sur- CHAP. cognise their prejudices, and call the rounding objects by the names which they were accustomed to employ. John of Gaunt was from this time frequently addressed in the style of royalty; he kept a little court, and added somewhat to the splendour and magnificence in which he had hitherto lived; and these circumstances were by no means without their effect upon the subsequent transactions of his history. No proceeding can be less judicious, or afford less chance of ultimately redounding to the glory of him who adopts it, than this sort of speculative and dialectical claim to the supreme magistracy of a nation. The duke of Lancaster had a practical illustration of this before him, in the great measure of his father's reign; and it certainly conduces by no means to the credit of his sagacity or of the rectitude of his moral feelings, that so memorable a lesson produced so little impression upon him. Government is a topic of complicated and delicate texture: no consent, as some theorists have idly imagined, gives birth to its institution; yet it depends most XXXI. СНАР. 1371. XXX intimately upon the temper, the prejudices and the opinions of those for the benefit of whom it ought to be conducted. The man who puts these out of the question, and considers with contempt or disrespect the sentiments of a nation in points in which it is most intimately concerned, makes a glaring exhibition of his weakness in regard to policy; and, though perhaps not of a depraved heart, acts as if he disdained all attention to the interests, the rights and the happiness of mankind. What was the duke of Lancaster to the Spanish nation? The majority of them scarcely knew of his existence; or, if they did, felt as much inclination to be governed by an emissary from the Grand Lama of Tartary, as by him. This This generous people, with a prejudice congenial to the human mind, preferred for their sovereign a bastard and a regicide, born among them and descended from the race of their kings, to the most gallant and blameless prince on earth, of whom they had no knowledge, and who could not enter into their peculiarities. In this great crisis of the life of John of Gaunt, XXXI. 1371. he evinced the most essential deficiencies of CHAP. character. His contemporaries, it is to be feared, did not comment, as it deserved, upon the immorality of his proceeding; but they felt most materially to his disadvantage the imbecility of pretending to a crown which he could have no reasonable hope to acquire, and of regaling his fancy with the gaudy outside of royalty, and the empty name of a king, which, while it conferred no power, must to the mind of every sober and judicious observer convey an idea of ridicule. Yet it is not difficult to assign the motive which influenced the duke of Lancaster in this measure. He felt, as his elder brother had done, indignant at the impudent usurpation and sanguinary actions of Henry of Transtamare. He desired by his own interposition to pluck him from the throne; and this project was not the less pleasing to him because he thought the proper conclusion of the exploit was to place himself upon the throne in his stead. John of Gaunt, like all the other children of Edward III, was bred in the purest and most refined notions of chi Motive from which it sprung. XXXI. 1371. CHAP. valry. We may therefore be well convinced that he contemplated with particular reverence the achievements of Rodrigo Dias, commonly called the Cid, and the other Spanish champions, who, in their contentions against the Moors, were the first to raise chivalry to the consummation of its splendour. To rescue this nation of heroes from the rod of an usurper, appeared to his thoughts the greatest of all human exploits; to preside over them the highest of all human glories. Zeal and enthusiasm are never very accurate calculators. He saw this perspective in distant view; and, unhappily for himself, and for his true and substantial fame, was too eager and animated, to allow him to consider its parts and estimate it in detail. CHAP. XXXII. POLITICAL ADMINISTRATION OF JOHN OF GAUNT. MUNIRE. XXXII. FROM the consideration of the king of CHAP, Castille in his relations with other countries, the course of events now leads us to view him as connected with the civil transactions of his own. Lionel duke of Clarence, the second son of Edward III, died in 1368; and the Black Prince brought with him, from his Spanish campaign in 1367, an impaired and broken constitution, which no subsequent care or skill had the power to restore. These events, together with the declining age of the king, made way for that high degree of political influence and power to which John of |