complained, tli rough their speaker, that their orders for the removal of aliens from the Queen's court had not been complied with ; and, enumerating fortyfour persons in her service, demanded their instant dismissal. The King returned a favourable answer ; and, to the grief of the Queen, her obnoxious foreign attendants were all banished three weeks afterwards. Joanna was the first widow since the Norman Conquest who wore the crown of England as Queen Consort. Shortly after her marriage to Henry the Fourth, she was in the receipt of a splendid income. Her annuity as Duchess Dowager of Brittany was princely. When the Percy rebellion was crushed by the sanguine battle of Shrewsbury, the King granted her the Karl of Northumberland's mansion in Aldgate, and other of the confiscated estates of the Percys and their adherents. In 1406, the commons voted her revenues to the yearly value of ten thousand marks ; and in the subsequent year, on the conclusion of the truce with Brittany, Henry added the town of Hereford to the dower of his beloved consort Joanna, and requested the parliament to make her further pecuniary grants. But large as was Joanna's income, she was by no means free from pecuniary cares. The expenses of quelling rebellion and repelling foreign foes, quite exhausted the coffers of Henry, and drove him more than once to encroach upon the resources of his consort, who about this time found such great difficulty in procuring her dower from Brittany, on account of the hostility between France and England, that in June, 1406, she sent her faithful secretary, John do Boyas, to arrange with her friends and officers there for the more regular and safe transmission of it to England for the future, On departing, De Boyas received letters of protection from King Henry, who about the same time granted a safe conduct to two ships bringing horses, lamps, and other things for the Queen's use from Brittany. It was more from want of money than from want of will that the King, during the first six years of his reign, afforded such slight encouragement to tournaments, teastings, pageantry, and other splendid entertainments in which his predecessors had so delighted to indulge. When Earl of Derby, Henry excelled and delighted in chivalric exercises ; but it was now rare indeed that he sported with lance or sword, or even graced the lists with his presence as a patron or spectator. However, whenever he or the Queen presided at a tournay or a feast, they made a right royal display, and conducted themselves as befitted the sovereigns of England. Tbe Queen wore rich and costly dresses and robes, pearls, rubies, and jewels in abundance, and generally, what then was the vogue, a cap about two feet high, looking more like a portable castle than a head-dress. The King, whether with a cap or crown on his head, or a robe or a gown on his body, always wore that especial Lancasterian badge the collar of S. S., enamelled with flowers of the forget-me-not, and the motto Soveriane vous de moy, a device and motto which heralds and antiquarians have endeavoured in vain to explain the origin of, and of which nothing is really known beyond the fact that Henry adopted them some ten years previous to nia accession.