Note 186 — THE PROLOGUE. (continued 4)

Dr. Percy, in the notes to the Northumberland Household Book, has adduced a very curious extract from one of the letters of this Earl of Northumberland, which he thinks affords a “full vindication of the earl from the charge of ingratitude in being the person employed to arrest the cardinal.” However this may be, the earl appears to have felt the embarrassment of his situation; he trembled, and with a faltering voice could hardly utter the ungracious purport of his mission. To a mind of any delicacy the office must have been peculiarly distressing, and even supposing the earl to have been formerly treated in an arbitrary and imperious manner by the cardinal, it is one which he should have avoided. As the letter gives a very curious picture of the manners as well as the literature of our first nobility at that time, I shall place it in my appendix; the very curious volume in which it is to be found being of great rarity and value.