Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches

The Valet's Tragedy, and Other Studies

PREFACE I. THE VALET’S TRAGEDY II. THE VALET’S MASTER III. THE MYSTERY OF SIR EDMUND BERRY GODFREY IV. THE FALSE JEANNE D’ARC. V. JUNIUS AND LORD LYTTELTON’S GHOST VI. THE MYSTERY OF AMY ROBSART VII. THE VOICES OF JEANNE D’ARC VIII. THE MYSTERY OF JAMES DE LA CLOCHE IX. THE TR...

Chapters

15. Chapter 15

The good King took all very easily. On August 3, 1668, he wrote a longa et verbosa epistola, from Whitehall, to the General of the Jesuits. His face was now set towards the secr...

7. Chapter 7

We do not propose to unriddle this mystery, but to show that the most recent and industrious endeavour to solve the problem is unsuccessful. We cannot deny that Godfrey may have...

4. Chapter 4

I durst not venture to sollicite in Monsr Roux Marsilly’s behalfe because I doe not know whether the King my Master hath imployed him or noe; besides he is a man, as I have been...

16. Chapter 16

Among his sham titles are Dux Roani and ‘de Roano,’ clearly referring, as Mr. Steuart notices, to de la Cloche’s travelling name of Henri de Rohan. The Neapolitan pretender, the...

11. Chapter 11

Here it may be well to consider the version of the tragedy as printed, twenty-four years after the event, by the deadly enemies of Lord Robert, now Earl of Leicester. This is th...

6. Chapter 6

On November 14, before the Lords’ Committee, Bedloe again gave evidence. The 2,100 pounds were now 4,000 pounds offered to Bedloe, by Le Fevre, early in October, to kill a man....

8. Chapter 8

There seems no good reason, however, to doubt the authenticity of the fact that a woman, calling herself Jeanne Pucelle de France, did, in 1436, marry Robert des Armoises, a man...

3. Chapter 3

Then comes a blank in the paper. There follows a copy of a letter as if FROM CHARLES II. HIMSELF, to ‘the Right High and Noble Seigneurs of Zurich.’ He has heard of their wishes...

1. Chapter 1

PREFACE I. THE VALET’S TRAGEDY II. THE VALET’S MASTER III. THE MYSTERY OF SIR EDMUND BERRY GODFREY IV. THE FALSE JEANNE D’ARC. V. JUNIUS AND LORD LYTTELTON’S GHOST VI. THE MYSTE...

2. Chapter 2

Apparently Mattioli now sobered down, and probably was given a separate chamber and a valet; he certainly had a valet at Pignerol later. By May 1681 Dauger and La Riviere still...

18. Chapter 18

The lines are from a version of the North of Scotland, and, on the face of it, are older than the extirpation of the Catholic faith in the loyal North. The reference to Holy Lan...

12. Chapter 12

The man was a rogue, however we take him, and the sole tangible fact is that a report of the evidence given at the inquest did exist, and that the verdict may have been ‘Acciden...

5. Chapter 5

On September 28, Oates was to appear before the Council. Earlier on that day he again visited Godfrey, handed to him a copy of his deposition, took oath to its truth, and carrie...

13. Chapter 13

Can we not carry the question further? Has the psychological research of the last half-century added nothing to our means of dealing with the problem? Negatively, at least, some...

20. Chapter 20

As to modern languages, Mr. Donnelly decides that Shakespeare knew Danish, because he must have read Saxo Grammaticus ‘in the original tongue’--which, of course, is NOT Danish!...

17. Chapter 17

‘“No! I thought I saw my husband’s apparition and the man that had done it, and that man was Tyler, and that was the reason I sent for him.... When my neighbours asked me what w...

14. Chapter 14

She was now led into the allegory intended to veil the King’s secret, the allegory about the Angel (herself) and the Crown (the coronation at Rheims). This allegory was fatal, b...

19. Chapter 19

We have been, in brief, invited to suppose that, about 1719, a Scot wrote a ballad on an event in contemporary Russian Court life; that (contrary to use and wont) he threw the s...

9. Chapter 9

The warning of death in three days, says Coulton, occurred (place not given) on the night of November 24, 1779. He observes: ‘It is certain that, on the morning after that very...

10. Chapter 10

There is every reason to believe, on the Pitt Place evidence, combined with the making of his will, that Lord Lyttelton had really, for some time, suffered from alarming attacks...

21. Chapter 21

There is no human nature in this nonsense. An ambitious lawyer passes his nights in retouching stock pieces, from which he can reap neither fame nor profit. He gives his work to...

22. Chapter 22

The pun does not fit the name of--Bacon! The apostrophe to ‘sweet Swan of Avon’ hardly applies to Bacon either; he was not a Swan of Avon. It were a sight, says Ben, to see the...