When he had selected what he wished for in plated and mail armour, the lord of Milan, out of his abundant love for the Earl, ordered four of the best armourers in Milan to accompany the knight to England, that the Earl of Derby might be more completely armed."-Johnes' Froissart, Vol. IV. p. 597.

Note VIII.

The golden legend bore aright,

"Who checks at me, to death is dight.”—P. 26.

The crest and motto of Marmion are borrowed from the following story. Sir David de Lindsay, first Earl of Crauford, was, according to my authority, Bower, not only excelling in wisdom, but also of a lively wit. Chancing to be at the court of London, about 1390, he there saw Sir Piers Courtenay, an English knight, famous for skill in tilting, and for the beauty of his person, parading the palace arrayed in a new mantle, bearing for device an embroidered falcon, with this rhyme,

I bear a falcon, fairest of flight,

Who so pinches at her, his death is dight*
In graith.f

The Scottish knight, being a wag, appeared next day in a dress exactly similar to that of Courtenay, but bearing a mag. pie instead of the falcon, with a motto ingeniously contrived to rhyme to the vaunting inscription of Sir Piers:

I bear a pie picking at a piece,

Who so picks at her, I shall pick at his nese t

In faith.

This affront could only be expiated by a just with sharp lances. In the course, Lindsay left his helmet unlaced, so that

* Prepared.

† Armour.

‡ Nose.

It gave way at the touch of his antagonist's lance, and he thus avoided the shock of the encounter. This happened twice:— in the third encounter, the handsome Courtenay lost two of his front teeth. As the Englishman complained bitterly of Lindsay's fraud in not fastening his helmet, the Scottishman agreed to run six courses more, each champion staking in the hand of the king two hundred pounds, to be forfeited, if on entering the lists, any unequal advantage should be detected. This being agreed to, the wily Scot demanded that Sir Piers, in addition to the loss of his teeth, should consent to the extinction of one of his eyes, he himself having lost an eye in the fight of Otterburn. As Courtenay demurred to this equalization of optical powers, Lindsay demanded the forfeit; which, after much altercation, the king appointed to be paid to him, saying, he surpassed the English both in wit and valour. This must appear to the reader a singular specimen of the humour of that time. I suspect the Jocky Club would have given a different decision from Henry IV.

Note IX.

Largesse, largesse.-P. 29.

This was the cry with which heralds and pursuivants were wont to acknowledge the bounty received from the knights. Steward of Lorn distinguishes a ballad, in which he satirizes the narrowness of James V., and his courtiers, by the ironical burden

Lerges, lerges, lerges, hay,

Lerges of this new year day.

First lerges of the king, my chief,
Who came as quiet as a thief,

And in my hand slid-shillings twae!*

To put his largeness to the prief, †
For lerges of this new year day.

The heralds, like the minstrels, were a race allowed to have

great claims upon the liberality of the knights, of whose feats they kept a record, and proclaimed them aloud, as in the text, upon suitable occasions.

At Berwick, Norham, and other Border fortresses of importance, pursuivants usually resided, whose inviolable character rendered them the only persons that could, with perfect assurance of safety, be sent on necessary embassies into Scotland. This is alluded to in Stanza XXI. p. 36.

Note X.

They hailed Lord Marmion:
They hailed him Lord of Fontenaye,

Of Lutterward, and Scrivelbaye,

Of Tamworth tower and town.-P. 29.

Lord Marmion, the principal character of the present romance, is entirely a fictitious personage. In earlier times, indeed, the family of Marmion, Lords of Fontenay, in Normandy, was highly distinguished. Robert de Marmion, Lord of Fontenay, a distinguished follower of the Conqueror, obtained a grant of the castle and town of Tamworth, and also of the manor of Scrivelby, in Lincolnshire. One, or both, of these noble possessions was held by the honourable service of being the royal champion, as the ancestors of Marmion had formerly been to the Dukes of Normandy. But after the castle and demesne of Tamworth had passed through four successive barons from Robert, the family became extinct in the person of Philip de Marmion, who died in 20th Edward I., without issue male. He was succeeded in his Gastle of Tamworth by Alexander de Frevile, who married Mazera, his grand-daughter. Baldwin de Frevile, Alexander's descendant, in the reign of Richard I., by the supposed tenure of his castle of Tamworth, claimed the office of royal champion, and to do the service appertain ing; namely, on the day of coronation, to ride completely armed, upon a barbed horse, into Westminster Hall, and there to challenge the combat against any who would gainsay the king's title. But this office was adjudged to Sir John Dymoke, to whom the manor of Scrivelby had descended by another of

the coheiresses of Robert de Marmion; and it remains in that family, whose representative is hereditary champion of England at the present day. The family and possessions of Frevile have merged in the Earls of Ferrars: I have not, therefore, created a new family, but only revived the titles of an old one in an imaginary personage.

It was one of the Marmion family, who, in the reign of Edward II., performed that chivalrous feat before the very castle of Norham, which Bishop Percy has woven into his beautiful ballad, "The Hermit of Warkworth." The story is thus told by Leland:

"The Scottes came yn to the marches of England, and destroyed the Castles of Werck and Herbotel, and overran much of Northumberland marches.

"At this tyme Thomas Gray and his friendes defended Norham from the Scottes.

"It were a wonderful processe to declare, what mischiefes cam by hungre and asseges by the space of xi yeres in Northumberland; for the Scottes became so proude after they had got Berwick, that they nothing esteemed the Englishmen.

"About this tyme there was a greate feste made yn Lincolnshir, to which came many gentilmen and ladies; and amonge them one lady brought a heaulme for a man of were, with a very riche creste of gold, to William Marmion, knight, with a letter of commandement of her lady, that he should go into the daungerest place in England, and ther to let the heaulme be seene and known as famous. So he went to Norham; wither withyn 4 days of cumming cam Philip Moubray, guardian of Berwicke, having yn his bande 40 men of armes, the very flour of men of the Scottish marches.

"Thomas Gray, capitayne of Norham, seynge this, brought his garison afore the barriers of the castel, behynd whom cam William, richly arrayed, as al glittering in gold, and wering the heaulme, his lady's present.

"Then said Thomas Gray to Marmion, 'Sir knight, ye be cam hither to fame your helmet: mount up on yor horse, and ryde łyke a valient man to yowr foes even here at hand, and I

forsake God if I rescue not thy body deade or alyve, or I my. self wyl dye for it.

"Whereupon he toke his cursere, and rode among the throng of ennemyes; the which layed sore stripes on hym, and pullid hym at the last out of his sadel to the grounde.

"Then Thomas Gray, with al the hole garrison, lette prik yn among the Scottes, and so wondid them and their horses, that they were overthrowan; and Marmion, sore beten, was horsid agayn, and, with Gray, persewed the Scottes yn chase. There were taken fifty horse of price; and the women of Norham brought them to the foote men to follow the chase.”

Note XI.

Sir Hugh the Heron bold,
Baron of Twisell, and of Ford,

And Captain of the Hold.-P. 30.

Were accuracy of any consequence in a fictitious narrative, this castellan's name ought have been William: For William Heron of Ford was husband to the famous Lady Ford, whose syren charms are said to have cost our James IV. so dear. Moreover, the said William Heron was, at the time supposed, a prisoner in Scotland, being surrendered by Henry VIII., on` account of his share in the slaughter of Sir Robert Ker of Cessford. His wife, represented in the text as residing at the court of Scotland, was, in fact, living in her own castle at Ford. See Sir Richard Heron's curious Genealogy of the Heron Family.

Note XII.

The whiles a Northern harper rude
Chanted a rhyme of deadly feud,

"How the fierce Thirwalls, and Ridleys all, &c."

Page S1.

This old Northumbrian ballad was taken down from the recitation of a woman eighty years of age, mother of one of the miners in Alston-moor, by the agent for the lead mines there, who communicated it to my friend and correspondent, R. Surfees, Esquire of Mainsforth. She had not, she said, heard it