Swart-moor. —There were songs about him long current in England. See Dissertation prefixed to Ritson's Ancient Songs, 1792, p. Ixi.'—Scott.
l. 588. Lambert Simnel, the Pretender, made a scullion after his overthrow by Henry VII.
l. 590. Stokefield (Stoke, near Newark, county Nottingham) was fought 16 June 1487.
l. 607. 'It was early necessary for those who felt themselves obliged to believe in the divine judgment being enunciated in the trial by duel, to find salvos for the strange and obviously precarious chances of the combat. Various curious evasive shifts, used by those who took ap an unrighteous quarrel, were supposed sufficient to convert it into a just one. Thus, in the romance of "Amys and Amelion," the one brother-in-arms, fighting for the other, disguised in his armour, swears that he did not commit the crime of which the Steward, his antagonist, truly, though maliciously, accused him whom he represented. Brantome tells a story of an Italian, who entered the lists upon an unjust quarrel, but, to make his cause good, fed from his enemy at the first onset. "Turn, coward! "exclaimed his = antagonist. "Thou liest," said the Italian, "coward am I none; and in this quarrel will I fight to the death, but my first cause of combat was unjust, and I abandon it." "Je vous laisse à penser," adds Brantome, "s'il n'y a pas de l'abus là." Elsewhere he says, very sensibly, apon the confidence which those who had a righteous cause entertained of victory: "Un autre abus y avoit -il, que ceux qui avoient un juste subjet de querelle, et qu'on les faisoit jurer avant entrer au camp, pensoient estre aussitost vainqueurs, voire s'en assuroient-t-ils du tout, mesmes que leurs confesseurs, parrains et confidants leurs en respondoient tout-à-fait, comme si Dieu leur en eust donné une patente ; et ne regardantpoint à d'autres fautes passées, et que Dieu en garde la punition à ce coup là pour plus grande, despiteuse, et exemplaire."—Discours sur le Duels.'—Scott,
Stanza XXII. 1. 612. Recreant, a coward, a disgraced knight. See 'Lady of the Lake,' V. xvi:
'Let recreant yield who fears to die';
and cp. ' caitiff recreant,' Richard II, i. 2. 53.
l. 633. The Tame falls into the Trent above Tamworth.
Stanza XXIII. l. 662. Quaint, neat, pretty, as in Much Ado, iii. 4. 21: 'A fine, quaint, graceful, and excellent fashion.'
Stanza XXIV. l. 704. St. Withold, St. Vitalis. Cp. King
