When she was fifteen Jane Austen wrote a satirical history of England. Here is her passage on Henry V and his son:
Now if she had only turned to History as her muse in adult life instead of wasting her time with novels. (I swiftly run from the stones aimed my way!)
The Archbishop’s guess as to the meaning of the “terra vero salica” (in the MS published by Herold) or the “terra autem salica” (in the MS published by the Abbé Piuthou) is as good as any.
No one really knows what it meant and “if it is to be guesswork, let us all guess for ourselves. To be guided by second-hand conjecture is pitiful,” as Henry Tilney observess in Northanger Abbey; a caution that deserves to be heeded by the whole tribe of textual critics, historians – and jurists.