174 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2nd p. No 113., Feb. 27. '58. 



Tragedy, namely, Paradice Lost, Paradice Regained, and 

 Sampson Agonista. But his fame is gone out like a candle 

 in a snufF, and his memory will always stink, which 

 might have ever lived in honourable repute, had not he 

 been a notorious Traytor, and most impiously and vil- 

 lanously bely'd that blessed martyr King Charles the 

 First." 



Amonw such besotted toad-eaters to royalty, 

 how marvellous it was that the illustrious, talented, 

 amiable Milton was not sacrificed to their fury. 



George OrroR. 



AMBIGUOUS PROPER NAMES IN PROPHECIES : DEATH 

 OF HENRY IV. 



(2"'' S. iv. 202. ; v. 37.) 



Mr. Macrat has pointed out that the received 

 story respecting the equivocal prediction of the 

 place of Henry IV.'s death, is to be found in 

 manuscripts of the Continuation of the Brute, 

 earlier than the historian Fabyan. The following 

 passage occurs in a MS. of the British Mu- 

 seum, which appears to belong to the time of 

 Henry V. : — 



" And in the xiiii yere of Kyng Henri's regne the iiii, 

 the kyng lete make galeas of werr, for hopit to have 

 passed the grete see, and so forth to Jerusalem, and there 

 to have endit hj's lyve. Bot God viside hym so sone 

 aftre with infirmyteis and grete sekenes, that he m3'ght 

 not well endure no whyle. [Qu. something omitted?] 

 So fer feath he was takyn and broght to dede [bede] at 

 Westmynstre in a fayre chambre. And as he lay in bed 

 he asked hys chaumbrelaj'ne what thei called that cham- 

 bre that he lay in. And thei answered and said, Jeru- 

 salem. And then he sayd hys prophesy was fulfilled 

 that was prophesyed of hym, for hys prophesy said that 

 he shuld make hj's ende in Jerusaleme. And then he 

 made hym redy unto God, and disposed all hys wyll, and 

 sone aftre he died." — Egerton MSS., 650. 



The following is the corresponding passage from 

 Higden's Polychronicon, printed by Caxton, in 

 1482, seventy years after the death of Henry IV. 

 The old spelling of Caxton's time is modernised. 



" In the fourteenth year of the reign of King Harry, 

 there were made galleys of war ; for the king purposed 

 to have passed the sea, and so forth unto Jerusalem. But 

 God visited him with great and fervent infirmities ; and 

 on a day he was brought to Saint Edward shrine, to make 

 his offering and to take his leave. And there being he 

 became so sick that they who were about him supposed he 

 should have died there; and then they took and bare 

 him into the Abbot's place into a fair large chamber, and 

 laid him upon a pallet before the fire. And when he was 

 come to himself again, and wist not where he was, he 

 axed of his chamberlain where he was, and how the 

 chamber was called that he was in. And he told him 

 that he was in the Abbot's place, and that the chamber 

 was named Jerusalem. Then he said that his time was 

 come, and that it was prophesied of him that he should 

 die in Jerusalem, and there disposed him to Godward, and 

 made him ready, and soon after died in the same cham- 

 ber. On whose soul God have mercy, amen ! Then was 

 the body carried from thence in a barge by water to 

 Feversham, ajid from thence to Canterbury by land, and I 



there by Saint Thomas' shrine in Christ's church he is 

 buried. Thus ended King Harry the Fourth, about Mid 

 lent Sunday, in the year of our Lord a thousand four 

 hundred and twelve." 



The first of these passages appears to be a mu- 

 tilated and imperfect version of the narrative 

 adopted in the printed Polychronicon, A similar 

 version of the same story is followed in the ac- 

 count of Fabyan, whose agreement is sometimes 

 verbal. Fabyan, however, represents a consider- 

 able length of time as intervening between the 

 king's seizure and his death, and his narrative 

 does not seem to assume that the king actually 

 died in the Jerusalem chamber. The chronicler 

 Elmham and Fabyan state that his death occurred 

 on March 20, 1413. The same day is assigned 

 for his death, on other authentic data, by Sir 

 Harris Nicolas, Chronology of History^ p. 302. It 

 appears from the Gesta Henrici Quinti Regis 

 AnglicE, published by the English Historical So- 

 ciety, that Heni*y V. was crowned at Westminster 

 on April 9 following. 



In the verses of Elmham, the chronicler of 

 Henry V., cited by Mr. Macray, the prophecy is 

 described as simply a prediction that Henry IV. 

 would visit the Holy Land. This prophecy is 

 affirmed to have been fulfilled by his death in the 

 Bethlehem chamber at Westminster. It is pos- 

 sible that this may be a change of name, induced 

 by the necessities of the Latin metre : the most 

 probable supposition is, however, that it is a vari- 

 ation of a popular story. 



In Capgrave's Chronicle of England, edited by 

 .the Rev. J. C. Hingeston, of Exeter College, and 

 recently published under the auspices of the go- 

 vernment, in the series superintended by the 

 Master of the Rolls, there is an account of the 

 death of Henry IV., which may be considered as 

 the account of a contemporary. Capgrave was 

 born in 1393, and died at the age of seventy-one 

 in 1464 : he was twenty years old at the death of 

 Henry IV. With the other authorities, he states 

 that the king died on March 20, and he proceeds 

 to give the following notice of his death : — 



" At his death, as was reported of full sad [i. e. serious, 

 discreet,] men, certain lords steered [i. e. incited] his 

 confessor, friar John Till, Doctor of Divinity, that he 

 should induce the king to repent him, and do penance, in 

 special for three things. One for the death on [of] King 

 Richard ; the other for the death of archbishop Scrope ; 

 the third for the wrong title of the crown. And his an- 

 swer was this: For the two first points, I wrote unto 

 the Pope the very truth of my conscience ; and he sent 

 me a bull, with absolution, and penance assigned, which 

 I have fulfilled. And as for the third point, it is hard to 

 set remedy ; for my children will not suffer that the re- 

 galia go out of our lineage." — P. 302. 



This passage implies that the king's death did 

 not take place suddenly, but that it was foreseen, 

 and that certain exhortations of repentance were 

 addressed to him by his confessor at the instiga- 

 tion of some leading men about the court, and 



