Friedrich Hebbel - "Agnes Bernauer"

Amy D. V. Chalmers - "Madge Morton's Secret"

Thomas Wentworth Higginson - "Black Rebellion"

Virgil and Voltaire - "The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2

J >> J. Endell Tyler >> Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2




"On Monday, the last day of November, the Speaker, in the name of the
Commons, prayed the King to thank my Lord the Prince, the Bishops of
Winchester and Durham, &c. who were assigned to be of council to the
King in the last parliament, for their great labour and diligence;
for, as it appears to the said Commons, my said Lord the Prince, and
the other Lords, have well and loyally done their duty according to
their promise in that parliament. And upon that, kneeling, my Lord the
Prince, and the other Lords, declared, by the mouth of my Lord (p. 441)
the Prince, how they had taken pains, and labour, and diligence,
according to their promise, and the charge given them in parliament,
to their skill and knowledge. This the King remembered well [or made
good mention of], and thanked them most graciously. And he said
besides, that he was well assured, if they had had more than they had,
in the manner it had been spoken by the mouth of my Lord the Prince,
at the time the King charged them to be of his council in the said
parliament, they would have done their duty to effect more good than
was done in diverse parts for the defence, honour, good, and profit of
him and his kingdom. And our Lord the King also said, that he felt
very contented with their good and loyal diligence, counsel, and duty,
for the time they had been of his council."

This took place on the 30th of November, a month (saving two days)
after the parliament had assembled, and within less than three weeks
of its termination. It would scarcely be credible, even had the report
come through a less questionable channel, that Henry of Monmouth up to
that time had been guilty of the unfilial delinquency with which the
MS. charges him. Nor could he have made the "unnatural attempt to
dethrone his diseased father" at any period through the remaining
three weeks of the session of that parliament. At all events, such a
proceeding appears altogether irreconcilable with the conduct both of
the parliament and of the King on the very last day of their sitting.
"On Saturday, December 20th, (say the Rolls,) being the last day of
parliament, the Speaker, recommending the persons of the Queen, of the
Prince, and of other the King's sons, prayeth the advancement of their
estates; for the which the King giveth hearty thanks."

Had any such transaction taken place during this parliament as the MS.
records, would the King, on the last day of the session, without any
allusion to it, have given hearty thanks to the Commons for their
recommendation of the Prince's person (coupled with the name of (p. 442)
his Queen and his other sons), and their prayer for further provision
for his dignity and comfort?

There are, however, two or three more circumstances upon which it may
appear material to make some observations; or even, should these
closing observations not seem altogether indispensable, yet, since
this is all new and untrodden ground, it may yet be thought safer to
anticipate conjectures, than to leave any questions unopened and
unexamined on this point--a point which the Author trusts may be set
at rest at once, and for ever.

The Author then is ready to confess his belief that both the MS. and
its commentator, the modern historian, have confounded this parliament
of November 1411 with the parliament of February 3, 1413, which was
opened in the illness of the King, and which he never was able to
attend. But if it be attempted to engraft on this fact the surmise
that it might have been in the latter parliament that the Prince
demanded the surrender of the throne, and that it is after all a mere
mistake of dates, the material fact being unshaken and unaffected,--to
this suggestion he replies, that there is no evidence, directly or
indirectly bearing on the subject, in support of such a surmise. The
only statement in printed book or manuscript known, is that which we
have now been sifting; and which with a precision, as though of set
purpose, minute and pointed, fixes the alleged transaction to the year
1411.[329] Not only so. We have, on the contrary, reason to believe
that before the meeting of the next parliament, February 1413, _all
differences had been made up between the King and his son_; and that
from the day of their reconciliation they lived in the full
interchange of paternal and filial kindness to the end. For that (p. 443)
jealousies and alienations of confidence, fostered by the malevolence
of others,[330] had taken place between them in the course of the
preceding year, the very mention of the "ridings of gentils and huge
people with the Prince," twice recurring in the Chronicle of London,
seems of itself to force upon us. The accounts, at all events, such as
they are, which chroniclers give of their reconciliation, fix the date
of that happy issue of their estrangement to a period antecedent to
the last parliament of Henry IV. February 3.--Cras. Purif. 1413.

[Footnote 329: It cannot, however, be supposed that
this anonymous writer fabricated the story; he must
have copied it from some other writer, or put down
what he had learned by hearsay.]

[Footnote 330: The Author confesses his own opinion
to be that a party was formed at court (headed
probably by the Queen), jealous of the Prince's
influence, and determined to destroy his power with
his father. That, to oppose this party, the Prince
summoned his friends, and made a demonstration of
his power; (it is possible that he might have
expressed his readiness to act again in the
government for his father, as he had undoubtedly
done before:) and that, after much coldness and
alienation, father and son were fully reconciled.]

Although the life and reign of Henry IV. continued more than a year
and four months after the passing of the ordinance respecting the
coin, with an account of which this MS. abruptly closes, yet
(excepting what is involved in the extract above cited) not one single
word is said of the foreign and domestic affairs of the kingdom, or of
the life of the King, or of his death; though much of interesting
matter was at hand, and though a parliament was summoned, and actually
met fourteen months after the alteration of the coin. And such is the
close of a document, not like a yearly chronicle, or general register
of events, satisfied with giving a summary of the most remarkable
casualties in the briefest form; but a narrative which transcribes,
with unusual minuteness, the very words (at full, and with all their
technicalities,) of some of the most unimportant and prolix statutes
of Henry IV.'s reign.[331] It is not that the MS. is mechanically (p. 444)
cut short by loss of leaves, or other accident; the Sloane ends with
an "etc." in the very middle of a page, and the King's at the foot of
the first column.

[Footnote 331: Sloane, p. 42. The statute for
assigning certain imposts for the King's household
is transcribed at full length, word for word. So,
too, in the seventh year, the statute relative to
the succession is copied verbatim. Of the same
character is the copy of the Tripartite Indenture
of Division.]

We need not encumber this inquiry (already too long) by any
reflections on the avidity with which this passage of the MS. has been
seized, and made the groundwork of charges against Henry of "unfilial
conduct," "unnatural rebellion" towards his father, and "the
unprincipled ambition of a Catilinarian temper," with other hard words
and harder surmises; because we are trying the value of testimony. If
that testimony is sound, modern historians may doubtless build upon it
what comments seem to them good; if we utterly destroy the validity of
the evidence, their foundation sinks from under their superstructure.

The reader, however, has probably already determined that, unless
there be in reserve some other independent, or at least auxiliary
source of evidence, the palpable contradiction and manifest confusion
reigning through this part of the MS., together with the high degree
of improbability thrown over the whole statement by the undoubted
records of the very parliament in question, justify the rejection of
the passage altogether from the pale of authentic history. The Author
confesses that he has step by step come to that conclusion.

THE END.

LONDON
PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY,
Dorset Street, Fleet Street.

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