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                           HISTORIC BUBBLES

                                  BY

                            FREDERIC LEAKE.

                       [Illustration: colophon]

               _The earth has bubbles as the water has,
                And these are of them._--BANQUO.

                  _Mais les ouvrages les plus courts
                    Sont toujours les meilleurs._--LA FONTAINE.

                            ALBANY, N. Y.:
                   RIGGS PRINTING & PUBLISHING CO.,
                                 1896.


                            COPYRIGHT, 1896

                                  BY

                 RIGGS PRINTING AND PUBLISHING COMPANY




CONTENTS


                                                  PAGE

Duke of Berwick,                                     7

Captivity of Babylon,                               45

The Second House of Burgundy,                       75

Two Jaquelines,                                    115

Hoche,                                             152

An Interesting Ancestor of Queen Victoria,         185

John Wiclif,                                       201




PREFACE


Once upon a time I was a member of that arch-erudite body, the Faculty
of Williams College, and I took my turn in putting forth lectures
tending or pretending to edification. I was not to the manner born,
and had indulged even to indigestion, in the reading of history. These
ebullitions are what came of that intemperance.

The manuscripts were lying harmless in a bureau drawer, under gynæcian
strata, when, last summer, a near and rummaging relative, a printer,
unearthed them, read them, and asked leave to publish them. I refused;
but after conventional hesitation, I--still vowing I would ne’er
consent--consented.

With this diagnosis, I abandon them to the printer and the public.
Those who read them will form opinions of them, and some who read them
not, will do the same thing in accordance with a tempting canon of
criticism.

                                                                  F. L.

WILLIAMSTOWN, MASS., 1896.




The Duke of Berwick


In the north-east corner of the map of England, or, if you are a
Scotchman, in the south-east corner of the map of Scotland, you will
find the town of Berwick.

That town was held first to belong to Scotland, and then to England.
Then the lawyers tried their hand at it, and made out that it belonged
to neither--that a writ issued either in England or Scotland, would
not run in Berwick-on-Tweed. So an act of Parliament was passed in the
reign of George II., to extend the authority of the British realm to
that evasive municipality.

The name is pronounced _Berrick_. It is a rule in England to spell
proper names one way and pronounce them another: thus Edinburgh is
Edinboro, Derby is Darby, Brougham is Broom, Cholmondeley is Chumly and
so on. This rule is sometimes inconvenient. An American tourist wished
to visit the home of Charlotte Brontë. He asked the way to Haworth.
_Ha-worth!_ Nobody had ever heard of such a place. No such place
in that part of England. At last somebody guessed that this stray
foreigner wanted to go to Hawth. Haworth is Hawth.

But that act of Parliament did not decree that folks should say Berrick
and not Berwick; and even if it had, it would not be of force in this
country; so the reader may pronounce it just as he pleases.

From that town was derived the ducal title of my subject.

In November, 1873, I sailed for England. Among my shipmates was Lord
Alfred Churchill an uncle of the present duke of Marlborough, and a
descendent of John Churchill duke of Marlborough the famous general
of Queen Anne. Walking the deck one day with Lord Alfred, I asked him
about his family--not about his wife and children--that would not have
been good manners; but about the historic line from which he sprang.
I asked how it was that he was a Churchill, when he was descended
not from a son but from a daughter of the great duke. He explained
that an act of parliament had authorised Charles Spencer, earl of
Sunderland, son-in-law of the duke, not only to take the title of duke
of Marlborough, but to change his name from Spencer to Churchill.

There can be no better evidence of the overshadowing glory of the
great captain than that the house of Sunderland should so nearly
suppress the old, aristocratic name of Spencer, in favor of the new,
the parvenu Churchill. The Spencers came in with the Conqueror, and we
meet them often in history. We well remember the two Spencers, father
and son, who were executed in the reign of Edward II. on a charge of
high-treason; and that bizarre historian A’Becket says that the sad
tale of those Spencers led afterwards to the introduction of spencers
without any tail at all.

I asked his lordship what had become of the Berwick branch of the
Churchills. He answered drily that he did not know--so drily in fact
that I inferred he had forgotten there had ever been such a branch.

In order to introduce that branch I must