Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1

J >> J. Endell Tyler >> Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1

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[Footnote 328: The Chronicle of London, twice
within a very brief space, records such a
disturbance as the Chief Justice in Shakspeare is
represented to have hastened "to stint;" but in
each case, by adding the names of the King's sons,
rescues Henry from all share in the affray.

"In this year (the 11th, 1410,) was a fray made in
East-Cheap by the King's sons, Thomas and John,
with the men of the town."

"This year, (the 12th, 1411,) on St. Peter's even,
(June 28,) was a great debate in Bridge Street,
between the Lord Thomas's men and the men of
London."]

[Footnote 329: The name of John Fastolfe, Esq.
occurs in the muster rolls of Henry on his first
expedition to France. But it must be remembered
that not Falstaff, but Sir John Oldcastle, was made
the buffoon on the stage at first, and continued so
for many years, till the offence which it gave led
to the substitution of Falstaff. "Stage poets,"
says Fuller, "have themselves been very bold with,
and others very merry at, the memory of Sir John
Oldcastle; whom they have fancied a boon companion,
a jovial roister, and yet a coward to boot,
contrary to the credit of all chronicles, owning
him a martial man of merit. The best is, Sir John
Falstaff hath relieved the memory of Sir John
Oldcastle, and of late is substituted buffoon in
his place.--Church History, iv. 38."]

[Footnote 330: See Pell Rolls (Issue), 8 Henry V,
March 11; 9 Henry V, April 1. See also Acts of
Privy Council, vol. ii. pp. 5, 344, &c.]

It is a curious fact, that the magnanimous conduct of the Judge,
tending so much to his renown, has induced various families and
biographers to challenge the credit of the affair for their (p. 369)
friends. No less than four claimants require us to examine their
pretensions. Shakspeare and the world at large have consented to give
the honour to Gascoyne; whilst the friends of Markham, Hankford, and
Hody, have each in their turn disputed the palm with him. Of these
four claimants two are reckoned among the "worthies of Devon." With
regard to Sir John Hody, "to whom some of our countrymen (says Mr.
Prince) would ascribe the honour," we need only add the sentence with
which this antiquary sets aside his claim,--"But this cannot be, for
that he was not a judge until thirty years afterwards."

The claims of Hankford to this distinction rest on the authority of
Risdon, the Devon antiquary, who began his work in 1605, and did not
finish it till 1630. Mr. Prince would add the authority of Baker's
Chronicle; but, were Baker's authority of any value, he does not
mention the name of the Judge; and, by specifying that the transaction
took place at the _King's Bench_ bar, and that the Prince was
committed to the _Fleet_, he shows that no dependence is to be placed
on his authority. If it took place at the King's Bench bar, the King's
Bench prison would have received the royal culprit; and if, as Risdon
says, the Judge's sentence was, "I command you, prisoner, to the
King's Bench," not Hankford, but Gascoyne, was the Judge. Hankford was
not appointed to the King's Bench before March 29th, 1 Henry V, (p. 370)
some days after the supposed culprit had ascended the throne.[331]

[Footnote 331: There is so much of fable mingled
with the traditionary biography of this "Devonshire
worthy," that most persons probably will dismiss
the claim altogether. He became weary of his life,
and, being determined to rid himself from the
direful apprehensions of dangerous approaching
evils, he adopted this strange mode of suicide:
having given strict orders to his keeper to shoot
any person at night who would not stand when
challenged, he threw himself into the keeper's way,
and was shot dead upon the spot. "This story (says
the author) is authenticated by several writers,
and the constant tradition of the neighbourhood;
and I myself have been shown the rotten stump of an
old oak under which he is said to have fallen." But
as to the cause which drove him to this rash act
the same writers vary, and tradition is strangely
diversified. One author says, that "on the
deposition of Richard II, who had made him a judge,
he was so terrified by the sight of infinite
executions and bloody assassinations, which caused
him continual agonies, that, upon apprehension what
his own fate might be, he fell into that melancholy
which hastened his end." His re-appointment to the
office on September 30, 1401, by Henry IV, would
have relieved him from these apprehensions. Others
say, that, "having committed the Prince to prison
in his younger days, he was afraid that, on the
sceptre of justice falling into his hands, that
royal culprit would take a too severe revenge
thereof; and this filled him with such insuperable
melancholy, that he was driven to the desperate act
of self-murder." But his appointment to succeed
Gascoyne as Chief Justice of the King's Bench,
March 29, 1413, must have conquered that
melancholy; and he discharged that office through
the whole of Henry V.'s reign, and through one year
of Henry VI, after which he died, December 20,
1422.]

The claim of Judge Markham, it is presumed, is supported only by the
testimony of an ancient manuscript preserved in his family. He was
Chief Justice of the Common Pleas from 20 Richard II. to 9 (p. 371)
Henry IV.[332] Some colour, however, is given to this claim by the
vague tradition that Prince Henry was committed to the Fleet; to which
prison alone the Judges of the Common Pleas commit their prisoners.
But if he was the Judge who committed the Prince, and if he died in
the 9th of Henry IV,[333] the allegation that the Prince was then
dismissed from the council falls to the ground; for at that time, and
long after, he seems to have been in the very zenith of his power.

[Footnote 332: In a manuscript, a copy of which was
shown to a gentleman who gave the Author the
information, belonging to the Markhams, an ancient
family of Nottinghamshire, of about the date of
Queen Elizabeth, the honour is claimed for Markham:
and in an old play, which turns the whole into
broad farce, (probably anterior to Shakspeare,) the
Judge is made to commit the Prince to the Fleet.]

[Footnote 333: Or even if he died, as some say, on
St. Sylvester's Day, (December 30,) 1409.]

If, then, Prince Henry was ever guilty of the gross insult and
violence in a court of justice, and the firm, intrepid Judge, to
uphold and vindicate the majesty of the law, committed him to prison
for the offence, the probabilities preponderate in favour of Gascoyne
having been the individual. But this supposition also is not free from
difficulties. He was made Chief Justice of the King's Bench[334] 15th
November, 2 Henry IV. (1401.) And of his intrepidity[335] in the
discharge of that office, we have already mentioned an especial (p. 372)
instance at the death of Archbishop Scrope, if what Clemens
Maydestone, a contemporary, says, be true. Henry IV, who had the
person of the Archbishop in his power, called upon Gascoyne, who was
with him, to pass on his prisoner the sentence of death; but, at the
risk of losing the King's favour and his own appointment, he
positively refused, on the ground of its illegality. The Archbishop,
however, was condemned to be beheaded by one Fulthorp, (or, as some
say, Fulford,) afterwards a judge, as we have stated in its place.
Gascoyne was subsequently sent with Lord Ross, by the council, to the
north, as one of those in whom the King was known to have especial
confidence, as soon as the news arrived in London of Lord Bardolf's
hostile movement; and we find him still continued in the office of
Chief Justice, apparently without having incurred the King's
displeasure.

[Footnote 334: Pat. 2 Henry IV. p. 1. m. 28.]

[Footnote 335: How far the high esteem in which the
memory of Judge Gascoyne has been held may be owing
to the tradition concerning Henry of Monmouth, we
need not inquire. His name has constantly been held
in great honour. Judge Denison, by his own especial
desire, was buried close to the grave of Gascoyne.]

No adage is more sound than that which affirms a little learning to be
a dangerous thing. More than fifty years ago, the Gentleman's
Magazine[336] triumphantly maintained, that, at all events, Shakspeare
had deviated from history in bringing Henry V. and Gascoyne (p. 373)
together after the Prince's accession, because Gascoyne died in the
life-time of Henry IV. This view has generally been acquiesced in, and
the powerfully delineated scene of our great dramatist has been
pronounced altogether the groundless fiction of an event which could
not by possibility have transpired. The whole question turns upon the
date of Gascoyne's death. He was buried in Harewood Church in
Yorkshire; and Fuller gives the following as his monumental
inscription: "Gulielmus Gascoyne, Die Dominica, 17º Dec^ris. 1412, 14
H. IV."--"William Gascoyne [died] on Sunday, December 17th, 1412, in
the fourteenth year of Henry IV." If this were correct, there would be
an end of the question; but the brass was torn from the tomb during
the civil wars, and the copy cannot be verified. The inscription,
however, as given by Fuller, is at all events self-contradictory. The
17th of December fell on a Saturday, not on a Sunday, in 1412.

[Footnote 336: The Magazine is followed in its
erroneous views by subsequent writers.]

The process of the argument, and the accession of new evidence by
which we are now at length enabled to set this point at rest, are very
curious. The Author, indeed, confesses himself to have been one of
those who were induced, by the documents then before them, to believe
that Judge Gascoyne died on Sunday, December 17, 1413, somewhat more
than half a year after Henry V.'s accession; and although the late
discovery of the Judge's last Will proves that the argument (p. 374)
was then sound only so far as it established the fact that he died
after Henry's accession, and was unsound in fixing the period of his
death at so early a period as December 1413; yet the statement of that
argument may perhaps not be altogether uninteresting, whilst it may
suggest a valuable caution as to the jealous vigilance with which
circumstantial evidence should always be sifted before the conclusions
built upon it be admitted.

It was then a fact upon record, that Chief Justice Gascoyne was
summoned, on the 22nd March 1413, (the very day after Henry's
accession,) to attend the parliament in the May following. When the
parliament met, Gascoyne's name does not appear among those who were
present; whilst Hankford, his successor, is appointed Trier of
Petitions in the room of Gascoyne, and, in the case of a writ of
error, brings up as Chief Justice the record from the King's Bench.
Hankford's appointment as Chief Justice bears date March 29th, 1413;
and he is summoned to attend parliament as Chief Justice in the
December following.[337] In the Pell Rolls a payment is recorded, July
7, 1413, of his half-year's fee to "William Gascoyne, late Chief (p. 375)
Justice of Lord Henry the King's father." The inference from these
facts was undoubtedly conclusive: first, that Gascoyne's death was
erroneously referred to December 1412; secondly, that he was alive and
Chief Justice when Henry V. came to the throne; thirdly, that he
ceased to be Chief Justice within eight days of Henry's accession,
somewhere between March 22, and March 29, 1413. It was merely matter
of conjecture whether he was too ill to discharge the duties of his
station, and resigned; or what other probable cause of his removal
existed. The conversation, at all events, which Shakspeare records,
might _possibly_ have taken place; though it is a fact, scarcely
reconcilable with it, that Henry V. never did renew Gascoyne's
appointment,--a proceeding almost invariably adopted on the demise of
a sovereign by his successor. Henry V. might have offered to commit
into his hand "the unstained sword that he was wont to bear:"--within
eight days after Henry IV. had ceased to breathe, Gascoyne had no
longer in his hand the staff of justice.

[Footnote 337: Dugdale is unquestionably mistaken,
and the many authors who follow him, in fixing
Hankford's appointment to January 29, 1 Hen. V.
1414. He refers for his authority to "Patent 1 Hen.
V. m. 33;" but no entry of the kind is found
there.]

The reason which then induced the persons who argued on these facts to
suppose that Fuller had by mistake adopted the date of the year 1412
instead of 1413 was this:--It was very improbable that the words "Die
Dominica" should have been introduced by the copyist, if they were not
really on the tomb. Hence it was inferred that he died on a Sunday.
Now December 17th was on a Sunday in the following year, (p. 376)
1413; and, since the date was in Roman letters, it was thought very
probable that the last I had been obliterated in MCCCCXIII. The words,
indeed, "14th Henry IV," were also quoted by Fuller: but it was
unquestionably more credible that those words formed a marginal note
in the reporter's manuscript, and were mere surplusages, than that
they should have been allowed a place in the brass scroll of a
monument.

Such was the state of our knowledge, and such was the course of our
reasoning as to the time of Gascoyne's decease, till within a very
short period of the publication of this work. A document, however, has
been very lately brought to light on this subject, which supersedes
that statement altogether; setting the whole argument in a new point
of view, and reading a plain lesson on the care and circumspection
with which inferences, however plausible, as to dates and facts,
should be admitted. In the present instance, indeed, the conclusion to
which we had before arrived, on the question of Gascoyne having
survived Henry IV, remains unassailable, or rather, is only still
further removed from the possibility of historical doubt; and the
whole argument on the vast improbability of Prince Henry having ever
offered an insult to the Chief Justice, or of his ever having been
committed to prison for any offence of the kind, remains at least
equally strong as before. Most persons, perhaps, may consider the
degree of improbability to have become still greater. Be this (p. 377)
as it may, the facts now placed beyond further controversy as to
Gascoyne's death are these. In the Registry of the Court of York the
last Will and testament of William Gascoyne has been found recorded.
It bears date on the Friday after St. Lucy's Day in the year 1419; and
it was proved on the 23rd of December following. In the year 1419, St.
Lucy's Day, December 13, was on a Wednesday. The Will was consequently
made on Friday the 15th of December, and was proved on the morrow
week, Saturday, December 23rd. In the Will, the testator declares that
he was weak in body; and the strong probability is that he died on the
following Sunday, December 17, 1419.[338] This would accord precisely
with Fuller's representation of the scroll on the tomb, "on the Lord's
Day, December 17." Whilst the facility of mistaking MCCCCXIX for
MCCCCXII, (being the obliteration only of one cross stroke in the last
letter,) is even more remarkable than that of the error which on the
former supposition was thought probable, from the obliteration of the
last letter I in MCCCCXIII.

[Footnote 338: It must be regarded as a very
curious coincidence connected with this argument,
that the 17th of December should have fallen on a
Sunday, both in the year MCCCCXIII, and in
MCCCCXIX, but in no other year between 1402 and
1421.]

* * * * *

The Author has had recourse to every means within his reach to assure
himself of the genuineness of this document, and to ascertain (p. 378)
that the testator was the William Gascoyne[339] who was Chief Justice
of the King's Bench. The result is, that not a shadow of any of the
doubts which he once jealously entertained, remains on the subject;
whilst he gratefully remembers the prompt and satisfactory assistance
rendered him by the present Registrar of York. The document must be
admitted without reserve.

[Footnote 339: The mention in the body of the Will
of the names of his former wife, and of his second
wife then alive, and the record of the Will of that
second wife, who states herself the widow of
William Gascoyne, late Chief Justice, preserved in
the same register, fix the identity of the testator
beyond dispute. The Author was first indebted for a
knowledge of the existence of this document to the
volume called Testamenta Eboracensia, published by
the Surtees Society; though he cannot suppress the
surprise with which he read the comment of the
editors, the chief mistake of which was discovered
in time to be rectified in an "erratum" after the
work had been printed.]

From these now indisputable facts a thought might perhaps not
unnaturally suggest itself to the mind of any one taking only a
general view of the whole subject, that some countenance is here given
to the prevalent notion that Gascoyne had displeased Henry during the
years of his princedom; but that, instead of holding the worthy and
intrepid Judge in higher honour, (as tradition tells,) and rewarding
him for his noble bearing, on the contrary, the King resented the
insult shown to his person, and dismissed him (contrary to the usual
practice) from his high judicial station. A fact,[340] however, (p. 379)
new (it is presumed) to history, enables or rather compels us to
dismiss such a conjecture from our minds. Whatever was the definite
cause of Gascoyne's withdrawal from the bench as Chief Justice of
England; whether his declining health, or an inclination for
retirement and repose after so long[341] and wearisome a discharge of
his arduous duties, or the competency[342] of his fortune, induced him
to draw back at length from the turmoils of public life, and (p. 380)
pass his last days among his own friends and relatives in the privacy
of a country residence; certainly he carried with him when he left his
court, not the resentment and unkindness, but the most friendly
feelings and respect of his new sovereign. By warrant, November 28,
1414, (that is, in the very year after his retirement,) the King
grants to "our dear and well-beloved William Gascoyne an allowance of
four bucks and does out of the forest of Pontefract for the term of
his life."

[Footnote 340: For this fact, and many others, as
well as for most valuable suggestions, and
assistance of various kinds, the Author is indebted
to T. Duffus Hardy, Esq. of the Record Office in
the Tower,--a gentleman who, with a mind admirably
stored with antiquarian knowledge, possesses also
the faculty of applying his stores to the best
advantage in the developement of whatever subject
he undertakes, and the principle also of employing
his knowledge and abilities in the cause of truth.]

[Footnote 341: Gascoyne had been Chief Justice of
the King's Bench more than twelve years,--a portion
of life considerably beyond the average duration of
their office in those high functionaries. Reckoning
either from Hanlow, 1258, in the reign of Henry
III, or from Gascoyne, in 1401, in the reign of
Henry IV, to the present time, the average number
of years through which the Chief Justices of the
King's Bench have retained their seats is below
nine. Through the last century, however, (reckoning
from Lord Hardwick's appointment, in 1733, to Lord
Tenterden's death, in 1832,) the average has risen
to above fourteen years.]

[Footnote 342: He was in a condition to lend the
King money when the exigencies of the state pressed
him hard. Among other creditors, the Pell Rolls
(14th May 1420) record the repayment of a loan to
the executors of William Gascoyne, which was within
half a year of his death.]

* * * * *

The sum of the whole matter as to the historical representations of
Henry's conduct is this:

Before the year 1534, far more than a century after Henry's death, no
allusion whatever is made to any occurrence of the kind in any work,
printed or manuscript, now extant and known. Sir Thomas Elyot, who
mentions it incidentally as an anecdote, combining the merits "of a
good Judge, a good Prince, and a good King," gives no reference to any
authority whatever. Subsequently it is reported in detail by Hall, but
with much exaggeration on Elyot's narrative. It then not only passed
current in our histories, but served as a topic of grave import in our
Prince of tragedians, and of burlesque in the broad farces of later
and perhaps earlier days than his. The biographers of Henry, though
they detail in all their minute particulars many circumstances of his
youth, far less important either to his character, or as facts of
general and national interest, and who lived, some of them, (p. 381)
almost a century nearer the date of the supposed transaction than
Elyot, are to a man silent on the subject; not one of them betraying
the shadow of suspicion that he was even aware of any rumour or vague
tradition of the kind. Such facts as the committal to prison of the
heir-apparent, especially such an heir-apparent as Henry (it is
presumed), must have been notorious through the metropolis and the
whole land, and must have excited a great and general sensation; and
yet the Chronicles, though they often surprise us by their minute
notice of trifling circumstances, do not contain the slightest
intimation that any such affair as this had ever come to the knowledge
of those who kept them. They are silent, and their silence seems
natural.[343]

[Footnote 343: By the kind assistance of those to
whom the state of the records of our courts of
justice is most familiar, the Author has been
enabled to assure himself satisfactorily that they
offer nothing which can throw any light whatever on
the question examined in these pages.]

On the whole, most persons will probably believe that either Gascoyne,
or Hankford, or Hody would upon such evidence, we do not say merely
charge the jury for an acquittal, but would, on perusing the
depositions, have previously recommended the grand inquest to return
"Not a true Bill." Still every reader has the evidence fairly before
him, and must decide for himself!

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