disturbers of the realm, to wit, the Spencers, the father and the son, Robert Baldock, Bishop of Norwich, the king's chancellor, and their fautors; and whosoever did bring to the queen the head of Hugh Spencer should have 1000 pound.

'The king, Hugh Spencer the younger, and Robert Baldock, determined to flee into the Isle of Lunday, which is in the mouth of the river Severn, but being in great danger on the sea the space of a week, at last arrived in Wales, where they were taken the sixteenth day of November, in the monastery of Neth.

'The king was committed to Henry, Earl of Lancaster, his kinsman, who brought him to Killingworthe Castle. Hugh Spencer, Robert Baldock, and Symon Readyng were brought to the queen at Hereford. Hugh Spenser was condemned without answer at Hereford, where he was drawn and hanged upon a gallows thirty foot high, and then headed and quartered on the four-and-twentieth of November. Robert Baldock died in Newgate with many torments, 1327.

'These things being done, the queen, with her son Edward, Roger Mortimer, and other, went to Wallingford Castle a little before Christmas, and before the Twelfth Day they came to London, where they were joyfully received.

'On the morrow after the said feast they held a Parliament, where, by common decree, they elected Edward, his eldest son, and then sent, in the name of the whole Parliament, the bishops, John Stratford, Bishop of Winchester, Adam Tarleton, Bishop of Hereford, and Henry, Bishop of Lincoln, two earls, etc., unto the king at Kenilworth. Adam de Tarleton, Bishop of Hereford, being the chiefe in malice, did the message with many great threats, declaring unto him their election, and required him to renounce the kingly dignity and crown to his son. The king answered with tears that he was very sorry that he had behaved himself so evil towards the people of his kingdom; but, seeing the matter was so unrecoverable, he prayed them all to forgive him, and thanked them that they had chosen his eldest son. The messengers renounce all homages and duties due to Edward of Carnarvon, late king. He was delivered

to the custody of Henry, Earl of Leicester, and one hundred marks the month allowed for his charges in Killingworth Castle.

'Isabel the queen, being persuaded that the Earl of Leicester too much favoured the old king her husband, through the subtle device of her schoolmaster, Adam Tarle

ton, Bishop of Hereford, appointed that Thomas Gornay and John Maltravers, knights, having received him into their custody, should carry him about whither they would, so that none of his wellwillers should have access unto him, or understand where he made any long abode. These brought him out by night from Kenilworth, and first he is brought to the castle of Corfe, then to Bristow, where for a season he was kept shut up close in the castle, until such time as it was understood by certain burgesses of the same town, who, for the deliverance of the said Edward, conveyed themselves over sea, whose determination being known to his keepers, in a certain dark night they conveyed him thence to Berkeley.

'These tormentors forced him to ride bareheaded; when he would sleep, they would not suffer him; neither when he was hungry would they give him such meat as liked him, but such as he loathed; every word he spoke was contraried by them, giving out most slanderously that he was mad. And to conclude, in all matters that they could imagine, they were contrary to his will, that either by cold or watching, or unwholesome meats, or melancholy or other infirmity, he might languish and die. But, contrariwise, this man, being of a good disposition by nature, stout to suffer, and patient through God's grace to abide griefs, he endured all the wicked devices of his enemies. For as touching poisons, which were ministered to him, by the benefit of nature he despatched them away.

'Moreover, devising by all means to disfigure him that he might not be known, they determined for to shave as well the hair off his head as also off his beard, wherefore, coming by a little water which ran in a ditch, they commanded him to alight from his horse to be shaven, to whom being set on a molehill, a barber came with a basin of cold water taken out of the ditch, to whom Edward said, "Shall I have no warm water?" The barber answered, "This will serve.” Quoth Edward, "Will ye or nill ye, I will have warm water;" and that he might keep his promise, he began to weep and to shed tears plentifully (as it was reported by William Byshop to Sir Thomas de la More, knight). At length they came to Barkeley Castle, where Edward was shut up close like an ancher.

'It seemed good to many of great dignity and blood, as well spiritual as temporal, both men and women, that all such fear should be taken away by the death of Edward; whereupon letters were sent to his keepers, blaming them

for suffering him to enjoy so much liberty, and nourishing him so delicately.

Moreover, there is a privy motion made to them that the death of Edward would not be misliked unto them. And in this point the great deceit of sophisters stood in force, set down by the Bishop of Hereford, who wrote thus:

"Eduardum occidere nolite timere bonum est."

"Kill Edward do not fear it is a good thing;'
or thus:

"To seek to shed King Edward's blood
Refuse to fear I count it good."

"This saying is to be resolved into two propositions, whereof the first, consisting of three words, to wit, “Eduardum occidere nolite," and the second of other three, that is, "timere bonum est," do seem to persuade very subtlely; but the receivers of the letters not being ignorant of the sophistical writing, changed the meaning thereof to this sense: "Eduardum occidere nolite timere," and afterwards joined these words "bonum est."

'Now when the old king was brought to the castle aforesaid, he was very courteously received by Thomas, Lord Barkeley. But after the tormentors had received letters concerning the government of the castle, Thomas, Lord of Berkley, is commanded to depart from thence, wherefore, taking his leave with sighs, he goeth to his other dwellingplaces. After this the old king was shut up in a close chamber, where with the stink of the dead carcases laid in a cellar under him he was miserably tormented many days in such sort, that he was well nigh suffocated therewith, and that the pain was almost intolerable, it appeared by the complaint he made on a certain day at the chamber window, certain carpenters then working on the right side thereof hearing the same. But these tyrants perceiving that this would not force his death, one night, being the 22 of September, they came rushing in upon him, as he lay in his bed, with great heavy feather beds, as much in weight as 15 men could bear, wherewith they oppressed and smothered him, into whom also they thrust a plumber's iron, being made red-hot, up into his bowels through a certain instrument like to the end of a trumpet or glister-pipe, put in at his fundament, burning thereby his inward parts, providing thereby lest any wound being found in the king's body, they

might be caused to answer it. In this sort was this stout knight oppressed, crying with a loud voice, so that many as well within the castle as without heard it, perceiving it was the cry of one that suffered violent death.

"[Thus far out of Thomas de la More, a worshipful knight, that then lived, and wrote in the French tongue what he saw with his eyes, or heard credibly reported by them that saw, and some that were actors-From Edition by Howes, 1615.] 1329. The Earl of Kent,

for certain confessions which he made, and for certain letters which were found about him, was there [at Winchester] beheaded.'

It is usually stated that Fabyan was Marlow's authority for his plot. That this was not the case will be evident on comparing the two preceding narratives with the play itself. In fact the jig in Act II, Sc. ii, seems to be nearly all the matter for which Marlow was indebted to Fabyan. There can be no doubt that he either used Sir Thomas de la More's narrative, or some other in great measure derived from it, most likely Stow as well as Holinshed. Stow's Annals have been selected for the extracts here given, as he follows More closely. Holinshed is too verbose to give in full; though Marlow certainly used his narrative. The spelling has been modernised there can be no advantage in retaining the unsystematic irregularities of sixteenth century phonetics except when their very irregularities are the subject of study. Fabyan's singular spellings of proper names have, however, been carefully reproduced, in order to show that Marlow did not copy them. In all probability he used several authorities for his plot; in this differing from Shakespeare, whose studies of English history seem to have been confined to Holinshed's Chronicle, which was also Marlow's authority for the last act; as will be seen from the following extracts.

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EXTRACTS FROM HOLINSHED'S 'CHRONICLES' [1586].

1307. When the Lord Treasurer, Walter de Langton, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield (thorough whose complaint Peers de Gaueston had been banished the land), was going towards Westminster to make preparation for the [king's] burial, he was, upon commandment from the new king, arrested, committed to prison, and after delivered to the hands of the said Peers, being then returned again into

This

the realm, who sent him from castle to castle as a prisoner. His lands and tenements were seized to the king's use, but his movables were given to the foresaid Peers. new king having revoked again into England his old mate the said Peers de Gaueston, he received him into most high favour, creating him Earl of Cornwall and Lord of Man, his principal secretary, and lord chamberlain of the realm. The foresaid Peers furnished his court with companies of jesters, ruffians, flattering parasites, musicians, and other vile and naughty ribalds, that the king might spend both days and nights in jesting, playing, banqueting, and in such other filthy and dishonourable exercises.

'About the thirteenth day of October at the Parlement a marriage was concluded betwixt the Earl of Cornwall, Peers de Gaueston, and the daughter of Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Glocester.

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1308. About the two-and-twentieth of January the king sailed over into France, and at Bullongue in Picardie, on the four-and-twentieth day of January, he did homage to the French king for his lands of Gascoigne and Pontieu, and on the morrow after married Isabel, the French king's daughter.

'The malice which the lords had conceived against the Earl of Cornwall still increased, the more indeed, through the high bearing of him being now advanced to honour. For being a goodly gentleman and a stout, he would not once yield an inch to any of them, which worthily procured him great envy amongst the chiefest peers of all the realm, as Sir Henry Lacy, Earl of Lincoln; Sir Guy, Earl of Warwick; and Sir Aymer de Valence, Earl of Penbroke; the Earls of Glocester, Hereford, Arundel, and others, which, upon such wrath and displeasure as they had conceived against him, thought it not convenient to suffer the same any longer. Hereupon they assembled together in the Parlement time at the New Temple on Saturday next before the Feast of Saint Dunstan, and there ordained that the said Peers should abjure the realm, and depart the same on the morrow after the Nativity of St John Baptist at the furthest, and not to return into the same at any time then after to come. To this ordinance the king (although against his will), because he saw himself and the realm in danger, gave his consent, and made his letterspatent to the said earls and lords to witness the same. These letters were read, heard, and allowed in the presence of all the noblemen of this land the day and year above said.