Oxford World’s Classics

by Jane Austen

  The King was murdered—The Queen was sent home: see Henry VI, Part 3 (act 5, scenes 6–7).

  Edward the 4th … Picture we have here given of him: Edward IV (1442–83), King of England and Lord of Ireland, was born at Rouen, Normandy, on 28 Apr. 1442, the second surviving child and eldest son of Richard, 3rd Duke of York, and Cecily, Duchess of York. He reigned from 1461 to 1470 and from 1471 to 1483. JA echoes Goldsmith, who singles out Edward’s ‘courage and beauty’ as his ‘best qualities’ (History of England, ii, 250); Cassandra’s portrait of a dumpy, ill-favoured man, comically at odds with the text, seems to be inspired by H. W. Bunbury’s caricature ‘The Recruits’ (see note to p. 122), a source also for her image of Henry V. Christine Alexander detects an additional likeness to the Austens’ cousin Edward Cooper (Love and Freindship, ed. Alexander, 415 n.).

  marrying one Woman while he was engaged to another: in 1464, while his council finalized arrangements for his marriage to Bona of Savoy, sister-in-law of Louis XVI, Edward IV secretly married Elizabeth Woodville (1437–92), widow of Sir John Grey. Cf. the double engagement in ‘Frederic & Elfrida’. Edward IV’s namesake Edward Ferrars, in S&S, is engaged to one woman (Lucy Steele) while hoping to marry another (Elinor Dashwood).

  poor Woman! … Henry the 7th: after Edward’s death, Elizabeth was deprived of her estates and removed to Bermondsey, a monastery on the banks of the Thames where she died in 1492.

  Jane Shore … a play written about her: in his highly popular Tragedy of Jane Shore: Written in Imitation of Shakespeare’s Style (1714), Nicholas Rowe dramatizes the king’s seduction of the beautiful young wife of a goldsmith. The play, still performed regularly in the 1790s, consists chiefly of domestic scenes and private distress: a repentant Jane Shore is forgiven; her husband is praised because he is merciful. Goldsmith echoes Rowe in his treatment of Shore as an ‘unfortunate woman … deluded from her husband … the most guiltless mistress in [Edward’s] abandoned court. She was ever known to intercede for the distressed, and was usually applied to as a mediator for mercy’ (History of England, ii, 257–8).

  124 Edward the 5th … picture: Goldsmith’s History of England includes a portrait of Edward V (1470–83), eldest son of Edward IV, who succeeded his father in 1483 at the age of 12, but was deposed, imprisoned in the Tower of London with his brother, and disappeared in questionable circumstances two months later. The most favoured explanation for the brothers’ disappearance, now as in JA’s lifetime, is that they were murdered on the order of Richard III, late in the summer of 1483, to pre-empt a rising in their favour (see note below to p. 124). Cassandra may not have provided an illustration, but JA apparently expected her to do so as she left space for one in the manuscript, subtitling it ‘Edward th’ (subsequently deleted; see Textual Notes, p. 232).

  Richard the 3d … very respectable Man: Richard III (1452–85), King of England and Lord of Ireland, was the youngest surviving child of Richard, 3rd Duke of York, and Cecily, Duchess of York, and reigned from 1483 to 1485. There was an Austen family joke about the respectability of anyone called Richard; in a letter of 15 Sept. 1796, JA writes: ‘Mr Richard Harvey’s match is put off, till he has got a Better Christian name, of which he has great Hopes’ (Letters, 10); cf. NA: ‘Her father was a clergyman, without being neglected, or poor, and a very respectable man, though his name was Richard’ (ch. 1).

  he did not kill his two Nephews: on the death of his brother Edward IV, Richard deprived his two nephews of their rights to the throne and had himself proclaimed king. Whether he was guilty of ordering the boys’ murder was disputed in the 18th century; see e.g. Horace Walpole’s defence of Richard in Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third (1768), a work that he went on to repudiate in 1793. Cf. ‘Kitty, or the Bower’, in which the heroine and Edward Stanley participate in a ‘historical dispute’ about Richard III’s character (p. 198).

  I am inclined to beleive true: by swiftly gainsaying her own confident assertion that Edward V was murdered on his uncle’s orders, JA contrives to endorse both Richard’s supporters and his opponents.

  124 he did not kill his Wife: in Shakespeare’s Richard III (act 4, scene 2), and in Goldsmith’s History of England, ii, 270, the king is described as plotting the death of his wife, Anne Neville, in 1485.

  Perkin Warbeck … Duke of York: during the reign of Henry VII, Warbeck claimed to be Richard, Duke of York, one of the princes in the tower (see notes above to p. 124); in 1497, he confessed his imposture. He was executed two years later.

  Lambert Simnel … Widow of Richard: during the reign of Henry VII, Simnel claimed to be Edward, Earl of Warwick, son of the Duke of Clarence and therefore the nephew of Richard III and Edward IV. JA’s portrayal of Simnel as a widow is another instance of gender reversal; see ‘Edgar & Emma’, note to p. 25.

  Henry Tudor E. of Richmond … getting the Crown: Henry, Earl of Richmond, derived his claim to the throne from his mother, Margaret Beaufort, great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt (third son of Edward III). Henry VII (1457–1509) reigned from 1485 to 1509; he was the first of the Tudor monarchs, whose line culminated in the reign of ‘wicked’ Elizabeth I.

  battle of Bosworth: the last major battle of the War of the Roses, in Aug. 1485, in which Richard III was defeated and slain, and Henry VII took the throne. It is the climax of Shakespeare’s Richard III (act 5, scenes 3–5).

  125 Princess Elizabeth of York: Princess Elizabeth (1466–1503), daughter of Edward IV, was married to Henry in Jan. 1486, thereby uniting the two Houses of York and Lancaster. This, as JA recognizes, was a shrewd move; Henry’s claim to the throne was tenuous and the marriage to Elizabeth gave him credibility.

  happiness of being grandmother: parodying the tendency in Whig histories to look forwards, reading historical events in terms of their future significance. Henry VII’s elder daughter, Margaret Tudor, married James IV of Scotland in 1503; their granddaughter and JA’s great favourite, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, was born in 1542, a year after Margaret’s death.

  the D. of Suffolk: the Duke of Suffolk. Lady Jane Grey’s mother, Frances Grey, Duchess of Suffolk, was the second child and eldest daughter of Henry VIII’s sister Mary and Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk.

  amiable young woman … hunting: ‘amiable’ is a standard epithet for Lady Jane Grey (1537–54) in 18th-century history and fiction (also applied to Anne Boleyn in the next section of JA’s ‘History’); see e.g. Joseph Collyer, The History of England, from the Invasion of Julius Cæsar, to the Dissolution of the Present Parliament, 14 vols. (1774–5), vii, 146; Charles Coote, The History of England, from the Earliest Dawn of Record to the Peace of MDCCLXXXIII, 9 vols. (1791), v, 190; Lady Jane Grey: An Historical Tale, 2 vols. (1791), ii, 106; Thomas Gibbons, The Life & Death of Lady Jane Grey (1792), 13, 21, 56. See also ‘Frederic & Elfrida’, note to p. 4. Goldsmith describes Lady Jane as ‘the wonder of her age’, fond of ‘reading Plato’s works in Greek, while the rest of the family were hunting in the Park’ (History of England, iii, 36). See also note to p. 128.

  taken into the Kings kitchen: cf. Hume’s History of England: ‘He was pardoned, and made a scullion in the King’s kitchen’ (‘Henry VII’, ch. 24); Goldsmith’s History of England follows Hume’s text almost exactly (ii, 286).

  126 Henry the 8th: Henry VIII (1491–1547), King of England and Ireland from 1509 to 1547, the second surviving son of Henry VII and his wife, Elizabeth. Cassandra’s image pokes fun at him, partly through his incongruous moustache and tasselled red nightcap, a fashionable daytime accessory in the 1780s (cf. ‘french net nightcap’ in ‘A beautiful description of the different effects of Sensibility on different Minds’, note to p. 63). The image may recall popular caricatures of the Whig politician Charles James Fox (see Love and Freindship, ed. Alexander, 417 n.).

  a slight sketch of the principal Events: standard phrasing in historical narratives; cf. ‘For the clearer understanding of the modern history of this country, … it is necessary to give a slight sketch of t
he principal events which occurred in the year 1787’ (The Historical Magazine, Or, Classical Library of Public Events, 5 vols. (1789), i, 14).

  come to lay his bones among them: see ‘Love and Friendship’, note to p. 87; in Goldsmith’s History of England, the cardinal is said to have announced on his arrival at Leicester Abbey, where he died, ‘Father abbot, I am come to lay my bones among you’ (ii, 361). Cf. also Hume’s History of England, ‘Henry VIII’, ch. 30, which gives this speech indirectly. JA combines the two, keeping Goldsmith’s speech marks but using Hume’s third-person voice.

  Anna Bullen … Crimes with which she was accused: Anne Boleyn (c.1507–36), Queen of England, second consort of Henry VIII, and mother of Elizabeth I. She married Henry in 1533, but fell out of favour and was charged with adultery, committed to the Tower of London, and beheaded on 19 May 1536. Her name is given in the form ‘Anna Bullen’ in both Shakespeare’s Henry VIII and Goldsmith’s History of England (1771), but not in Hume’s History of England.

  6th of May: Goldsmith’s History of England, following Hume’s History of England (‘Henry VIII’, ch. 31), reproduces in full a letter from Anne Boleyn to the king in which she protests her innocence and concludes ‘From my doleful prison in the Tower, this sixth of May’ (ii, 384). JA draws attention to the fact that this date, one of only two included in Goldsmith’s History of England, has no year attached to it.

  Crimes & Cruelties of this Prince: see Goldsmith’s History of England (1771): ‘Henry was cruel from a depraved disposition alone; cruel in government, cruel in religion, and cruel in his family’ (ii, 418). Cf. the more extensive catalogue of Henry’s virtues and vices in Hume’s History of England, ‘Henry VIII’, ch. 33.

  abolishing Religious Houses: the dissolution or suppression of religious houses was carried out by a series of administrative and legal processes, set in train between 1536 and 1541, which allowed Henry VIII to disband Catholic monasteries, priories, convents, and friaries in England, Wales, and Ireland, appropriate their income, and dispose of their assets; see Goldsmith, History of England, ii, 373–4. Henry won the authority to do this in England and Wales through the Act of Supremacy, passed by Parliament in 1534, which made him Supreme Head of the Church in England, thus separating England from papal authority, and by the First Suppression Act (1536) and the Second Suppression Act (1539).

  127 infinite use to the landscape of England in general: JA refers to the widespread contemporary enthusiasm for visiting and reading about medieval and monastic ruins, an enthusiasm stoked by the kind of gothic fiction that Catherine Morland enjoys reading in NA and by William Gilpin’s accounts of his various tours (see ‘The three Sisters’, note to p. 58). Gilpin’s definition of the picturesque was founded on an appreciation of ruined abbeys and monasteries. As he noted in Observations, Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty, Made in the Year 1772, On Several Parts of England; Particularly the Mountains, and Lakes of Cumberland, and Westmoreland, 2 vols. (1786), ‘In the ruins of castles … other countries may compare with ours. But in the remains of abbeys no country certainly can … the Gothic style, in which they are generally composed, is, I apprehend, unrivalled among foreign nations; and may be called a peculiar feature in English landscape’ (i, 13).

  5th Wife … led an abandoned Life before her Marriage: Catherine Howard (c.1521–42), niece of Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk and cousin of Anne Boleyn. She was executed less than two years after marrying Henry VIII. Goldsmith writes that Catherine ‘confessed her incontinence before marriage, but denied her having dishonoured the king’s bed since their union’ (History of England, ii, 402).

  noble Duke of Norfolk: Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk (1538–72), son of the poet Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, and grandson of the 3rd Duke of Norfolk; he was the wealthiest landowner in the country and for some years a favourite courtier of Elizabeth I. She imprisoned him in 1569 for scheming to marry Mary, Queen of Scots. Following his release, he was accused of involvement in the so-called Ridolfi plot of 1571, with Philip II of Spain, to put Mary, Queen of Scots, on the English throne and restore Catholicism in England. He was executed for treason in 1572. (See Hume’s History of England, ‘Elizabeth’, ch. 41.) Southam suggests that JA may be covertly alluding to Sophia Lee’s The Recess, in which Mary and Norfolk secretly marry (Volume the Second, ed. B. C. Southam (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), 215).

  The kings last wife: Katherine or Catherine Parr (1512–48), sixth consort of Henry VIII. Hume calls her ‘a woman of virtue’ (History of England, ‘Henry VIII’, ch. 33), Goldsmith ‘a woman of discretion and virtue’, who ‘managed this capricious tyrant’s temper with prudence and success’ (Goldsmith, History of England, ii, 406). She ‘contrived to survive’ the king, as JA notes, only to die a year later after giving birth to a daughter.

  Edward the 6th … during his minority: Edward VI (1537–53), King of England and Ireland, the first and only legitimate son of Henry VIII, came to the throne as a 9-year-old and died aged 15. Full power and authority during his minority—that is, until his eighteenth birthday—supposedly fell to a council comprising the sixteen executors of his father’s will. Even before Henry VIII’s death, Edward Seymour (c.1500–1552), Duke of Somerset and uncle of Edward VI, and Sir William Paget, the king’s secretary, had decided to ignore the will and arrange for Somerset’s preferment as protector of the realm and governor of Edward’s person. Cassandra’s portrait of Edward does not portray a child; Alexander argues that it is probably a likeness of JA’s rich older brother Edward (see Love and Freindship, ed. Alexander, 419 n.).

  those first of Men Robert Earl of Essex, Delamere, or Gilpin: Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex (1565–1601), was an English nobleman, general, and sometime favourite of Elizabeth I. Dashing and politically ambitious, he was placed under house arrest following a poor campaign in Ireland during the Nine Years’ War in 1599. In 1601, he led an abortive coup d’état against the government and was executed for treason. Charlotte Smith’s Frederic Delamere, hero of Emmeline (1788), with whom Essex is again compared in the next section of JA’s ‘History’, is equally handsome, ardent, and doomed. William Gilpin, like Samuel Johnson, felt some of JA’s passionate attachment to Mary, Queen of Scots (see Observations, Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty, i, 92).

  127–8 He was beheaded … the manner of it: see note to p. 125; here, too, JA parodies the Whig tendency to read past events in terms of their future significance.

  the Duke of Northumberland: see Goldsmith’s account of the jockeying for power between John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland and Somerset, whose downfall and execution Northumberland had engineered (History of England, iii, 25–9). He arranged for his son to marry Lady Jane Grey, whom he proclaimed queen against her will on the death of Edward VI. She and her husband were found guilty of treason and beheaded in 1554.

  reading Greek … excess of vanity: Jane showed early promise of exceptional academic ability; sent to join the household of the widowed queen, Katherine Parr, in 1547, she benefited from educational opportunities then available in court circles for girls as well as boys. JA mocks this seeming paragon of virtue and learning—perhaps in part because she is called Jane (cf. the treatment of perfect Jane Fairfax in E). The word ‘vanity’ was originally the much lower, colloquial ‘Cockylorum’ (also spelled ‘cockalorum’ and ‘cockolorum’), meaning ‘Little or young cock, bantam; self-important little man’ (OED); ‘cocky’ means ‘arrogantly pert’ (OED) and can be applied to a man or a woman (see Textual Notes, p. 232).

  conducting to the Scaffold … passing that way: Jane and her husband Guildford were executed on 12 Feb. 1554. Cf. History of England: ‘the lady Jane was conducting to the place of execution’; ‘she had just written three sentences on seeing her husband’s dead body, one in Greek, one in Latin, and one in English, importing, that she hoped God and posterity would do him and their cause justice’. Goldsmith’s handling of the executions is at once more lurid and more sympathetic than JA’s, mentioning Guildford’s
‘headless body … streaming with blood’ but seeing Lady Jane’s lack of visible emotion as evidence of ‘heroic resolution’ rather than of indifference or affectation (History of England, iii, 49–50). See also Hume’s History of England, ‘Mary’, ch. 36.

  128 Mary: Mary I, also known as Mary Tudor (1516–58), daughter of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon, Queen of England and Ireland from 1553 to 1558. With her husband, Philip, heir to the Spanish throne, her chief objective was to restore Catholicism to England. Alexander suggests that Cassandra’s ‘rather frumpish image’ of Mary could represent the Austens’ friend Mary Lloyd (see ‘Frederic & Elfrida’, note to p. 2; Love and Freindship, ed. Alexander, 420 n.).

  128–9 Martyrs to the protestant Religion … not fewer than a dozen: during her 5-year reign, Mary repealed the religious legislation that had been introduced by her half-brother, Edward VI, returning the English Church to Roman jurisdiction and resulting in the exile or execution of many Protestants. Parliament also restored the old heresy laws. Eventually, nearly three hundred Protestants were burned at the stake in the reign of ‘Bloody Mary’, as Goldsmith notes (History of England, iii, 62).

  129 Philip … Armadas: Mary and Philip (1527–98) married in 1554; he became King of Spain in 1566. In 1588, when Elizabeth I was on the throne, the English defeated Philip’s Spanish Armada—a fleet of more than one hundred warships—thwarting his planned invasion of the country to reinstate Catholicism.