'Then, after some devout prayer, with a smiling countenance he desired the executioner to proceed. Tears gushed from the eyes of Herbert when he beheld him so willing to die, and saw that no ingenuity could wrest his secret from him. He gave orders for his release. His imprisonment and threatened execution were contrived without the King's knowledge to intimidate him into compliance. The iniquitous devices having failed, Herbert did not dare to take away his life. Dalton rose from the block with a heavy countenance, and returned to his abbey, much grieved at the further prolongation of his earthly sojourn. Herbert died shortly after this atrocious act of tyranny, and Debois also came to an untimely end. His father, Sir John Debois, was slain at the battle of Tewkesbury, May 4, 1471; and two days after, as recorded in Stow's "Annales," he himself (James Debois) was taken, with several others of the Lancastrian party, from a church where they had fled for sanctuary, and was beheaded on the spot.'
[7] See Appendix to the present chapter, p. 58.
[8] The pentageron, or pentagramma, is a mystic figure produced by prolonging the sides of a regular pentagon till they intersect one another. It can be drawn without a break in the drawing, and, viewed from five sides, exhibits the form of the letter A (pent-alpha), or the figure of the fifth proposition in Euclid's First Book.
[9] From the Greek φόβος, fear; φόβητρα, bugbears.
[10] Bad puns were evidently common on the stage before the days of Victorian burlesque.
[11] So Shakespeare, '1 Hen. IV.,' iii. Falstaff says: 'I make as good use of it as many a man doth of a death's head, or a memento house.'
'Save the nightingale alone: She, poor bird, as all forlorn, Leaned her breast uptill a thorn.'
[13] A _peripatetic_, or walking philosopher. Observe the facetiousness in 'Aristotle's _stamp_.' Aristotle was the founder of the Peripatetics.
[14] Fabius _Cunctator_, or the Delayer, so called from the policy of delay which he opposed to the vigorous movements of Hannibal. One would suppose that the humour here, such as it is, would hardly be perceptible to a theatrical audience.
[15] In the old German 'Faustbuch,' the title of 'Prince of the North' is given to Beelzebub.