Footnote 12: An item of five yards of cloth for the bed of the nurse of Thomas at Kenilworth; and an ell of canvass for his cradle.[(back)]
Footnote 13: This is one of those incidents, occurring now and then, the discovery of which repays the antiquary or the biographer for wading, with toilsome search, through a confused mass of uninteresting details, and often encourages him to persevere when he begins to feel weary and disappointed. [(back)]
Footnote 14: "Thomæ Rothwell informanti Humfridum filium Domini Regis pro salario suo de termino Paschæ, 13s. 4d."—1 Hen. IV.[(back)]
Footnote 15: The treasurer's account, during the Earl's absence, contains some items which remove all doubt from this statement: among others, 20l. to Lancaster the herald, on Nov. 5, going toward England; and in the same month, to three "persuivantes," being with the Earl, eight nobles; and to a certain English sailor, carrying the news of the birth of Humfrey, son of my lord, 13s. 4d.[(back)]
Footnote 16: King Richard II, the Duke of Lancaster, and his son, Henry of Bolinbroke, became widowers in the same year. [(back)]
Footnote 17: That Henry cherished the memory of his mother with filial tenderness, may be inferred from the circumstance that only two months after he succeeded to the throne, and had the means and the opportunity of testifying his grateful remembrance of her, we find money paid "in advance to William Goodyere for newly devising and making an image in likeness of the Mother of the present lord the King, ornamented with diverse arms of the kings of England, and placed over the tomb of the said king's mother, within the King's College at Leicester, where she is buried and entombed."—Pell Rolls, May 20, 1413. [(back)]
Footnote 18: The portiphorium was a breviary, containing directions as to the services of the church. [(back)]
Footnote 19: He bequeaths also, in the same will, "to Joan, Countess of Hereford, our dear grandmother, a gold cyphus." This lady, however, died before Henry. In the Pell Rolls we find the payment of "442l. 17s. 5d. to Robert Darcy and others, executors of Joan de Bohun, late Countess of Hereford, on account of live and dead stock belonging to her, February 27, 1421." [(back)]
Footnote 20: Soon after Henry IV's accession, the Pell Rolls, May 8, 1401, record the payment of "10l. to Bertolf Vander Eure, who fenced with the present lord the King with the long sword, and was hurt in the neck by the said lord the King." The Chronicle of London for 1386 says "there were joustes at Smithfield. There bare him well Sir Harry of Derby, the Duke's son of Lancaster."[(back)]
Footnote 21: The Author would gladly have presented to the reader a different portrait of the religious and moral character of "Old John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster;" but a careful examination of the testimony of his enemies and of his eulogists, as well as of the authentic documents of his own household, seems to leave no other alternative, short of the sacrifice of truth. Godwin, in his Life of Chaucer, has undertaken his defence, but on such unsound principles of morality as must be reprobated by every true lover of Religion and Virtue. The same domestic register of the Duchy which records the wages paid to the adulteress, and the duke's losses by gambling, proves (as many other family accounts would prove) that no fortune however princely can supply the unbounded demands of profligacy and dissipation. Even John of Gaunt, with his immense possessions, was driven to borrow money. This fact is accompanied in the record by the curious circumstance, that an order is given for the employment of three or four stout yeomen, because of the danger of the road, to guard the bearers of a loan made by the Earl of Arundel to the Duke, and sent from Shrewsbury to London. [(back)]