Henry I.

, and went through

eleven earldoms to 1337. From that time we
have only dukes;
and Shakspeare evidently
alludes to Humphry Plantagenet, youngest son
of Henry IV., and
therefore brother of Henry V.,
whom the poet, with strict regard to the
rules of courtesy,
makes the last to be named by
the gallant king. With him the dukedom of
Gloucester
became extinct; but it was revived
in 1461, and conferred on Richard, brother
of Edward
IV., commonly known as ‘Crookback.’
At his death at Bosworth in 1485, the title merged
in
the Crown; and the last who held it was the
uncle of our present gracious Queen, William-
Frederick,
Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh.
Seeing that Shakspeare’s Glo’ster was the
son of
Henry IV., and that our present royal family
trace their descent through all the
previous
sovereigns of England, we may conclude that
while the ‘Bedford and Exeter’ and
Salisbury
of Agincourt fame have no representatives at
the present day connected with them
by any
ties of sanguinity, yet that ‘Harry the King,’
‘Warwick and Talbot’ and Glo’ster are
so represented,
and in the manner just intimated.