54 Lionel and Violante 



V. LIONEL AND VIOLANTE 



As the day for the wedding approached, the thoughts of every 

 one would turn more and more to the chief actors in the scene, 

 Lionel and Violante. 



I. LIONEL 



Lionel was too young to have played a very important part 

 on the world's stage, being not yet 30 years old. For the 

 chivalric imaginings which presided at his birth and christen- 

 ing, see Appendix A. It would have been a long forecast which 

 could have seen that he should get kings, though he were none — 

 that from him, through his first marriage, should lineally proceed 

 a monarch who should revive and surpass, on the Field of the 

 Cloth of Gold (1520), the splendors of Lionel's second marriage. 

 He himself had been most conspicuous in tiie service of England 

 during his five years' residence in Ireland as viceroy^ (1361-6), 

 an office the importance of which has been thus set forth by 

 Camden^ : 



Their jurisdiction and authority is really large and Royal : they 

 make war and peace, have power to fill all Magistracies and other 

 Offices, except some very few ; to pardon all crimes but those of high 

 treason, and to confer Knighthood, etc. . . . Whether we consider 

 his jurisdiction and authority, or his train, attendance, and splendor, 

 there is certainly no Viceroy in Christendom that comes nearer the 

 grandeur and majesty of a King. 



As for Lionel's appearance, Hardyng^ tells us little except 

 that he was tall : 



In all the world was then no prince hym like 

 Of hie stature and of all semelynesse ; 

 Above all men within his hole kyngrike 

 Bv the shulders he might be seen, doutlesse; 

 As a mayde in halle of gentilnesse, 

 And in all other places sonne to rethorike. 

 And in the felde a lyon Marmorike.* 



^ See Hist. Background, pp. 179-181. 



-Britannia, ed. Gibson, 1695, p. 974. 



' Chronicle, ed. Ellis, p. 334. 



* Belonging to Marmarica, the modern Barca, in northern Africa. 



