[152.6] In previous editions it was here remarked:—‘This French zeal appears to have excited the contempt of some of his acquaintances—among others of Friar Brackley, who nicknamed him Colinus Gallicus.’ The discovery of additional letters, formerly published in a Supplement, but now incorporated with the series, seems to show that this was an error, or at all events very doubtful. It is clear from Letter 404 that a certain ‘W. W.’ and Colinus Gallicus were different persons (see vol. iii. p. 213, note 3), and the references to ‘W. W.’ at p. 230 as the knight’s secretary and one of his executors remove any doubt that we might otherwise entertain that he was William Worcester. But a new difficulty arises from that identification, that Friar Brackley calls ‘W. W.’ an Irishman, which William Worcester was not; and the references at p. 220 of the same volume would imply that he was really an Irishman in nationality, and also a one-eyed man of dark visage. Such may have been Worcester’s personal appearance; but why was he called an Irishman?
It is with some hesitation that I hazard a new conjecture as to the person nicknamed Colinus Gallicus; but on comparing the different passages where that nickname occurs, I am inclined to think it was meant for Judge Yelverton.
[153.1] Itin. 368.
[153.2] Tanner’s Bibliotheca. See also a notice of William Worcester in Retrospective Review, Second Series, ii. 451-4.
[154.1] No. 97.
[154.2] Scrope’s History of the Manor of Castle Combe, pp. 264-283. The MSS. formerly at Castle Combe, to which Mr. Scrope refers in this work, have since been presented by him and Mr. Lowndes, the present lord of the manor, to the British Museum. One of them we have reprinted in No. 97.
[154.3] She is not unlikely to have been the lady mentioned in No. 97. ‘Fauconer’s daughter of London, that Sir Reynold Cobham had wedded.’ This I find need not have been, as I have stated in a footnote, the widow of Sir Reginald Cobham of Sterborough, who died in 1446; for there was an earlier Sir Reginald Cobham, whose widow Elizabeth was married to William Clifford as early as 1438. (Inquisitions post mortem, 16 Hen. VI. No. 31.) Thus there is the less difficulty in attributing Letter 97 to a much earlier date than that assigned to it by the endorsement.
[155.1] Letter 94.
[155.2] No. 93.
[155.3] No. 94.