But this is not all as to the resemblance which the
passage from Bracciolini bears to the writing in the
Annals. The expression “quam iste oppetiise,”
i.e. mortem, “videtur,” has its exact
counterpart in the Second Book of the Annals in the
phrase: “vix cohibuere amici, quo minus
eodem mari oppeteret,” i.e. mortem
(II. 24). When, too, Bracciolini says of Jerome
of Prague, “se ipsum exuit vestimentis,”
“strips himself of his clothes,”
instead of simply, “takes off his clothes,”—“exuit
vestimenta,”— we have an expression
precisely like that in the Annals, “neutrum
datis a se praemiis exuit,” that is, “strips
neither of the rewards which he had given him”
(XIV. 55), instead of “takes away the rewards,”—“praemia
exuit.”
But I will go by-and-bye more fully into matters of
this kind. At present it is necessary that I
should still pursue the career of Bracciolini,—or
rather so much of it as is absolutely needed, in order
that the reader may see how curiously it prepared and
formed him to be the author of such a peculiar work
as the Annals, which in its characteristic singularity,
could have proceeded from him only, and by no manner
of means from Tacitus.
CHAPTER II.
BRACCIOLINI IN LONDON.
Gaining insight into the darkest passions from associating
with Cardinal Beaufort.—II. His passage
about London in the Fourteenth Book of the Annals
examined.—And III. About the Parliament
of England in the Fourth Book.
I. In the autumn of 1418, after the breaking up of
the Council of Constance, Bracciolini left Italy and
accompanied to England a member of the Plantagenet
family, the second son of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster,
Henry Beaufort, whose placid and beardless face the
great Florentine seems to have first seen at the Ecumenical
Council which that princely prelate had turned aside
to visit in the course of a pilgrimage he was making
to Jerusalem. Henry Beaufort was then Bishop
of Winchester, but afterwards a Cardinal, and though
there was another Prince of the Roman Church, Kemp,
Archbishop of York and subsequently of Canterbury,
Beaufort was always styled by the popular voice and
in public acts “The Cardinal of England,”
on account, perhaps, of his Royal parentage and large
wealth, more enormous than had been known since the
days of the De Spencers: he had lands in manors,
farms, chaces, parks and warrens in seven counties,
Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Wiltshire,
Somersetshire, Hampshire and Surrey, besides having
the Customs of England mortgaged to him, and the cocket
of the Port of Southampton with its dependencies,—an
indebtedness of the State which is so far interesting
as being the foundation of our National Debt.
