It is very remarkable (though Shakspeare doubtless never became acquainted with the circumstance) that the identical Percy whom he makes Henry IV. desire to have been his son, instead of his own Henry, bears ample testimony, at least a full year previously, to the valour and kind-heartedness of him on whose brow the poet makes his father lament "the stain of riot and dishonour." Sir Edmund Mortimer was taken by Glyndowr at Melienydd in Radnor, June 12th, 1402; and, as early as the 3rd of May 1401, Percy wrote from Caernarvon to the council that North Wales was obedient to the law, except the rebels of Conway and Rees Castles, who were in the mountains, whom he expresses his expectation that the Prince of (p. 352) Wales would subdue. "These will be right well chastened," said he, "if God please, by the force and governance which my lord the Prince _has_ sent against them, as well of his council as of his retinue." In the same letter Hotspur informs the King's council that the commons of the counties of Caernarvon and Merioneth (who had come before him in the sessions which he was then holding as Chief Justice of North Wales) had humbly expressed their thanks to the Prince for the great pains of his kind good-will in endeavouring to obtain their pardon."[321] Henry Prince of Wales, whom the poet makes his father thus to disparage at the mere mention of Henry Percy's victory, would lose nothing in point of prowess, and generosity, and high-minded bearing, at this very early period of his youth, by a comparison either with Percy himself, or with any other of his contemporaries, whose names are recorded in history. [Footnote 321: See these facts stated historically in previous chapters of this volume.] The next passage of our historical dramatist which requires to be examined, occurs in that very affecting interview between Henry and his father on the news of Percy's rebellion, and the resolution declared to take the field at Shrewsbury.[322] "I know not whether God will have it so, For some displeasing service I have done, That, in his secret, doom out of my blood (p. 353) He breeds revengement and a scourge for me. But thou dost, in thy passages of life, Make me believe that thou art only marked For the hot vengeance and the rod of heaven, To punish my mistreadings. Tell me else, Could such inordinate and low desires, Such barren, base, such lewd, such mean attempts, Such barren pleasures, rude society,[323] As thou art matched withal and grafted to, Accompany the greatness of thy blood, And hold their level with thy princely heart? Thy place in council thou hast rudely lost, (p. 354) Which by thy younger brother is supplied; And art almost an alien to the hearts Of all the court, and princes of my blood." [Footnote 322: I Hen. IV. act iii. scene 1.]