[Footnote 87.2: [From Fenn, iii. 278.] The date of this letter
is doubtful. The two pieces of intelligence at the beginning
were certainly both false rumours, as the writer, indeed, seems
to have suspected. Henry VI. never went to Scotland in manner of
war, and the Earl of Wiltshire never was made Chancellor. But
the time when those rumours seem most likely to have arisen was
in the year 1456, when the Duke of York had been deprived of the
Protectorate. The Earl of Wiltshire, being of the opposite party
to York, was not unlikely to have been talked of as Chancellor,
although the Chancellorship was given on the 7th of March to the
Archbishop of Canterbury. As to the rumoured expedition against
Scotland, we know that in the preceding year James II., in
defiance of the truce, laid siege to Berwick, which offered a
gallant resistance (Nicolas’s _Privy Council Proceedings_, vi.
248). This, however, does not appear immediately to have led to
open war between the two countries. Diplomatic relations were
still carried on till, on the 10th of May 1456, James II.
despatched Lyon Herald to the King of England to declare plainly
that the Truce of 1453 was injurious to Scotland, and that he
did not mean to abide by it (Lambeth MS. 211, f. 146 b). No
reply was made to this message till the 26th of July, when an
answer was despatched by the Duke of York in the King’s name
(_see_ Rymer, xi. 383); but there can be little doubt the desire
to punish the insolence of the Scots must have been very general
long before.]
[Footnote 88.1: A law was passed in the eighteenth year of Henry
VI. to put a stop to the abuse of persons having interest about
the Court procuring antedated letters patent, by means of which
they were enabled to claim the emoluments of lands or offices
granted to them from a date anterior to the actual passing of
the grant. --_See_ Hardy’s Introduction to the _Patent Rolls of
King John_, p. xxx.]
[Footnote 88.2: Shere or Shore Thursday, Maundy Thursday, the
day before Good Friday.]
[Footnote 89.1: St. Matthew’s Gospel, chap. xviii. ver. 15, 16,
17, and ver. 21, 22.]
[Footnote 89.2: This relates to papers sent with this letter,
and accounts for there being no direction, as the whole was
enclosed in a parcel.--F.]
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