line 585.  Despiteously, despitefully.  ‘Despiteous’ is used in ’Lay of the Last Minstrel,’ V. xix.  Cp.  Chaucer’s ‘Man of Lawe,’ 605 (Clarendon Press ed.):—­

     ‘And sey his wyf despitously yslayn.’

line 587.  ’A German general, who commanded the auxiliaries sent by the Duchess of Burgundy with Lambert Simnel.  He was defeated and killed at Stokefield.  The name of this German general is preserved by that of the field of battle, which is called, after him, Swart-moor.—­There were songs about him long current in England.  See Dissertation prefixed to RITSON’S Ancient Songs, 1792, p. lxi.’—­ Scott.

line 588.  Lambert Simnel, the Pretender, made a scullion after his overthrow by Henry vii.

line 590.  Stokefield (Stoke, near Newark, county Nottingham) was fought 16 June, 1487.

line 607.  ’It was early necessary for those who felt themselves obliged to believe in the divine judgment being enunciated in the trial by duel, to find salvos for the strange and obviously precarious chances of the combat.  Various curious evasive shifts, used by those who took up an unrighteous quarrel, were supposed sufficient to convert it into a just one.  Thus, in the romance of “Amys and Amelion,” the one brother-in-arms, fighting for the other, disguised in his armour, swears that he did not commit the crime of which the Steward, his antagonist, truly, though maliciously, accused him whom he represented.  Brantome tells a story of an Italian, who entered the lists upon an unjust quarrel, but, to make his cause good, fled from his enemy at the first onset.  “Turn, coward!” exclaimed his antagonist.  “Thou liest,” said the Italian, “coward am I none; and in this quarrel will I fight to the death, but my first cause of combat was unjust, and I abandon it.”  “Je vous laisse a penser,” adds Brantome, “s’il n’y a pas de l’abus la.”  Elsewhere he says, very sensibly, upon the confidence which those who had a righteous cause entertained of victory:  “Un autre abus y avoit-il, que ceux qui avoient un juste subjet de querelle, et qu’on les faisoit jurer avant entrer au camp, pensoient estre aussitost vainqueurs, voire s’en assuroient-t-ils du tout, mesmes que leurs confesseurs, parrains et confidants leurs en respondoient tout-a-fait, comme si Dieu leur en eust donne une patente; et ne regardant point a d’autres fautes passes, et que Dieu en garde la punition a ce coup la pour plus grande, despiteuse, et exemplaire.”—­Discours sur le Duels.’—­Scott.

Stanza xxii. line 612.  Recreant, a coward, a disgraced knight.  See ‘Lady of the Lake,’ V. xvi:—­

     ‘Let recreant yield who fears to die’;

and cp. ‘caitiff recreant,’ Richard ii, i. 2. 53.

line 633.  The Tame falls into the Trent above Tamworth.

Stanza xxiii. line 662.  Quaint, neat, pretty, as in Much Ado, iii. 4. 21:  ‘A fine, quaint, graceful, and excellent fashion.’