eir of England! Was this easy?
May this be wash'd in Lethe, and forgotten?"

thus justifies himself to the king:

"I then did use the person of your father;
The image of his power lay then in me:
And in the administration of his law,
Whiles I was busy for the commonwealth,
Your highness pleased to forget my place,--
The majesty and power of law and justice,
The image of the king whom I presented,--
And, struck me in my very seat of judgment;
Whereon, as an offender to your father,
I gave bold way to my authority,
And did commit you." {162}

Now this is a relation that we are well content, although unsupported by
contemporaneous authority, to receive on tradition; because in the
nature of the circumstances we cannot expect to find any authentic
evidence of the occurrence. But we should never think of citing these
passages as fixing the fact of the _blow_, as chronicled by Hall, in
opposition to the milder representation of the story as told by Sir
Thomas Elliott in "The Governour." The bard makes that selection between
the two versions which best suits the scene he is depicting.

We cannot, however, be so easily satisfied with the second fact,--the
reappointment of Gascoigne,--thus asserted by Shakspeare when making
Henry say:

"You did commit me;
For which, I do commit into your hand
The unstain'd sword that you have us'd to bear;
With this remembrance,--that you use the same
With the like bold, just, and impartial spirit,
As you have done 'gainst me."

We require better evidence for this than tradition, because, if true,
better evidence can be adduced. A noble writer has very recently
declared that he can "prove to demonstration that Sir William Gascoigne
survived Henry IV. several years, _and actually filled the office of
Chief Justice of the King's Bench under Henry V_." As to the first of
these points he implicitly follows Mr. Tyler's history, who proves that
Gascoigne died in December 1419, in the seventh year of the fifth
Henry's reign; but as to the second point, deserting his authority and
omitting the dates introduced in it, he entirely fails in supporting his
assertion. The assertion, however, having been made in so recent a work,
it becomes important to investigate its truth.

The only fact that gives an apparent authenticity to the story is that
Gascoigne was summoned to the first parliament of Henry V. as "Chief
Justice of our Lord the King." When we recolle