This curious tract is entitled _The Devonshire Woman: or a Wonderful Narrative of Frances Flood_. It bears no date, but is of about 1724. At the end stands: “Printed for Frances Flood, and sold by Nobody but herself.” In fact, the poor creature went about on crutches selling the story of her misfortunes. The tract is very scarce, but there is a copy in the British Museum. SIR WILLIAM HANKFORD In the Second Part of _Henry IV_, Shakespeare makes his hero, Prince Hal, behave with splendid generosity to Judge Gascoigne, who had committed him to prison for striking him in open court. The King says to him:-- How might a prince of my great hopes forget So great indignities you laid upon me? What! rate, rebuke, and roughly send to prison The immediate heir of England! Was this easy? May this be wash’d in Lethe, and forgotten? The Chief Justice replies:-- I then did use the person of your father; The image of his power lay then in me: And, in the administration of his law, Whiles I was busy for the commonwealth, Your highness pleasèd to forget my place, The majesty and power of law and justice, The image of the king whom I presented, And struck me in my very seat of judgment; Whereon, as an offender to your father, I gave bold way to my authority, And did commit you. Shakespeare makes King Henry V recognize that Gascoigne was in the right. You are right, justice, and you weigh this well; Therefore still bear the balance and the sword. But here Shakespeare has not been true to history. His ideal king was not so generous as he represented him. In fact, directly on his accession Henry displaced Gascoigne from the Chief-Justiceship, and elevated to his place the Devonshire lawyer Sir William Hankford, Knight of the Bath. Prince, indeed, in his _Worthies of Devon_, claims that it was Hankford who committed Prince Hal to prison; but this is a mistake, the brave and resolute judge was Sir William Gascoigne, who was displaced, and Sir William Hankford installed as Chief Justice in his room by Henry V eight days after his accession.