OVER THE LORD CHIEF JUSTICE OF ENGLAND.
THERE is reason to believe that Sir John Falstaff remained for some months in the north-west of England, doubtless employed in pursuit of the scattered remnants of the rebel forces. Some considerable time must have elapsed from the date of the battle of Shrewsbury to that of his next appearance in London of which we have any positive record. Sir John was most favourably received on his return to the metropolis, where he was more than compensated for the ingratitude of the court by the hospitable treatment of the citizens, at whose expense he and his retainers feasted in great profusion for many weeks, solely on the strength of the glowing accounts received (never mind from what source) of our knight’s achievements in Shropshire.
But a warrior like Sir John may not long rest on his laurels. A new enemy had to be faced, arising in an unexpected quarter.
One of the most eminent men of the reign of Henry the Fourth (after Sir John Falstaff) was William Gascoigne, Knight and Chief Justice of England. The biography of this wise and excellent judge will be found in Master Fuller’s work upon English Worthies; a book which would be irreproachable but for the culpable and glaring omission of a personage so eminently entitled to prominence in such a collection as the hero of these pages. The anecdote of Sir William’s courageous committal of the Prince of Wales for contempt of court—in the celebrated criminal action of the King versus Bardolph—is too well known to need recapitulation here. It is true that, bearing as it does on two of the most conspicuous characters in this narrative, some slight discussion might be opportunely employed on the occurrence; for instance, as to the nature of the offence which originally got our rubicund friend “into trouble,” and what was the real extent of the magnanimity displayed by the Prince, on the one hand, and the Lord Chief Justice, on the other. It would be valuable to the cause of historic truth to make quite certain whether the whole affair was, or was not, what, in the parlance of modern criminal jurisprudence, is called a “put up concern” between the two distinguished actors, having for its object a harvest of mutual popularity. The fact that Bardolph was at liberty in an incredibly short space of time after the event, lends a slight colour of such suspicion as I have hinted at to the transaction; but the rights of the matter are involved in such hopeless obscurity as to render all investigation on the subject worse than idle.
Though in the enjoyment of much and well-merited court favour, and public approbation, and being a man of modest integrity, it is still not unnatural or inexcusable that Sir William Gascoigne should feel some little jealousy of the more brilliant attainments and more enviable renown of a warrior, statesman, wit, and scholar like Sir John Falstaff.
The weakness of envy is perhaps the most difficult of all Adam’s legacy for the best of us to rid ourselves of. History, ancient and modern, abounds in illustrations of the tenacity of this vice, even in the noblest natures. Dionysius the elder, and the great Cardinal Richelieu, though the one an absolute monarch of the fairest island in Greek colonised Europe, and the other the virtual master of the most warlike and polished realm of the seventeenth century, were both jealous of the pettiest scribblers of their respective days. The author of “The Vicar of Wakefield,” and “The Citizen of the World,” could not see a mountebank throw a summerset but he must risk the scattering of his valuable brains in an attempt to do the same thing better. To seek an illustration nearer our own time, have we not the celebrated little boy of the United States of America, who, though he had carried away the prizes for writing and arithmetic, committed suicide because an inferior mathematician of his own class defeated him in the correct spelling of “phthisic!”?
Is it then a great wonder that the Lord Chief Justice of England (an office which, after all, was then of little more importance than that of a police magistrate of the present day) should have felt envious of a man so vastly his superior in every way (except in the trifling matters of solvency and conventional honesty), as Sir John Falstaff, and should have sought to annoy his brilliant rival by every means in his power; of which, considering the official position of the one man, and the habits of the other, there could have been no scarcity?
Amongst other illustrations of what must be called petty persecution—(for, in a work of this serious description, things should receive their right names without respect to persons)—on the part of Sir William Gascoigne towards Sir John Falstaff, it may be mentioned that the former chose to consider the Gadshill expedition as a grave offence, punishable by the defective criminal code of the period. He summoned Sir John to appear before him to answer the charge. Sir John treated the invitation with the contempt it deserved, and went off to kill Percy—stay, that is a slip of the pen—I should say, to distinguish himself in the glorious field of Shrewsbury.
It will hardly be supposed that the tidings of Sir John Falstaff’s safe return from action under a perfect forest of fresh-grown laurels were particularly agreeable to Sir William Gascoigne. Gall and wormwood, on the contrary, may be assumed to have been the flavour imparted by them to the chief judicial mind. At any rate, it is indisputable that his lordship had not many days heard of our hero’s safe arrival and honoured treatment in London when he took a walk, attended only by a single follower, for the express purpose of taking Sir John Falstaff into custody. There is but one consideration which makes such a proceeding wholly inexcusable—namely, that the Justice should have nursed his vindictiveness for a period of so many months. This, it must be admitted, argues a relentless and unforgiving nature.
The Chief Justice was an artful man, as will be believed from his having risen to high rank in the legal profession. He thought it prudent to veil his malignant design even from his attendant.
“What’s he that goes there?” He enquired, breaking off a general conversation to point towards a stout gentleman whom he saw walking leisurely down the street followed by a diminutive page.
“Falstaff, an’t please your Lordship.”
His Lordship affected absence of mind.
“He that was in question for the robbery?”
The robbery! You observe, reader? There was but one robbery present to his Lordship’s mind, and that one committed possibly more than a twelvemonth back.
“He, my Lord: but he hath since done good service at Shrewsbury; and, as I hear, is now going with some charge to the Lord John of Lancaster.”
“What, to York?”
The countenance of his worship fell considerably. These tidings were baffling to his hopes of vengeance. Sir John Falstaff was once more in the king’s commission, and consequently not liable to arrest. Still Sir William was loth to let his prey slip wholly away from him.
“Call him back,” he said to his servant.
There was some difficulty in getting the knight to arrest his course.
In the first place, he was afflicted with a sudden deafness. This temporary obstacle overcome, he showed an obtuseness of understanding as to what was said to him that was really surprising in a man of his intellectual antecedents. At length the Justice attacked him personally, with—
“Sir John Falstaff, a word with you.”
The Chief Justice had his wish—rather more than his wish, in fact. Sir John Falstaffs manner of gratifying it shall be given in the exact words of the chronicler *:—
* “Henry IV” (Part II.) Act I. Sc. 2.
Sir John Falstaff.—My good lord! God give your lordship good time of day. I am glad to see your lordship abroad; I heard say your lordship was sick: I hope your lordship goes abroad by advice. Your lordship, though not clean past your youth, hath yet some smack of age in you, some relish of the saltness of time; and I most humbly beseech your lordship, to have a reverend care of your health.
Chief Justice.—Sir John, I sent for you before your expedition to Shrewsbury.
Sik John Falstaff.—An’t please your lordship, I hear his majesty is returned with some discomfort from Wales.
Chief Justice.—I talk not of his majesty:—You would not come when I sent for you.
Sir John Falstaff__And I hear, moreover, his highness is fallen into this same villainous apoplexy.
Chief Justice.—Well, heaven mend him! I pray you, let me speak with you.
Sib John Falstaff.—This apoplexy is, as I take it, a kind of lethargy, an’t please your lordship; a kind of sleeping in the blood, a rascally tingling.
Chief Justice.—What tell you me of it? be it as it is.
Sir John Falstaff.—It hath its original from much grief; from study, and perturbation of the brain: I have read the cause of his effects in Galen: it is a kind of deafness.
Chief Justice.—I think you are fallen into the disease; for you hear not what I say to you.
Sir John Falstaff.—Very well, my lord, very well: rather, an’t please you, it is the disease of not listening, the malady of not marking, that I am troubled withal.
Chief Justice.—To punish you by the heels would amend the attention of your ears; and I care not, if I do become your physician.
Sir John Falstaff.—I am as poor as Job, my lord, but not so patient; your lordship may minister the potion of imprisonment to me, in respect of poverty; but how I should be your patient to follow your prescriptions, the wise may make some dram of a scruple, or, indeed, a scruple itself.
Chief Justice.—I sent for you, when there were matters against you for your life, to come speak with me.
Sir John Falstaff.—As I was then advised by my learned counsel in the laws of this land-service, I did not come.
Chief Justice.—Well, the truth is, Sir John, you live in great infamy.
Sir John Falstaff.—He that buckles him in my belt cannot live in less.
Chief Justice.—-Your means are very slender, and your waste great.
Sir John Falstaff.—I would it were otherwise; I would my means were greater, and my waist slenderer.
Chief Justice.—You have misled the youthful prince.
Sir John Falstaff.—The young prince hath misled me: I am the fellow with the great belly, and he my dog.
Chief Justice.—Well, I am loath to gall a new-healed wound: your day’s service at Shrewsbury hath a little gilded over your night’s exploit on Gads hill: you may thank the unquiet time for your quiet o’er-posting that action.
Sir John Falstaff.—My lord?—
Chief Justice.’—But since all is well, keep it so: wake not a sleeping wolf.
Sir John Falstaff.—To wake a wolf is as bad as to smell a fox.
Chief Justice.—What! you are as a candle, the better part burnt out.
Sir John Falstaff.—A wassel candle, my lord: all tallow: if I did say of wax, my growth would approve the truth.
Chief Justice.—There is not a white hair on your face, but should have his effect of gravity.
Sir John Falstaff.—His effect of gravy, gravy, gravy.
Chief Justice__You follow the young prince up and down, like his ill angel.
Sir John Falstaff.—Not so, my lord; your ill angel is light; but, I hope, he that looks upon me will take me without weighing: and yet, in some respects, I grant, I cannot go, I cannot tell. Virtue is of so little regard in these coster-monger times, that true valour is turned bearherd. Pregnancy is made a tapster, and hath his quick wit wasted in giving reckonings: all the other gifts appertinent to man, as the malice of this age shapes them, are not worth a gooseberry. You, that are old, consider not the capacities of us that are young: you measure the heat of our livers with the bitterness of your galls; and we that are in the vaward of our youth, I must confess, are wags too.
Chief Justice.—Do you set down your name in the scroll of youth, that are written down old with all the characters of age? Have you not a moist eye? a dry hand? a yellow cheek? a white beard? a decreasing leg? an increasing belly? Is not your voice broken? your wind short? your chin double? your wit single? and every part about you blasted with antiquity? and will you yet call yourself young? Fie, fie, fie, Sir John!
Sir John Falstaff.—My lord, I was born about three of the clock in the afternoon, with a white head, and something a round belly. For my voice,—I have lost it with hollaing, and singing of anthems. To approve my youth farther, I will not: the truth is, I am only old in judgment and understanding; and he that will caper with me for a thousand marks, let him lend me the money, and have at him. For the box o’ the ear that the Prince gave you, he gave it like a rude prince, and you took it like a sensible lord. I have checked him for it, and the young lion repents; marry, not in ashes and sackcloth, but in new silk, and old sack.
Chief Justice.—Well, God send the Prince a better companion!
Sir John Falstaff.—God send the companion a better prince! I cannot rid my hands of him.
Chief Justice.—Well, the King hath severed you and Prince Harry. I hear you are going with Lord John of Lancaster against the Archbishop and the Earl of Northumberland.
Sir John Falstaff.—Yea; I thank your pretty sweet wit for it. But look you pray, all you that kiss my lady peace at home, that our armies join not in a hot day; for, by the Lord, I take but two shirts out with me, and I mean not to sweat extraordinarily: if it be a hot day, an I brandish any thing but my bottle, I would I might never spit white again. There is not a dangerous action can peep out his head, but I am thrust upon it: well, I cannot last ever. [But it was always yet the trick of our English nation, if they have a good thing, to make it too common. If you will needs say I am an old man, you should give me rest. I would to God, my name were not so terrible to the enemy as it is: I were better to be eaten to death with rust, than to be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion. ]
Chief Justice.—Well, be honest, be honest; and God bless your expedition!
Sir John Falstaff.—Will your lordship lend me a thousand pound to furnish me forth?
Chief Justice.—Not a penny, not a penny: you are too impatient to bear crosses. Fare you well: commend me to my cousin Westmoreland.
I consider this utter defeat of my Lord Chief Justice Gascoigne one of the most brilliant triumphs of Sir John Falstaff’s victorious life.
“If I do, fillip me with a three-man beetle,” said Jack, looking after the retreating form of his defeated adversary with ineffable contempt. “Boy!”
“Sir?” said the small page.
“What money is in my purse?”
“Seven groats and twopence.”
“I can get no remedy against this consumption of the purse: borrowing only lingers it out, but the disease is incurable. Go, bear this letter to my Lord of Lancaster; this to the Prince; this to the Earl of Westmoreland; and this to old Mistress Ursula, whom I have weekly sworn to marry since I perceived the first white hair on my chin. About it; you know where to find me.”
And pray, who was old Mistress Ursula? We may chance to hear of her by and bye.