[54] See “The English Courtier” ... and “The Court and Country.” Both reprinted in Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s “Roxburghe Library.”—F.
[55] Here follow etymologies of the terms “Duke,” “Marquess,” and “Baron.”—W.
[56] 1 Sam. ii. 15; 1 Kings i. 7.—H.
[57] Here follows a long paragraph on the character of the clergy which is more appropriate to the chapter on “The Church.”—W.
[58] Every peer ceases to be a legislator the moment the Crown considers the advice and aid of such peer unnecessary. The historic meeting between Elizabeth Woodville and Edward Plantagenet (which incidentally has made the lady ancestress to nearly every royal house in Europe), when she declared herself
“too mean to be your queen,
And yet too good to be your concubine,”
was occasioned by the mean estate left by her late husband, Sir John Grey, to his orphan children. Sir John was by right Lord Grey of Groby, but never sat at Westminster as such, being killed at Saint Albans. His children would have had small chance of writs of summons had not their beautiful mother ensnared the monarch who (much to his crook-backed brother’s disgust, at least in the play) would “use women honourably.” The heir of the Birminghams was not only evicted from the House of Peers, but from Dudley Castle, because he was poor. The heir of the Staffords had the old barony taken from him by Charles I. (simply because he, Roger Stafford, was poor), and saw it given to a court favourite, one of the honour-hooking Howards.—W.
[59] Here follows a learned disquisition upon “Valvasors.”—W.
[60] Here follows a discourse upon Equites Aurati.—W.
[61] Here is a description of dubbing a knight.—W.