His national affections were strong. When one reported to Henry that the King of France had said that his bastard, as well as the bastard of Normandy, might conquer England, the princely boy exclaimed, "I'll to cuffs with him, if he go about any such means." There was a dish of jelly before the prince, in the form of a crown, with three lilies; and a kind of buffoon, whom the prince used to banter, said to the prince that that dish was worth a crown. "Ay!" exclaimed the future English hero, "I would I had that crown!"--"It would be a great dish," rejoined the buffoon. "How can that be," rejoined the prince, "since you value it but a crown?" When James I. asked him whether he loved Englishmen or Frenchmen better, he replied, "Englishmen, because he was of kindred to more noble persons of England than of France;" and when the king inquired whether he loved the English or the Germans better, he replied the English; on which the king observing that his mother was a German, the prince replied, "'Sir, you have the wyte thereof;'--a northern speech," adds the writer, "which is as much as to say,--you are the cause thereof."
Born in Scotland, and heir to the crown of England at a time when the mutual jealousies of the two nations were running so high, the boy often had occasion to express the unity of affection which was really in his heart. Being questioned by a nobleman, whether, after his father, he had rather be king of England or Scotland, he asked, "Which of them was best?" Being answered, that it was England; "Then," said the Scottish-born prince, "would I have both!" And once, in reading this verse in Virgil,
Tros Tyriusve mihi nullo discrimine agetur,
the boy said he would make use of that verse for himself, with a slight alteration, thus,
Anglus Scotusve mihi nullo discrimine agetur.
He was careful to keep alive the same feeling in another part of the British dominions; and the young prince appears to have been regarded with great affection by the Welsh; for when once the prince asked a gentleman at what mark he should shoot, the courtier pointed with levity at a Welshman who was present. "Will you see, then," said the princely boy, "how I will shoot at Welshmen?" Turning his back from him, the prince shot his arrow in the air. When a Welshman, who had taken a large carouse, in the fulness of his heart and his head, said in the presence of the king, that the prince should have 40,000 Welshmen, to wait upon him against any king in Christendom; the king, not a little jealous, hastily inquired, "To do what?" The little prince turned away the momentary alarm by his facetiousness: "To cut off the heads of 40,000 leeks."