(As both of you, God pardon it! have done)
To put down Richard, that sweet lovely rose
And plant this thorn, this canker Bolingbroke."
And again, Don John, in Much Ado about Nothing, Act I. Sc. 3.:
"I had rather be a canker in a hedge, than a rose in the grave."
Anon.
"Short red, god red."—In Roger of Wendover's Chronicle, Bohn's edition, vol. i. p. 345., is a story how Walchere, Bishop of Durham, was slain in his county court, A.D. 1075, by the suitors on the instigation of one who cried out in his native tongue "Schort red, god red, slea ye the bischop."
Sir Walter Scott, in his Tales of a Grandfather (vol. i. p. 85.), tells the same story of a Bishop of Caithness who was burned for enforcing tithes in the reign of Alexander II. of Scotland (about 1220).
What authority is there for the latter story? Did Sir Walter confound the two bishops, or did he add the circumstance for the amusement of Hugh Littlejohn? Was this the formula usually adopted on such occasions? How came the Caithness people to speak such good Saxon?
G.