Chapter Cona to Constance of Beverley of C by Brewer's Readers Handbook

the bad revolving stars, That have consented unto Henry’s death! King Henry the Fifth, too famous to live long!
   —Shakespeare: I Henry VI. act i. sc. I (1589).

Constance, mother of prince Arthur and widow of Geoffrey Plantagenet.—Shakespeare: King John (1598).

Mrs. Bartley’s “lady Macbeth,” “Constance,” and “queen Katherine” [Henry VIII.], were powerful embodiments, and I question if they have ever since been so finely portrayed (1785–1850).—J. Adolphus: Recollections.

Constance, daughter of sir William Fondlove, and courted by Wildrake, a country squire, fond of field sports. “Her beauty rich, richer her grace, her mind yet richer still, though richest all.” She was “the mould express of woman, stature, feature, body, limb; “she danced well, sang well, harped well. Wildrake was her childhood’s playmate, and became her husband.—Knowles: The Love Chase (1837).

Constance, daughter of Bertulphe provost of Bruges, and bride of Bouchard, a knight of Flanders. She had “beauty to shame young love’s most fervent dream, virtue to form a saint, with just enough to earth to keep her woman.” By an absurd law of Charles “the Good,” earl of Flanders, made in 1127, this young lady, brought up in the lap of luxury, was reduced to serfdom, because her grandfather was a serf; her aristocratic husband was also a serf because he married her (a serf). She went mad at the reverse of fortune, and died.—Knowles; The Provost of Bruges (1836).

Constance of Beverley, in sir W. Scott’s Marmion, is a Benedictine nun, who fell in love with Marmion, and, escaping from the convent, lived with him as a page. But Marmion proved faithless; and Constance, falling into the hands of the Benedictines, was tried for violating her vows. At the same time a monk (who had undertaken to remove her rival Clara) was tried also. Both were condemned, and both were immured in niches in the convent wall, which were then filled up with “hewn stones and cement.”—Canto ii.