England.]

2. No fact is more undeniably certain than that Henry IV. made his
eldest son (our Henry V.) Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwall in the
parliament held immediately upon his accession; whereas the MS.
declares that Henry V. was so created in the year of the Emperor of
Constantinople's visit to England, and in the parliament which (p. 432)
began at the feast of St. Hilary, during which Sautre was burned for a
heretic;--that is, a year and a quarter later.

3. The MS. account of Hotspur's rebellion is quite inconsistent with
facts, and altogether, in other respects, as improbable as it is
singular. The MS. says that Hotspur,[320] about Candlemas, was
commissioned to go against the Welsh rebels; but when he reached the
country with his forces, and found it to be mountainous, and fit
neither for horse nor infantry, he made a truce with Owyn, and went to
London to take the King's pleasure upon it. The reception he met with
at court drove him to his own country; and the King, as soon as he
heard of Percy gathering his people, collected those whom he believed
to be faithful to him, and hastened to meet him near Shrewsbury.
Whereas the fact is, that Henry Percy had been resident as Chief
Justice in North Wales, Constable of Caernarvon, &c. at least three
years; had besieged Conway with his own men; had routed the rebels at
Cader Idris, and most zealously persevered in his attempts to suppress
the rebellion; and had returned from the Principality at least a year
and a half before the Candlemas (1403), at which the MS. says that he
was first commissioned to go there.

[Footnote 320: This account of Hotspur's mission to
Wales is the first circumstance mentioned by the
manuscript after the chronicle of the Monk of
Evesham ends.]

The next point to which the attention of the reader is solicited will
perhaps be considered by many to involve a greater improbability than
the Author may himself attach to it. Every one who has ever read, or
heard, or written about the "Tripartite Indenture of Division" made
between Glyndowr, Mortimer, and Northumberland, fixes it, as (p. 433)
Shakspeare does, before the battle of Shrewsbury.[321] The scene in
the house of the Archdeacon of Bangor is too exquisite for any one to
desire it to be proved a fable. But (as the Author believes) this MS.
is the only document extant which professes to record th