shewn to have been, a haughty, irascible woman, whose tongue and temper were dreaded by friend and foe. Although accurate history has little to do with dramatic representation of character, it is worthy of remark, that the imperious claim of Constance to the crown of England for her son, was not founded upon that indefeasible right which would have been recognized at a later period. Mr. Foster in his Historical Essays remarks that, “In England, while some might have thought Arthur's hereditary claim superior to his uncle's, there was hardly a man of influence, who at this period would have drawn the sword for him, on any such principle as that the crown of England was heritable property.
The genius of the country
had been repugnant to any such notion. The Anglo-Saxon Sovereignty was elective, that people never sanctioning a custom by which the then personal and most arduous duties of sovereignty, both in peace and war, might pass of right to an infant or imbecile prince; and to the strength of this feeling in the country of their conquest, the Normans here tofore had been obliged to defer.”
When the alliance between John and Philip has been determined, the latter enquires for her, and the Dauphin replies, “She is sad and passionate in your highness' tent.” Philip thinks the peace “will give her sadness very little cure,” and in real apprehension asks his brother of England, “how we may content this widow lady ?” John proposes to give up Bretagne and other dignities and powers to Arthur, and trusts in this manner to appease if not to satisfy her ambition, and avert her vituperation : “I trust we shall, If not fill up the measure of her will, Yet in some measure satisfy her so, That we shall stop her exclamation.”
John, however, had reckoned without his host; the lady's will was not to be so readily satisfied, nor her passionate
