Footnote 199: The parliament called Indoctum, or Lacklearning. It was in this parliament that the confiscation of the property of the bishops was proposed. [(back)]
Footnote 200: At this time Owyn Glyndowr confirms his league with the King of France by deed, dated and signed "in our Castle of Llanpadarn, the 12th of January 1405, and of our principality the sixth." [(back)]
Footnote 201: All the writers who have copied this letter, from Rymer downwards, have fallen into a ludicrous mistake here. Reading an n instead of a v in the words J'envoia (I sent), they have translated the passage, "within your lordship of Monmouth and Jennoia." Sir Harris Nicolas first supplied the true reading. The mistake led persons well acquainted with Monmouthshire (among others, the Author of these Memoirs,) to make different inquiries as to the lordship of Jennoia: they will now no longer wonder at the unfruitful issue of their search. [(back)]
Footnote 202: The author published under the name of Otterbourne says, that Owyn's son was made prisoner at Usk on the 25th of March, and one thousand five hundred of his men were taken or slain; and that, after the Feast of St. Dunstan, his chancellor was taken. There is reason to doubt whether that chronicler has not mistaken the place and time of the battle to which he refers; though it is not impossible that another battle (of which, however, we have no authentic record,) was fought at Usk a fortnight after the rebels were defeated at Grosmont: Grosmont is about twenty miles distant from Usk. [(back)]
Footnote 203: A review of this "aged Earl's" behaviour, from the first occasion on which he is introduced to our notice in these Memoirs to the day of his death, supplies only a melancholy succession of acts of broken faith. On the 7th of February 1404, before the assembled estates of the realm, on receiving the King's pardon for the past, he most solemnly swore upon the cross of Canterbury to be true and faithful to his sovereign Henry IV: he "swore also, on the peril of his soul, that he knew of no evil intentions on the part of the Duke of York, or of the Archbishop; and that the King might place full trust and confidence in them as his liege subjects." [(back)]
Footnote 204: Gascoyne does not appear to have been even suspended from his office in consequence of his refusal to sentence the Archbishop; he continued Chief Justice till after the King's death. [(back)]
Footnote 205: Sloane, 1776. [(back)]
Footnote 206: This is extracted from the Preface of Sir Harris Nicolas, p. 56. [(back)]
Footnote 207: The Acts of the Privy Council. [(back)]
Footnote 208: The extraordinary distress of the King from the want of pecuniary means cannot be questioned: though (independently of taxes and subsidies) large sums must have been flowing into the royal treasury, as well from the immense possessions belonging to the Duchy of Lancaster, as from the forfeited estates of the rebels. Still the King's coffers were drained. [(back)]