annel through which Boece's _History of Scotland_ came into the
magic cauldron of Shakespearian transformation. Cardinal Wardlaw, the
founder of the oldest of Scottish schools, was a very different man from
Boece, being the glow-worm to the grub.--W.

[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 Athenaeus.--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 m