The Caged Lion

The Caged Lion

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Caged Lion, by Charlotte M. Yonge
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Title: The Caged Lion
Author: Charlotte M. Yonge
Release Date: May 11, 2005 [eBook #2573]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CAGED
LION***

Transcribed from the 1912 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price,
email [email protected]

THE CAGED LION
PREFACE
When the venture has been made of dealing with historical events and
characters, it always seems fair towards the reader to avow what
liberties have been taken, and how much of the sketch is founded on
history. In the present case, it is scarcely necessary to do more than
refer to the almost unique relations that subsisted between Henry V.
and his prisoner, James I. of Scotland; who lived with him throughout
his reign on the terms of friend rather than of captive, and was
absolutely sheltered by this imprisonment throughout his nonage and
early youth from the frightful violence and presumption of the nobles

of his kingdom.
James's expedition to Scotland is wholly imaginary, though there
appears to have been space for it during Henry's progress to the North
to pay his devotions at Beverley Minster. The hero of the story is
likewise invention, though, as Froissart ascribes to King Robert II.
'eleven sons who loved arms,' Malcolm may well be supposed to be the
son of one of those unaccounted for in the pedigrees of Stewart. The
same may be said of Esclairmonde. There were plenty of Luxemburgs
in the Low Countries, but the individual is not to be identified. Readers
of Tyler's 'Henry V.,' of Agnes Strickland's 'Queens,' Tytler's 'Scotland,'
and Barante's 'Histoire de Bourgogne' will be at no loss for the origin of
all I have ventured to say of the really historical personages. Mr. Fox
Bourne's 'English Merchants' furnished the tradition respecting
Whittington. I am afraid the knighthood was really conferred on
Henry's first return to England, after the battle of Agincourt; but
human--or at least story-telling--nature could not resist an anachronism
of a few years for such a story. The only other wilful alteration of a
matter of time is with regard to the Duke of Burgundy's interview with
Henry. At the time of Henry's last stay at Paris the Duke was attending
the death-bed of his wife, Michelle of France, but he had been several
times in the King's camp at the siege of Meaux.
Another alteration of fact is that Ralf Percy, instead of being second
son of Hotspur, should have been Henry Percy, son of Hotspur's
brother Ralf; but the name would have been so confusing that it was
thought better to set Dugdale at defiance and consider the reader's
convenience. Alice Montagu, though her name sounds as if it came out
of the most commonplace novelist's repertory, was a veritable
personage--the heiress of the brave line of Montacute, or Montagu;
daughter to the Earl of Salisbury who was killed at the siege of Orleans;
wife to the Earl of the same title (in her right) who won the battle of
Blore Heath and was beheaded at Wakefield; and mother to Earl
Warwick the King-maker, the Marquis of Montagu, and George Nevil,
Archbishop of York. As nothing is known of her but her name, I have
ventured to make use of the blank.
For Jaqueline of Hainault, and her pranks, they are to be found in
Monstrelet of old, and now in Barante; though justice to her and Queen
Isabeau compels me to state that the incident of the ring is wholly

fictitious. Of the trial of Walter Stewart no record is preserved save that
he was accused of 'roborica.' James Kennedy was the first great
benefactor to learning in Scotland, and founder of her earliest
University, having been himself educated at Paris.
The Abbey of Coldingham is described from a local compilation of the
early part of the century, with an account of the history of that grand
old foundation, and the struggle for appointments between the parent
house at Durham and the Scottish Government. Priors Akefield and
Drax are historical, and as the latter really did commission a body of
moss- troopers to divert an instalment of King James's ransom into his
own private coffers, I do not think I can have done him much injustice.
As the nunnery of St. Abbs has gone bodily into the sea, I have been
the less constrained by the inconvenient action of fact upon fiction.
And for the Hospital of St. Katharine's-by-the-Tower, its history