Whether or not the knight found the hedgerows of Warwick, Stafford, and Salop of such fruitfulness--in the matter of linen--as he had anticipated, the historian has no means of ascertaining. The shirt in those days, it should be stated, was a comparatively recent invention--nor had the art of the laundress been brought to its present perfection. VI. HOW SIR JOHN FALSTAFF WON THE BATTLE OF SHREWSBURY. Even had the Royalist side been deprived of the immense weight of Sir John Falstaff’s counsels and support, the issue of the struggle could not have been doubtful. Fortune seemed to have declared against the rebels from the outset. The Earl of Northumberland was taken ill at Berwick, and unable to join his gallant son in the field. The Welsh under Glendower did not come up in time for the battle. All the efforts of their gallant and patriotic chieftain to bring his troops past the neighbouring cheese districts of the border county of Chester had proved ineffectual. Nevertheless the rebels determined on giving battle, which was perhaps a superfluous piece of generosity on their part, as the king, the princes, and Sir John Falstaff had come determined to take it. Hotspur--the warmth of whose heels would not seem to have produced in him any remarkable coolness of head--sent, on the eve of the engagement, an epistle to the king, which is strikingly illustrative of the knightly courtesy of the period. In this document he accuses Henry of murder, perjury, illegal taxation, obtaining money under false pretences, kidnapping, and bribery at elections. * The crimes of garrotting and stealing drinking vessels from the railings of private dwellings were not then known, or it is more than probable that these too would have entered into the wholesale list of accusations. Such a document, it will be admitted, was not calculated to dispose the king to leniency or placability. He was a monarch of the bilious temperament, and not at any time remarkable for excessive amiability or good humour. A popular historian has informed us that “he was subject to fits, which bereaved him for a time of reason.” ** The effect of such a communication on a monarch so constituted may be imagined. * Hall, folio 21--‘22, &c. ** Pinnock on Goldsmith--a work that has not come within the sphere of my observation for many years. The passage quoted, however, and many others from the same, were indelibly impressed on my memory at the time of perusal by a system of mnemonics now unhappily falling into disuse.-- Biographer.