[132] There was no Parliament at Perth in 1433. The short session of that year was at Stirling. No official record of this remarkable law remains. In fact, Boece (from whom Harrison evidently quotes by memory) does not say either 1433 or that a law was made. He simply records the immediate effect of Cardinal Wardlaw’s speech. However, it had a short shift. Fate was against the patriotic Scot. James Stuart took matter more important than “divers English gentlemen” into Scotland: the royal troubadour carried something beside his batch of love rondels away from Windsor Castle as the fruit of his long captivity. He had not sung nor sighed in vain. The “mistress’ eyebrow” of his “woeful ballad” belonged to Joan of Somerset, one of the three fair Joans of the house of Plantagenet whose marriages were so wonderfully
“Auspicious to these sorrowing isles.”
From Joan of Kent, Princess of Wales, Joan of Beaufort, Countess of Warwick, and Joan of Somerset, Queen of Scotland, are descended most of our English, Irish, Welsh, as well as Scotch families. We may be said to owe most of our Joans, Johannas, Janes, Jeans, and Janets to these three women “big with the fate” of nations.—W.
[133] One would suppose Harrison himself had been “conserving the honour of Orestes” when he penned this passage. He doubtless quoted from the lost works of the Greek physician by means of his favourite Athenæus.—W.
[134] “As loathing those metals because of the plenty” sounds strangely to modern ears. Yet Harrison in this one phrase, by mere accident, lets in more light upon the secret of the towering supremacy of the Elizabethan age than have all the expounders, historians, and philosophers from that day to this. The comparative plenty of gold in the time of Elizabeth was brought about by the Spanish invasions of Peru and Mexico. England had far more gold than it had hitherto understood any use for, and she fortunately escaped being seized with that insatiable gold thirst which swiftly sapped the foundations of Spanish dominion as it had that of Rome and other empires of the past. We need seek no further for a reason why the England of Elizabeth surpassed all other communities. Having all material wealth beyond any other people, at no time has the doctrine of universal labour and repudiation of the fictitious riches of metallic hordes or usurious accumulations been so invariably denounced. Harrison’s simple evidence is supported by all the records of the time.—W.
[135] Roger Bacon.—H. [The philosopher’s stone is yet missing which is to accomplish this miracle of making malleable glass, something which has had a strange fascination as an inventor’s dream in all ages. The account of Tiberius Cæsar dashing out the brains of the all-too-clever mechanic (who had actually accomplished this feat), so as to prevent the Roman world from emancipating itself from the rule of iron (or of gold), is the most startling legend in the imperial annals. Old Friar Bacon, who devoted so much attention to optics, naturally put this feat in the forefront of the list of wonders to be accomplished by his great elixir; and Harrison’s slip yet remains beyond the eager grasp of men, though the grand desideratum has been again and again announced in our own time.—W.]
[136] This was the first English idea of the potato as instanced in the last scene of the Merry Wives of Windsor. This was not what is now generally understood as the potato, but the sweet potato of Virginia brought home by Raleigh. The common potato (which has been only common even in North America for less than a century) is often mixed historically with this other tuber. As a fact, our familiar vegetable of to-day is largely a creature of artificial development, and nowhere grows in the same quality wild, whereas the yam or sweet potato is very little altered from its native state.—W.
[137] Sweet cicely, sometimes miscalled myrrh. Mure is the Saxon word. At one time the plant was not uncommon as a salad.—W.
[138] Crosby Ravensworth in Westmorland is misnamed. It is either Raven’s thwaite or Raven’s swarth, but never worth, which is here meaningless. Swarth still lingers on the tongues of the mowers, and thwaite was the form adopted by a once famous family from this mountain fastness. The parish is notable as the home of the Addisons.—W.
[139] A famine at hand is first seen in the horse-manger, when the poor do fall to horse corn.—H.