when the report so terrifies me, that methinks he blow remains still on my cheek, that it burns me.' The people laughed at this mightily; and to this day I have heard it commended for rare."

The play of the Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth attempts no flights of poetry or wit, but in the simplest words that will convey its sense attempts a stage presentment of the idle prince who grew to be a great victorious king. When the young Prince is robbing the king's receivers, with Ned and Tom and Sir John Oldcastle, and boxing the ears of the Chief Justice who will not restore to him his man, the thief, who robbed Derrick the carrier on Gad's Hill, there are no more words spent than suffice to tell what is doing. Being idle and dissolute they swear; but one oath, Gog's wounds," well repeated, answers every purpose of the dramatist in that respect. The blanks left in the copy given in this volume are usually restored to the correct text when they are filled up with that recurrent phrase. In Sir John Oldcastle, whom Shakespeare has expanded into Sir John Falstaff, there is everything to supply. The original Sir John has his name familiarised into Jockey.

"Tom. My lord, we are now about a mile off London.
Hen. V. But, sirs, I marvel that Sir John Oldcastle
Comes not away: Sounds, see where he comes.

How now,

Enters JOCKEY.

Jockey, what news with thee?"

In Shakespeare's first draft of King Henry IV., as acted by the players, he had followed the Famous

Victories in accepting the name of Sir John Oldcastle for his fat knight. When it had been pointed out to Shakespeare that the knight placed in degrading positions by the writer of the early piece was a man of highest character, who had been condemned to cruel death in the reign of Henry V. for his fidelity to conscience, Shakespeare erased his name, and borrowed that of another gentleman of the time, whose character had been touched by an accusation of cowardice. There remained, however, some accidental traces of the first form of the name. In the second scene of the first act Prince Henry addresses Falstaff as "my old lad of the castle;" that is the only trace left in the First Part of King Henry IV. In the Second Part, in the second scene of the third act, Shallow speaks of Falstaff as having been page to Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk. That had been written truly of Sir John Oldcastle, who was in his youth Sir Thomas Mowbray's page. Again, in the printing of the quarto (1600) of the Second Part, in one place the correction on the playbook had been accidentally omitted, and the printers, following what they saw, set up Old. in place of Falst. Finally, Shakespeare was not content with mere erasure. He inserted words in direct retractation of the use of a good man's name to represent a misused life. At the close of the Epilogue to the Second Part of Henry IV., in glancing forward to the play of Henry V., he said, “Our humble author will continue the story, with Sir John in it, and make you merry with fair Katherine of France: where, for anything I know, Falstaff shall

die of a sweat, unless already 'a be killed with your hard opinions; for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man."

Nevertheless, the play had been first acted with the martyr's name in it for Falstaff's, and by habit it may have remained in use at some of the theatres. In a book published as late as 1618, Field's "Amends for Ladies," it is asked, referring to Act V., sc. 2, of the First Part of Henry IV. :—

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"Did you never see

The play where the fat knight, hight Oldcastle,
Did tell you truly what this honour was?"

In a piece published in 1604, called "The Meeting of Gallants at an Ordinarie, or the Walks in Powles," one says, "Now, signiors, how like you mine host ? did I not tell you he was a mad round knave and a merry one too? and if you chance to talk of fat Sir John Oldcastle, he will tell you he was his grandfather." With reference to this, the host is afterwards called, "my noble fat actor." John Speed, in his 'Chronicle," published in 1611, refers to a Jesuit who had described Oldcastle as a ruffian, a robber, and a rebel, and his authority taken from the stage-players." Thomas Fuller, in his "Church His-tory," and afterwards in his " Worthies," referred to the degradation of the character of Sir John Oldcastle upon the stage. In his "Church History," published in 1656, he wrote:-"Stage pocts have themselves been very bold with, and others very merry at, the memory of Sir John Oldcastle, whom they have fancied a boon

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companion, a jovial royster, and a coward to boot. The best is, Sir John Falstaff hath relieved the memory of Sir John Oldcastle, and of late is substituted buffoon in his place."

The real Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, was a brave knight of unblemished life, who held the tenets of Wyclif, and had opened his doors at Cowling Castle to the persecuted teachers of the Lollards. On Christmas morning, in 1417, he was hung up by the middle in an iron chain upon a gallows in St. Giles's Fields, and burnt alive while thus suspended. The last words heard from him were praise of God, into whose hands he resigned his soul.

Sir John Fastolf was substituted by Shakespeare probably because he had figured as a coward in the First Part of King Henry VI., upon which play Shakespeare himself had formerly been more or less busy. In that play, during a battle (Act. III., sc. 2), we have this passage:—

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Captain. Whither away, Sir John Fastolfe, in such haste
Fast. Whither away! to save myself by flight:

We are like to have the overthrow again.

Cap. What will you fly, and leave Lord Talbot?

Fast.

Ay,

All the Talbots in the world to save my life.
Cap. Cowardly knight! ill fortune follow thee!"

And afterwards, at the beginning of the fourth act Fastolfe as Knight of the Garter, has his garter plucked by Talbot from his leg, for cowardice shown at the Battle of Patay, he is also publicly degraded from his rank, and banished by the king on pain of death. In

taking this name, Shakespeare must have felt that he was safe against injustice to a noble character. Yet the real Sir John Fastolf, while unpopular in his day and really accused of cowardice at the Battle of Patay, though he was able to disprove the charge, was a grave knight, of hot temper, who was of the Privy Council of Henry VI. at the time of Cade's rebellion. He was decried by the rebels as the greatest traitor in England or France, who had diminished all the garrisons of Normandy, Le Mans, and Maine, and thereby caused the loss of all the king's inheritance beyond sea. It appears, however, that he himself attributed English losses to the disregard of his advice, and caused his secretary, William Worcester, to put in writing, for his justification, the good counsels he had given in vain.

Sir John Fastolf held lands in Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, and Surrey; he was a friend of the Paston family, and took up his abode in Norfolk in the latter part of the year 1454, where John Paston and his brother William-who were included in the list of the trustees appointed to manage his large property after his death-were among his most familiar friends. In the list of the trustees were the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Winchester. The old knight, who died in 1459, bequeathed to John Paston all his lands in Norfolk and Suffolk. The Paston family kept its letters, and they remain to us now as the earliest collection of family letters illustrating the past history of England that exists in our literature. Many letters from the historical Sir John