[1] Printed in 1579 in a pamphlet called The Paradoxe, the author of which, Abraham Fleming, does not mention Gascoigne’s name.
[2] Reprinted in vol. ii. of J. Haslewood’s Ancient Critical Essays (1811-1815), and in Gregory Smith’s Elizabethan Critical Essays (1904).
| “Againe I see, within my glasse of Steele But foure estates, to serve each country soyle, The King, the Knight, the Pesant, and the Priest. The King should care for al the subjects still, The Knight should fight, for to defend the same, The Pesant, he shoulde labor for their ease, And Priests shuld pray, for them and for themselves.”— (Arber’s ed. p. 57.) |
[4] The influence of this play on the Shakespearian Taming of the Shrew is dealt with by Prof. A.H. Tolman in Shakespeare’s Part in the Taming of the Shrew (Pub. of the Mod. Lang. Assoc. vol. v. No. 4, pp. 215, 216, 1890).
GASCOIGNE, SIR WILLIAM (c. 1350-1419), chief justice of England in the reign of Henry IV. Both history and tradition testify to the fact that he was one of the great lawyers who in times of doubt and danger have asserted the principle that the head of the state is subject to law, and that the traditional practice of public officers, or the expressed voice of the nation in parliament, and not the will of the monarch or any part of the legislature, must guide the tribunals of the country. He was a descendant of an ancient Yorkshire family. The date of his birth is uncertain, but it appears from the year-books that he practised as an advocate in the reigns of Edward III. and Richard II. On the banishment of Henry of Lancaster Gascoigne was appointed one of his attorneys, and soon after Henry’s accession to the throne was made chief justice of the court of king’s bench. After the suppression of the rising in the north in 1405, Henry eagerly pressed the chief justice to pronounce sentence upon Scrope, the archbishop of York, and the earl marshal Thomas Mowbray, who had been implicated in the revolt. This he absolutely refused to do, asserting the right of the prisoners to be tried by their peers. Although both were afterwards executed, the chief justice had no part in the transaction. It has been very much doubted, however, whether Gascoigne could have displayed such independence of action without prompt punishment or removal from office following. The oft-told tale of his committing the prince of Wales to prison must also be regarded as unauthentic, though it is both picturesque and characteristic. The judge had directed the punishment of one of the prince’s riotous companions, and the prince, who was present and enraged at the sentence, struck or grossly insulted the judge. Gascoigne immediately committed him to prison, using firm and forcible language, which brought him to a more reasonable mood, and secured his voluntary obedience to the sentence. The king is said to have approved of the act, but there appears to be good ground for the supposition that Gascoigne was removed from his post or resigned soon after the accession of Henry V. He died in 1419, and was buried in the parish church of Harewood in Yorkshire. Some biographies of the judge have stated that he died in 1412, but this is clearly disproved by Foss in his Lives of the Judges; and although it is clear that Gascoigne did not hold office long under Henry V., it is not absolutely impossible that the scene in the fifth act of the second part of Shakespeare’s Henry IV. has some historical basis, and that the judge’s resignation was voluntary.
GASCONY (Wasconia), an old province in the S.W. of France. It takes its name from the Vascones, a Spanish tribe which in 580 and 587 crossed the Pyrenees and invaded the district known to the Romans as Novempopulana or Aquitania tertia. Basque, the national language of the Vascones, took root only in a few of the high valleys of the Pyrenees, such as Soule and Labourd; in the plains Latin dialects prevailed, Gascon being a Romance language. In the 7th century the name of Vasconia was substituted for that of Novempopulana. The Vascones readily recognized the sovereignty of the Merovingian kings. In 602 they consented to be governed by a duke called Genialis, but in reality they remained independent. They even appointed national dukes, against whom Charlemagne had to fight at the beginning of his reign. Finally Duke Lupus II. made his submission in 819, and the Carolingians were able to establish Frankish dukes in the country. Three of these are known: Séguin (Sighivinus), William (Guillaume), and Arnaud (Arnaldus). They were at the same time counts of Bordeaux, and succumbed to the Normans. After the death of Arnaud in 864 the history of Gascony falls into the profoundest obscurity. The lists of the 10th-century dukes prepared by ancient and modern historians can only be established by means of hypotheses based in many cases on spurious documents (e.g. the charter of Alaon), and little confidence can be placed in them. During this troubled period Gascony was from time to time attached to one or other of the other Vascon states which had been formed on the southern slope of the Pyrenees, but in the reign of Hugh Capet it was considered as forming part of France, from which it has never been separated. Disputed in the 11th century by the counts of Poitiers, who were also dukes of Aquitaine, and by the counts of Armagnac, the duchy finally passed to the house of Poitiers in 1073, when the title of duke of Gascony was merged in that of duke of Aquitaine and disappeared. In the feudal period Gascony comprised a great number of countships (including Armagnac, Bigorre, Fézensac, Gaure and Pardiac), viscountships (including Béarn, Lomagne, Dax, Juliac, Soule, Marsan, Tartas, Labourd and Maremne), and seigneuries (e.g. Albret, &c.). From the ecclesiastical point of view, it corresponded nearly to the archbishopric of Auch.