry IV., called 'the great Harry,' was pawned; while cupboards and beaufets at royal palaces were ransacked of their rich goblets and flagons, and distributed to the knights and leaders of that expedition, as pledges and pawns that their pay should be forthcoming when coin was more plentiful. Even that stout northern squire, to whose keeping was confided the banner of St. George' by his warlike sovereign,

1 Thomas Strickland, the banner-bearer of St. George at Agincourt, afterwards sir Thomas Strickland, knight of the shire for Westmoreland. His petition in Norman-French is a curious illustration of the state of the times, and proves how extremely scarce specie was in England; for notwithstanding the pathos with which he petitions, as a poor squire, not to be held accountable for the king's broken silver flagons, and for the restoration of his 147. 4s. 10d., not forgetting an odd farthing, "he was heir to extensive domains, being the eldest son of sir Walter Strickland of Helsington, knight of the shire of Westmoreland, and grandson of lord Dacre of Gilsland."-See Burn's Westmoreland. His supplication to the council of the infant Henry VI. is thus worded :---“ "Very humbly supplicates a poor squire, Thomas de Strickland, lately the bearer of the banner of St. George for the very noble king Henry V., whom God assoil! May it please your good grace to consider the long service that the said suppliant did for the late king in Luts beyond sea, at his arrival at Harfleur and the battle of Agincourt, and, e that time, when the city of Rouen was won. And your said suppliant has Lad no compensation for his labour at the said day of Agincourt, nor any pay at all, g only for one half-year. Not only that; but your said suppliant is brought in ammar with the exchequer for the sum of 14/. 4s. 104d. for certain broken sver pots, which were pawned to him by the said king Henry V. The which vesels your suppliant was forced to sell, and the money obtained for them was all expended in the service of his late king. And that it may please your wise discretions, out of reverence to God and respect to the soul of the late king, to grant to your suppliant the said 147. 4s. 104d. in regard for his services, and

did not undertake his chivalric commission without a pawn of broken silver flagons. It was necessary for Henry to make these personal sacrifices in order to pay his army, as the unsettled temper of the times forced him to be exceed ingly moderate in his pecuniary applications to his parliament. France, he meant, should pay for all.

From Southampton Henry V. sent Antelope, his pur suivant-of-arms, with a letter to Katherine's father dated from that port, to show the reality of his intentions of invasion. He demanded the English provinces, and the hand of Katherine; otherwise he would take them by force. The king of France replied, "If that was his mind, he would do his best to receive him; but, as to the marriage, he thought it would be a strange way of wooing Katherine, covered with the blood of her countrymen." But the brother of the princess, the wild young dauphin Louis, was imprudent enough to exaspe rate his dangerous adversary by sending him a cask of Paris tennis-balls, telling him, " that they were fitter playthings for him, according to his former course of life, than the provinces he demanded." The English and their sovereign were excessively exasperated at this witticism. "These balls," replied Henry, perpetrating an angry pun, "shall be struck back with such a racket, as shall force open Paris gates."*

But on the very eve of Henry's embarkation,

"To cross the sea, with pride and pomp of chivalry,"

as part payment of the debt owed him by the late king; and that this grant may be sufficient warrant for the discharge of the said suppliant from the 147. 48. 10 d. aforesaid; and this for the love of God and a work of charity."-Feb. 14, 1424. There is an order from the council to exonerate Strikeland, as they call him, from the 147. 4s. 104d.-See Foedera, vol. x. pp. 318, 319. They could not afford to remunerate the banner-bearer of St. George for what he calls "his labour" at the day of Agincourt, to say nothing of the still harder day's work of leading the storming of Harfleur and Rouen; but they gave his son, sir Walter Strickland, by way of payment, the office of hereditary master of the royal harriers, an office which his direct descendant and representative, Charles Strickland Standish, esq. M.P. certainly does not possess at present. These curious particulars are referred to by sir Harris Nicolas in his History of Agincourt, a work written with spirit and fire worthy of its subject. To its rich pages we have been frequently indebted. 1 White Kennet's History, vol. i.

2 No part of history is better authenticated than this incident; there is scarcely a contemporary chronicler who does not mention it. Old Caxton relates the pun of the racket.

a plot for his destruction was discovered, founded on the claims of his friend the earl of March to the crown of England. This plot was concocted by the earl of Cambridge, the king's near relative, who had married Anne Mortimer, the sister of March.' This lady had died, leaving one son, afterwards the famous Richard duke of York, who, as his uncle March was childless, was the representative of his claims. The rights of this boy were the secret motives of the Southampton conspiracy. The grand difficulty was to induce March to assert his hereditary title against his friend Henry V.

The earl of Cambridge intended, after the assassination of Henry through the agency of the king's trusted chamberlain, to fly with March to the borders of Wales, where the earl was to declare his claims, and be crowned with the "royal crown of Spain," which was to pass with the common people for the crown of England, and to be carried in the van of the army on a cushion. This plot was spoiled by the romantic refusal of the earl to assert his rights, or dispossess his friend and guardian. After Cambridge had opened his plan to the earl of March, that prince, avowedly by the advice of his man Lacy, refused to swear to keep the secret, but requested an hour's space to consider of the proposition; which time he used in seeking the king and informing him of his danger, first requesting a pardon of Henry for listening sufficiently "to his rebels and traitors to understand their schemes." Henry summoned a sort of court-martial, of which his brother Clarence was president, and made quick work in the

The young earl, with all his feudal muster, was in attendance on Henry, prepared to share the expedition, in which he won great fame. He is often confunded with his uncle Edmund Mortimer, the son-in-law of Glendower, who was at that time supposed to be a prisoner in Trim-castle, Ireland. Hall and Shakspeare confund the two Edmund Mortimers. The early death of the nother of Richard duke of York, sister and heiress of the earl of March, is proved by the fact that her husband, the earl of Cambridge, had a second countess at the tune of his death.

* This belonged to Pedro the Cruel: it was brought to England by the heiresses of that king, one of whom married John of Gaunt, the other the father of Cambridge. It appears Cambridge had it at this time in his possession.--See his enfession, State Trials, Fœdera, and Hearne's Sylloge.