“I know very well that it is most common for the events of the reign of Henry V., to be cited from the ‘_History of his Life and Actions_,’ written in Latin verse by Thomas, a Monk of Elmham, in Norfolk, in his time Prior of the Monastery of the Holy Trinity at Lenton, in the County of Nottingham. As that part of his Poem, however, which treats ‘_De adventu Regis ad Pontem Londoniarum_,’--concerning the King’s entrance at the Bridge of London,--is considerably inferior to the account which I have already given you, I shall dispense with your labour in listening to it, and mine in translating it; and only observe to you, that an authentic copy of Thomas of Elmham’s ‘_Historia de Vitâ et Gestâ Henrici V. Anglorum Regis_,’ is preserved in the Cottonian Manuscript which I last cited, article 3, fairly written on parchment, in the small black text-hand of the latter part of the fifteenth century; and that the passage will be found at folio 101 b. Capitulum xliiii. I would remind you, also, that a printed edition of this work was published by Tom Hearne, Oxford, 1727, 8vo., which is not one of his most common books; the text was taken from several old Manuscripts, and the value of a large-paper copy fluctuates between four and six guineas. The next authority, therefore, whom I shall quote upon this subject, is supposed to have been the production of the justly famous old John Lydgate, who was in his days a very eminent English Poet; being born about 1375, and dying about 1461. He was a Monk of the Abbey of Bury, in Suffolk; and of these historical verses by him there is a Manuscript copy, written on parchment in an old Court-hand, ornamented with vermillion chorusses and lines, in No. 565, of the Harleian Manuscripts, in the British Museum. You will find them forming Articles 8 and 9 of that volume, and thus entered in the Catalogue, volume i. page 351. ‘_A Poem upon the Wars of King Henry the V. in France; and his return to England, after the battle of Agincoure; composed perhaps by John Lidgate_.’--‘_The making of_ (i. e. Poem upon) _the comynge of the Kynge_ (Henry V.) _out of Fraunce, to London. By John Lidgate, the Monke of Bury._’ Such are the titles of these verses, from which I shall repeat to you all that concerns the King’s entry at London Bridge; and, firstly, at page 111 b. the story runs thus, beginning at the second stanza of ‘_Passus Tercius_.’ “The Mayr of london was Redy bown, With all y^e craftes of that Cite Alle clothyd in red, thorugh out y^e town A semely sight it was to se: To y^e black Hethe thanne rod he, And spredde y^e way on euery syde; Xx^{ti} M^l. men myght wel se Oure comely kynge for to abyde. _Wot ze right well that thus it was Gloria tibi Trinitas._