"Sir, Here comes the nobleman who committed the Prince for striking him about BARDOLF." 2 HEN. IV. act. i. On the other side, it might with equal, perhaps with greater fairness be argued, that this is not one of those cases in which various independent authorities bear separate testimony to one important fact; whilst minor discrepancies as to time and place, and persons and circumstances, tend only to confirm the testimony, placing the authority above suspicion, and exempting the case from all idea of conspiring witnesses. Such arguments are then only sound when the witnesses are contemporary with the fact, or live soon after its alleged date. But when chroniclers and biographers, who write immediately of the times and of the life of the person charged, recording circumstances far less important and characteristic, omit all mention whatever of an event which must have been notorious to all,--but of which no trace whatever can be found, nor any allusion directly or indirectly to it is discovered, for more than a century and a quarter after the death of the accused,--the investigator appears to be justified in requiring some auxiliary evidence; at all events, such discrepancies cease to contribute the alleged aid to the establishment of the main fact. When, for example, the Chronicle of London records an affray in East-Cheap between the townsmen and (p. 366) the Princes,[328] mentioning by name Thomas and John, and registers the journeys of John of Gaunt, the execution of Rhys Duy, the Welshman, with unnumbered events, far less important and notorious than must have been the commitment to prison of the heir-apparent of the throne, and on that circumstance is altogether silent, not having the slightest allusion to anything of the kind; and when those biographers who lived and wrote nearest to the time (such as Elmham, Livius, Otterbourne, Hardyng, Walsingham, all of whom speak more or less strongly of his irregularities and youthful vices, and subsequent reformation,) never allude to any story of the sort, and apparently had no knowledge even of any tradition respecting it; the charge either of partiality or incredulity does not seem to lie at the door of any one who might doubt the reality of the whole. It is not as though the deed were regarded as having fixed an indelible stain on the Prince's memory, and therefore his partial biographers would gladly have buried it in oblivion. Sir Thomas Elyot (and his (p. 367) seems to have been the general opinion) appears to have considered the issue of the transaction as far more redounding to the Prince's honour, than its progress stamped him with disgrace; and he attracts the reader's especial attention to it by a marginal note: "A good Judge, a good Prince, a good King." It is curious to observe the progress of this story. Sir Thomas Elyot, the first in point of time who states it, makes no mention either "of the blow on the Chief