Shakespeare's environment

by C. C. Stopes

1625-6. William Burbage....

1649-50. Samuel Snell.

The Roll ends without any concluding remark. Now the Leet-Book of Coventry has been edited (or at least full selections from it from 1384 to 1590) by Miss Dormer Harris, and though it gives very much fuller information concerning the history of Coventry, some items occur in this Roll which do not occur in the Leet-Book. “Life in an Old English Town: a History of Coventry,” also by Miss Dormer Harris, gives very many more details, but misses some of these.

There remains a special charm in this little roll compared to the comparatively commonplace quartos which give even fuller information. A copyist, about the end of the seventeenth century, compiled a sort of history of the Mayors of Coventry (Harleian MS. 6388, f. 15).

While many of these short notes have a special value of their own, we may be allowed to express a particular interest in the record of John Hornby, here given as 1412-13.

Many able articles have been written, and speeches made, about the possibility or impossibility of a Lord Chief Justice committing a prince to prison. Many researches have been undertaken, in the Record Office and elsewhere, to try to discover any historical basis for the story regarding Prince Hal and the Lord Chief Justice Gascoigne, which so delighted Shakespeare that he added to it. But all researches have been in vain. No fact that in any way supports the tradition has been preserved. The story itself has been traced no further back than to Sir Thomas Elyot, who refers to it without giving the name of the Justice. Here, in this little Coventry Roll, it is recorded, as the event of John Hornby’s year, that “he arrested the Prince in the city of Coventry.” We should like to have been told more, and to have heard the cause and consequence of the arrest.

This is the only trustworthy story of any arrest of Prince Henry, and it is possible that the action of Mayor John Hornby, as Justice of the Peace in right of his office, became the foundation for the legend concerning the anonymous Lord Chief Justice. We know from other sources that Prince Henry was a good deal in Coventry when acquiring military experience in the Welsh wars, that he lay at Cheylesmore House in the immediate vicinity, and he probably took his amusements in Coventry. It may only be Shakespeare’s imagination which fixed the scene of his convivial gatherings with Falstaff and his train at the Boar’s Head Tavern in East Cheap. It is possible—indeed, more than likely—that these were carried on at Coventry, and that some breach of the peace there forced the courageous Mayor to do justice even against his popular prince.

We know that Shakespeare, to glorify Henry V, makes him retain the Lord Chief Justice Gascoigne in office on his accession, as a proof of his recognition of courage and directness in the administration of justice. This, as Dr. Blake Odgers pointed out, in an address to the Shakespeare League, was proof positive that Bacon did not write the play of “Henry IV, Part II,” at least. He knew better. For Gascoigne had been a Gray’s Inn man, and so was Bacon, and the latter knew that the young king Henry V did not appoint Gascoigne to be his Lord Chief Justice. The records of Gray’s Inn prove that, and also the epitaph on Gascoigne’s tombstone, where it was clearly stated that he “had been Lord Chief Justice to King Henry the IV.” That epitaph would not have been silent about King Henry V if he had reappointed his father’s choice in the office of Lord Chief Justice.

It seems ungracious to dispute the credit of Shakespeare as an historian; but truth is better than fiction. The testimony that Prince Hal was arrested at Coventry may stimulate our imaginations anew, and lead us to further research in fresh directions.

One other point may be noted. It is generally supposed that the local records say nothing about the intended duel between Bolingbroke and Mowbray. But this authority gives the suggestive idea that the combatants were received by the crafts in liveries, and had a banquet “on horseback”! King Richard II himself is not referred to.