It was with this good man that the ancient and lawful lineage of the Saxon sovereigns ended, about the middle of the eleventh century. An English historian closes this era of his country's annals in these words:

"Our kings, in the castle of Windsor, live on the brink of the grave which opens to receive them. The throne

of Shakspeare's lines, which no "beauty-selector" or compiler of quotation-dictionaries has ever detected. It is Malcolm who says

"Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell:

Though all things foul would wear the brows of grace,
Yet grace must still look so."

And, in this connection of quotations, I venture to quote a sprightly passage from a letter of my brother's which now lies before me:

"I was," he writes, "the other day, looking over 'Measure for Measure' to find a grand image which Froude mentions in one of his letters, but which got out of my memory after I had returned the 'Remains' to the Library. By-the-by, did you ever notice how hard it is to lay your hand sometimes upon a grand thought or image in Shakspeare, which you have lost the clue to? He puts it somewhere that you would not think of looking for it, or so incidentally that you overlook it—so differently from inferior writers, who put a flashy gilt frame round what they are proud of. I was obliged, therefore, to look over the play almost line by line, and, after all, did not find what I was looking for; but I did notice among other things a jewel of a sentence, in point of real English construction and unparsableness, which I thought would delight you:

'These poor informal women are no more

But instruments of some more mightier member

That sets them on.'

In the same scene, was Shakspeare thinking of a Puritan heresythough I am not sure the error belongs to them, 'the greater the sinner the greater the saint'-when he says

'They say, best men are moulded out of faults,
And, for the most, become much more the better
For being a little bad.'

of Edward was equally by the side of his sepulchre, for he dwelt in the palace of Westminster; and, on the festival of the Epiphany, the day after his decease, his obsequies were solemnized in the adjoining abbey, then connected with the royal abode by walls and towers, the foundations whereof are still existing. Beneath the lofty windows of the southern transept of the abbey, you may see the deep and blackened arches, fragments of the edifice raised by Edward, supporting the chaste and florid tracery of a more recent age. Within, stands the shrine—once rich in gems and gold―raised to the memory of the Confessor by the fond devotion of his successors, despoiled, indeed, of all its ornaments, neglected and crumbling to ruin, but still surmounted by the massy, iron-bound oaken coffin which contains the ashes of the last legitimate Anglo-Saxon king."

Baffled in finding the passage I was hunting, I was driven to get the 'Remains' again, for the vexation of memory haunted me. Mr. Froude was struck with what he calls 'a certain wild sublimity about it.' Speaking of respect for high places, the duke says

'Respect to your great place! and let the Devil

Be sometimes honoured for his burning throne.””

MS. Letter, 22d October, 1843. W. B. R.

LECTURE IV.*

The Reign of King John.

Interval between the last Saxon kings and King John-Degeneraey of the Saxon race-Contagion of Danish vice-The Bristol slave-trade-The Northmen-The Normans-Their conquests-Death of Harold-Effect of the conquest on the conquerors -Their despotism-The Royal Forest lands-The Curfew-Death of William the Norman-Tyranny of his successors-Marriage of Henry the First to a Saxon princess-The Plantagenets-Richard Coeur-de-Lion-Romance of Ivanhoe—Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury-King John, the first of the "Chronicle-Plays”—Imaginative power developed-John, a usurper-Shakspeare's view of his character-"England" the great idea of the play-Falconbridge its exponent-His character-Shakspeare's power "in minimis”. James Gurney's four words-France and Austria-Constance and Arthur-His death-Pandulph-Struggle with the Papacy-Innocent the Third-Stephen Langton-The interdict-Struggle with the barons-The Great Charter-Shakspeare's English loyalty.

THE main subject of this lecture will be the reign and times of King John. In proceeding to it, I desire to connect that period of English history with the epoch with which I closed my last lecture; and thus, by rapidly noticing the intervening times, to preserve the continuity of our historical view of England.

The last event which I spoke of was the death of that meek and saintly sovereign, Edward the Confessor, and,

* January 18th, 1847.

in his death, the ending of the legitimate dynasty of the Anglo-Saxon kings, the race of Cerdic, the King of Wessex, which had ruled the land for more than five hundred years. This, it will be remembered, was about the middle of the eleventh century; and at the close of the succeeding century began the reign of King John. The interval of about one hundred and forty years was an eventful period, which I cannot attempt to do more than glance swiftly over.

The Saxon race had become degenerate the race which could boast of Alfred and Athelstan-which had produced heroic kings and sent forth saintly men to bear the Christian faith unto other lands. The best part of the old Saxon character was wasted away in widespread licentiousness and debauchery. The people had grown to be sensual and self-indulgent and riotous; revelry was their habit, with no better excuse than that the Danes had taught them to drink deep.

Danish vice became also Saxon vice; and, worse an hundred-fold, a horrid slave-trade shows into what deep and cruel profligacy England, at that time, was sunk. The town of Bristol was an established slave-market, and this detested traffic was carried on by Saxons of high rank, who sold their own countrymen; and into Saxon hands the price was paid for Saxon peasants, menials, and servile vassals of every description, who were carried away from their native land to dwell in Denmark and Ireland, homeless, because in slavery.* There was such

* "Slave ships regularly sailed from Bristol to Ireland, where they were secure of a ready and profitable market." Lingard, vol. i. p. 376, ch. vii. W. B. R.

depravity in England, that, though the sensual, deaf in their debauchery and wickedness, heard it not, the cry went up to Heaven for vengeance. The national corruption seemed to provoke national retribution; and when it came, it was in fierce and bloody chastisement. "The Saxons," as has been eloquently said, "had not been left without warning. Judgment had followed judgment. The Dane had fulfilled his mission, yet there was no improvement. They had seen, too, among them, with all the stern holiness and fiery zeal of an ancient prophet, startling and terrible as the Danes themselves, Dunstan the Archbishop, who had dragged a king from his chamber of shame. Yet they would not rouse themselves: the wine-cup was too sweet, the couch too soft: 'the joys of the hall,' the story, the song, the 'glee-beams' of the harp,―these gladdened their days; and to these, in spite of the Danes and St. Dunstan, they clung faster and faster. The dream went on; the lethargy became heavier.

*

*

*

*

"At last the stroke came; more terrible in its reality than the most anxious had imagined. It was not merely a change of kings or families; not even an invasion or ordinary conquest; it was a rooting and tearing up, a wild overthrow of all that was established and familiar in England.

"There were seeds of good, of high and rare excellence in the Saxons; so they were to be chastised, not destroyed. Those who saw the Norman triumph, and the steady, crushing strength of its progress, who saw English feelings, English customs, English rights, trampled on, mocked at, swept away, little thought that the Norman, the "Francigena," was to have no abiding name in the