1st from May 27th.....1199 to May. 17th.....1200 2nd........18th.....1200.

3rd..... 1201

2nd.....1201

.22nd.. 1202

.....

.23rd..... 1202 ....... 14th.....1203

5th........15th..... 1203 ..June 2nd.....1204

.....1204. May 18th

.....1205

May 19th.. 1205 .......10th.....1206

8th........11th.....1206

3rd....

4th.

6th.... June 3rd..

7th.

.......30th

.....1207 14th .....1208

6th.....1209

.28th. ....1215.

8th.....1214. ...... 27th.....1215

18th........ 19th.....1216...Oct. 19th.....1216

2nd.....1212

..22nd.....

1213

7th .....1214

..18th

.....1216

IX. HISTORICAL EXAMINATION INTO THE SUPPOSED DEATH OF KING JOHN BY POISON.

Vide the preceding Essay and Memoir, pages 34, 35, 490, 491.

THE very doubtful circumstances attending the decease of this Sovereign, and the several causes assigned for it, have been already more than once referred to in the preceding pages; and the present article is intended to give a more particular account of the arguments and authorities, which have been adduced to support each side of the question.

The subject seems to have been first agitated in that series of publications concerning the evil intentions of the Jesuits, which appeared about the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries; when the narrative, of the poisoning was recited by Sir Francis Hastings, in his tract, entitled "A watch-word to all religious and truehearted Englishmen." Lond. 1598, 8vo. This was answered by the celebrated Jesuit Father Robert Parsons, in a work called, "The temperate ward-word against the seditious ward-word of Sir Francis Hastings in behalf of the Popish cause;" in which he considers the story as cited from Caxton's Chronicle to be a novelty, not older than the publication of that work in 1483,-though there was an edition of it printed in 1480;-and, being very unwilling to acknowledge the poison, viewing it as a reproach on Monachism and the Catholic faith, he accuses his antagonist and the Protestants with malice and forgery: though Caxton, John Major, and George Lilly, also Papists, do not hesitate to record it. He also charges the same upon John Fox for relating the story in his " Acts and Monuments;" and particularly censures the malignancy of the latter, for having represented the whole transaction in a large wood-cut of six compartments, though a perfectly fictitious design, all the figures being dressed in the costume of the Author's own times, and King John wearing his crown, even after he had lost it in the Washes at Lincoln. Upon the publication of Speed's "History of Great Britain," in 1611, Dr. John Barkham, Dean of Bocking, who wrote the lives of Henry II. and King John for that work, again brought forward the different accounts of the latter Sovereign's death, and particularly noticed the recent discussion; affirming that there was no malice in affixing to the story of the poisoning, pictures of it "to move hatred of the Monks and their religion.". He adds, also, that such persons "were the very first who not only so depictured it, but also lively and richly depainted it in their goodliest manuscripts;" of which he particularly refers to one of the St. Alban's Chronicle in the Library of the Archbishop of Canterbury. See the Rev. H. J. Todd's account of it in his Catalogue of

that collection, page 1, No. VI., wherein he states that it is "enriched with miniature paintings of the most exquisite beauty." Another Manuscript containing a representation of this circumstance, probably of greater antiquity and of almost equal elegance, is preserved in the Cottonian Library, marked Vitellius A. XIII., and was, perhaps, written and illuminated about the thirteenth century, or within a hundred years after King John's death. It consists of eight pages of vellum painted on both sides, with large effigies of the English Sovereigns, from Edward the Confessor to Edward I., having very brief notices of their reigns written beneath them in French, in letters of azure and gold. In the memoir attached to King John, it is stated that he was poisoned at Swineshead by a Brother of the House, and the illumination above represents the Monk kneeling and presenting the King with the cup whilst the whole convent is observing them. This subject, as well as the other drawings of the manuscript, has been engraven by Strutt in his Regal and Ecclesiastical Antiquities, and a copy of it is also introduced in the initial letter to the Memoir of King John in the present volume. A third Manuscript containing an illumination of this event, also of the time of Edward I., is observed by Dr. Barkham to have been in Selden's Library, wherein the King is represented at a banquet richly habited, and four Monks coming to him, one of whom presents him with the poisoned cup.

The real cause of this Sovereign's death seems next to have became a subject of discussion, in M. Rapin's History of England; particularly in the edition of 173236, translated by the Rev. Nicholas Tindal and Philip Morant, whose objections to the story of his poisoning have been already noticed. From this period the popular tradition seems to have been set aside, until it was revived by several arguments in favour of it, which appeared in the Rev. John Lewis's Life of William Caxton, Lond. 1737, 8vo. in his catalogue of that Printer's works,

a This rare and curious volume, is said to have been limited to a private impression of 150 copies, all upon thick royal paper, but not of very superior typography. The Life of Caxton is incorporated with a

under the article of The Chronicle of England; which contains a very full account of the circumstance. Most of these observations will also be found in the Notes to the Memoir of Caxton in the Biographia Britannica; and their historical value and credibility were, in December 1772, considered by the Rev. Samuel Pegge, in a paper printed in the Archæologia, Vol. IV., pages 29-46, entitled, "An Enquiry into the nature and causes of King John's Death, wherein it is shewn that it was not effected by Poison." In laying before the reader a short account of this curious discussion, the following notices will shew, firstly, the narratives, arguments, and evidence, adduced against the King's death by Poison; and, secondly, those which have been brought forward to support it.

To commence, then, with Mr. Pegge's narrative. The reader will remember that when King John left Lynn, on October 11th, 1216, his treasures, &c., were all swallowed up by the tide in the river Wellstream, overflowing the Washes between Lincolnshire and Norfolk, even before himself and his army had entirely crossed over. He passed that night at Swineshead-Abbey, a small Monastery of Cistercians, near Boston in Lincolnshire; where he was first taken ill. Those who give credit to his murder, affirm that his disease was the effect of poison; but Mr. Pegge argues that it was actually a fever and dysentery, or flux, produced partly by fatigue, anxiety, and sorrow, and partly by his making an immoderate repast the same night on

descriptive list of his works; which embraces much useful antiquarian research, though it often confuses the original subject, and the whole volume is rather dull in its composition. The Chronicle of England, mentioned above, was printed by Caxton at Westminster in 1480, and has thence been called "Caxton's Chronicle;" though the earlier part of it was founded upon a work by Douglas, a Monk of Glastonbury Abbey; the Printer having only continued it to the defeat of Henry VI., at the Battle of Towton in Yorkshire, on Palm Sunday, March 29th, 1461. It was so popular a work, as to be printed four times in the fifteenth century, and the edition of 1483 having been prepared by a schoolmaster of St. Alban's, it received the name of "The St. Alban's Chronicle"; but its narratives have been very much suspected and censured, and it is, perhaps, most celebrated for its very circumstantial account of the poisoning of King John.

peaches and new cyder, of which he was extremely fond, and had often partaken without danger. The King departed from Swineshead on horseback, as some say on the following morning, though others affirm that he remained there two days; but on his way to Sleford Castle he was forced to remove to a litter, in which he was carried to Newark Castle, where he died in a few days after. At this place he first saw his physician, the Abbot of Croxton,perhaps Ralph de Lincoln,-who had not been with him at Swineshead to control his appetite, and now his malady was past cure: the Abbot after John's death embalmed his remains, when his bowels were buried at Croxton in Leicestershire, and his body in Worcester Cathedral.

The arguments used by Mr. Pegge, to prove that such really were the progress and causes of the King's disease and death, are, firstly, the very natural and probable character of the circumstances themselves; and the general use of the word dysenteria, by the contemporary Historians to express the King's disease: secondly, a comparison with the decease of Cardinal Wolsey, who died of a dysentery, also produced by grief and vexation, though it was likewise strongly suspected that he had been poisoned: thirdly, that on the body being embowelled, no historian notices the appearance of any sign of venom, or of any suspicion entertained by King John's physician; although such as relate the ordinary tradition affirm that the corse was swelled by the poison: fourthly, the absence of all allusion to the subject in the King's will, where the only notice of his sickness is, that he was prevented being more particular "by grievous infirmity;" though it should be remembered that this instrument was certainly written by an ecclesiastic, and therefore might be suspected. And fifthly, Mr. Pegge observes, that no sort of revenge for the supposed murder at Swineshead ever appears to have been taken, nor even an enquiry made into it; although Henry III., with the Earl of Pembroke and others of his powerful friends and followers, were, in the very year after John's death, all triumphant at Newark, the very place where it happened, and but a short distance from the Abbey: which foundation, however,