“Shouts of pursuers.”—Lady Maud Mortimer having sent her instructions to Prince Edward, he made his escape by riding races with his attendants till he had tired their horses, when he rode up to a thicket where dame Maud had ambushed a swift steed. Mounting his gallant courser, Edward turned to his guard, and bade them “commend him to his sire the king, and tell him he would soon be at liberty,” and then galloped off; while an armed party appeared on the opposite hill, a mile distant, and displayed the banner of Mortimer.—Queens of England.
Note WWWW.—[Page 386.]
When the Old Man rode forth, he was preceded by a crier who bore a Danish axe with a long handle, all covered with silver, and stuck full of daggers, who proclaimed, “Turn from before him who bears the death of kings in his hands.”—Joinville, p. 97.
Note XXXX.—[Page 387.]
“Fedavis.”—Henri, Count of Champagne, visiting the grand-prior of the Assassins, the latter led him up a lofty tower, at each battlement of which stood two fedavis (devotees). On a sign from him, two of these sentinels flung themselves from the top of the tower. “If you wish it,” he said to the count, “all these men shall do the same.”—Michelet.
Note YYYY.—[Page 390.]
“Loving lips.”—“It is storied,” says Fuller, “how Eleanor, his lady, sucked all the poison out of his wounds without doing any harm to herself. So sovereign a remedy is a woman’s tongue, anointed with the virtue of a loving affection. Pity it is that so pretty a story should not be true (with all the miracles in love’s legends); and sure he shall get himself no credit, who undertaketh to confute a passage so sounding to the honor of the sex.”
Note ZZZZ.—[Page 406.]
“Earl of Devon.”—The Courtenays derive their ancestry from “Louis the Fat.” Beside the branch that was established upon the throne of Constantinople, a part of the family settled in England, and twelve Earls of Devonshire of the name of Courtenay were ranked among the chief barons of the realm, for a period of more than two hundred years.
By sea and land they fought under the standard of the Edwards and Henrys. Their names are conspicuous in battles, in tournaments, and in the original list of the Order of the Garter; three brothers shared the Spanish victory of the Black Prince. One, the favorite of Henry the Eighth, in the Camp of the Cloth of Gold broke a lance against the French monarch. Another lived a prisoner in the Tower, and the secret love of Queen Mary, whom he slighted perhaps for the princess Elizabeth, and his exile at Padua, has shed a romantic interest on the annals of the race.—Gibbon’s Rome.