Ivanhoe

INTRODUCTION

1 (p. 3) Parnell’s Tale: The poetry that follows is from Thomas Parnell’s “A Fairy Tale, in the Ancient English Style” (1729; lines 97-99), slightly altered.

2 (p. 4) Men bless their stars and call it luxury: The line, slightly altered, is from Thomas Addison’s Cato (1713; 1.4.70).

3 (p. 5) “wonder that they please no more”: From Samuel Johnson’s “The Vanity of Human Wishes” (1749; line 263).

4 (p. 5) Logan’s tragedy of Runnamede: John Logan (1748-1788) was forced to give up his ministry in the Church of Scotland because of his success as a playwright. Runnamede, which concerns the events surrounding the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215, was first staged in 1783.

5 (p. 6) trick upon trick: Scott misquotes from Maria Edgeworth’s Tales of Fashionable Life (1802; 3.95).

6 (p. 7) Il Bondocani: Stories of II Bondocani, a robber chief featured in The Arabian Nights, were known in Europe in various forms beginning in the late Middle Ages.

7 (p. 11) Tring, Wing, and Ivanhoe … And glad he could escape so: The historical circumstance of the rhyme is disputed, as these villages (with their manors) never belonged to the Hampden family. What is certain is that they are located in Buckinghamshire, far away from the action of the novel.

8 (p. 12) the freedom of the rules: Scott’s first profession was the law, and this refers to the right Scottish lawyers enjoyed to appear in English courts.

DEDICATORY EPISTLE

1 (p. 13) Rev. Dr. Dryasdust, F.A.S.: A fictitious character of Scott’s invention who first appears in his 1816 novel The Antiquary, Dryasdust is also the addressee for the “Introductory Epistle” to The Fortunes of Nigel (1822) and is the “author” of frame matter in two other Scott novels. His name has become proverbial, signifying the pedantic, fact-laden practice of history.

2 (p. 14) a second M’Pherson: James Macpherson (1736-1796) was responsible for the greatest literary hoax of the eighteenth century. His translations (1760-1763) of “Ossian,” an ancient Scottish bard who was greeted as the Celtic Homer, were fakes, written by himself.

3 (p. 14) Mohawks and Iroquois: The Iroquois, of which the Mohawks are one tribe, fought with the English against the French in the seventeenth century, and against the Americans in the War of Independence. In Scott’s time, an analogy between Native American tribes and the Highland clans of Scotland was commonly drawn.

4 (p. 15) the Bruces and Wallaces of Caledonia: Robert (the) Bruce (1274-1329) was crowned king of Scotland in 1306; he defeated the English in a famous battle at Bannockburn in 1314. Sir William Wallace (1270-1305) was another storied champion of Scottish independence, captured and executed by the English in 1305.

5 (p. 15) Erictho … in corpore quærit: Erictho, the witch consulted by Roman general Pompey in Lucan’s Pharsalia (first century A.D.), resurrects a corpse from the battlefield: “Prying into the inmost parts cold in death, till she finds the substance of the stiffened lungs unwounded and still firm, and seeking the power of utterance in a corpse” (6.629-231), translated by J. D. Duff (London, 1928), p. 351. The “Scottish magician” to whom Erictho is likened is Scott himself.

6 (p. 16) valley ofJehoshaphat: Scott seems here to confuse two biblical references: the valley of dry bones in Ezekiel 37, and the valley of Jehoshaphat, referred to in Joel 3:12.

7 (p. 17) Dr. Henry … Mr. Strutt… Mr. Sharon Turner: Robert Henry, Joseph Strutt, and Sharon Turner were late-eighteenth-century historians whose work was vital to Scott’s reconstruction of the Middle Ages in Ivanhoe.

8 (p. 17) goblin tale: Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1765) is considered the first modern Gothic novel in English, inaugurating a genre whose popular appeal is undiminished today.

9 (p. 19) “well of English undefiled”: The quoted phrase is from Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (1596; 4.2.32). Spencer is referring to Chaucer’s English, not his own.

10 (p. 19) the unfortunate Chatterton: Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) was the so-called “marvelous boy” whose forgeries of fifteenth-century poems were uncovered by Horace Walpole—which prompted his early suicide. Chatterton afterward became an icon of the Romantic movement.

11 (p. 19) “eyes, hands, organs, dimensions … same winter and summer”: These passages are near-quotations from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (act 3, scene 1).

12 (p. 21) Ingulphus … Geoffrey de Vinsauf: Ingulphus’s twelfth-century “History of Croyland” (not Croyden) is now thought to be a forgery. Similarly, Geoffrey de Vinsauff, a poet supposed to have accompanied Richard I on the Third Crusade, is no longer thought to be the author of the account of Richard alluded to here by Scott. He inherited the mistakes from Robert Henry’s The History of Great Britain (1771-1785).

13 (p. 21) the gallant Froissart: Fourteenth-century French poet and historian Jean Froissart provided romantic accounts of the age of chivalry in his Chronicles of England, France, and Spain. That work, which Scott read in the 1523-1535 translation by Lord Berners, had great influence on the writing of Ivanhoe.

14 (p. 22) Sir Arthur Wardour: Wardour is a Tory antiquarian in Scott’s The Antiquary (1816). The manuscript referred to is thus also fictitious.

15 (p. 22) the Bannatyne MS., the Auchinleck MS.: Scott refers to poetic manuscripts dating from the sixteenth and fourteenth centuries, respectively. The Auchinleck manuscript contains a fragment of the anonymous romance Richard Coeur de Lion, an important source for Ivanhoe.

16 (p. 22) Robin of Redesdale: This is the popular name given to the prehistoric image of a hunter carved into stone in a Northumberland field. In the late eighteenth century, the landowner was so annoyed by trespassing tourists that he blew up the stone.

17 (pp. 22-23) Gath … Arthur’s Oven: With “Tell this not in Gath,” Scott quotes the Bible, 2 Samuel 1:20, where. David orders that news of Saul’s death not be broadcast among the Philistines; the phrase is used colloquially to mean keeping something secret. Arthur’s Oven was an ancient dome-shaped building thought to mark the northern edge of the Roman occupation of Britain. It was destroyed by the local landowner in 1743 and its stones used to repair a dam. The reference to King Arthur is to the site of his last battle, in nearby Camelon (Camlann).

CHAPTER I

1 (p. 27) epigraph: The lines are from Alexander Pope’s translation of the Odyssey (1725; 14.453-456), slightly altered. The passage refers to the return of Odysseus, which is implicitly compared to Ivanhoe’s return from the Holy Land.

2 (p. 33) “A devil draw … confound the ranger of the forest”: [Author’s note] The Ranger of the Forest. A most sensible grievance of those aggrieved times were the Forest Laws. These oppressive enactments were the produce of the Norman Conquest, for the Saxon laws of the chase were mild and humane; while those of William, enthusiastically attached to the exercise and its rights, were to the last degree tyrannical. The formation of the New Forest bears evidence to his passion for hunting, where he reduced many a happy village to the condition of that one commemorated by my friend, Mr. William Stewart Rose—

The disabling dogs, which might be necessary for keeping flocks and herds from running at the deer, was called lawing, and was in general use. The Charter of the Forest, designed to lessen those evils, declares that inquisition, or view, for lawing dogs shall be made every third year, and shall be then done by the view and testimony of lawful men, not otherwise; and they whose dogs shall be then found unlawed shall give three shillings for mercy; and for the future no man’s ox shall be taken for lawing. Such lawing also shall be done by the assize commonly used, and which is, that three claws shall be cut off without the ball of the right foot. See on this subject the Historical Essay on the Magna Charta of King John (a most beautiful volume), by Richard Thomson.

3 (p. 35) King Oberon: Oberon is the fairy king in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but Wamba is certainly referring to a text more contemporary (although still anachronistic) to the setting of Ivanhoe, namely Huon of Bordeaux, a thirteenth-century romance.

CHAPTER II

1 (p. 35) epigraph: The lines are from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales: the “General Prologue,” I:165-172.

2 (pp. 38-39) natives of some distant Eastern country: [Author’s note] Negro Slaves. The severe accuracy of some critics has objected to the complexion of the slaves of Brian de Bois-Guilbert, as being totally out of costume and propriety. I remember the same objection being made to a set of sable functionaries whom my friend, Mat Lewis, introduced as the guards and mischief-doing satellites of the wicked Baron in his Castle Spectre. Mat treated the objection with great contempt, and averred in reply, that he made the slaves black in order to obtain a striking effect of contrast, and that, could he have derived a similar advantage from making his heroine blue, blue she should have been.

I do not pretend to plead the immunities of my order so highly as this; but neither will I allow that the author of a modern antique romance is obliged to confine himself to the introduction of those manners only which can be proved to have absolutely existed in the times he is depicting, so that he restrain himself to such as are plausible and natural, and contain no obvious anachronism. In this point of view, what can be more natural than that the Templars, who, we know, copied closely the luxuries of the Asiatic warriors with whom they fought, should use the service of the enslaved Africans whom the fate of war transferred to new masters? I am sure, if there are no precise proofs of their having done so, there is nothing, on the other hand, that can entitle us positively to conclude that they never did. Besides, there is an instance in romance.

John of Rampayne, an excellent juggler and minstrel, undertook to effect the escape of one Audulf de Bracy, by presenting himself in disguise at the court of the king, where he was confined. For this purpose, he stained “his hair and his whole body entirely as black as jet, so that nothing was white but his teeth,” and succeeded in imposing himself on the king as an Ethiopian minstrel. He effected, by stratagem, the escape of the prisoner. Negroes, therefore, must have been known in England in the dark ages.^gw

3 (p. 40) covereth a multitude of sins: See the Bible, 1 Peter 4:8.

4 (p. 43) Knights Templars: The order, founded in 1118 during the Crusades, takes its name from the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, where the knights were headquartered. Their initial mission was to protect Christian pilgrims on their journeys to the Holy Land, but with the blessing of the pope, the order quickly spread throughout western Europe, gaining enormous wealth and political influence.

5 (p. 44) Hereward… Heptarchy: The Anglo-Saxon hero Hereward’s resistance to William the Conqueror significantly postdates the demise of the Heptarchy, the name given to the seven original Anglo-Saxon kingdoms before the Danish invasions beginning in the seventh century.

6 (p. 45) houris of old Mahound’s paradise: “Mahound” is a derogatory variation on “Muhammad”; the Prior is referring to a commonly held Western belief that the Koran promises virgins in paradise to the “blessed” who die in the name of Islam.

CHAPTER III

1 (p. 48) epigraph: The lines are from James Thomson’s long poem Liberty (1735-1736; 4.668-670).

2 (p. 52) “I might even have made him one of my warders”: [Author’s note] Cnichts. The original has cnichts, by which the Saxons seem to have designated a class of military attendants, sometimes free, sometimes bondsmen, but always ranking above an ordinary domestic, whether in the royal household or in those of the aldermen and thanes. But the term cnicht, now spelt knight, having been received into the English language as equivalent to the Norman word chevalier, I have avoided using it in its more ancient sense, to prevent confusion.—L. T.

3 (p. 54) the most odiferous pigments: [Author’s note] Morat and Pigment. These were drinks used by the Saxons, as we are informed by Mr. Turner. Morat was made of honey flavoured with the juice of mulberries; pigment was a sweet and rich liquor, composed of wine highly spiced, and sweetened also with honey; the other liquors need no explanation.—L. T.

CHAPTER IV

1 (p. 55) epigraph: The lines, slightly altered, are from Pope’s translation (1725-1726; 20.314-317, 322-324).

2 (p. 56) the horns of the altar: See the Bible, Psalms 118:27.

3 (p. 61) a truce with Saladin: Saladin was the Western name given to the Sultan of Egypt and Syria whose attack on Christian Jerusalem in 1187 prompted the Third Crusade (1189-1192), in which Richard I participated. After mixed success, and never reaching Jerusalem itself, Richard negotiated a truce with Saladin in 1192.

CHAPTER V

1 (p. 62) epigraph: The quotation is from Shylock’s famous speech from The Merchant of Venice (act 3, scene 1). Scott borrowed much from Shakespeare, most notably the stagy, pseudo-medieval language spoken by the characters in Ivanhoe. With the choice of this epigraph, he explicitly holds up Shylock as his model for Isaac.

2 . (p. 65) “all the babble of the fabulous Sir Tristrem: [Author’s note] Sir Tristrem. There was no language which the Normans more formally separated from that of common life than the terms of the chase. The objects of their pursuit, whether bird or animal, changed their name each year, and there were a hundred conventional terms to be ignorant of which was to be without one of the distinguishing marks of a gentleman. The reader may consult Dame Juliana Berners’s book on the subject. The origin of this science was imputed to the celebrated Sir Tristrem, famous for his tragic intrigue with the beautiful Ysolte. As the Normans reserved the amusement of hunting strictly to themselves, the terms of this formal jargon were all taken from the French language.

3 (p. 65) Northallerton … the Holy Standard: The English defeated the Scots in a famous battle on Cowton Moor, near Northallerton, in 1138, at which the English carried the banners of Saints Peter, John, and Wilfred.

4 (p. 66) Knights Hospitallers: A militant order of monks founded in 1120 to superintend the Christian Hospital in Jerusalem. Their importance as a military force grew with the Crusades, and by the late twelfth century they were the Knights Templars’ principal rivals.

5 (p. 66) St. John-de-Acre: A strategically important port in northern Israel taken by Saladin in 1187, St. John-de-Acre was recaptured by the Crusaders four years later. The legend of a victory tournament began with the romance Richard Coeur de Lion (see note 15 to the Dedicatory Epistle, above), which is also Scott’s source for significant details of the Ashby tournament in Ivanhoe.

CHAPTER VI

1 (p. 62) epigraph: The lines are from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (act 1, scene 3).

2 (p. 76) misery of Lazarus: It would be unlikely for a medieval Jew to refer to the New Testament (Luke 16:20-21), the parable of the poor man at the rich man’s gate. A further irony is that Isaac more resembles the rich man in the story than the beggar.

3 (p. 79) the Jews of this period: Scott significantly underplays the extent of persecution of the Jews at this time. Brought to England with the Normans, they were given royal protection by the Conqueror in return for enormous loans, but their situation in England deteriorated significantly under Richard I, whose coronation day itself was marred by pogroms. Isaac and Rebecca’s departure at the end of the novel is an implicit signal of how intolerable the combination of extortion and violence had become for the Jews in twelfth-century England. They were officially expelled in 1290 by Edward I and not readmitted until 1655.

4 (p. 80) the host of the Pharoah: Isaac recalls the biblical account of the fate of Pharoah’s army at the crossing of the Red Sea in Exodus 14:25.

CHAPTER VII

1 (p. 83) epigraph: The lines are from John Dryden’s medievalist romance Palamon and Arcite; or, The Knight’s Tale (1699; 3.453—463).

2 (p. 92) Bride of the Canticles: Solomon is the ”wise king” whose Temple in Jerusalem Richard has failed to recapture. He is also the supposed author of the biblical Song of Songs, also known as the Canticle of Canticles, a set of poems famous for their lustrous evocation of female beauty.

3 (p. 94) William Rufus: William II of England went hunting in the New Forest in 1100 and never returned. He was shot, presumably by his companion Walter Tyrrell (who fled abroad), but whether by design or accident was never determined.

CHAPTER VIII

1 (p. 96) epigraph: The lines are from Dryden’s Palamon and Arcite (3.580-586).

2 (p. 99) The knights are dust … with the saints, we trust: [Author’s note] Lines from Coleridge. These lines are part of an unpublished poem by Coleridge, whose muse so often tantalises with fragments which indicate her powers, while the manner in which she flings them from her betrays her caprice, yet whose unfinished sketches display more talent than the laboured master-pieces of others.

3 (p. 104) the arrogance and wealth that finally occasioned their suppression: In the early fourteenth century, Rome turned against the Knights Templars, charging the order with immorality and heresy, though in reality taking aim at their wealth and power. The order’s demise was sealed by a papal bull in 1312, and by the burning of the Grand Master in 1314.

CHAPTER IX

1 (p. 107) epigraph: The source for these slightly altered lines—Dryden’s The Flower and the Leaf; or, The Lady in the Arbor: A Vision (1700; lines 175-177, 184—189)—is another poem in which Dryden, like Scott after him, revisits the Middle Ages.

2 (p. 112) Og the King of Bashan, and Sihon, King of the Amorites: In the biblical accounts (Numbers 21 and 32:33), these two Canaanite kings were killed in battle against the Israelites.

CHAPTER X

1 (p. 116) epigraph: The lines are from Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta (c.1592; act 2, scene 1).

CHAPTER XI

1 (p. 126) epigraph: The lines are from Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona (act 4, scene 1).

2 (p. 129) the stream… in the wilderness: See the Bible, Exodus 15:23-27 and 17:6.

CHAPTER XII

1 (p. 133) epigraph: The poetry, from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (lines 2599-2610), is taken from ”The Knight’s Tale,” the story of the battle between the knights Palamon and Arcite, from which Scott drew significant details for his account of the Ashby tournament.

CHAPTER XIII

1 (p. 144) epigraph: Misattributed to Homer’s Iliad, the passage nevertheless is strongly reminiscent of Pope’s translation and of the events of book 24, which describe the funeral games following the death of Patroclus. The actual source is a far more obscure eighteenth-century text, William Wilkie’s The Epigoniad 5.141-146.

2 (p. 145) attractions and antipathies: Pliny’s Natural History, an ancient text well known in the Middle Ages, explains specific natural phenomena, such as magnetic force, according to a principle of inherent attraction or antipathy between material objects.

3 (p. 146) myrrh … camphire: See the Bible, Song of Songs 1:13-14.

CHAPTER XIV

1 (p. 153) epigraph: The lines are from Thomas Warton’s ”Ode for the New Year, 1787” (lines 1-6).

2 (p. 159) a Saxon would have been held nidering: [Author’s note] Nidering. There was nothing accounted so ignominious among the Saxons as to merit this disgraceful epithet. Even William the Conqueror, hated as he was by them, continued to draw a considerable army of Anglo-Saxons to his standard by threatening to stigmatise those who staid at home as nidering. Bartholinus, I think, mentions a similar phrase which had like influence on the Danes.—L. T.

CHAPTER XV

1 (p. 162) epigraph: The lines are from Joanna Baillie’s Count Basil: A Tragedy (1798; act 2, scene 3). Scott, a great promoter of Bail-lie’s plays, once likened her to Shakespeare.

CHAPTER XVI

1 (p. 167) epigraph: The lines are from Thomas Parnell’s The Hermit (1729; lines 1-6).

2 . (p. 174) Shadrach … King of the Saracens: The king here is Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon; in the Bible, the brothers Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego walk untouched through the fire in Daniel 3. The English came to apply the term “Saracen” to any Muslim rather than specifically to the tribes of the Arabian Peninsula, its original Greek designation.

3 (p. 177) scissors … scimitar of Goliath: In the biblical account, Delilah emasculates Samson by cutting off his hair while he slept (Judges 16:19); Jael nails a tent-peg through the head of Sisera, also sleeping (Judges 4:21); and Goliath’s scimitar fails to defend him from a slingshot to the head delivered by the boy David (1 Samuel 17:40-51).

4 (p. 178) make the harp-strings tinkle: [Author’s note] The Jolly Hermit. All readers, however slightly acquainted with black letter, must recognise in the clerk of Copmanhurst, Friar Tuck, the buxom confessor of Robin Hood’s gang, the curtal friar of Fountain’s Abbey.

CHAPTER XVII

1 (p. 178) epigraph: The lines, slightly altered, are from Thomas Warton’s “Inscription in a Hermitage at Ansley Hall in Warwickshire” (1777; lines 25—30).

2 (p. 179) a ballad in the vulgar English: [Author’s note] Minstrelsy. The realm of France, it is well known, was divided betwixt the Norman and Teutonic race, who spoke the language in which the word “yes” is pronounced as oui, and the inhabitants of the southern regions, whose speech, bearing some affinity to the Italian, pronounced the same word oc. The poets of the former race were called minstrels, and their poems lays; those of the latter were termed troubadours, and their compositions called sirventes and other names. Richard, a professed admirer of the joyous science in all its branches, could imitate either the minstrel or troubadour. It is less likely that he should have been able to compose or sing an English ballad; yet so much do we wish to assimilate him of the Lion Heart to the land of the warriors whom he led, that the anachronism, if there be one, may readily be forgiven.

3 (p. 180) Iconium’s turban’d soldan fell: Iconium is the medieval name for the Turkish city of Konya, which fell to the advancing Crusaders in 1190.

4 (p. 181) a sort of derry-down chorus: [Author’s note] Derry-down Chorus. It may be proper to remind the reader that the chorus of “derry-down” is supposed to be as ancient, not only as the times of the Heptarchy, but as those of the Druids, and to have furnished the chorus to the hymns of those venerable persons when they went to the wood to gather mistletoe.

5 (p. 183) old Ariosto: Author of the romance Orlando Furioso (1516), Ludovico Ariosto was considered in Scott’s time as the modern Virgil, and was widely read and quoted. In his “Essay on Romance” (1822) Scott writes approvingly of Ariosto’s digressive narrative technique, which he alludes to and imitates here.

CHAPTER XVIII

1 (p. 183) epigraph: This epigraph begins a sequence of invented verse passages authored by Scott himself to serve as epigraphs in Ivanhoe. Scott was in a hurry to finish the novel, needing the money from its sales to purchase a commission in the army for his son. There is no better evidence of his haste than his choosing to invent epigraphs rather than go to the trouble of remembering and locating an appropriate verse or passage.

2 (p. 190) Hotspur: Scott refers to the scene in Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV in which Hotspur is frustrated by a reluctant and sluggish ally, Archbishop Scroop (act 3, scene 1).

CHAPTER XIX

1 (p. 191) epigraph: The lines are from Baillie’s Orra: A Tragedy (1812; act 3, scene 1).

CHAPTER XX

1 (p. 198) epigraph: The lines are written by Scott.

2 (p. 198) Watling Street: This is the English name for the old Roman road that runs south-north from Dover through London to the northern border.

3 (p. 200) De profundis clamavi: See the Bible, Psalm 130:1, “Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord” (King James Version; henceforth, KJV).

CHAPTER XXI

1 (p. 205) epigraph: The lines are from Baillie’s Orra (act 3, scene 2).

2 (p. 209) Tosti … the tale: Tosti was King Harold II’s disgruntled brother who, with encouragement from William of Normandy, allied himself to an invading Norwegian force and launched an attack on the King’s forces at Stamford Bridge near York in September 1066. The Norwegians were defeated, and Tosti was killed. Harold was celebrating the victory when word came of the Norman invasion in the south. Harold immediately marched his army to meet William but was defeated and shot dead with an arrow in the eye on October 14 at the Battle of Hastings.

3 (p. 210) the bloody streams of the Derwent: [Author’s note] Battle of Stamford. A great topographical blunder occurred here in former editions. The bloody battle alluded to in the text, fought and won by King Harold, over his brother the rebellious Tosti, and an auxiliary force of Danes or Norsemen, was said, in the text and a corresponding note, to have taken place at Stamford, in Leicestershire [Lincolnshire], and upon the river Welland. This is a mistake into which the Author has been led by trusting to his memory, and so confounding two places of the same name. The Stamford, Strangford, or Staneford at which the battle really was fought is a ford upon the river Derwent, at the distance of about seven [nine] miles from York, and situated in that large and opulent county. A long wooden bridge over the Derwent, the site of which, with one remaining buttress, is still shown to the curious traveller, was furiously contested. One Norwegian long defended it by his single arm, and was at length pierced with a spear thrust through the planks of the bridge from a boat beneath.

The neighbourhood of Stamford, on the Derwent, contains some memorials of the battle. Horse-shoes, swords, and the heads of halberds, or bills, are often found there; one place is called the “Danes’ well,” another the “Battle flats.” From a tradition that the weapon with which the Norwegian champion was slain resembled a pear, or, as others say, that the trough or boat in which the soldier floated under the bridge to strike the blow had such a shape, the country people usually begin a great market which is held at Stamford with an entertainment called the Pear-pie feast, which, after all, may be a corruption of the Spear-pie feast. For more particulars, Drake’s History of York may be referred to. The Author’s mistake was pointed out to him, in the most obliging manner, by Robert Belt, Esq., of Bossal House. The battle was fought in 1066.

4 (p. 213) the destined knight: Possibly a reference to a scene in Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (22.18-23) where Astolfo blows his horn to warn the inhabitants of an enchanted castle, which then disappears into mist.

CHAPTER XXII

1 (p. 213) epigraph: The lines are from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (act 2, scene 8).

2 (p. 216) the keys … to bind and to loose: The reference is to the keys to the kingdom of heaven, as noted in the Bible, Matthew 16:19.

3 (p. 217) “above that glowing charcoal”: [Author’s note] Torture. This horrid species of torture may remind the reader of that to which the Spaniards subjected Guatemozin, in order to extort a discovery of his concealed wealth. But, in fact, an instance of similar barbarity is to be found nearer home, and occurs in the annals of Queen Mary’s time, containing so many other examples of atrocity. Every reader must recollect that, after the fall of the Catholic Church, and the Presbyterian Church government had been established by law, the rank, and especially the wealth, of the bishops, abbots, priors, and so forth, were no longer vested in ecclesiastics, but in lay impropriators of the church revenues, or, as the Scottish lawyers called them, titulars of the temporalities of the benefice, though having no claim to the spiritual character of their predecessors in office.

Of these laymen who were thus invested with ecclesiastical revenues, some were men of high birth and rank, like the famous Lord James Stuart, the prior of St. Andrews, who did not fail to keep for their own use the rents, lands, and revenues of the church. But if, on the other hand, the titulars were men of inferior importance, who had been inducted into the office by the interest of some powerful persons, it was generally understood that the new abbot should grant for his patron’s benefit such leases and conveyances of the church lands and tithes as might afford their protector the lion’s share of the booty. This was the origin of those who were wittily termed Tulchan Bishops,^gx being a sort of imaginary prelate, whose image was set up to enable his patron and principal to plunder the benefice under his name.

There were other cases, however, in which men who had got grants of these secularised benefices were desirous of retaining them for their own use, without having the influence sufficient to establish their purpose; and these became frequently unable to protect themselves, however unwilling to submit to the exactions of the feudal tyrant of the district.

Bannatyne, secretary to John Knox, recounts a singular course of oppression practised on one of those titular abbots by the Earl of Cassilis, in Ayrshire, whose extent of feudal influence was so wide that he was usually termed the King of Carrick. We give the fact as it occurs in Bannatyne’s Journal [pp. 55—67], only premising that the Journalist held his master’s opinions, both with respect to the Earl of Cassilis as an opposer of the king’s party, and as being a detester of the practice of granting church revenues to titulars, instead of their being devoted to pious uses, such as the support of the clergy, expense of schools, and the relief of the national poor. He mingles in the narrative, therefore, a well-deserved feeling of execration against the tyrant who employed the torture, with a tone of ridicule towards the patient, as if, after all, it had not been ill-bestowed on such an equivocal and amphibious character as a titular abbot. He entitles his narrative

THE EARL OF CASSILIS’ TYRANNY AGAINST A QUICK

(i.e. LIVING) MAN

“Master Allan Stewart, friend to Captain James Stewart of Cardonall, by means of the Queen’s corrupted court, obtained the abbacy of Crossraguel. The said Earl, thinking himself greater than any king in those quarters, determined to have that whole benefice (as he hath divers others) to pay at his pleasure; and because he could not find sic security as his insatiable appetite required, this shift was devised. The said Mr. Allan, being in company with the Laird of Bargany, was, by the said Earl and his friends, enticed to leave the safeguard which he had with the said Laird, and come to make good cheer with the said Earl. The simplicity of the imprudent man was suddenly abused; and so he passed his time with them certain days, which he did in Maybole with Thomas Kennedie, uncle to the said Earl; after which the said Mr. Allan passed, with quiet company, to visit the place and bounds of Crossraguel, of which the said Earl being surely advertised, determined to put in practice the tyranny which long before he had conceived. And so, as king of the country, apprehended the said Mr. Allan, and carried him to the house of Dunure, where for a season he was honourably treated (gif a prisoner can think any entertainment pleasing); but after that certain days were spent, and that the Earl could not obtain the feus of Crossraguel according to his awin appetite, he determined to prove gif a collation could work that which neither dinner nor supper could do for a long time. And so the said Mr. Allan was carried to a secret chamber; with him passed the honourable Earl, his worshipful brother, and such as were appointed to be servants at that banquet. In the chamber there was a grit iron chimlay, under it a fire; other grit provision was not seen. The first course was—‘My Lord Abbot,’ said the Earl, ‘it will please you confess here, that with your own consent you remain in my company, because ye durst not commit yourself to the hands of others.’ The Abbot answered, ‘Would you, my lord, that I should make a manifest lie for your pleasure? The truth is, my lord, it is against my will that I am here; neither yet have I any pleasure in your company.’ ‘But ye shall remain with me at this time,’ said the Earl. ‘I am not able to resist your will and pleasure,’ said the Abbot, ‘in this place.’ ‘Ye must then obey me,’ said the Earl; and with that were presented unto him certain letters to subscribe, amongst which there was a five year tack, and a nineteen year tack, and a charter of feu of all the lands of Crossraguel, with all the clauses necessary for the Earl to haste him to hell. For gif adultery, sacrilege, oppression, barbarous cruelty, and theft heaped upon theft, deserve hell, the great King of Carrick can no more escape hell for ever than the imprudent Abbot escaped the fire for a season as follows.

“After that the Earl spied repugnance, and saw that he could not come to his purpose by fair means, he commanded his cooks to prepare the banquet: and so first they flayed the sheep, that is, they took off the Abbot’s cloathes even to his skin, and next they bound him to the chimney—his legs to the one end and his arms to the other; and so they began to beet the fire sometimes to his buttocks, sometimes to his legs, sometimes to his shoulders and arms; and that the roast should not burn, but that it might rest in soppe, they spared not flambing with oil (Lord, look thou to sic cruelty!) And that the crying of the miserable man should not be heard, they closed his mouth that the voice might be stopped. It may be suspected that some practisiane [partisan] of the King’s [Darnley‘s] murder was there. In that torment they held the poor man, till that oftimes he cried for God’s sake to dispatch him; for he had as meikle gold in his awin purse as would buy powder enough to shorten his pain. The famous King of Carrick and his cooks perceiving the roast to be aneuch, commanded it to be tane fra the fire, and the Earl himself began the grace in this manner: ‘Benedicte Jesus Maria, you are the most obstinate man that ever I saw; gif I had known that ye had been so stubborn, I would not for a thousand crowns have handled you so; I never did so to man before you.’ And yet he returned to the same practice within two days, and ceased not till that he obtained his formest purpose, that is, that he had got all his pieces subscryvit alsweill as ane half-roasted hand could do it. The Earl thinking himself sure enough so long as he had the half-roasted Abbot in his awin keeping, and yet being ashamed of his presence by reason of his former cruelty, left the place of Dunure in the hands of certain of his servants, and the half-roasted Abbot to be kept there as prisoner. The Laird of Bargany, out of whose company the said Abbot was enticed, understanding (not the extremity), but the retaining of the man, sent to the court, and raised letters of deliverance of the person of the man according to the order, which being disobeyed, the said Earl for his contempt was denounced rebel, and put to the horne. But yet hope was there none, neither to the afflicted to be delivered, neither yet to the purchaser [i.e. procurer] of the letters to obtain any comfort thereby; for in that time God was despised, and the lawful authority was contemned in Scotland, in hope of the sudden return and regiment of that cruel murderer of her awin husband, of whose lords the said Earl was called one; and yet, oftener than once, he was solemnly sworn to the King and to his Regent.”

The Journalist then recites the complaint of the misused Allan Stewart, Commendator of Crossraguel, to the Regent and Privy Council, averring his having been carried, partly by flattery, partly by force, to the black vault of Dunure, a strong fortalice, built on a rock overhanging the Irish Channel, where its ruins are still visible. Here he stated he had been required to execute leases and conveyances of the whole churches and parsonages belonging to the Abbey of Crossraguel, which he utterly refused as an unreasonable demand, and the more so that he had already conveyed them to John Stewart of Cardonall, by whose interest he had been made Commendator. The complainant proceeds to state that he was, after many menaces, stript, bound, and his limbs exposed to fire in the manner already described, till, compelled by excess of agony, he subscribed the charter and leases presented to him, of the contents of which he was totally ignorant. A few days afterwards, being again required to execute a ratification of these deeds before a notary and witnesses, and refusing to do so, he was once more subjected to the same torture, until his agony was so excessive that he exclaimed, “Fy on you, why do you not strike your whingers into me, or blow me up with a barrel of powder, rather than torture me thus unmercifully?” upon which the Earl commanded Alexander Richard, one of his attendants, to stop the patient’s mouth with a napkin, which was done accordingly. Thus he was once more compelled to submit to their tyranny. The petition concluded with stating that the Earl, under pretence of the deeds thus iniquitously obtained, had taken possession of the whole place and living of Crossraguel, and enjoyed the profits thereof for three years.

The doom of the Regent and Council shows singularly the total interruption of justice at this calamitous period, even in the most clamant cases of oppression. The Council declined interference with the course of the ordinary justice of the county (which was completely under the said Earl of Cassilis’s control), and only enacted that he should forbear molestation of the unfortunate Commendator, under the surety of two thousand pounds Scots. The Earl was appointed also to keep the peace towards the celebrated George Buchanan, who had a pension out of the same abbacy, to a similar extent, and under the like penalty.

The consequences are thus described by the Journalist already quoted:—

“The said Laird of Bargany, perceiving that the ordinerie justice (the oppressed as said is) could neither help him nor yet the afflicted, applied his mind to the next remedy, and in the end, by his servants, took the house of Dunure, where the poor Abbot was kept prisoner. The bruit flew fra Carrick to Galloway, and so suddenly assembled herd and hyre-man that pertained to the band of the Kennedies; and so within a few hours was the house of Dunure environed again. The Master of Cassilis was the frackast, and would not stay, but in his heat would lay fire to the dungeon, with no small boasting that all enemies within the house should die.

“He was required and admonished by those that were within to be more moderate, and not to hazard himself so foolishly. But no admonition would help, till that the wind of an hacquebute blasted his shoulder, and then ceased he from further pursuit in fury. The Laird of Bargany had before purchest [obtained] of the authorities, letters, charging all faithfull subjects to the King’s Majesty to assist him against that cruel tyrant and man-sworn traitor, the Earl of Cassilis; which letters, with his private writings, he published, and shortly found sic concurrence of Kyle and Cunynghame with his other friends, that the Carrick company drew back fra the house; and so the other approached, furnished the house with more men, delivered the said Mr. Allan, and carried him to Ayr, where, publicly at the market cross of the said town, he declared how cruelly he was entreated, and how the murdered King suffered not sic torment as he did, that only excepted he escaped the death; and, therefore, publicly did revoke all things that were done in that extremity, and especially he revoked the subscription of the three writings, to wit, of a fiyve yeir tak and nineteen yeir tak, and of a charter of feu. And so the house remained, and remains (till this day, the 7th of February 1571), in the custody of the said Laird of Bargany and of his servants. And so cruelty was disappointed of proffeit present, and shall be eternallie [punished], unless he earnestly repent. And this far for the cruelty committed, to give occasion unto others, and to such as hate the monstrous dealing of degenerate nobility, to look more diligently upon their behaviours, and to paint them forth unto the world, that they themselves may be ashamed of their own beastliness, and that the world may be advertised and admonished to abhor, detest, and avoid the company of all sic tyrants, who are not worthy of the society of men, but ought to be sent suddenly to the devil, with whom they must burn without end, for their contempt of God, and cruelty committed against his creatures. Let Cassilis and his brother be the first to be the example unto others. Amen. Amen.”

This extract has been somewhat amended or modernised in orthography, to render it more intelligible to the general reader. I have to add, that the Kennedies of Bargany, who interfered in behalf of the oppressed Abbot, were themselves a younger branch of the Cassilis family, but held different politics, and were powerful enough in this and other instances to bid them defiance.

The ultimate issue of this affair does not appear; but as the house of Cassilis are still in possession of the greater part of the feus and leases which belonged to Crossraguel Abbey, it is probable the talons of the King of Carrick were strong enough, in those disorderly times, to retain the prey which they had so mercilessly fixed upon.

I may also add, that it appears by some papers in my possession that the officers or country keepers on the Border were accustomed to torment their prisoners by binding them to the iron bars of their chimneys to extort confession.

CHAPTER XXIII

1 (p. 221) epigraph: The lines are from Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona (act 5, scene 4) .

2 (p. 227) the industrious Henry: See “Dedicatory Epistle,” endnote 7.

CHAPTER XXIV

1 (p. 229) epigraph: The text is from John Home’s Douglas (1756; line 305).

2 (p. 234) gentle Ecclesiastica: Bois-Guilbert here associates Rebecca with the Book of Wisdom from the Apochrypha, also called Ecclesiasticus, which contains lengthy disquisitions on female virtue and moral conduct.

CHAPTER XXV

1 (p. 239) epigraph: The lines are from Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer (1773; 4.680).

CHAPTER XXVI

1 (p. 247) epigraph: The lines are written by Scott himself.

CHAPTER XXVII

1 (p. 254) epigraph: The lines are from George Crabbe’s “The Hall of Justice” (1807; lines 5-8, 27-32) .

2 (p. 269) touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets nought of evil: See the Bible, 1 Chronicles 16:22.

3 (p. 269) “They bring forward mantelets and pavisses”: [Author’s note] Mantelets and Pavisses. Mantelets were temporary and movable defences formed of planks, under cover of which the assailants advanced to the attack of fortified places of old. Pavisses were a species of large shields covering the whole person, employed on the same occasions.

4 (p. 270) “Look that the crossbowmen lack not bolts”: [Author’s note] Bolts and Shafts. The bolt was the arrow peculiarly fitted to the cross-bow, as that of the long-bow was called a shaft. Hence the English proverb—“I will either make a shaft or bolt of it,” signifying a determination to make one use or other of the thing spoken of.

CHAPTER XXVIII

1 (p. 271) epigraph: The lines are written by Scott himself.

2 (p. 281 ) Juvenal’s Tenth Satire: Better known to Scott’s readers in the form of Samuel Johnson’s imitation, “The Vanity of Human Wishes,” in which the rich traveler discovers that “Nor light nor darkness bring his pain relief / One shows the plunder, and one hides the thief” (lines 43-44).

3 (p. 283) “Here be two arblasts … with windlaces and quarrells”: [Author’s note] Arblast, etc. The arblast was a cross-bow, the wind-lace the machine used in bending that weapon, and the quarrell, so called from its square or diamond-shaped head, was the bolt adapted to it.

CHAPTER XXIX

1 (p. 284) epigraph: The lines are from Friedrich Schiller’s Die Jungfrau von Orleans (The Maid of Orleans; 1801; act 5, scene 11 ); the translation is by Scott.

2 (p. 286) The quiver … the shouting: The reference is to the Bible, Job 39:23-25.

3 (p. 287) “Something resembling a bar of iron, and a padlock painted blue on the black shield”: [Author’s note] Heraldry. The Author has been here upbraided with false heraldry, as having charged metal upon metal. It should be remembered, however, that heraldry had only its first rude origin during the crusades, and that all the minutiae of its fantastic science were the work of time, and introduced at a much later period. Those who think otherwise must suppose that the Goddess of Armoirers, like the Goddess of Arms, sprung into the world completely equipped in all the gaudy trappings of the department she presides over. In corroboration of what is above stated, it may be observed, that the arms which were assumed by Godfrey of Boulogne himself, after the conquest of Jerusalem, was a cross counter potent cantoned with four little crosses or upon a field azure, displaying thus metal upon metal. The heralds have tried to explain this undeniable fact in different modes; but Ferne gallantly contends that a prince of Godfrey’s qualities should not be bound by the ordinary rules. The Scottish Nisbet and the same Feme insist that the chiefs of the crusade must have assigned to Godfrey this extraordinary and unwonted coat-of-arms in order to induce those who should behold them to make inquiries; and hence give them the name of arma inquirenda. But with reverence to these grave authorities, it seems unlikely that the assembled princes of Europe should have adjudged to Godfrey a coat armorial so much contrary to the general rule, if such rule had then existed; at any rate, it proves that metal upon metal, now accounted a solecism in heraldry, was admitted in other cases similar to that in the text. See Ferne’s Blazon of Gentrie, p. 238; edition 1586. Nisbet’s Heraldry, vol. i. p. 113; second edition.

4 (p. 289) “close under the outer barrier of the barbican”: [Author’s note] Barriers. Every Gothic castle and city had, beyond the outer walls, a fortification composed of palisades, called the barriers, which were often the scene of severe skirmishes, as these must necessarily be carried before the walls themselves could be approached. Many of those valiant feats of arms which adorn the chivalrous pages of Froissart took place at the barriers of besieged places.

CHAPTER XXX

1 (p. 294) epigraph: The lines are written by Scott himself.

CHAPTER XXXI

1 (p. 303) epigraph: The lines are from Shakespeare’s Henry V (act 3, scene 1).

2 (p. 310) “… and instantly follow me”: [Author’s note] Incident from Grand Cyrus. The Author has some idea that this passage is imitated from the appearance of Philidaspes, before the divine Mandane, when the city of Babylon is on fire, and he proposes to carry her from the flames. But the theft, if there be one, would be rather too severely punished by the penance of searching for the original passage through the interminable volumes of the Grand Cyrus.

3 (pp. 314-315) Whet the bright steel … I also must perish: [Author’s note] Ulrica’s Death-Song. It will readily occur to the antiquary that these verses are intended to imitate the antique poetry of the Scalds—the minstrels of the old Scandinavians—the race, as the Laureate so happily terms them, “Stern to inflict, and stubborn to endure, / Who smiled in death.” The poetry of the Anglo-Saxons, after their civilisation and conversion, was of a different and softer character; but in the circumstances of Ulrica she may not be unnaturally supposed to return to the wild strains which animated her forefathers during the time of Paganism and untamed ferocity.

CHAPTER XXXII

1 (p. 316) epigraph: The lines were written by Scott himself; see chapter 18, note 1.

2 (p. 320) THEOW and ESNE … FOLKFREE and SACLESS: “Theow” and “Esne” refer to Gurth’s status as a serf, and “folkfree” and “sacless” to the freedom from serfdom now bestowed upon him by his master, Cedric. Scott borrowed the terms from a seventeenth-century text, Sir Henry Spelman’s Feuds and Tenures by Knightly Service (1641).

3 (p. 327) “I accept of no such presents, ” said the Knight: [Author’s note] Richard Cœur-de-Lion. The interchange of a cuff with the jolly priest is not entirely out of character with Richard I., if romances read him aright. In the very curious romance on the subject of his adventures in the Holy Land, and his return from thence, it is recorded how he exchanged a pugilistic favour of this nature while a prisoner in Germany. His opponent was the son of his principal warder, and was so imprudent as to give the challenge to this barter of buffets. The King stood forth like a true man, and received a blow which staggered him. In requital, having previously waxed his hand, a practice unknown, I believe, to the gentlemen of the modern fancy, he returned this box on the ear with such interest as to kill his antagonist on the spot. See in Ellis’s Specimens of English Romance, that of Cœur-de-Lion.

CHAPTER XXXIII

1 (p. 329) epigraph: The lines are from Shakespeare’s Coriolanus (act 1, scene 6).

2 (p. 331) morris-dancer: Here is another example of the historical freedoms Scott allowed himself in Ivanhoe. Like jousting tournaments, morris-dancing is anachronistic to the twelfth century; no records of it appear before the fifteenth century. That said, it is highly apropos to Scott’s themes, as traditional morris-dancing features the characters of Robin Hood, Maid Marian, and Friar Tuck.

3 (p. 332) “Father Aymer, Prior of the rich Abbey of Jorvaulx”: [Author’s note] Jorvaulx Abbey. This Cistercian abbey was situate in the pleasant valley of the river Jore, or Ure, in the North Riding of Yorkshire. It was erected in the year 1156, and was destroyed in 1537. For nearly three centuries, the ruins were left in a state nearly approaching to utter demolition; but at length they were traced out and cleared at the expense of Thomas Earl of Aylesbury, in the year 1807. The name of the abbey occurs in a variety of forms, such as Jorvaulx, Jervaux, Gerveux, Gervaulx, Jorvall, Jorevaux, etc. In Whitaker’s History of Richmondshire, vol. i., a ground-plan of the building is given, along with notices of the monuments of the old abbots and other dignitaries which are still preserved (Laing).

4 (p. 335) Ichabod! … my house!: Ichabod means “without glory.” See the Bible, 1 Samuel 4:21.

5 (p. 340) “Thou be’st a hedge-priest”: [Author’s note] Hedge-Priests. It is curious to observe, that in every state of society some sort of ghostly consolation is provided for the members of the community, though assembled for purposes diametrically opposite to religion. A gang of beggars have their patrico, and the banditti of the Apennines have among them persons acting as monks and priests, by whom they are confessed, and who perform mass before them. Unquestionably, such reverend persons, in such a society, must accommodate their manners and their morals to the community in which they live; and if they can occasionally obtain a degree of reverence for their supposed spiritual gifts, are, on most occasions, loaded with unmerciful ridicule, as possessing a character inconsistent with all around them.

Hence the fighting parson in the old play of Sir John Oldcastle, and the famous friar of Robin Hood’s band. Nor were such characters ideal. There exists a monition of the Bishop of Durham against irregular churchmen of this class, who associated themselves with Border robbers, and desecrated the holiest offices of the priestly function, by celebrating them for the benefit of thieves, robbers, and murderers, amongst ruins and in caverns of the earth, without regard to canonical form, and with torn and dirty attire, and maimed rites, altogether improper for the occasion.

CHAPTER XXXIV

1 (p. 342) epigraph: The lines are from Shakespeare’s King John (act 3, scene 3).

2 (p. 343) Ahithophel: Ahithophel was a co-conspirator with Absalom against his father, King David, in the Bible, 2 Samuel 15-17.

3 (p. 344) bloody … with speed: The quotation, slightly altered, is from Shakespeare’s Richard II (act 2, scene 3) .

4 (p. 348) Thomas-a-Becket … stained the steps of his own altar: The most notorious event of Henry II’s largely beneficent reign was the murder, at his suggestion, of his erstwhile friend Thomas à Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, in 1170. After Thomas’s elevation to sainthood three years later, Canterbury Cathedral, site of the killing, became a destination for pilgrims and is perhaps the most famous of England’s holy places. Waldemar Fitzurse, Prince John’s counselor in Ivanhoe, is a fictional son of one of Thomas’s murderers, Reginald Fitzurse.

5 (p. 348) Tracy, Morville, Brito: [Author’s note] Slayers of Becket. Reginald Fitzurse, William de Tracy, Hugh de Morville, and Richard Brito were the gentlemen of Henry the Second’s household who, instigated by some passionate expressions of their sovereign, slew the celebrated Thomas-a-Becket.

CHAPTER XXXV

1 (p. 350) epigraph: The lines are written by Scott himself.

2 (p. 351) “we visit the preceptories”: [Author’s note] Preceptories. The establishments of the Knights Templars were called preceptories, and the title of those who presided in the order was preceptor ; as the principal Knights of St. John were termed commanders, and their houses commanderies. But these terms were sometimes, it would seem, used indiscriminately.—Such an establishment formerly existed at Temple Newsam, in the West Riding, near Leeds (Laing) .

3 (p. 352) fiery furnace seven times heated: See the Bible, Daniel 3:19.

4 (p. 355) Ut leo semper feriatur: The Latin translates as “The lion must always be struck down.” [Author’s note follows] Ut Leo Semper Feriatur. In the ordinances of the Knights of the Temple, this phrase is repeated in a variety of forms, and occurs in almost every chapter, as if it were the signal-word of the order; which may account for its being so frequently put in the Grand Master’s mouth.

5 (p. 357) “Take to thee the brand of Phineas”: The Grand Master refers to a grisly incident in the Bible (Numbers 25:7-8) and a symbolic biblical indictment of interracial sex that is pertinent to the case of Rebecca and Bois-Guilbert. Phineas, on finding an Israelite soldier sleeping with a Midianite woman, slays them both with a single thrust of his spear.

6 (p. 360) the thrashing-floor: See Matthew 3:12.

7 (p. 360) Vinum … pulchritudine tua: The first phrase quotes the Bible, Psalm 104:15: “Wine that maketh glad the heart of man.” The second derives from Psalm 45:11, “So shall the king greatly desire thy beauty” (KJV).

CHAPTER XXXVI

1 (p. 363) epigraph: The lines are written by Scott himself.

CHAPTER XXXVII

1 (p. 371) epigraph: The lines are written by Scott himself.

2 (p. 383) trial by combat: In a recent article, Gary Dyer has uncovered a contemporary context for Scott’s evocation of this Norman law, which allows the accused to defend themselves, if proxy by necessary, in single combat; the belief was that God would justly decide the outcome of the contest, revealing the truth of the case in a manner beyond human divination. In 1817 Britons were amazed to learn that the law of combat was still on the books when Abraham Thornton, accused of the murder of Mary Ashford, invoked his defendant’s chivalric right. The case against Thornton broke down in confusion, and the trial was widely reported. See Gary R. Dyer, “Ivanhoe, Chivalry, and the Murder of Mary Ashford,” Criticism 39 ( 1997) , pp. 383-408.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

1 (p. 383) epigraph: The lines, slightly altered, are from Shakespeare’s Richard II (act 4, scene 1).

2 (p. 388) “even as the signet of the mighty Solomon was said to command the evil genii: The Koran records that God gave Solomon power over the genii. It is only tradition, however, possibly derived from its mention in The Arabian Nights, which locates the power in his signet ring.

3 (p. 389) Benoni: The name, which means ”son of my sorrow” in Hebrew, was given by the dying Rachel to her son in the Bible, Genesis 35:18. Jacob would rename him Benjamin, and the boy became his ill-fated favorite.

4 (p. 389) gourd of Jonah: Isaac is referring not to a cup, but rather to the fruit tree God provided for Jonah, which became infested with worms overnight and died. See the Bible, Jonah 4:7.

5 (p. 390) Boabdil the Saracen: This is a glaring anachronism. Boabdil was the last Moorish king of Grenada (1482-1492), under whose reign Jews enjoyed equal rights and freedoms with other citizens. When a Christian army reconquered Spain in 1492, the Jews were expelled and sought sanctuary in the Islamic east and the Ottoman Empire.

CHAPTER XXXIX

1 (p. 392) epigraph: The lines, slightly altered, are from Anna Seward’s ”From Thy Waves, Stormy Lannow, I Fly” (1799; lines 6-7) . Scott edited a three-volume edition of Seward’s poetry, published in 1810.

2 (p. 397) heaven … nearly scaled: In the first book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the Titans pile up rocks toward the heavens in an effort to overthrow the Olympian gods. Poet John Keats inverted the myth by having the Olympian gods overthrow the Titans in his Miltonic epic fragment ”Hyperion,” written in the same year as Ivanhoe.

CHAPTER XL

1 (p. 404) epigraph: The line is not from Shakespeare, but from Colley Cibber’s subliterary revision The Tragicall History of King Richard III (1700), which was the version of the play known to British theatergoers for more than a hundred years.

2 (p. 418) ”I am Robin Hood of Sherwood Forest”: [Author’s note] Locksley. From the ballads of Robin Hood, we learn that this celebrated outlaw, when in disguise, sometimes assumed the name of Locksley, from a village where he was born, but where situated we are not distinctly told.—

According to tradition, a village of this name was the birth-place of Robin Hood, while the county in which it was situated remains undetermined. There is a broadside printed about the middle of the 17th century with the title of A New Ballad of Bold Robin Hood, showing his birth, etc., calculated for the meridian of Staffordshire. But in the ballad itself, it says—

Ritson says, it may serve quite as well for Derbyshire or Kent as for Nottingham (Laing).

CHAPTER XLI

1 (p. 421) epigraph: These lines, slightly altered, are from an opera by Andrew Macdonald called Love and Loyalty (1788). Many of Scott’s novels were adapted for the operatic stage, most famously Lucia di Lammermoor (1835), by Donizetti.

2 (p. 423) “The Chancellor must make sure of London”: William de Longchamp was Richard I’s chancellor and longtime ally; he was left in charge of much of the kingdom’s affairs on Richard’s leaving for the Third Crusade in 1789. On finding that authority usurped by the scheming John, William left for Germany. He was principally responsible for the raising of Richard’s ransom money; on the King’s return, he resumed the office of chancellor.

3 (p. 427) the Charter of the Forest was extorted from the unwilling hands of King John when he succeeded to his heroic brother: This is a specific instance of Scott’s altering the historical record to Richard’s advantage. The Lion-Heart was in fact a champion of the Norman forest laws, and the liberalizing Charter of the Forest was not signed until after John’s death.

4 (p. 427) treacherous death… weight in gold: According to legend, as recorded in the broadsheet ballads of the Middle Ages (that is, the “black-letter garlands”), Robin Hood was poisoned by his cousin, the Prioress of Kirlees. The quotation is from John Ferriar’s “The Bibliomania” (1809).

5 (p. 428) various monuments … are shown in the neighboring churchyard: [Author’s note] Castle of Coningsburgh. When I last saw this interesting ruin of ancient days, one of the very few remaining examples of Saxon fortification, I was strongly impressed with the desire of tracing out a sort of theory on the subject, which, from some recent acquaintance with the architecture of the ancient Scandinavians, seemed to me peculiarly interesting. I was, however, obliged by circumstances to proceed on my journey, without leisure to take more than a transient view of Coningsburgh. Yet the idea dwells so strongly in my mind, that I feel considerably tempted to write a page or two in detailing at least the outline of my hypothesis, leaving better antiquaries to correct or refute conclusions which are perhaps too hastily drawn.

Those who have visited the Zetland Islands are familiar with the description of castles called by the inhabitants burghs, and by the Highlanders—for they are also to be found both in the Western Isles and on the mainland—duns. Pennant has engraved a view of the famous Dun Dornadilla in Glenelg; and there are many others, all of them built after a peculiar mode of architecture, which argues a people in the most primitive state of society. The most perfect specimen is that upon the island of Mousa, near to the Mainland of Zetland, which is probably in the same state as when inhabited.

It is a single round tower, the wall curving in slightly, and then turning outward again in the form of a dice-box, so that the defenders on the top might the better protect the base. It is formed of rough stones, selected with care, and laid in courses or circles, with much compactness, but without cement of any kind. The tower has never, to appearance, had roofing of any sort; a fire was made in the centre of the space which it incloses, and originally the building was probably little more than a wall drawn as a sort of screen around the great council fire of the tribe. But, although the means or ingenuity of the builders did not extend so far as to provide a roof, they supplied the want by constructing apartments in the interior of the walls of the tower itself. The circumvallation formed a double inclosure, the inner side of which was, in fact, two feet or three feet distant from the other, and connected by a concentric range of long flat stones, thus forming a series of concentric rings or stories of various heights, rising to the top of the tower. Each of these stories or galleries has four windows, facing directly to the points of the compass, and rising, of course, regularly above each other. These four perpendicular ranges of windows admitted air, and, the fire being kindled, heat, or smoke at least, to each of the galleries. The access from gallery to gallery is equally primitive. A path, on the principle of an inclined plane, turns round and round the building like a screw, and gives access to the different stories, intersecting each of them in its turn, and thus gradually rising to the top of the wall of the tower. On the outside there are no windows; and I may add that an inclosure of a square, or sometimes a round, form gave the inhabitants of the burgh an opportunity to secure any sheep or cattle which they might possess.

Such is the general architecture of that very early period when the Northmen swept the seas, and brought to their rude houses, such as I have described them, the plunder of polished nations. In Zetland there are several scores of these burghs, occupying in every case capes, headlands, islets, and similar places of advantage singularly well chosen. I remember the remains of one upon an island in a small lake near Lerwick, which at high tide communicates with the sea, the access to which is very ingenious, by means of a causeway or dike, about three or four inches under the surface of the water. This causeway makes a sharp angle in its approach to the burgh. The inhabitants, doubtless, were well acquainted with this, but strangers, who might approach in a hostile manner, and were ignorant of the curve of the causeway, would probably plunge into the lake, which is six or seven feet in depth at the least. This must have been the device of some Vauban or Cohorn of those early times.

The style of these buildings evinces that the architect possessed neither the art of using lime or cement of any kind, nor the skill to throw an arch, construct a roof, or erect a stair; and yet, with all this ignorance, showed great ingenuity in selecting the situation of burghs, and regulating the access to them, as well as neatness and regularity in the erection, since the buildings themselves show a style of advance in the arts scarcely consistent with the ignorance of so many of the principal branches of architectural knowledge.

I have always thought that one of the most curious and valuable objects of antiquaries has been to trace the progress of society by the efforts made in early ages to improve the rudeness of their first expedients, until they either approach excellence, or, as is most frequently the case, are supplied by new and fundamental discoveries, which supersede both the earlier and ruder system and the improvements which have been ingrafted upon it. For example, if we conceive the recent discovery of gas to be so much improved and adapted to domestic use as to supersede all other modes of producing domestic light, we can already suppose, some centuries afterwards, the heads of a whole Society of Antiquaries half turned by the discovery of a pair of patent snuffers, and by the learned theories which would be brought forward to account for the form and purpose of so singular an implement.

Following some such principle, I am inclined to regard the singular Castle of Coningsburgh—I mean the Saxon part of it—as a step in advance from the rude architecture, if it deserves the name which must have been common to the Saxons as to other Northmen. The builders had attained the art of using cement, and of roofing a building—great improvements on the original burgh. But in the round keep, a shape only seen in the most ancient castles, the chambers excavated in the thickness of the walls and buttresses, the difficulty by which access is gained from one story to those above it, Coningsburgh still retains the simplicity of its origin, and shows by what slow degrees man proceeded from occupying such rude and inconvenient lodgings as were afforded by the galleries of the Castle of Mousa to the more splendid accommodations of the Norman castles, with all their stern and Gothic graces.

I am ignorant if these remarks are new, or if they will be confirmed by closer examination; but I think that, on a hasty observation, Coningsburgh offers means of curious study to those who may wish to trace the history of architecture back to the times preceding the Norman Conquest.

It would be highly desirable that a cork model should be taken of the Castle of Mousa, as it cannot be well understood by a plan.

The Castle of Coningsburgh is thus described:—

“The castle is large, the outer walls standing on a pleasant ascent from the river, but much overtopt by an high hill, on which the town stands, situate at the head of a rich and magnificent vale, formed by an amphitheatre of woody hills, in which flows the gentle Don. Near the castle is a barrow, said to be Hengist’s tomb. The entrance is flanked to the left by a round tower, with a sloping base, and there are several similar in the outer wall; the entrance has piers of a gate, and on the east side the ditch and bank is double and very steep. On the top of the churchyard wall is a tombstone, on which are cut in high relief two ravens, or such-like birds. On the south side of the churchyard lies an ancient stone, ridged like a coffin, on which is carved a man on horseback; and another man with a shield encountering a vast winged serpent, a man bearing a shield behind him. It was probably one of the rude crosses not uncommon in churchyards in this county. See it engraved on the plate of crosses for this volume, plate xiv. fig. 1. The name of Conninesburgh, by which this castle goes in the old editions of the Britannia, would lead one to suppose it the residence of the Saxon kings. It afterwards belonged to King Harold. The Conqueror bestowed it on William de Warren, with all its privileges and jurisdiction, which are said to have been over twenty-eight towns. At the corner of the area, which is of an irregular form, stands the great tower, or keep, placed on a small hill of its own dimensions, on which lie six vast projecting buttresses, ascending in a steep direction to prop and support the building, and continued upwards up the sides as turrets. The tower within forms a complete circle, twenty-one feet in diameter, the walls fourteen feet thick. The ascent into the tower is by an exceeding deep flight of steep steps, four feet and a half wide, on the south side leading to a low doorway, over which is a circular arch crossed by a great transom stone. Within this door is the staircase which ascends strait through the thickness of the wall, not communicating with the room on the first floor, in whose centre is the opening to the dungeon. Neither of these lower rooms is lighted except from a hole in the floor of the third story; the room in which, as well as in that above it, is finished with compact smooth stonework, both having chimney-pieces, with an arch resting on triple clustered pillars. In the third story, or guard-chamber, is a small recess with a loophole, probably a bed chamber, and in that floor above a niche for a saint or holy-water pot. Mr. King imagines this a Saxon castle of the first ages of the Heptarchy. Mr. Watson thus describes it. From the first floor to the second story (third from the ground) is a way by a stair in the wall five feet wide. The next staircase is approached by a ladder, and ends at the fourth story from the ground. Two yards from the door, at the head of this stair, is an opening nearly east, accessible by treading on the ledge of the wall, which diminishes eight inches each story; and this last opening leads into a room or chapel ten feet by twelve, and fifteen or sixteen high, arched with freestone, and supported by small circular columns of the same, the capitals and arches Saxon. It has an east window, and on each side in the wall, about four feet from the ground, a stone bason, with a hole and iron pipe to convey the water into or through the wall. This chapel is one of the buttresses, but no sign of it without, for even the window, though large within, is only a long narrow loophole, scarcely to be seen without. On the left side of this chapel is a small oratory, eight by six in the thickness of the wall, with a niche in the wall, and enlightened by a like loophole. The fourth stair from the ground, ten feet west from the chapel door, leads to the top of the tower through the thickness of the wall, which at top is but three yards. Each story is about fifteen feet high, so that the tower will be seventy-five feet from the ground. The inside forms a circle, whose diameter may be about twelve feet. The well at the bottom of the dungeon is filled with stones.”—Cough’s Edition of Camden’s Britannia. Second Edition, vol. iii. pp. 267, 268.

CHAPTER XLII

1 (p. 430) epigraph: The lines are written by Scott himself.

2 (p. 436) Athelstane… stood before them … like something arisen from the dead!: [Author’s note] Raising of Athelstane. The resuscitation of Athelstane has been much criticised, as too violent a breach of probability, even for a work of such fantastic character. It was a tour-de force, to which the Author was compelled to have recourse by the vehement entreaties of his friend and printer, who was inconsolable on the Saxon being conveyed to the tomb.

CHAPTER XLIII

1 (p. 442) epigraph: The lines are from Shakespeare’s Richard II (act 2, scene 2).

2 (p. 443) meeting of radical reformers… “dunghills”: Scott refers implicitly to the infamous Peterloo Massacre of August 1819 (see Introduction). In his sardonic reference to the “heroic language of insurgent tailors,” Scott makes his contempt for the Manchester reformists clear. “Flints” refers to striking workers, and “dunghills” to those who earn lower wages in their stead (what would be referred to today as “breaking the picket line”).

3 (p. 450) Sadducees: In Matthew 22:23, the Sadducees are a breakaway Jewish sect that maintains that the soul dies with the body, a mainstream tenet of Judaism today.

4 (p. 451) Greek fire: Scott is historically accurate in this case, even to the very year. The Third Crusaders brought this sulfurous, combustible liquid back with them from the Holy Land, where it had been used at the siege of Acre.

CHAPTER XLIV

1 (p. 454) epigraph: The line, slightly altered, is from John Webster’s The White Devil (1612; act 4, scene 1).

2 (p. 458) good-natured brother. The reconciliation between John and Richard was initiated by John and presided over by their mother in France in 1194. Richard restored his younger brother’s lands the following year.

3 (p. 461) the mixed language, now termed English, was spoken at the court of London: Edward III officially instituted English, rather than Norman French, as the language of the court in his address to Parliament in 1367.

4 (p. 464) Johnson … a TALE: Samuel Johnson’s “The Vanity of Human Wishes” (lines 219-222); “foreign” is substituted for “barren” to signify Richard’s dying in Belgium, and “humble” for “dubious” because that death, unlike the Swedish King’s, contained no element of mystery.