and under him the Mortimers began to hold up their heads. By that time they had become Plantagenets again. Edmund had died without issue; and Anne was the last of her family. She married as I have said, Richard Plantagenet earl of Cambridge. Their son was Richard

duke of York who won the first battle of Saint Albans, and came near seizing the crown. His son Edward IV. did seize it. He married that charming widow Lady Grey daughter of Jaqueline of Luxembourg. (See Two (See Two Jaquelines.) The daughter of that marriage was Elizabeth Plantagenet who married Henry Tudor, Henry VII. It is there that Plantagenet becomes Tudor. Their daughter, Margaret Tudor married James Stuart, James IV. of Scotland, and it is there that Tudor becomes Stuart. The son of James and Margaret, was another James Stuart, James V. who married Mary of Guise of that famous House of Lorraine the upshoot of which is a remarkable event in French history. It took two assassinations to save the last of the Valois from having the crown snatched from his head by that able and unscrupulous family. The daughter of James V. and Mary of Guise was Mary Stuart, queen of Scots. She married her half-cousin Henry Stuart lord Darnley who like herself was grandchild of Margaret Tudor, and next to herself, heir to the English crown. The

son of Mary and Henry Stuart was James VI. of Scotland and first of England. He married Anne of Denmark, and their daughter Elizabeth Stuart married Frederic count Palatine. The daughter of Elizabeth and Frederic was Sophia who married Ernest Augustus, elector of Hanover, and became the mother of George I. George III. was great-grandson of George I. and Victoria is granddaughter of Geoge III.

Thus have we traced the pedigree of the Queen from Peter-the-cruel.

After so fatiguing a stretch, it is a comfort to take breath and reflect that thus far the Queen has not developed the objectionable traits of her ancestor. She has never been known to poison anybody, nor has a single case of midnight assassination been made out against her.

IT

John Wiclif

T has been said that three men struck telling blows at the Roman hierarchy: Philip the fourth, John Wiclif and Martin Luther: a Frenchman, an Englishman and a German. The first opened the way for the other two. Philip IV. called the fair, that is the handsome, was the greatest of the Capetien kings, but his greatness was intellectual only. If he contributed largely to lead mankind out of the bog of superstition in which they were swamped, he did it simply to gratify his own rapacity and ambition. He was the first monarch to challenge the Church to a combat à outrance; and he succeeded in leading her captive literally as well as figuratively.

It is useless to try, as some quasi historians do, to explain the career of Wiclif without taking into consideration the state of the Church at that epoch; and if the reader is not informed on that point, he will not profit much by this essay till he has read, marked, learned and inwardly digested the previous one on the Captivity of Babylon.

Cotemporary with Philip IV. was Edward I. of

England. The two were pretty evenly matched. Edward was probably the better soldier; but in his negotiations with Philip, the advantage remained to the latter. Edward married for his second wife Philip's sister; and Edward's son married Philip's daughter. It was this last marriage that caused the hundred years war.

Edward's grandfather king John, one of the basest of monarchs, had been compelled by his barons, to accept the Great Charter and solemnly to swear to observe it. He appealed to the pope Innocent III. to release him from that oath, and the pontiff consented on condition that John should cede to him in fee the kingdom of England and receive it back in tenancy as a fief of the Holy See, subject to an annual tribute of money as token of vassalage. The bargain was consummated: John was empowered to violate his oath, and his Holiness became Lord paramount of England. He received the tribute in silver and gold during the life of John and during the long reign of his son Henry III. the father of Edward. But when he, Edward, came to the throne he resolved not to be outdone by his incomparable brother-in-law, and refused to continue the tribute. The pope, Boniface VIII., did not follow up the claim with his usual tenacity. Perhaps because he already had his hands full with Philip; and perhaps because there super

vened between him and Edward a negotiation of a different character. Edward at the head of an army, was pursuing his claim to the crown of Scotland. The Scotch appealed to the pope giving him a correct history of the transactions between the two kingdoms, by which the independence of Scotland was fully recognised. Boniface ordered Edward to withdraw his troops, alleging that Scotland belonged to him, Boniface a new pretence little to the taste of the Scotch themselves. Edward denied the Scotch version, and told the pope that the English monarchy was founded by Brutus the Trojan in the time of the prophet Samuel, and that Scotland was subjugated and annexed by his Edward's ancestor king Arthur, a prince for whose existence there was the same authority then as now, namely the rhymes of the nursery. Boniface was struck with the antiquity of the English monarchy and the deeds of the valorous Arthur, and he changed sides: he commanded the Scotch no longer to resist his beloved son in the Lord, king Edward.

Some years later we find Edward brought by his subjects to the verge of dethronement for his tyranny, and forced to ratify anew the Great Charter and swear to observe it; and then applying to Clement V. the French pope, Philip's pope, first pope of the Captivity, for a dispensa