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enQli^fi Mtn ot Action 
 
 HENRY THE FIFTH 
 
COPYRIGHT 
 
 First Edition 1889 
 Reprinted 1891, 1906, 1912 (twice) 
 

 HENRY THE FIFTH 
 From a Picture in the possession of Queen's College, Oxford. 
 
HENEY THE FIFTH 
 
 THE EEV. A. J. CHUECH 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 
 ST. MARTIN'S STEEET, LONDON 
 
 1912 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Boyhood of Henry . ... 1 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 Prince Henry and Prince Hal . . . 7 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Prince Henry and the Chief Justice . 22 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 The Charges against Prince Henry . . 30 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 Accession to the Throne . . .43 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 The French Crown . . 50 
 
VI CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Preparations for War ... .59 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 The Invasion of France ... 67 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 Agincourt . . . '/6 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 After Agincourt ... .88 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 Henry and the Lollards . . . , .97 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 Henry and Queen Joanna ... .105 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 The Second Campaign in France . .109 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 Henry's Marriage ;j23 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Siege OF Melun . . . . . .131 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 The Last Campaigns 137 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 The Death oi' Henry . . , . . .144 
 
CHAPTEE I 
 
 THE BOYHOOD OF HENRY 
 
 Heney was born in the castle of Monmouth on August 
 9th, 1387. He was the eldest of the six children of 
 Henry of Lancaster by Mary de Bohun, younger daughter 
 and co-heiress of Humphrey de Bohun. ^ Humphrey, as 
 the last male descendant of the De Bohuns, united in 
 himself the dignities and estates of the Earls of Here- 
 ford, Northampton, and Essex. The elder daughter, 
 Eleanor, was married to Thomas of Woodstock, youngest 
 son of Edward the Third. Eleanor's husband hoped 
 to secure the whole of the Hereford estates, amounting, 
 it is said, to fifty thousand nobles of annual income 
 (not less, it may be calculated, than two hundred thou- 
 sand pounds of money at its present value). He took 
 charge of his sister-in-law, and had her carefully in- 
 structed in theology, intending that she should take 
 
 ^ Henry's brothers and sisters were (1) Thomas, Duke of Clarence, 
 born 1389, killed at Bauge in Anjou, March 22nd, 1421 ; (2) John, 
 Duke of Bedford, born 1390, died Regent of France at Kouen, 
 September 14th, 1435 ; (3) Humphrey, born 1391, died, it was 
 commonly supposed by foul means, early in 1447 ; (4) Blanche, 
 married to Louis, son of Rupert, King of the Romans ; (5) 
 Philippa, married to Eric the Thii'teeuth, King of Denmark, 
 <S B 
 
HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 the veil in a convent of the Sisters of St. Clare. John 
 of Gaunt had other views for her future. He took 
 occasion of his j^ounger brother's absence in France 
 to have her removed to Arundel Castle, where she 
 vi^as very soon afterwards married to his son Henry. 
 She died in 1494 in her twenty-fifth year. She was 
 better educated, it appears, than most of the ladies of 
 her day, and it would seem that some of her taste for 
 books descended to her son. The character of Henry 
 of Lancaster has been variously estimated. He won in 
 his youth a high reputation for enterprise and courage. 
 We find him fighting against the Mahommedans in 
 Barbary in one year, and in the next against the Pagan 
 tribes of Lithuania. His skill in all martial exercises 
 was conspicuously great. But, according to one account, 
 he was so stained with crime that his own father wished 
 him to be put to death. He was a bold and probably 
 an unscrupulous man, whom circumstances exposed to a 
 very strong temptation. The weaknesses and vices of 
 Richard the Second put the throne within his reach. We 
 can easily believe that he really felt himself better quali- 
 fied to rule than his feeble and capricious cousin, and it 
 is just possible that he may have persuaded himself or 
 been persuaded by others that there was something in 
 his claim of hereditary right to the throne. The power 
 unjustly gained was retained by the methods to which 
 an usurper is commonly driven, by falsehood and by 
 cruelty. Former friends were betrayed — as, for example, 
 the Lollards, who certainly had helped him to the throne 
 — and enemies were ruthlessly crushed. The power 
 thus won and maintained descended to his son in 
 happier circumstances. The younger Henry's title was 
 
FAMILY CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 not seriously questioned. There was, it is true, a con- 
 spiracy against him, but it was not supported by any 
 formidable party in the nation. A great success, won 
 early in his reign, made him the object of popular enthu- 
 siasm. At the same time he had the advantage of a 
 singularly attractive exterior : the hereditary beauty of 
 the Plantagenets was conspicuous in him. And he was 
 fdix opportunitate mortis: he died before the lustre of 
 his achievements and the charm of his personal qualities 
 were dimmed by failure and the corrupting influences 
 that wait on power. It was with him as it would have 
 been with the Black Prince if he had died after Poictiers. 
 Yet, allowing for some differences of a finer organisation, 
 it is not difficult to see some of the main characteristics 
 of the fourth Henry in his more fortunate son. 
 
 If tradition may be trusted, the young Henry was a 
 delicate child, and was put out to be nursed at a village 
 near Monmouth. The cradle in which he had lain was 
 long shown as a curiosity at Bristol, and the name of his 
 nurse, Joan Waring, appears in the public accounts, from 
 which we learn that an annuity of twenty pounds was 
 settled upon her after her foster-son's accession to the 
 throne. 
 
 The household -book of John of Gaunt gives some 
 interesting glimpses of the lad's education. We have 
 an item of money paid for strings for his harp, and 
 another of four shillings expended on seven books of 
 grammar for his use. The continued weakness of his 
 health may be seen in the payment of a courier who 
 announced to his father the fact of his alarming illness. 
 
 He had just entered on his twelfth year when his 
 father was banished. He remained in England, probably 
 
HENRY THE FIFTH 
 
 under the care of his grandfather. But John of Gaunt 
 died in the February following his son's banishment, and 
 a few weeks afterwards Henry of Lancaster's estates 
 were seized by the Crown on the ground that he had 
 slandered the King, and was consorting with his enemies 
 abroad. The young Henry accompanied Richard to 
 Ireland, and was sent to the castle of Trim in Meath, 
 the ancient meeting-place of the Irish Parliament. He 
 seems to have been kindly treated, and received the 
 honour of knighthood from the King's hands. He was 
 left behind in Ireland in company vnth his cousin, the 
 young Duke of Gloucester, when Eichard returned to 
 England in July. On August 18th Richard was made 
 prisoner. The young Henry was immediately sent for, 
 and was brought to England in a ship furnished by a 
 citizen of Chester. At Chester he met his father, whom 
 he accompanied to London. On September 29th Richard, 
 who was now in the Tower, signed a deed of abdication : 
 on the 30th Parliament met and declared him to be 
 deposed ; and on the same day the Duke of Lancaster 
 was seated on the throne by the Archbishops of Canter- 
 bury and York. 
 
 Henry is said to have been created Prince of Wales 
 by his father on the day of his coronation. At least we 
 find him in possession of that dignity a fortnight after- 
 wards, when the King grants to his " most dear eldest 
 son Henry, Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, and 
 Earl of Chester, the custody and rights of all lands of 
 heirs under age in the principality of Wales and the 
 counties of Chester and Flynt," and also orders him to 
 be put in possession of the revenues of the duchy of 
 Cornwall. The Council also had to consider where he 
 
NEGOTIATIONS FOR MARRIAGE 
 
 should reside, and what establishment should be kept up 
 for him. 
 
 Before long negotiations were entered upon for his 
 marriage. Towards the end of the year a mission was 
 sent to the King of France, proposing in general terms 
 alliances between the two royal families. The proposal 
 was rejected contemptuously. The King of France 
 knew of no King of England but his son-in-law Richard. 
 Before many weeks were past, Richard was dead — ^by 
 what means it does not belong to our present purpose 
 to inquire — leaving a virgin widow, Isabella of Valois. 
 Isabella, eldest of the five daughters of Charles the Sixth of 
 France and Isabeau of Bavaria, was then in her thirteenth 
 year. She had all the beauty of her race, and would 
 be a richly-dowered bride. Henry lost no time in asking 
 her hand for his eldest son. The demand was not wel- 
 come either to the French Court, which was not disposed 
 to recognise Henry's title, or to the young lady herself, 
 who seems to have cherished a fond recollection of her 
 husband. It was renewed more than once with the same 
 ill-success. Henry was afterwards to win for himself by 
 a very rough wooing a bride of the same house, the 
 youngest of Isabella's sisters. 
 
 If we are to believe a local tradition, the young Henry 
 studied for a time at Queen's College, Oxford, under the 
 care of his uncle Henry, afterwards Cardinal Beaufort, 
 whom we know to have been Chancellor of the University 
 during the two years 1397-8. The Chancellor was then 
 a resident officer, performing the functions now delegated 
 to the Vice-Chancellor. 
 
 Queen's College had been founded in 1341 by Robert 
 Eglesfield under the auspices of Philippa, Queen of 
 
HENRY THE FIFTH 
 
 Edward the Third, and might therefore be considered 
 a specially appropriate residence for princes of the 
 Plantagenet line. A room in the college over the gate- 
 way that fronts St. Edmund's Hall was long shown as 
 having been occupied by Prince Henry. His portrait 
 was to be seen painted on the glass of the window, while 
 an inscription in Latin recorded (it disappeared with 
 the gateway early in the last century) the fact that 
 " Henry V, conqueror of his enemies and of himself, was 
 once the great inhabitant of this little chamber." This 
 glass is now in the upper library. It is difficult to 
 estimate the precise value of such a tradition. There 
 is no documentary evidence to confirm it ; on the 
 other hand, it is not intrinsically unlikely. Henry 
 had some of the tastes of a student. This fact and the 
 academical standing of his uncle might have suggested a 
 residence at Oxford as a useful way of employing some 
 of his time. Such a residence, if it ever took place, 
 must be assigned to some time between October 1399 
 and March 1400-1. At the latter date he had begun 
 to take a part in public affairs, for we find on March 10th, 
 1400-1, that King Henry grants, "on the supplication of 
 his most dear son, the Prince of Wales," a pardon to all 
 the rebels of four counties of North Wales, with three 
 exceptions, of whom Owen Glendower is one. Thence- 
 forth his name occurs, as will be seen, continuously in 
 the State documents of the time. 
 
CHAPTEE II 
 
 He who would draw a portrait of Prince Henry finds 
 himself anticipated by the work of a master hand, a work 
 done in colours so fresh and vivid, and with outlines 
 so firm, that rivalry is hopeless. Shakespeare's "Prince 
 Hal," the reckless, brilliant lad, now bandying jests with 
 bullies and sots in city taverns, now leading his troops 
 to victory on the field of Shrewsbury, is one of those 
 creations of genius which, be they true to history or 
 untrue, never lose their hold on the minds of men. No 
 sober description of the actual Henry, however accurately 
 worked out of authentic details, can possibly supersede 
 the figure which the great dramatist has made immortal. 
 
 ^ I have to express my special obligations to a pamphlet by Mr. 
 F. Solly-Flood, Q.C., reprinted from the Transactions of the Royal 
 Historical Society. It bears the title of The Story of Prince Henry 
 of Monmouth and Chief-Justice Gascoign, but it discusses fully the 
 "whole question of Henry's character in early life. I am also greatly 
 indebted to the able account of Henry's campaigns which is to be 
 found in Mr. H. E,. Clinton's From Crecy to Assye. Finally I 
 must thank the Provost of Queen's College, Oxford, for his courtesy 
 in communicating to me some interesting information about Henry's 
 supposed residence at Oxford, and Major Servante, R.M., for his 
 courtesy in guiding me on a visit which I paid to the field of 
 Agincourt. 
 
HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 If I may borrow an illustration from literature, it is here 
 as it is with Pope and the rival translators of Homer. 
 Nothing could be more unlike the real Iliad than the 
 polished epigrammatic rhetoric of Pope's version, yet it 
 is so masterly a work, so splendid in style, so magniii- 
 cent in versification that it is the despair of the most 
 scholarly and the most faithful translators; whatever 
 the learned may say, the world still reads "Pope's 
 Homer." So the world will always think of Henry 
 in his youth as the Prince Hal who spoils Falstaff of 
 his ill-gotten booty at Gadshill, laughs at him and with 
 him over his cups in Eastcheap, and soliloquises over his 
 prostrate bulk at Shrewsbury. Many figures in history 
 seem to bring up before us these curious eidola, which 
 even the best information cannot wholly banish from 
 our minds. Who can quite dissociate his conception of 
 the first Cyrus from the figure which Xenophon has 
 pourtrayed in his philosophical romance, or forget, when 
 he thinks of Tiberius, the gloomy profligate and tyrant 
 who stands out so vividly from the pages of Tacitus ? 
 
 The brilliant figure, then, of the first and second parts 
 of Henry the Fourth is at least a literary fact. I do not 
 propose to enter on a connected discussion of its authen- 
 ticity. There are many genuinely historical details which 
 we have about Henry's real personality, and we have at 
 least some suggestions of the source from which the great 
 dramatist drew his materials. 
 
 Of course it is easy to take Shakespeare too seriously. 
 Supreme in genius as he was, he was also a playwright, 
 had to do a playwright's work, and descend, if we must 
 say so, to a playwright's arts. His audience had to be 
 amused ; and certainly no audience was ever better 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S PRINCE HAL 
 
 amused than were the pit and the galleries of the Globe 
 by Prince Hal and Falstaff. The slender, graceful 
 youth, with gay dress and plumed and jewelled cap, 
 was the happiest foil to the huge " man mountain," with 
 his untrussed hose and wine-stained doublet. The fancy, 
 too, of the people was caught by the notion of this 
 young heir to the crown drinking sherry-sack, as might 
 any one of themselves, in an Eastcheap tavern. It was 
 an excellent jest, with just a spice of romance in it, less 
 familiar also than the manners of some of our heir- 
 apparents since that time have made it. Shakespeare 
 never could have dreamt that he was raising a grave 
 question for historians to quarrel over. 
 
 The fact is that the great dramatist, whose genius was 
 never more signally shown than in transmuting other 
 men's lead into gold, found a play, dull enough in itself, 
 which he fashioned into that masterpiece of humour, 
 the comedy of Henry the Fomth. The Famous Victories of 
 Henry the Fifth was possibly written by William Tarleton, 
 a comedian who flourished in Elizabeth's reign. It is 
 known that he acted in it, taking the part of Sir John 
 Oldcastle. Of the real Oldcastle it is sufficient here to 
 say that he was a man of lofty morality, who witnessed 
 to his convictions by his death. In Tarleton's play — if 
 it be his — he is a vicious buffoon and thief. He goes 
 by the name of " Jockey," and he has two companions 
 of similar character, who are known as " Ned " and 
 "Tom.'' These are represented as the Prince's associates. 
 And to mark more distinctly the true object of the play, 
 which certainly was to bring the Puritans into ridicule, 
 the other and principal character is one Dericks, a name 
 borne by one of the Marian martyrs. This play was first 
 
HENRY THE FIFTH 
 
 acted before 1588, Tarleton dying in that year, and it was 
 the play which Shakespeare adapted. But an Enghsh 
 audience would be far less disposed to relish jests upon 
 Protestant martyrs after the Armada and the Papist con- 
 spiracies of Elizabeth's latter days, and Shakespeare made 
 a change to suit the altered taste of the day. Oldcastle 
 and Dericks disappear : they are replaced, we may say, 
 by Falstaff and Bardolf. Both were historical person- 
 ages, and Shakespeare does them as much injustice as his 
 predecessor had done to the Lollard martyr. Bardolf 
 went more than once as ambassador to France in Henry 
 the Fourth's reign, and in the time of his successor he was 
 Lieutenant of Calais. Sir John FalstaiT was a Knight 
 of the Garter, a general of distinction, and a man of 
 undoubted honour. There is not a shadow of reason for 
 connecting either Bardolf or Falstaff with any disreput- 
 able proceedings. Shakespeare seems to have taken their 
 names absolutely at random. 
 
 In the first part of Henry the Fourth, then, we see the 
 Prince associating with boon companions, and spending 
 his days in riot, until he is recalled to serious thoughts by 
 his mission to take high command in the army which his 
 father is sending against the rebels in the north and 
 west ; and finally doing away with the discredit that had 
 fastened itseK on his good name by his gallant behaviour 
 on the field of Shrewsbury. Now let us examine the 
 facts. 
 
 First, the situation may be briefly described. Henry the 
 Fourth was far from being safe on his newly won throne. 
 Early in UOO he had discovered a plot against his life. 
 The Kings of France and Scotland had refused to recog- 
 nise his title to the crown, and were even making pre- 
 
11 PRINCE HENRY AND OWEN GLENDOWER n 
 
 parations for an invasion of England. A more immediate 
 danger also threatened him ; Wales was in revolt. Here 
 Owen Glendower, lineal descendant of the Llewellyn who 
 had been defeated and slain by Edward the First, had been 
 roused by private wrongs to assert the independence of 
 his nation. And it was here that we find the young Henry 
 employed by his father. That a boy so young — in the 
 early part of 1400-1 he still wanted some months of 
 completing his fourteenth year — should be put in a posi- 
 tion of authority is remarkable ; that the boy so trusted 
 should have been a profligate simply exceeds belief. 
 
 The young Prince was apparently taking an active 
 part in the conduct of affairs ; in any case, he must have 
 been on the spot, and not wasting his time in London. 
 He was summoned to attend a Council to be held in 
 London on August 15th, 1401. A month afterwards the 
 rebellion in Wales broke out afresh, and the Prince was 
 probably again engaged in active service. At least we find 
 him in November with a small force of twenty men-at- 
 arms and forty archers, in respect of which he received, 
 by order of Council, the sum of one thousand pounds. 
 In the following year we find him acting on his own 
 account. He addresses (under date May 15th) a letter 
 to the Privy Council, in which he gives an account of his 
 doings in Wales. Owen Glendower, it seems, had sent 
 him something like a challenge. He had gone, accord- 
 ingly, to Owen's principal mansion, but had found no one 
 there. Thence he had proceeded to the Welshman's seat 
 at Glendourdy, and had burnt it, capturing at the same 
 time one of Owen's chief men. The prisoner had oflFered 
 five hundred pounds for his ransom, but this was not 
 accepted, and he was put to death. Henry had afterwards 
 
12 HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 marched into Merionethshire and Powysland. This 
 letter was written from Shrewsbury, and was followed 
 by another about a fortnight later, in which he describes 
 himself as being in great straits. His soldiers wanted 
 to know when they would be paid ; unless he had some 
 money sent, he could not remain where he was ; he had 
 already pawned his jewels {ms petitz joualx). The castles 
 of Harlech and Lampadern must be relieved without 
 delay. But if help were given, things promised well 
 for a suppression of the rebellion. 
 
 What reply the Prince received to these representa- 
 tions we do not know. The rebellion was not suppressed 
 then, nor for many years to come. On June 25th 
 something like a general levy was ordered, the King 
 addressing precepts to the Lieutenants of many English 
 counties by which it was enjoined that aU persons liable 
 to military service should meet him at Lichfield and 
 march with him against the Welsh rebels. Similar docu- 
 ments were issued later in the year, in one of which all 
 persons liable to serve in the counties of Derby and 
 Shropshire were enjoined to meet " our very dear son, 
 Henry, Prince of Wales " at Chester on August 27th. 
 
 It is needless to foUow the King's proceedings in 
 detail. His resources were not equal to the demands 
 made upon them. New dangers started up in un- 
 expected places, and he had to change his plans to meet 
 them. But on March 7th, 1403, we come to an import- 
 ant document. It is an ordinance of the King in 
 Council, given at Westminster. The beginning of it 
 runs thus : 
 
 " The King to all whom it may concern, greeting. Know 
 that, wishing to provide for the good government of the region 
 
II THE REVOLT OF THE PERCIES 13 
 
 of Wales, and of the Marches and parts adjacent thereto, 
 and for resistance to the rebels who have contrary to their 
 allegiance treasonably risen against us, and having full con- 
 fidence in the fidelity and energy of our dearly beloved eldest 
 son, Henry, Prince of "Wales, we constitute the said Prince 
 our Lieutenant in the said region of Wales." 
 
 Here then we find Henry, who was now about half- 
 way through, his sixteenth year, appointed to the civil 
 and military command of the most disturbed part of 
 the King's dominions. About six weeks later the men 
 of Shropshire write to the Council complaining of the 
 ravages of the Welsh rebels, and praying that some 
 men-at-arms and archers should be sent to protect them 
 till the Prince himself should come. 
 
 The King had now to meet a more formidable com- 
 bination of enemies than he had yet encountered. 
 Henry Percy, eldest son of the Earl of Northumberland, 
 the Harry Hotspur of Shakespeare, had been a trusted 
 lieutenant of Henry. He had served in Wales against 
 Glendower, and had been employed both in negotiations 
 with the Scotch and in military action against them. 
 He conceived himself to have been unjustly treated, for 
 reasons which do not concern our present purpose, and 
 to avenge his wrongs he formed an alliance with Owen 
 Glendower and with the Earl of Douglas on behalf of the 
 King of Scotland. Glendower was to invade Gloucester- 
 shire. To meet this danger the King issued briefs, under 
 date of June 16th, to the Lieutenants of Gloucester- 
 shire, Shropshire, Worcestershire, and Herefordshire, 
 directing that all persons liable to serve should put 
 themselves at the command of his son, Henry, Prince 
 of Wales. At the same time an attack on the northern 
 
14 HENRY THE FIFTH CHAP. 
 
 borders was threatened from Scotland, and the Percies, 
 whose disaffection was not yet known at Court, were 
 commissioned to repel it. The King himself inarched 
 northwards to assist them, and seems to have been 
 ignorant as late as July 10th of their real intentions. 
 These, however, became known to him a day or so 
 after, for he issued briefs to the Lieutenants of the 
 counties, dated from Burton-on-Trent on July 16th, 
 Lichfield on the 17th, and Westminster on the 18th, 
 requiring military assistance to repel the invasion of 
 Henry Percy with the Welsh rebels and "certain enemies 
 of ours from Scotland " in his company. 
 
 Six days later than the date of the Westminster brief 
 the battle of Shrewsbury was fought. Prince Henry was 
 on the field and bore himself bravely, though we must 
 not credit him with the great achievement which Shake- 
 speare attributes to him, of having slain Henry Percy in 
 single combat. A lad, still wanting some months of 
 sixteen, could hardly have vanquished a man of thirty, 
 one of the bravest and most expert soldiers of his time. 
 Hotspur seems to have been killed by a chance arrow 
 as he was charging with characteristic impetuosity the 
 royal forces. The young Prince was himself wounded 
 in the forehead by an arrow. 
 
 His father's confidence in him was continued. Two 
 days after the battle he expresses his trust in the 
 loyalty and prudent caution of his son, Henry, Prince 
 of Wales, and gives him full power to amnesty at his 
 discretion such persons concerned in the late rebellion 
 as he might think fit, in the county of Chester and in 
 other places named. 
 
 Owen Glendower, who had not shared the defeat of 
 
II PRINCE HENRY IN COMMAND 15 
 
 the Percies at Shrewsbury, still held out. In 1404 he 
 assumed the title of Prince of Wales. In the June of 
 that year the Sheriif of Hereford, with various gentlemen 
 of the county, represented to the King that they were 
 suffering greatly from the ravages of the Welsh rebels. 
 The Prince was directed to go to their help, and on the 
 20th of the month wrote to his father from Worcester, 
 to which city he had removed his headquarters. He 
 thanks him for his kind letter written from Pontefract 
 five days before, and rejoices in the news it brought of 
 his health and prosperity, which are, he says, the gi'eatest 
 pleasure that can come to him in the world. He had been 
 taking measures for the defence of the county of Hereford, 
 which the Welsh rebels had been ravaging with fire and 
 sword, and he would do all he could to resist them and 
 to save England from their attacks. Another letter to 
 the same effect was addressed by him to the Council, 
 and a second four days afterwards. 
 
 On August 30th the Council granted him three 
 thousand marks for the expenses of holding the castle 
 of Denbigh and other strongholds in North Wales, and 
 suggested that he should remain for a certain time 
 on the borders of Herefordshire, and afterwards invade 
 Wales. In a document apparently belonging to the 
 same time there is a list of castles in North Wales which 
 the Prince had kept at his own cost since the commence- 
 ment of the rebellion. 
 
 In March 1405 the Prince wrote to the King relating 
 a victory which he had won over the Welsh : 
 
 "On Wednesday, the lltli day of this present month of 
 March, the rebels in parties from Glamorgan, Morganoe, Usk, 
 Netherwart, and Overwart were assembled to the number of 
 
1 6 HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 eleven thousand by tlieir own accoimt. On the said 11th of 
 March they burnt part of your town of Grosmont. There- 
 upon I sent my dear cousin Lord Talbot and others. To 
 them there joined themselves your faithful and valiant knights, 
 William Newport and John Greindel. And though they 
 were but a small number, yet was it well seen that the vic- 
 tory is not in the multitude of the people but in the power 
 of God. ... By the aid of the Blessed Trinity your people 
 held the field of battle and vanquished the said rebels, and 
 slew of them, by one account eight hundred, since said one 
 thousand. . . . No prisoners were taken save one, a great 
 knight, whom I would have sent to you but that he cannot 
 yet comfortably ride. ... I pray God to keep you always 
 in joy and honour, and to grant me that I may soon comfort 
 you with other good news." 
 
 In this year by prompt action, and still more by 
 skilful diplomacy, the King crushed a formidable insur- 
 rection that threatened his power in the north. After 
 executing the chiefs of the rising — Scrope, Archbishop 
 of York, and Mowbray, Earl Marshall — he turned his 
 attention to Wales. If he could crush Glendower he had 
 practically rid himself of his enemies, for he held in his 
 power the heir to the Scottish throne. With his father's 
 action in the north the Prince could have had nothing 
 to do ; but we may be sure that he took a part in the 
 Welsh campaign. Large as was the force which Henry 
 brought into the field, little or nothing was accomplished. 
 The Welshmen were driven from the plain country ; but 
 they could not be touched in their mountain fastnesses. 
 Indeed the weather was so exceptionally bad that Glen- 
 dower was believed to have secured the aid of this 
 powerful ally by his magical arts. Early in the autumn 
 the King returned to London, disbanding at the same 
 time the greater part of his forces, and leaving the 
 
II CONFIDENCE OF PARLIAMENT IN HENRY 17 
 
 command of operations, as before, in the hands of the 
 Prince of Wales. 
 
 It would be tedious to give all the details of Henry's 
 proceedings that may be found in the public documents 
 of the time. On the whole, we get from these sources 
 the picture of a vigorous young prince, who must of 
 course have been assisted by older counsellors, but who 
 was not a mere puppet in their hands. He is making 
 head to the best of his abilities and means against a 
 formidable rebellion. He is much hampered by want of 
 money, and the King and the Council try to help him. 
 As time goes on, more means and more power are put 
 into his hands. King, Privy Council, and Parliament 
 seem to be agreed in trusting him. The King does not 
 think it necessary to visit in person the region which he 
 had put into his son's charge. More than once, after 
 proclaiming his purpose to take the field himself against 
 the Welsh rebels, he changes his mind, and goes else- 
 where. The Council accept without hesitation his 
 recommendation of the Prince and his affairs to their 
 care. When Parliament is sitting, it votes him money 
 for the purposes of his campaigns. 
 
 The proceedings, however, in the first half of 1406 
 are so important as bearing on the position of the 
 Prince that they must be specially mentioned. At 
 some time in March or April the Privy Council held a 
 meeting, at which the succession of the Prince of Wales 
 to the throne was considered, as was also the subject of 
 his lieutenancy in Wales, and of his power to amnesty 
 rebels who might give in their submission. About the 
 same time the House of Commons sent up an address 
 to the King, praying him to thank the Prince for 
 
 c 
 
i8 HENRY TBE FIFTH chap. 
 
 his diligence in the government of Wales, to which, 
 it will be remembered, he had been appointed three 
 years before. This address is dated April 3rd. Two 
 days afterwards the King renewed the appointment of 
 the Prince as Lieutenant of Wales till November 11th. 
 Special authority was conferred upon him to admit 
 rebels to grace on such terms as might approve them- 
 selves to him and his counsellors. Before the period 
 thus specified had expired — i.e., on September 27th — 
 provision was made for a further tenure of his office. 
 
 In the interval between April and September the 
 King's health had begun to fail so seriously that the 
 question of settling the succession became urgent. On 
 April 26 th he addressed two letters from Windsor to 
 the Council. In the first — written, it would seem, 
 early in the day — he tells them that he should not be 
 able to fulfil his purpose of being at Westminster on 
 that day. Some ailment had attacked his leg, and he 
 was also suffering seriously from ague. Consequently his 
 physicians considered that it would be dangerous for 
 him to travel on horseback However, he intended to 
 be at Staines that night ; from Staines he would journey 
 by water to London, where he hoped to be in the course 
 of three or four days. The second letter was written 
 later in the day. By that time his illness had so much 
 increased that he had to give up altogether the idea of 
 travelling. The Council would have to go on with 
 public business without him. On June 7th the House 
 of Commons voted an address of thanks to the Prince, 
 which was to be forwarded to him in Wales. At the 
 same time Parliament passed an Act declaring that the 
 succession to the throne was in the Prince of Wales and 
 
II THANKED BY PARLIAMENT 19 
 
 the heirs-male of his body lawfully begotten ; and fail- 
 ing these, to the other sons of the King and their heirs 
 in succession. Six months later this was amended by 
 another Act, which abolished the restriction to heirs- 
 male. This was done, of course, from considerations of 
 general policy, but it indicates a feeling of confidence in 
 the Prince. 
 
 The proclamation of this Act bears date December 
 22nd. Before this time the Prince had come to London, 
 and this is positively the first time that we have an intima- 
 tion of his presence in the capital. His name appears 
 on the list of the persons attending the meeting of the 
 Privy Council in the afternoon of December 8th; but it is 
 absent from a list dated November 27th, and the Prince 
 must therefore have been sworn in between the two dates. 
 He was present again at a meeting held on January 30th, 
 ■ when the Great Seal was resigned by Thomas Langley, 
 Bishop of Durham, and handed to Thomas Arundel, 
 Archbishop of Canterbury. How much longer his visit 
 to London lasted, we cannot say. Probably he returned 
 to the scene of his government when the season for 
 action in the field came on. At any rate by the early 
 autumn of the year he had gained considerable suc- 
 cesses, having received the submission of three chiefs, 
 an event which was evidently thought to be of con- 
 siderable importance. 
 
 In a brief session of Parliament during the same year 
 (October 20th to November 21st) the Prince again re- 
 ceived public thanks. A little later in the year the 
 King granted him certain property which had been 
 forfeited by the outlawry of sundry persons ; and also 
 reappointed him, for the fourth time, his Lieutenant in 
 
HENRY THE FIFTH 
 
 Wales. He had now, it will be remembered, completed 
 his twentieth year. The Welsh appointment was twice 
 more renewed — on December 27th, 1407, and again on 
 January 19th, 1409-10. Probably there would have 
 been an impropriety, now that the Prince had attained 
 years of maturity, in handing over to any one else the 
 chief command in the principality from which he took 
 his title. But he seems to have had personally little to 
 do with Welsh affairs during the latter part of his 
 father's reign. The last record of his presence in the 
 country is a document, executed at Carmarthen Castle, 
 and bearing date September 23rd, 1408. At that time 
 he had been five years and a half in command. He 
 had been so far unsuccessful in dealing with the Welsh 
 insurrection that Owen Glendower still held out, as 
 indeed he continued to do up to the day of his death. 
 But the rebels or patriots, according as we may choose 
 to call them, were certainly confined within narrow 
 limits. The Welsh difficulty was no longer, as it had 
 been in the days before the battle of Shrewsbury, a 
 danger that threatened the throne of the Lancastrian 
 princes ; it had ceased to be even a serious annoyance. 
 Glendower still remained unsubdued in his mountain 
 fastnesses ; but the rich plains of Herefordshire and 
 Worcestershire were no longer in fear of his incursions. 
 So the Prince's Welsh campaigns were a success rather 
 than, as is commonly stated by historians, a failure. 
 How much of this success was due to his personal initia- 
 tive it is, of course, impossible to say. When he 
 was first formally appointed to his office he was just 
 nine months younger than was the Black Prince at 
 Crecy. Lads between fifteen and sixteen are now-a- 
 
HENR VS EARL Y ABILITY 
 
 days considered too young even for the responsibilities 
 of a sixth form in a public school. In the England of 
 Edward and Henry's time men came much earlier to 
 their maturity. The royal caste especially, accustomed 
 from the very first to the realities of power, learnt 
 very soon to act for themselves. The young Prince is 
 probably entitled to a very considerable share of what- 
 ever credit may attach during the time of his active 
 lieutenancy to the management of Welsh affairs. 
 
CHAPTEE III 
 
 PRINCE HENKY AND THE CHIEF JUSTICE 
 
 The first part of Henry's public life, the period of his 
 lieutenancy of Wales and the Welsh border, has now- 
 been dealt with. We may pass on to the second, which 
 may be roughly described as extending from the beginning 
 of 1409 up to his accession to the throne. On February 
 28th, 1408-9, he was appointed Constable of Dover Castle 
 and Keeper of the Cinque Ports. After this we find no 
 mention of his personal presence in Wales, though, as 
 has been mentioned, he continued to hold the office of 
 Lieutenant of that principality. He seems to have re- 
 sided chiefly in London or at the seat of his new duties. 
 This, then, seems a convenient opportunity of discussing 
 the famous story of his insolent behaviour to the Chief 
 Justice, his punishment, and his submission. Shake- 
 speare, indeed, would seem to place the incident in the 
 first period of the Prince's life. In the first act of the 
 second part of Henry the Fourth, Falstaff's page says to 
 his master, when the Chief Justice enters, " Here comes 
 the nobleman who committed the Prince for striking him 
 about Bardolph." This, therefore, puts it back to some 
 time before the battle of Shrewsbury, which, it will be 
 remembered, is supposed to have been fought just before 
 
CHAP. Ill THE GASCOIGNE OF SHAKESPEARE 23 
 
 the beginning of the second drama. This is manifestly 
 impossible. If there were nothing else to disprove it — 
 and the Prince's age, barely fifteen, would be itself 
 sufficient — there is the fact that he resided continuously 
 in Wales. The incident, if it be a fact, must be assigned 
 to the time when Henry was living in or near London. 
 
 We may notice, before proceeding, the curious care- 
 lessness in the great dramatist which makes the Prince 
 strike the Chief Justice " about Bardolph." Bardolph 
 is one of the boon companions of FalstafF. The Prince 
 never expresses anything but contempt for him. 
 
 A few lines from the famous scene may be quoted. 
 The King, then newly seated on the throne, asks the 
 Chief Justice, who has come to offer his homage, 
 
 " How might a prince of my great hopes forget 
 So great indignities you laid upon me? 
 What ! rate, rebuke, and roughly send to prison 
 The immediate heir of England !" 
 
 And then, after hearing the defence, he goes on : 
 
 " You are right, justice, and you weigh this well ; 
 Therefore still bear the balance and the sword: 
 And I do wish your honours may increase. 
 Till you do live to see a son of mine 
 Offend you and obey you, as I did. 
 So shall I live to speak my father's words : 
 Happy am /, tlmt have a man so bold, 
 That dares do justice on my propter son ; 
 And not less happy, having such a son, 
 Tliat would deliver up his greatness so 
 Into the hands of justice." 
 
 No more picturesque incident, it must be allowed, has 
 ever been used to "point a moral or adorn a tale." We 
 cannot wonder that it has become one of the common- 
 
24 HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 places of history, or of what passes as history. What, 
 then, is the foundation of the story; or, if it has no 
 foundation, what is its origin % 
 
 It appears for the first time in Tlu Bohe named the 
 Governour of Sir Thomas Elyot, a philosophico-political 
 treatise, published in 1531. The story as he tells it 
 runs thus : 
 
 " The most renowned Priace, King Henry the Fifth, 
 late King of England, during the life of his father was 
 noted to be fierce and of wanton courage. It happened that 
 one of his servants whom he well favoured, for felony by 
 him committed, was arraigned at the King's Bench ; whereof 
 he being advertised, and incensed by light persons about 
 him, in furious rage came hastily to the bar, where his ser- 
 vant stood as a prisoner, and commanded him to be ungyved 
 and set at liberty, whereat all men were abashed, except 
 the Chief Justice, who humbly exhorted the Prince to be 
 contented that his servant might be ordered according to 
 the ancient laws of the realm, or if he would have him 
 saved from the rigour of the laws, that he should obtain, if 
 he might, of the King, his father, his gracious pardon ; 
 whereby no law or justice should be derogate. With which 
 answer the Prince nothing appeased, but rather more in- 
 flamed, endeavoured himself to take away his servant. The 
 judge, considering the perilous example and inconvenience 
 that might thereby ensue, with a valiant spirit and courage 
 commanded the Prince upon his allegiance to leave the 
 prisoner and depart his way. With which commandment 
 the Prince, being set all in a fury, all chafed, and in a terrible 
 manner, came up to the place of judgment — men thinking that 
 he would have slain the judge, or have done to him some 
 damage ; but the judge sitting still, without moving, declar- 
 ing the majesty of the King's place of judgment, and with 
 an assured and bold countenance made to the Prince these 
 words following :— ' Sir, remember yourself ; I keep here 
 the place of the King, your sovereign lord and father, to 
 whom ye owe double obedience, wherefore, eftsoons in his 
 
in SIR THOMAS ELYOfS STORY 25 
 
 name, I charge you desist of your wilfulness and unlawful 
 entry here, and from henceforth give good example to those 
 which hereafter shall he your proper suhjects. And now for 
 your contempt and disobedience go you to the prison of the 
 King's Bench, whereunto I commit you ; and remain ye 
 there prisoner until the pleasure of the King, your father, 
 be further known.' With which words being abashed, and 
 also wondering at the marvellous gravity of that worshipful 
 Justice, the noble Prince, laying his weapon apart, doing 
 reverence, departed and went to the King's Bench, as he 
 was commanded. Whereat his servants disdaining, came 
 and showed to the King all the whole aflfair. Whereat he 
 awhile studying, after as a man all ravished with gladness, 
 holding his eyes and hands up towards heaven, abraided, 
 saying with a loud voice, ' merciful God, how much am 
 I, above all other men, bound to your infinite goodness ; 
 specially for that ye have given me a judge who feareth not 
 to minister justice, and also a son who can suffer semblably 
 and obey justice 2 ' " 
 
 This narrative is circumstantial enough, though it 
 gives no note of time. On what foundation, then, does 
 it rest, for we can hardly suppose it to be a pure inven- 
 tion ? There certainly appears to have been a tradition 
 which attributes some such misconduct to the Prince. 
 Some few years after the appearance of Sir Thomas 
 Elyot's book, one Robert Eedman or Redmayne wrote a 
 book which he entitled Historia Henrici Quinii He 
 thus expresses himself : 
 
 " He was removed from the Council (Senatus), and access to 
 the Court was forbidden to him. His reputation was checked 
 in mid-course, because he struck the Chief Justice, whose 
 function it was to solve suits and decide causes, when the said 
 Justice had committed to prison one from whose companion- 
 ship Henry derived a singular pleasure." 
 
 Here the offence is the same, but the punishment is 
 
26 HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 diiferent. Of the alleged removal of the Prince from the 
 Council it will be more convenient to speak hereafter. 
 
 Of Eichard Eedman we know nothing beyond what 
 may be learnt from the internal evidence of his chronicle, 
 and this amounts to little more than that he was a 
 scholar well versed in Latin literature ; that he was 
 inclined to the Eeformed opinions ; and that he wrote 
 somewhat earlier than the middle of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury. It seems, however, that there was a Eedman who 
 was present at the battle of Agincourt, and who on one 
 occasion was joined in a commission with Gascoigue, 
 the hero of the story. It has been suggested that this 
 Eedman was an ancestor of the chronicler, and that he 
 derived his story from a tradition current in his family. 
 Of this we can only say that, it is not impossible, not 
 forgetting, however, that such a tradition may indeed 
 have existed and yet not have been true. 
 
 Finally, Thomas Hardyng tells us that the punish- 
 ment of removal from the Council was inflicted upon the 
 Prince by the King, but does not mention the offence 
 which was thus visited. Hardyng was a contemporary; 
 indeed, as he was born 1 378, he was very nearly of the 
 same age as Henry. So far his testimony is valuable, 
 though his account of the incident seems to have been 
 written quite late in Hfe. But, as the Prince's oifence 
 is not specified, it has but a very indirect bearing on the 
 question. 
 
 On the other hand, an examination of the records 
 of the Court of the King's Bench shows that there is 
 no entry to be found in them of any committal of the 
 Prince. It has been pointed out that the summary com- 
 mittal to prison of an offender, as described by Elyot, 
 
Ill LIGHT EVIDENCE 27 
 
 was not the course of proceeding at the time. This, 
 however, may be waived. The Prince may have been 
 tried by a jury impanelled on the spot, and sent to 
 prison when found guilty by them ; and for this course 
 of proceeding a more dramatically effective committal by 
 the presiding judge may have been substituted. But the 
 incident must, one would think, have been recorded in 
 one way or another, and the absolute silence of the rolls 
 and year-books of the Court affords a strong presumption 
 that nothing of the kind ever occurred. 
 
 But on looking back to the records of an earlier time, 
 we find that on one occasion a Prince of Wales had been 
 guilty of contempt of Court and had been punished for 
 it by his father. In the thirty-fourth year of Edward 
 the First, one William de Breora, having had judgment 
 pronounced against him by Eoger de Hegham, one of the 
 Barons of the Exchequer, " climbed in contemptuous 
 fashion upon the bar, and with grave and bitter words 
 found fault with the said judgment and also insulted the 
 said Eoger as he was leaving the Court" The Court 
 proceeded to punish him for this offence, and rested its 
 action on what had recently been done in a similar case. 
 
 " Suoh acts," it says, " namely, contempt and disobedience 
 done to the servants of our Lord King, as to the King himself 
 and his Court, are exceedingly odious. This was lately 
 manifested when the said King removed his eldest and dearly 
 beloved son, Edward, Prince of Wales, from his house for 
 nearly the space of half-a-year, because he had spoken gross 
 and bitter words to a servant of the King ; nor would he 
 suffer him to come into his presence till he had satisfied the 
 aforesaid servant of the King in the matter of his offence." 
 
 There can, I think, be little doubt that we have here 
 
28 HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 the germs of the story which Shakespeare afterwards 
 so effectively used. It has been acutely pointed out 
 that several phrases in Elyot's narrative have the 
 appearance of having been translated from the Latin ; 
 and the theory is that some chronicler compounded the 
 various incidents as they had occurred or were supposed 
 to have occurred, and combined them with the story 
 which is told in the Govenwrn; and which has been 
 immortalised by Shakespeare. It should, perhaps, be 
 added that Gascoigne had shown in a very striking way 
 his independence of spirit. After the suppression of 
 the northern insurrection in 1405, the King directed him 
 to pronounce sentence of death on the two leaders, 
 Richard Scrope, Archbishop of York, and Thomas Mow- 
 bray, Earl Marshall, who had been captured and probably 
 tried and condemned by some kind of court-martial. 
 Gascoigne, who was Chief Justice (he had been appointed 
 to the office in November 1400), refused to do so. He 
 declared that as to the Archbishop, neither the King nor 
 any of the King's subjects could lawfully put him to 
 death ; as to the Earl Marshall, he had the right to be 
 tried by his peers. Independence in a judge has always 
 been especially dear to Englishmen. To a monkish 
 historian — and almost all the historians of the time were 
 monks — such independence could not show itself in a more 
 praiseworthy fashion than in asserting the exemption of 
 ecclesiastical persons from the jurisdiction of lay courts. 
 Gascoigne, then, would be a genuine hero, and, as with 
 other genuine heroes, a great amount of myth may well 
 have grown up about his true story. 
 
 It only remains to examine the conclusion of the 
 legend, as Shakespeare tells it. The young King is there 
 
Ill THE TRUTH ABOUT GASCOIGNE 29 
 
 represented as assuring him of his favour, and pro- 
 mising to continue him in ofBce. 
 
 We find him acting as a judge in Hilary term 1413 
 (January and February). Henry the Fourth died on 
 March 20th. His successor summoned a new Parliament 
 by writ bearing date the 23rd day of that month, and 
 among the persons summoned was William Gascoigne. 
 But on March 29th William Hankford, a puisne judge of 
 the Common Pleas, was appointed to Gascoigne's office. 
 On July 7th of the same year there is recorded a pay- 
 ment made to him, as late Chief Justice, on account of 
 salary and annuity. It is quite possible that he volun- 
 tarily resigned his office. We do not exactly know his 
 age, but he must have been advanced in years. He had 
 been practising as an advocate as early as the year 1374, 
 which may well throwback his birth as far as 1340. In 
 this case he would be seventy-three at Henry's accession, 
 and seventy-three meant much more then than it does 
 now. He died in 1419. It may be mentioned that in 
 1414 a royal warrant gave him for life four bucks and 
 four does out of the forest of Pontefract. On the whole, 
 the evidence in the matter has an absolutely neutral 
 effect. It disproves, indeed, anything like a display of 
 magnanimity on Henry's part ; but then there does not 
 seem to have been any occasion for such magnanimity. 
 Gascoigne may have been removed from his office, a 
 common enough practice in the days when such offices 
 were held at the royal pleasure, or he may have resigned. 
 That he was continued in his office by the young King 
 is certainly a fiction. There can be little doubt that the 
 same may be said of the whole story. 
 
CHAPTEE IV 
 
 THE CHARGES AGAINST PRINCE HENRY 
 
 The appointment of the Prince in February 1408-9 to 
 the office of Constable of Dover and Keeper of the 
 Cinque Ports has already been mentioned. A little 
 more than a year afterwards — that is, on March 18th, 
 1409-10 — the King, having the "fullest confidence in the 
 circumspection and fidelity of his most dear son, Henry, 
 Prince of Wales,'' appointed him for the space of twelve 
 years Captain of the town of Calais. Thenceforward 
 his time was divided between his duties at these places 
 and in London, where he is found in frequent attendance 
 at Councils. In the Acts of the Privy Council and other 
 records there is preserved a continuous history of his 
 public life. The details are of little or no importance ; 
 but the impression left by the whole is that the Prince 
 was taking a leading part in the administration of affairs, 
 foreign and domestic. The theory of the Constitution, 
 as it is now understood and carried into practice, excludes 
 the possibility of any such action on the part of the heir- 
 apparent to the throne. The system on which the 
 machine is worked is a government by party, and from 
 party it is held to be necessary that he should stand 
 aloof. The Sovereign, though the powers assigned to him 
 
CHAP. IV RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE PRINCE 31 
 
 by the Constitution have virtually fallen into abeyance, 
 still has a very considerable share in the management of 
 affairs; but the functions of the Prince of Wales are 
 purely social. Things were very different in the days 
 of personal government. The King's Ministers were not 
 the representatives of the majority in Parliament, but 
 friends and counsellors of his own choice, often, of course, 
 his own kinsmen. Edward the First had been the support 
 of his feeble father, and the Third Edward had had an 
 able lieutenant in the Black Prince. All that is recorded 
 in authentic documents about Prince Henry tends to make 
 us believe that his behaviour as successor to the crown 
 resembled that of those great predecessors in his place. 
 There is nothing, on the other hand, to suggest a com- 
 parison with the dissolute heir of the first Edward, 
 whose frivolous conduct and unseemly intimacies have 
 nevertheless, by some strange caprice of tradition, been 
 transferred to our hero. 
 
 It will be sufficient to give a few only of the many 
 occasions on which the Prince's name is mentioned. It 
 will be seen that they indicate, more or less plainly, the 
 confidence and affection existing between him and his 
 father. 
 
 To be in command both at Dover and Calais, while 
 still retaining the lieutenantship of Wales, was manifestly 
 to be in a position of great trust. Not less significant in 
 another way was his appointment (dated February 1st, 
 1408-9) as guardian of the young Earl of March and his 
 brother, two most important persons as representing a 
 rival claim to the throne. The general opinion of his 
 character may be indicated by the fact that when, in 
 compliance with a request from the Commons, the Lords 
 
32 HENRY THE FIFTH 
 
 before appointed to be of the King's Council were again 
 declared, all of them took the oath to do justice except- 
 ing the Prince of Wales, who for his rank was excused 
 that ceremony. 
 
 In the course of the year 1411 we find grants of 
 money made to the Prince for operations to be carried 
 on at Calais and for the defence of Wales. In the 
 October of that year the King makes him a present of 
 twenty hogsheads of red wine from Gascony. It should 
 be mentioned that in the previous year he had received 
 from the King a grant for life of the palace of Cold- 
 harbour, in the parish of Hayes in Middlesex. 
 
 On November 2nd in this year Parliament met and 
 sat for six weeks. In the course of the session the 
 Speaker, in the name of the Commons, prayed the King 
 to thank the' Prince and the other Lords of the Council 
 for their great labour and diligence, and declared the 
 opinion of the House that the said Lords had done their 
 duty, according to their promise, well and loyally. The 
 Prince and his colleagues were present, and kneeling 
 declared by the mouth of the Prince that they had 
 endeavoured so to act. Thereupon the King thanked 
 them. On the last day of the Parliament the Speaker 
 recommended the Queen, the Prince, and the King's 
 younger son to the King, and asked for the advance- 
 ment of their estates. To this recommendation the King 
 returned the usual gracious answer. 
 
 There is nothing particularly remarkable in these 
 proceedings ; but they indicate the existence of harmony 
 and good feeling between the King, his heir, and the 
 House of Commons, and there is certainly nothing to 
 support the allegations that have now to be considered. 
 
IV ALLEGED DIFFERENCES WITH THE KING 33 
 
 In a chronicle the date of which cannot be fixed, but 
 which was certainly not contemporary with the events 
 which it professes to narrate, it is stated that in the 
 Parliament of 1411 the Prince desired of the King that 
 he should resign the kingdom, as being incapable by 
 reason of ill-health of performing its duties, that the 
 King refused to do so, and that thereupon the Prince 
 and his counsellors withdrew from the Parliament. 
 
 In another chronicle, also of uncertain date, written 
 by a monk of the Abbey of Malmsbury, it is stated that 
 in the thirteenth year of King Henry the Fourth "a 
 convention was made between Henry Beaufort, Bishop 
 of Winchester, and almost all the Lords that one of 
 them should speak to the King, desiring that he should 
 resign the crown and permit his eldest son to be crowned, 
 seeing that he was so horribly afflicted by leprosy ; and 
 that this being told to the King, he, being unwilling so 
 to resign his crown, by the advice of some of his Lords' 
 rode through a great part of England, notwithstanding 
 the said leprosy." 
 
 All the historical confirmation of this allegation that 
 exists lies in the fact that sixteen years afterwards the 
 Bishop, being on his trial for high treason, was accused 
 of having stirred up the King, when Prince of Wales, 
 to endeavour to bring about the resignation of his 
 father. No evidence was offered in support of the 
 charge, and the Bishop was acquitted. This acquittal is 
 not a conclusive proof of the prelate's innocence, for the 
 trial was a political move on the part of the faction 
 opposed to him, and the result would naturally follow 
 the event of the struggle. The charge must have re- 
 presented some kind of popular belief. It is probable, 
 
 D 
 
34 HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 or at least not impossible, that at some time during these 
 two years of Henry the Fourth's life there was a feeling 
 that the functions of government were not efficiently 
 performed by him, and that they might with advantage 
 be handed over to his heir. The Prince may have shared 
 this feeling, but there is nothing to prove that he did. 
 In the absence of aU evidence we may conclude that he 
 did not show it by any overt act. 
 
 One part of the story is indeed conclusively disproved 
 by testimony that cannot be gainsaid. The King did 
 not ride over a great part of England to show his people 
 that he was not disabled by the leprosy. We know that 
 on June 12th, 1411, he was at the Abbey of Stratford, 
 that he returned thence to his palace at Westminster 
 on that day, and that he was never afterwards absent 
 for a whole day from that residence. 
 
 In a proclamation dated February 3rd, 1411-12, the 
 King addresses his heir as " his most dear son, Henry, 
 Prince of Wales." The language is formal; but, so far 
 as it goes, it indicates continued confidence and affection 
 on the part of the King. This, it will be observed, was 
 a few weeks after the session of Parliament in which, as 
 is alleged, the Prince endeavoured to oust his father from 
 power. 
 
 One piece of contemporary evidence, however, must 
 not be neglected. Monstrelet writes thus (i. 101) : 
 
 " He (Henry IV) was so sorely oppressed at the latter end of 
 his sickness, that those who attended him, not perceiving him 
 to breathe, concluded that he was dead, and covered his face 
 with a cloth. It was the custom in that country, whenever 
 the King was ill, to place the royal crown on a cushion beside 
 his bed, and for his successor to take it at his death. The 
 Prince of Wales, being informed by the attendants that his 
 
IV MONSTRELET'S STORY 35 
 
 father was dead, had carried away the crown ; but, shortly- 
 after, the King uttered a groan, and his face was uncovered, 
 when, on looking for the crown, he asked what had become 
 of it ? His attendants replied that ' my lord the Prince had 
 taken it away.' He bade them send for the Prince, and, at 
 his entrance, the King asked him why he had carried away 
 the crown. ' My lord,' answered the Prince, ' your attendants 
 here present affirmed to me that you were dead ; and as your 
 crown and kingdom belong to me as your eldest son, after 
 your decease, I had taken it away.' The King gave a deep 
 sigh, and said, ' My fair son, what right have you to it ? for 
 you well know I had none.' ' My lord,' replied the Prince, 
 ' as you have held it by the right of your sword, it is my 
 intent to hold and defend it the same during my life.' The 
 King answered, ' Well, act as you see best ; I leave all things 
 to God, and pray that He will have mercy on me.' " 
 
 Shakespeare has used the story for the scene with 
 which every one is familiar; but he has used it in a 
 different sense from that in which it is told. The 
 dramatist's purpose was to heighten the contrast be- 
 tween the Prince, reckless, selfish, greedy of power, and 
 the King, changed by his elevation into a model of wis- 
 dom, thoughtfulness, and moderation. The chronicler, 
 who is manifestly a Yorkist partisan, introduces it to 
 enforce the dying King's supposed confession of his 
 wrongful tenure of the crown. There is no hint of the 
 father charging the son with a greedy grasping at power. 
 Dr. Lingard seems right in suggesting that the story- 
 was a fiction of the partisans of the Earl of March. It 
 has a very improbable look, and is supported by nothing 
 that we know of the manner of the King's death. 
 
 There remains, however, a certain residuum of evi- 
 dence -which makes it not altogether improbable that 
 during the last year of Henry the Fourth's life there 
 
36 HENR Y THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 was some disturbance of the harmony between him and 
 his eldest son. 
 
 Thomas Hardyng wrote in 1465 a metrical life of 
 Henry the Fifth, which is known as Versus Rhythmici in 
 laudem Henrici Quinti. In this we find the following 
 lines : 
 
 " The Bang discliarged tlie Prince from Ms counsail, 
 And set my lord Sir Thomas in his stead, 
 Chief of the council for the King's more avail ; 
 For which the Prince, of wrath and wiKul head, 
 Again him made debate and fro ward tread, 
 With whom the King took part and held the field. 
 To time the Prince unto the King him yield." 
 
 Hardyng was born in 1378, and he must therefore 
 have been in very advanced age when he wrote his 
 Versus Rhythmici. More than half a century, too, had 
 passed since the time of which he was writing. These 
 considerations, however, scarcely impair the value of his 
 testimony. The memory of an old man is commonly 
 tenacious of things that belong to his early life ; nor can 
 we, on the other hand, find a probable origin for so 
 circumstantial a story in the fancies of dotage. There 
 is possibly more weight in the argument that there is no 
 mention of any such occurrence in the chronicle which 
 Hardyng wrote some thirty years before the composition 
 of his Versus Rhythmici. But the chronicle was written 
 while the house of Lancaster was still in undisputed 
 possession of the throne, and, being doubtless intended 
 for the perusal of Henry the Sixth, who must have been 
 about attaining his majority when it was finished; it 
 is quite possible that the writer may have suppressed 
 the mention of a family quarrel. But in later times he 
 
IV SEAT IN THE COUNCIL 37 
 
 attached himself to the house of York, and his chronicle 
 is supposed to have been rewritten at the instance of 
 Eichard, Duke of York, killed at Wakefield. In 1465 
 Edward the Fourth was, to all appearance, firmly seated 
 on the throne. Praises of a great national hero, such 
 as was Henry the Fifth, would not be unwelcome ; but 
 there would be no motive for tenderness in writing the 
 family history. It must be allowed that, on the whole, 
 Hardyng's testimony has a certain weight. 
 
 Then comes the question — Is it confirmed by any 
 other evidence % There is an entry in the Pell Rolls, 
 under the date February 18th, 1411-12, which records 
 the payment to the Prince of a thousand marks in 
 consideration of the labours, costs, and charges sustained 
 by him "quo tempore fuit de consilio ipsius Domini 
 Eegis." The words may mean, according to the sense 
 which we may put on fuii, "for the time during 
 which he has been of the King's Council " or " for 
 the time during which he was," etc. It has been 
 argued that if the latter sense had been intended erat 
 would have been used instead of fuit. It may be 
 allowed that the signification of eraf woiild not have 
 been ambiguous. It would have meant that he was at 
 some former time and was not at the time of writing. 
 But fuit may mean the same. It is often used as a 
 most emphatic prseterite, as in the famous "fuimus 
 lioes, fuit Ilium." The Prince, too, it must be remem- 
 bered, had been a member of the Council at this time 
 for more than eleven years. If he still retained his seat 
 in it, it is somewhat strange that now for the first time 
 the payment of compensation for his expenses and 
 service appears. The first impression left by the entry 
 
38 HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 certainly is that the thousand marks were a solacium paid 
 to him on ceasing to belong to it.^ 
 
 A noticeable omission occurs in a writ issued on June 
 11th, 1412 — that is, about four months after the entry- 
 just discussed. The Prince is described, without any 
 affectionate or complimentary epithet, as the " Captain 
 of Calais." It is possible that this omission may have 
 been unintentional : there are instances in which it 
 occurs where it is impossible to suppose that any kind 
 of displeasure or angry feeling is implied ; and we 
 certainly find an entry of May 1st in the same year in 
 which the usual terms of affection are employed. 
 
 If the Prince was removed from the Council or 
 retired from it voluntarily, his absence cannot have 
 lasted long. His supposed successor or substitute, 
 Thomas, Duke of Clarence, left England to take the 
 command of the English forces in Aquitaine in July 
 1412, nor did he return to this country till after his 
 father's death. It is noticeable that there is no trace of 
 the resentment which an elder brother unjustly dis- 
 possessed might be supposed to feel for him who had 
 supplanted him. Henry, when he became king, retained 
 the Duke of Clarence in his command. In July a 
 Council was held at which the means of raising money 
 for the expenses of the King, and for a force which was 
 apparently about to be got together to serve under the 
 Prince, were discussed. In the September of the same 
 year the Prince, if we may trust the author of the Chronide 
 
 ^ I cannot feel satisfied with Mr. F. Solly-Flood's explanation 
 that, owing to the Prince's frequent absences at Calais, his attend- 
 ance at the Council had been intermittent, and his salaiy had 
 fallen into arrear. A thousand marks is a large sum, more than a 
 Councillor's salary for many years could amount to. 
 
IV POSSIBLE EXPLANATIONS 39 
 
 of London, actually attended a Council. "Whether this be 
 the case or no, it is certain that about this time we find 
 the Council deliberating about matters which closely con- 
 cerned the Prince's character, and coming to a conclusion 
 highly favourable to him. He had been accused, it •would 
 seem, of keeping back moneys that he had received for 
 the payment of his soldiers. He had now sent in two 
 rolls of paper, giving particulars of his expenditure, and 
 the Council accordingly directed the issue of letters 
 under the Privy Seal which should set forth the true 
 state of the case. A further order was made at the same 
 sitting of the Council for the pa3rment of a considerable 
 sum of money on account of the wages of certain men- 
 at-arms who were stationed under the Prince's command 
 in Wales. Very similar entries, which it is needless to 
 give, are found under date October 21st. 
 
 If, then, there was any disagreement between the 
 King and his eldest son, it must probably be referred to 
 the earlier part of 1412. It is easy to make conjectures 
 about the cause, for indeed several causes are possible or 
 even probable, but difficult to find reasons for preferring 
 one conjecture to another. There may have been the 
 ordinary jealousy that is found so often between the 
 possessor and the heir of power. The elder Henry's 
 capacity may have begun to fail him, as his health 
 certainly failed, during the last years of his life. Dis- 
 satisfaction on the side of the vigorous successor to the 
 throne and suspicion on that of its enfeebled holder 
 would naturally follow. And the young Henry may 
 well have felt some personal annoyance at the tortuous 
 policy which his father persisted in following in French 
 affairs. The King made a treaty with the King of 
 
40 HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 France in December 1410. No sooner was it proclaimed 
 than in the following March he began to negotiate with 
 the Duke of Burgundy, and concluded a truce with 
 him in May. In the following year an alliance, 
 offensive and defensive, was made with the French 
 Princes who were acting on behalf of the then disabled 
 King ; and again, a month after this, another treaty was 
 concluded with the Duke of Burgundy. The afiairs of 
 the Prince himself were one of the subjects dealt with in 
 these negotiations. Henry the Fourth was eager in the 
 extreme to strengthen his position by a matrimonial 
 alliance with a royal family of undoubted title. It was 
 now a daughter of the French King, and now a daughter 
 of the Duke of Burgundy, who seemed to him a desirable 
 bride for the heir to his crown ; and it is just possible 
 that the young man, who was quite capable of being 
 resolute in such matters, did not wholly approve of the 
 diplomacy by which his father sought to dispose of him 
 . in marriage. 
 
 It is possible that a curious story, previously referred 
 to as bearing on the question of Henry's possible resi- 
 dence at Oxford, may belong to this time of estrange- 
 ment. It was on a New Year's Day — the New Year's 
 Day of 1411-12, if this conjecture be correct — that the 
 Prince, finding that his enemies had slandered him to 
 his father, came to Westminster Hall. Dressed, accord- 
 ing to one version, in his old student's gown, with the 
 needle and thread, still yearly presented to the members 
 of Eglesfield's foundation, stuck in its collar, he advanced, 
 leaving his attendants clustered round the coal fire in 
 the middle of the hall, to the upper end where the King 
 sat with his immediate attendants. Saluting his father 
 
IV ALLEGED HOBBERV OP RECEIVERS 4I 
 
 he begged for a private audience, and the King, who 
 was unable to walk, was carried into another room. 
 Then the Prince fell on his knees, and drawing his 
 dagger from its sheath presented it to his father, and 
 begged him to plunge it into his heart if he thought that 
 there could be found there any feelings but those of 
 affection and loyalty. The chronicler Otterbourne tells 
 a somewhat similar story, but refers it to the June of 
 this same year. 
 
 Another charge that has been brought against Henry 
 may be traced in the first place to John Stow, whose 
 Summary of the Chronicles of England was published in 
 1570, and through him to Eobert Fabyan, whose 
 Chronicle was probably written early in the sixteenth 
 century. Stow writes : 
 
 " He (the Prince) lived somewhat insolently, insomuch 
 that while his father lived, being accompanied with some of 
 his yonng lords and gentlemen, he would wait in disguised 
 array for his own receivers and distress them of their money, 
 and sometimes at such enterprises both he and his com- 
 panions were sorely beaten ; and when his receivers made to 
 him their complaints how they were robbed in their coming 
 to him, he would give them their discharge of so much 
 money as they had lost, and besides that they should not 
 depart from him without great rewards for their trouble and 
 vexation, especially they should be rewarded that best had 
 resisted him and his company, and of whom he had received 
 the greatest and most strokes." 
 
 Of Fabyan it is only necessary to say that he 
 does not give any such details, but says generally 
 that the " King, before the death of his father, 
 applied himself unto all vice and insolency, and 
 drew unto him violent and vnldly - disposed persons." 
 
42 HENRY THE FIFTH chap, iv 
 
 Sto-w, therefore, it will be seen, improved upon 
 Fabyan. Eecent writers have improved upon Stow 
 by finding a cause for these lawless proceedings in 
 Henry's grinding poverty. Poverty was doubtless the 
 prevailing condition of both father and son ; but the 
 King was as liberal to his heir as his means permitted. 
 The Prince had often, it is clear, money enough to 
 advance his soldiers' pay, for we hear of sums repaid 
 him on this account. The story may be dismissed as a 
 fable, or, if it has any foundation at all, as the exagger- 
 ated report of a youthful freak. 
 
 A still more baseless invention is that the Prince and 
 his wild companions indulged in various extravagant 
 doings at his manor of Cheylesmore, near Coventry, 
 and that on one occasion he and they were taken into 
 custody by the Mayor of Coventry. The legend can- 
 not, it seems, be traced beyond the latter part of the 
 seventeenth century. 
 
 The other charges against Henry's character may be 
 more conveniently considered in the next chapter. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 ACCESSION TO THE THRONE 
 
 In December 1413 the King, whose health had been 
 failing for some years, was dangerously ilL He was then 
 at his palace at Eltham, and for a while, says Walsingham, 
 he seemed to be dead. But he recovered, and kept 
 Christmas with such festivity as he might. In the 
 following March he was again attacked as he was pray- 
 ing in the Confessor's Chapel at Westminster Abbey. 
 His attendants carried him into the Abbot's house, 
 where he shortly afterwards expired. One of his 
 biographers tells us that the dying man called his 
 successor to his side and advised him to fear God, to 
 choose an honest confessor, to be diligent in his duty 
 as a king, and to pay his (the speaker's) debts. The 
 speech has the appearance of the appropriate orations 
 which historians were accustomed to put into the mouth 
 of their characters. If, as seems likely, the cause of 
 death was apoplexy, it is probable that he never re- 
 covered consciousness. 
 
 The King died on March 20th. Parliament had 
 been prorogued to the 24th of the month. It was 
 ipso fado dissolved by the demise of the Crown ; but 
 the prelates, peers, and representatives of the Commons 
 
44 HMNRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 who had been summoned to it assembled in an informal 
 manner, and for the first time in English history, with- 
 out waiting for the solemnities of coronation, spontane- 
 ously offered homage to their new Sovereign, though at 
 the same time taking care to prevent their action from 
 being afterwards made into a precedent. 
 
 The young Henry's accession to the throne is said 
 to have been the occasion of a sudden change which 
 converted a reckless and profligate youth into a sober 
 God-fearing man. The contemporary evidence for this 
 assertion comes from two sources — Thomas Walsingham, 
 one of the long line of writers who formed the historical 
 school of St. Alban's, and Thomas Elmham, who was 
 then a monk of Canterbury and afterwards became one 
 of Henry's chaplains. Elmham writes : 
 
 " He was in the days of his youth a diligent follower of 
 idle practices, much given to instruments of music, and one 
 who, loosing the reins of modesty, though zealously serving 
 Mars, yet fired with the torches of Venus herself, and, in the 
 intervals of his brave deeds as a soldier, wont to occupy 
 himself with the other extravagances that attend the days 
 of undisciplined youth." 
 
 And after treating of the death of the King he goes 
 on to put a confession of sin into the mouth of the 
 Prince. Strong as are the expressions, they are nothing 
 more than what are uttered day after day by worshippers 
 whom neither the world nor their own conscience 
 accuses of any heinous crime. Further on we read : 
 
 " After he had spent the day in wailing and groaning, so 
 soon as the shades of night covered the earth, the weeping 
 Prince, taking advantage of the darkness, secretly visited a 
 certain recluse of holy life at Westminster ; and laying hare 
 
V REFORMATION OF LIFE 45 
 
 to Mm the secret sins of his whole life, was washed in the 
 layer of true repentance, and receiving the antidote of 
 absolution against the poison that he had before swallowed, 
 so put off the mantle of vice and returned decently adorned 
 with the cloak of virtue. Thus a barren willow was changed 
 into a fruitful olive, a Cooytus into an Euphrates, a Paris 
 into a Hippolytus, the left into the right, by a happy 
 miracle." 
 
 Hiirdyiig, Walsingham, and Otterbourne all use lan- 
 guage to the same effect; and finally we have the 
 testimony of the Italian who wrote under the pseu- 
 donym of Titus Livius. He was not strictly a con- 
 temporary ; but he seems to have been in the service 
 of Humphrey of Gloucester, the King's brother, and 
 some weight must be given to his words. They are, 
 it will be seen, little more than another version, 
 couched in less extravagant language, of the chronicle 
 of Elmham, and run thus : 
 
 " Wherefore he was said by his father and by the royal 
 council to be especially dear to the said King, although his 
 good report was damaged by certain blame cast upon him 
 by some in this matter — in that he took great pleasure in 
 music, and followed in moderation {mediocriter) the pleasures 
 of love and war, and other things which the licence of a 
 soldier's life is wont to permit, so long as his father lived. 
 . . . "While King Henry was yet dying, reflecting that he 
 was about to come to the kingdom, he called unto him a 
 priest, a monk of most virtuous life, and confessing to him 
 his past errors, radically amended his life and manners in 
 such fashion that no occasion of wantonness (lascime) was 
 ever afterwards found in him." 
 
 There is nothing said, it will be observed, about loose 
 and vicious companions whom the young King banished 
 from his presence as soon as he felt the responsibilities 
 
46 HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 of power. It is scarcely conclusive, perhaps, to show- 
 that the officers of his household during the days when 
 he stood next to the throne were persons of respectable 
 character. The same might be said of other heirs- 
 apparent who yet have been undoubtedly profligate. 
 The associates of a young prince's private life are not 
 necessarily his chamberlain, the treasurer of his house- 
 hold, or other dignified officials. But there is absolutely 
 no evidence to show that Henry was accustomed to the 
 society of vicious and disreputable companions. His 
 intimacy with Oldcastle, of which we shall have 
 occasion to speak hereafter, certainly could not be so 
 described. 
 
 On the other hand, we cannot wholly disregard the 
 contemporary evidence (for all other has been left out 
 of the account) which attributes to him a certain laxity 
 of life during the years that preceded his accession to 
 the throne. Such a laxity is only too probable in a 
 young prince. The temptations to which the young 
 kinsmen of the ruler are exposed, before they feel 
 the responsibilities of power, are the weak point of the 
 system of hereditary monarchy. It would have been 
 scarcely indeed a miracle, but certainly a most un- 
 common experience, if Henry had passed through them 
 altogether unscathed. But the language in which the 
 errors of his youth are described may easily have been 
 exaggerated. And this exaggeration may have been 
 partly at least due to Henry himself. Those who read 
 the confessions and self-reproaches of John Bunyan 
 might easily believe him to have been guilty of excesses 
 into which he did not really fall. Henry had something 
 of the same devout temper, and may, it is at least 
 
CORONATION 47 
 
 probable, have used language about himself that leaves 
 a too unfavourable impression of his conduct. That he 
 was no idler, wasting his time and strength in riotous 
 excess, but on the contrary a vigorous and energetic youth, 
 even precociously distinguished as a soldier and states- 
 man, is abundantly clear. He was trusted by the King 
 and the King's counsellors; the nation which had 
 watched his career for more than ten years welcomed 
 his accession, not -^vith the doubtful hope that would be 
 extended to a profligate promising reform, but with an 
 enthusiasm of confidence and joy. And yet he may have 
 been conscious to himself of transgressions in the past 
 of which others took little or no account, but for which 
 the fervour of his reception by his people might have 
 made him feel a keener reproach. With this we may 
 leave the subject. 
 
 The young King was crowned on April 10th, the 
 Sunday before Easter, in the midst, as Walsingham 
 tells lis, of a great snowstorm, from which the people 
 drew various auguries, favourable or unfavourable, of 
 the character of the future reign. Meanwhile a new 
 Parliament had been summoned to meet on May 15th. 
 The Commons presented a number of petitions to 
 the King, praying for the removal of grievances. It 
 is impossible to judge of the justice or injustice of 
 these complaints, and of the King's attitude with regard 
 to them ; but it is abundantly clear that he had a will 
 of his own, and a definite determination to maintain his 
 prerogative. Certain malpractices in the ecclesiastical 
 courts were, he promised, to be corrected : if the bishops 
 failed in their duty he would act himself. But a request 
 that the knights and burgesses summoned to Parliament 
 
HENRY THE FIFTH 
 
 might be allowed their expenses, met with the guarded 
 answer that it should be done if a precedent could be 
 found. To a petition for an extensive process of dis- 
 foresting it was replied that such as had just complaints 
 against the charters of the forests should be heard. 
 Eequests for the mitigation of the law of deodand ^ 
 and for a concession of certain freedoms in trade were 
 refused. 
 
 Henry's generosity of temper, or at least his confi- 
 dence in his position, a frame of mind which often 
 leads to the same course of action, was shown by his 
 treatment of those whom a meaner or weaker prince 
 might have regarded as rivals or enemies. The young 
 Earl of March, who was still regarded by some as the 
 rightful heir to the crown, was released from imprison- 
 ment to which the suspicious fears of the deceased King 
 had condemned him. Henry had been the guardian of the 
 young man's estates, and seems to have discharged the 
 trust with fidelity. The Earl repaid him with affection, 
 and, as will be seen, when a critical occasion came, with 
 loyalty. 
 
 Another hereditary enemy was treated in the same 
 generous fashion. The heir of the Percies, son of the 
 Hotspur who fell on the field of Shrewsbury, had been 
 carried by his grandfather into Scotland. Henry, in the 
 second year of his reign, restored him to his title and 
 estates. 
 
 Finally, what may be called a reparation was made 
 
 ^ The request seems reasonable enough — viz., that no boat or 
 barge travelling on a river, out of which a person might accidentally 
 fall and so be drowned, should be taken as a deodand, i.e. for- 
 feited to the lord of the manor or the Crown as being a cause or 
 instrument of death. 
 
V RE- BURIAL OF RICHARD 49 
 
 to the memory of the prince whom Henry's father had 
 dispossessed. Eichard had been buried almost secretly 
 at Langley, in the Church of the Preaching Friars. His 
 body was now removed to London, and buried in royal 
 style in the Abbey of Westminster; "not,'' says Wal- 
 singham, "without great expense on the part of the 
 King, who now confessed that he owed him the same 
 respect that he did to his own natural father." At the 
 same time the King provided that "four tapers should 
 burn day and night about his grave while the world 
 endureth ; '' once a week a Avrige, was to be chanted, and 
 on the next day a requiem. After a mass a distribution 
 was to be made of eleven shillings and eightpence ; while 
 on the obit, or anniversary of death, as much as twenty 
 pounds was to be given away. 
 
 Thus reconciled to the enemies, living or dead, of his 
 house, Henry could address himself with good conscience 
 and hope to the work of his life. 
 
CHAPTEE VI 
 
 THE FRENCH CROWN 
 
 A FAMOUS scene in Henry the Fifth represents two 
 English prelates consulting together how they may best 
 put aside the imminent demand of the Commons for a 
 secularisation of a great part of the Church revenues. 
 The clergy were to be stripped of what would maintain 
 fifteen earls, fifteen hundred knights, and six thousand 
 or more esquires, besides lazar -houses and poor-houses, 
 and still have a " thousand pounds by the year " for the 
 coffers of the King. Such a spoliation would not only 
 " drink deep," as the Bishop of Ely says, but, as his 
 brother of Canterbury replies, " drink the cup and aU." 
 The King's new-born piety would not be a sufficient pro- 
 tection against this danger. ISTor would it be averted 
 even by the offer of a greater sum by way of contribution 
 than the clergy had ever offered to any one of his pre- 
 decessors. A more potent help would be found in the 
 suggestion, 
 
 " Of his true titles to some certain dukedoms ; 
 And, generally, to the crown and seat of France, 
 Derived from Edward, his great-grandfather." 
 
 We are not called upon to discuss the historical 
 foundation for this story. The chroniclers of the six- 
 
CAUSES OF WAR 51 
 
 teenth century probably put something of the feelings 
 which were dominant in their own times into their 
 narratives of tlje earlier age. But the movement which 
 culminated in the action of Henry the Eighth was then 
 beginning. The wealth of the Church was certainly 
 overgrown and often ill-applied. Cupidity it was sure to 
 excite ; but wise and honourable statesmen also regarded 
 it with dislike as an influence adverse to the national 
 prosperity. But to suppose that the ecclesiastical 
 authorities could stifle these feelings by forcing, so to 
 speak, upon the nation a war to which it was averse 
 or even indifferent is to contradict all the analogies of 
 history. 
 
 It would be equally erroneous to suppose that Henry 
 himself was driven to embark in war by a feeling of the 
 insecurity of his position, and by the desire to conceal by 
 the glory of his military achievements the weakness of 
 his title to the throne. Still it is true that the claim to 
 the French crown was the heritage of the Plantagenets, 
 and that Henry was compelled to assert it if he would 
 show himself the authentic representative of the second 
 Henry and the third Edward. 
 
 For some time after William of Normandy seized the 
 Enghsh throne the relations of the King of England to 
 the King of France — it might be more correct to say, the 
 king who reigned at Paris — were those of an over-power- 
 ful vassal to a weak suzerain. When Henry the Second 
 actually ruled over a larger part of France than the 
 prince who was nominally its sovereign, this reversal of 
 the ordinary state of things, according to which the lord 
 was the superior, the vassal the inferior, was complete. 
 But the tendency of things was to strengthen the central 
 
52 HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 power at Paris, and to weaken the great feudatories. 
 The English kings could not retain a permanent hold 
 on their continental possessions. In th^ course of the 
 forty -three years' reign of Philip Augustus the vast 
 French territory held by Henry the Second was re- 
 duced to the provinces of Gascony and Guienne, from 
 more than a half to less than a tenth of the whole 
 country. 
 
 Without following in detail the events of the next 
 hundred years, we may say that their tendency was to 
 separate the two countries more and more completely, 
 and to prepare the way for the change in their relations 
 which may be held to date from the year 1327. In that 
 year the last of the three sons of Philip the Fair died child- 
 less. Edward the Third of England, as the son of Philip's 
 daughter Isabella, put forward a claim to the succession 
 as against Philip of Valois, who, as descended from a 
 common grandfather, Philip the Hardy, was his first 
 cousin.^ This claim he attempted to enforce by the inva- 
 sion which began with the brilliant victories of Crecy and 
 Poictiers, and reached a certain measure of success in 
 the Treaty of Bretigny (1360). But before many years 
 had passed, all but Calais was lost to England ; and when 
 Henry the Fifth resolved to recover what he claimed as 
 the inheritance of his predecessors, he had to begin, it 
 may be said, the work of conquest over again. 
 
 Allies, however, he had whose assistance he was to 
 
 1 Edward's claim had to encounter the difficulty that, according 
 to its argument, the French crown could not pass to a female (for 
 in that case it would have gone to Joan, Queen of Navarre, the 
 daughter of Louis the Tenth, Charles's eldest brother), but could 
 pass through a female— that is, through his mother Isabella to 
 himself. 
 
VI HENRY'S CLAIM 53 
 
 find very useful. The dynasty of De Montfort had been 
 established in possession of the dukedom of Britanny 
 in a great measure by English help, and though the 
 relations between the two countries had not been invari- 
 ably friendly since that time, the sense of this obligation, 
 and, still more powerfully, a jealous fear of the French 
 king, inclined Britanny to the English alliance. 
 
 The Dukes of Burgundy, though they had no 
 such motives of gratitude towards England, felt a far 
 stronger hostility towards France. The feud between 
 the rival factions which went by the names of Burgun- 
 dians and Armagnacs had now been raging for several 
 years; and though the attitude of the Burgundians 
 varied — at the great struggle of Agincourt they were 
 allies, though lukewarm and even doubtful allies, of the 
 French — they ultimately ranked themselves decidedly 
 on Henry's side. 
 
 In 1414, then, Henry formally demanded, as the heir 
 of Isabella, mother of his great-grandfather Edward, the 
 crown of France. This claim the French princes wholly 
 refused to consider. Henry then moderated his demands 
 so far, at least, as to allow Charles to remain in nominal 
 possession of his kingdom ; but they were still conceived 
 on a scale such as to render their acceptance impossible. 
 France was to cede to England, no longer as a feudal 
 superior making a grant to a vassal, but in full 
 sovereignty, the provinces of Normandy, Maine, and 
 Anjou, together with all that was comprised in the ancient 
 duchy of Aquitaine. Half, too, of Provence was claimed, 
 and the arrears of the ransom of King John, amount- 
 ing to twelve hundred thousand crowns, were also to 
 be paid. Finally, the French king was to give his 
 
54 HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 youngest daughter, Katharine, in marriage to Henry, 
 with a portion of two million crowns. ^ 
 
 The French Ministers offered, in answer, to yield the 
 duchy of Aquitaine, comprising the provinces of Anjou, 
 Gascony, Guienne, and Poitou, and to give the hand of the 
 Princess Katharine with a dowry of six hundred thousand 
 crowns, more, it was urged, than any daughter of France 
 had ever before received on the occasion of her marriage. 
 
 These oifers were refused. On September 17th 
 (1414) writs were issued calling together a new Parlia- 
 ment to meet on November 19th at Westminster. The 
 King was present, but what we should call the Royal 
 Speech was delivered by Henry Beaufort, Bishop of 
 Winchester and Lord Chancellor. In this the speaker 
 declared, not only that the King was resolved to govern 
 his realm wisely, but that he would prosecute even to 
 death his claim to the rightful inheritance, so long 
 withheld from him and his predecessors, of the crown 
 of France. That he might do this with success, the 
 Commons were exhorted to grant a liberal subsidy. 
 They voted, with the assent of the peers and the 
 clergy, two-tenths and two-fifteenths.^ 
 
 ^ The demand in money amounted in all to more than a million 
 pounds in the currency of the time. It should be multiplied by 
 fifteen to convert it into present value. The sum would have been 
 considered large, had it not been dwarfed by the enormous ransom 
 exacted from France within the last few years. 
 
 ^ These were taxes on capital, the tenth being payable in town, 
 the fifteenth in the country. But the sum actually levied was not 
 the literal tenth or fifteenth of the property taxed. Burdensome 
 as the imposts certainly were, these payments would have passed all 
 endurance. From before the middle of the fourteenth century these 
 taxes had been commuted for fixed sums. So much was levied from 
 each township or manor. 
 
NEGOTIATIONS SS 
 
 The scrupulous side of Henry's character, which seems 
 to have been not less developed than vehat may be 
 described as the ambitious side, would not be satisfied 
 without another attempt at negotiation. His uncle, 
 the Earl of Dorset, afterwards Duke of Exeter, ac- 
 companied by the Bishops of Durham and Norwich, 
 and a retinue so splendidly equipped as to excite 
 the astonishment of the French, visited Paris with 
 a new offer. Normandy and Maine were no longer 
 to be claimed : the dowry of the Princess was to be 
 reduced from two to one million crowns ; but the duchy 
 of Aquitaine and a portion of Provence were still 
 demanded. The French Ministers declined to yield 
 in the matter of the territory, but were willing to 
 raise their offer of a dowry from six to eight hundred 
 thousand crowns. These terms were, of course, un- 
 acceptable, and the ambassadors returned to England. 
 
 One more effort for peace was made, and this time 
 the overture came from France. It may be conveniently 
 mentioned in this place, though it was not made till the 
 preparations for war were considerably advanced, and 
 indeed was called forth by the alarming report of the 
 fleet and army which the English king was mustering that 
 had been carried across the Channel. 
 
 On the 29th of June the King, being present in a 
 council held at Winchester, granted seven safe-conducts to 
 the ambassadors of " our adversary of France [for so, in 
 view of his own claim, he now styles the French king] 
 about to come into the realm on account of certain 
 matters manifestly concerning the honour of God and 
 the staying of the shedding of human blood." The 
 principal ambassador was Thomas, Archbishop of Bruges. 
 
56 HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 Another high ecclesiastic, three nobles, and two lawyers 
 accompanied him. The mission was on a splendid scale, 
 for the united retinues numbered three hundred and 
 fifty. Henry received them at Winchester. 
 
 The Archbishop of Bruges set forth his mission in 
 a long and eloquent oration. After a preliminary 
 dissuasion of war and praise of peace, he proceeded to 
 offer terms : Limoges and its dependencies were to be 
 ceded to the English crown, and another hundred 
 thousand crowns to be added to the Princess's dowry. 
 
 On the question of money a compromise had been 
 nearly reached. The English demand had been re- 
 duced to a million crowns, and the French offer raised to 
 nine hundred thousand. As to territory, the difference 
 was hopelessly wide. Limoges and its dependencies 
 was a poor country, which it would not be worth while 
 to accept. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the ac- 
 complished Chioheley, was spokesman for the King. 
 He made no mention of dowry, but declared that if 
 the French king would not give with his daughter 
 Aquitaine, Anjou, and all that had ever appertained to 
 the ancestors of the King of England, the said King 
 would in no wise " retire his army nor break his jour- 
 ney, but would with all diligence enter into France, and 
 destroy the people, waste the country, and subvert the 
 towns with blood, sword, and fire, and never cease till 
 he had recovered his ancient right and lawful patri- 
 mony." When Chicheley sat do-vvn, the King stood 
 up and declared his assent to what he had said, and 
 promised on the word of a prince to perform it to the 
 uttermost. 
 
 It was evident that he was bent on war. The conces- 
 
VI THE ARCHBISHOP OF BRUGES 57 
 
 sions made by his own ambassadors had been taken back, 
 and the conditions now demanded amounted to nothing 
 less than a partition of France. At the beginning of 
 the negotiations these had been put forward, in a not 
 uncommon fashion of diplomacy, as a maximum from 
 which it might be convenient to make large deductions ; 
 as an ultimatum,, delivered by a sovereign whose army 
 was almost ready to sail, they meant nothing less than 
 war. 
 
 And so the Archbishop of Bruges took them. Cast- 
 ing aside diplomatic forms, he broke forth into an angry 
 denunciation of English arrogance and injustice, and 
 warned the King of the danger into which he was 
 running. Finally, he demanded a safe-conduct to return ; 
 a mere form of speech, as such a safe-conduct was included 
 in that already given to him and his colleagues. 
 
 English chroniclers call him " a proud and pre- 
 sumptuous prelate,'' yet his anger was nothing but 
 natural. Henry did not resent it, though he did not 
 retreat one whit from his position. The safe-conduct he 
 granted, and then added (I quote the speech as it is 
 given by Hollingshead): 
 
 " I little esteem your Prenoli brass, and less set by your 
 power and strength ; I know perfectly my right to my reign 
 which you usurp ; and except you deny the apparent truth, 
 so do yourselves also ; if you neither do nor will know it, 
 yet God and the world knoweth it. The power of your 
 master you See, but my puissance ye have not yet tasted. 
 If he have loving subjects, I am (I thank God) not unstored 
 of the same ; and I say this unto you, that before one year 
 pass, I trust to make the highest crown of your country to 
 stoop, and the proudest mitre to have his humiliation. In 
 the meantime tell this to the usurper your master, that 
 
S8 HENR Y THE FIFTH chap, vi 
 
 within three months I will enter into France, as into mine 
 own true and la-svful patrimony, appointing to acquire the 
 same, not with bray of words, but with deeds of men and dint 
 of sword, by the aid of God, in whom is my whole trust and 
 confidence. Further matter at this present I impart not 
 unto you, saving that with warrant you may depart safely and 
 surely into your own country, where I trust sooner to visit 
 you than you shall have cause to bid me welcome." 
 
 We can hardly suppose that we have here Henry's 
 very words. The speech has a certain rhetorical, 
 antithetical cast that inclines us to attribute it to the 
 pen of a chronicler who, we may conjecture further, 
 was writing in Latin. But it probably represents the 
 substance of the King's reply with sufficient accuracy. 
 
 Nothing more in the way of negotiation could be 
 done. It only remained to press forward the prepara- 
 tions for war. 
 
CHAPTEE VII 
 
 PREPAEATIONS FOR WAR 
 
 Henry's preparations were begun, as many believe, very 
 soon after his accession to the throne, and were not 
 discontinued during negotiations which can scarcely 
 have been intended to succeed. His situation was, on 
 the whole, favourable for his undertaking. He had no 
 reason to dread a hostile diversion by way of Scotland. 
 The Scottish king had been for many years a prisoner 
 in England, and though the chronic disturbances of the 
 Border did not cease, he was an effectual pledge for the 
 good behaviour of his subjects, who, if they wished to 
 indulge their hereditary enmity to England, had to take 
 service with the French king. The Welsh insurrection 
 had long ceased to be dangerous, but it had not been 
 yet suppressed, and it might become troublesome again 
 when the royal forces were employed elsewhere. Henry 
 did not forget this contingency. From previous am- 
 nesties offered to the rebels the name of the ringleader, 
 Owen Glendower, had been omitted. Henry now in- 
 cluded him in his proposition. He commissioned his 
 "faithful counsellor, Gilbert Talbot, to treat with Owen 
 Glendower of Wales," and promised to receive the said 
 Owen and "others our rebels of Wales" to his favour 
 
6o HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 if they would only apply for it. This mandate to 
 Gilbert Talbot bears date July 5th, and was issued from 
 Porchester Castle. At home there was at least a better 
 prospect of harmony and union than had existed for 
 many years. The Lollards indeed still gave some 
 trouble, but their favour with the people was not what 
 it had been. The war spirit which had seized the nation 
 did not suffer it to think of the grievances which had 
 seemed so urgent and of the hopes of reform which had 
 been so attractive a few years before. As for the dynastic 
 enemies who in the next generation were to overthrow 
 the house of Lancaster, they were still feeble. The 
 prince on whose claims they relied was personally at- 
 tached to Henry, and the ease with which the conspiracy 
 of Southampton was crushed shows that at this time 
 they were not really formidable. 
 
 Henry had no accumulated wealth to fall back upon 
 when he set himself to the task of providing for the many 
 necessities of the campaign which he meditated. On 
 the contrary, he had found on his accession the public 
 treasury empty and even embarrassed with debt. But 
 his subjects were heartily with him in his purpose, and 
 they came forward with liberal subsidies. The first 
 Pariiament of his reign had continued to him the grant 
 of a tax on stoneware, of tonnage and poundage which 
 they had made to his father, and that which met in 
 November 1414 had, as we have seen, been not less 
 generous. 
 
 Henry, on his part, was raising money in every 
 possible way. We find, for instance, a bond given to 
 Paul Milan, a merchant from Lucca, for a loan of two 
 hundred marks, and a debt of £478 18s. 8d. for cloth of 
 
VII THE SINEWS OF WAR 6i 
 
 gold and other merchandise supplied by the same Paul, 
 the debt being secured on the tolls of coast from the 
 ports of Southampton and Sandwich. Certain merchants 
 of Venice, again, were given security for the repayment 
 of a loan of a thousand marks on the customs of the 
 port of London. These were ordinary transactions. We 
 can hardly say the same for the pledging of the crown 
 called the Crown Henry to the Duke of Clarence as 
 security for the pay due to him and his men. It 
 was to be redeemed before January 1st, 1416; should 
 this not be done, the said Duke would be free to deal 
 with it after his pleasure. Next we find a certain 
 great tabernacle, once belonging to the Duke of Bur- 
 gundy, of silver gilt, and garnished with twenty-two 
 sapphires and one hundred and thirty - seven pearls, 
 pledged to various persons, among whom are the Dean 
 and Chapter of Exeter, for the repayment of a loan of 
 eight hundred and sixty marks; while some Norfolk 
 creditors have a great circlet of gold pledged to 
 them in consideration of a loan of a thousand marks. 
 It will be remembered that Devonshire and Norfolk were 
 at this time among the richest, if not actually the richest, 
 counties in England. 
 
 Henry, it is clear, spared no expense in making his 
 army as numerous and effective as possible. In that 
 wonderful collection of public documents known as 
 Rymer's Fcedera we find the contracts into which he 
 entered for the payment and maintenance of this force. 
 It vrill be interesting to give Dr. Lingard's careful sum- 
 mary of their contents. 
 
 " 1. Contracts were made by the Privy Seal with different 
 lords and gentlemen, who bound themselves to serve with a 
 
62 HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 certain number of men for a year from the day on which 
 they were first mustered. 2. The pay of a duke was to be 
 13s. 4d. per day ; an earl, 6s. 8d. ; a baron or banneret, 
 3s. 4d. ; a knight, 2s. ; an esquire. Is. ; an archer, 6d. 3. 
 The pay, or security for its amount, was to be delivered by 
 the treasurer a quarter of a year in advance; and if the money 
 was not actually paid at the beginning of the fourth quarter, 
 the engagement was to be at an end. As an additional 
 remuneration, each contractor received the ' usual regard ' or 
 douceur of 1 00 marks for every thirty men-at-arms. 4. A duke 
 was to have fifty horses ; an earl, twenty-four ; a baron or 
 banneret, sixteen ; a knight, six ; an esquire, four ; an archer, 
 one. The horses were to be furnished by the contractor, the 
 equipment by the King. 5. All prisoners were to belong to 
 the captor ; but if they were kings, the sons of kings, or officers 
 high in command bearing commissions from kings, they were 
 to belong to the Crown, on payment of a reasonable recom- 
 pense to the captors. 6. The booty taken was to be divided 
 into three parts. Two remained to the men ; the third was 
 again divided into three parts, of which the leader took two 
 and left the third to the King." 
 
 These arrangements strike us as being as liberal as 
 they are business like. Henry, it is clear, would not 
 run the risk of failure by starving his great expedition, 
 or by neglecting to enlist on his side the interests of his 
 troops. 
 
 In another important matter, little regarded or 
 wholly disregarded before his time, he showed his re- 
 markable capacity for military command. This was the 
 medical service of the army. Generals, of course, had 
 often taken their physicians with them into the field. 
 We have, for instance, the diaries, with notes of symp- 
 toms and treatment, of the physicians who attended 
 Alexander the Great. But now, for the first time, at 
 least in English history, we find a commander-in-chief 
 
VII MEDICAL SERVICE 63 
 
 making regular provision for the medical and surgical 
 treatment of his sick and wounded. Early in the year 
 (the indentures bear date April 29th, 1415) the King 
 had agreements drawn up with his physician Nicholas 
 Cohiet and his surgeon Thomas Morstede. Each was 
 to have the daily pay of twelve pence, and to have a 
 guard of three archers, each archer receiving the daily 
 pay of sixpence. 
 
 We do not hear of Nicholas Colnet being furnished 
 with any assistance. Anything like hospital treatment 
 of disease was probably impossible in a campaign of 
 those days; and a staff of physicians could hardly 
 have had any proper facilities for using whatever 
 knowledge they may have possessed. On the other 
 hand, Thomas Morstede, the surgeon, was accompanied 
 by a considerable establishment. When a wound had 
 been received, life could often be saved, or efficiency 
 preserved, by immediate surgical treatment. The 
 surgeon-general, as we may call him, was accordingly 
 directed to take with him twelve of his own craft. 
 Each of the twelve was to receive the daily pay of an 
 archer; and in addition to the daily twelve pence, a 
 quarterly allowance of a hundred marks was assigned 
 to each of the two chief medical officers. 
 
 Nearly a month later Morstede presented a petition 
 to the King praying for a sum of money for the 
 purchase of such things as were necessary for his office, 
 and also that all persons engaged in the surgical service 
 of the army should be directed to act under his instruc- 
 tions, and should receive such wages as he should 
 appoint. A third request was for a transport -service, 
 modestly limited to a chariot and two waggons. Mor- 
 
64 HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 stede wished also to know what wages he was to receive, 
 and how many attendants were to be allowed him. 
 The King's reply granted the chariot and waggons for 
 the ambulance service and twelve assistants ; but it is 
 not clear that these twelve were the same surgeons whom 
 Morstede had been originally directed to take with him. 
 Sixpence a day could not have been a very attractive 
 remuneration. Accordingly we are not surprised to 
 find Morstede afterwards applying to the King for power 
 to press, "as well within as without franchise birth, 
 persons of his craft such as he should choose to accom- 
 pany him." In the following year, that it may not be 
 necessary to return to the subject, the King issued a 
 writ to Morstede and William Breowardine, his colleague, 
 to this effect : 
 
 " Know ye that we have appointed to you, conjointly and 
 severally, surgeons and other workmen, to take and provide 
 without delay for the making of certain instruments neces- 
 sary and fitting for your mystery, such as may be required 
 for our present campaign beyond the sea." 
 
 The army, raised and equipped with such care and 
 forethought, numbered, it is said, six thousand men-at- 
 arms and twenty-four thousand archers. Cannons as 
 effective as the manufacturing skill of that day could 
 produce, and other engines of war had been procured. 
 So effective and so well prepared an army had never 
 before been collected in England for service abroad. 
 A splendid relic of the expedition remains to this day 
 in the Record Office. On July 20th a roll was prepared 
 in which should be written the names of all who were 
 to set forth with the King. It is still to be seen, a 
 
VII THE EARL OF CAMBRIDGE'S CONSPIRACY 65 
 
 splendid example of the caligraphy of a time when that 
 art was approaching its perfection. 
 
 The army was on the point of embarking, Henry 
 himself having come to Southampton to superintend the 
 operation, when everything was delayed by the dis- 
 covery of a conspiracy which had for its object nothing 
 less than a change of dynasty. 
 
 Its ringleader was Richard Plantagenet, Earl of 
 Cambridge, second son of Edmund of Langley, Duke of 
 York. He had received his title from Henry, but he 
 seems to have conceived the hope of advancing his 
 fortunes more effectively by supporting the elder branch 
 of the Plantagenets. " He intended," says the record of 
 his trial, " to kill the usurper Henry of Lancaster, and 
 to set the Earl oi March upon the throne." He had 
 married Anne, the Earl's sister, and in the event of the 
 Earl dying without issue, as actually happened nine 
 years later, his own son Richard would be heir to the 
 throne. '^ This conspiracy, therefore, was a premature 
 attempt to assert the claims which were afterwards 
 advanced for the house of York, whose head at this 
 time was the conspirator's elder brother. The Earl had 
 also, it is said, what may be called a second string to 
 his bow in a person supposed to be Richard the Second, 
 escaped from the Tower. This pretender, Thomas of 
 Trumpyngton, was then in Scotland. With the Earl of 
 Cambridge were associated Sir Thomas Grey of Heton, 
 in Northumberland, who was probably the intermediary 
 of the King's enemies on both sides of the Scotch border, 
 and Lord Scrope of Mersham, nephew of the Arch- 
 
 ^ This Eichard was the Duke of York who was killed after the 
 battle of Wakefield, and whose son was Edward the Fourth. 
 
 F 
 
66 HENRY THE FIFTH chap, vii 
 
 bishop of York whom Henry the Fourth had executed. 
 Scrope was the King's intimate companion. 
 
 The plan of the conspiracy was to conduct the Earl 
 of March to the Welsh border and then proclaim him 
 king. Henry Percy, who had not yet returned from 
 Scotland, and some Scotch lords were to create a diver- 
 sion in the north. 
 
 The King acted with his accustomed vigour. The 
 conspirators were at once put upon their trial and found 
 guilty. They were too dangerous to be spared. It 
 would be impossible to carry on the war with vigour if 
 the enemies of the dynasty were to be allowed to plot 
 against it at home. But Henry, though he was stern, 
 was not cruel. The guilty persons were executed, but 
 without the indignities that usually accompanied the 
 punishment of treason. The friendly relation between 
 the Earl of March and the King was not disturbed by 
 this rash attempt. The story that the Earl encouraged 
 the conspirators and then betrayed them, may be safely 
 disregarded. 
 
CHAPTEE VIII 
 
 THE INVASION OF FRANCE 
 
 Henry set sail from Southampton on August 11th. 
 His point of attack was Harfieur, in the estuary of the 
 Seine, now a decayed village, but then reckoned to be 
 the first seaport of Normandy. This importance was 
 one reason for attacking it; another was the activity 
 shown by its sailors in capturing English shipping. 
 The fleet of transports was necessarily large, fourteen 
 or sixteen hundred vessels in all; it seems to have 
 accomplished the voyage in safety, though, as the 
 disembarkation of the troops did not begin till the 
 night of August 14th, it may have encountered rough 
 weather, and some stores were certainly spoiled by the 
 sea. 
 
 Henry's first care was to issue strict orders for the 
 good behaviour of his army. All property of the Church 
 was to be held sacred, and no violence to be done to 
 any clerical person ; women were not to be injured. 
 The penalty of death was to be inflicted on all offenders. 
 
 He had effected his landing, which it would have been 
 easy to oppose, without molestation. Nor did he meet 
 with any hindrance when, four days afterwards, the dis- 
 embarkation of his men and stores completed, he marched 
 
68 HENR y THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 to Harfleur and invested the town. This occupied both 
 banks of the river L^zarde, a tributary of the Seine. 
 The entrance to the harbour was defended by a chain 
 drawn across from two towers which flanked either end 
 of the walls. The defences of the town were strong, and 
 each of the three gates was defended by an outwork. 
 The garrison consisted of four hundred men-at-arms, 
 who with their attendants may have made up a force 
 of between two and three thousand men. It was rein- 
 forced, before the investment of the town was made 
 complete, by a body of troops under the Lord of Gau- 
 court, who immediately assumed the chief command. 
 Henry sent a herald to demand the surrender of the 
 town. It was consistent with the position which he 
 claimed, that of a sovereign demanding his rightful 
 inheritance, that he threatened the inhabitants with 
 death if they refused obedience to the lawful Duke of 
 Normandy. 
 
 A regular siege was then commenced. Trenches 
 were pushed up to the town, and when the batteries 
 were finished a cannonade was opened. Henry had 
 some heavy field-pieces and a certain number of artillery- 
 men and engineers, though these, of course, did not bear 
 anything like the modern proportion to the whole force 
 of the army. The defence was obstinate. The besieged 
 repaired the damage caused by the cannonade almost as 
 fast as it was done, and successfully countermined the 
 English mines. They inflicted no little loss on their 
 assailants by the missiles which they discharged from 
 the walls, and even made some sallies with success. 
 Meanwhile the English army was suffering greatl}^. No 
 small part of the stores brought from England had 
 
VIII SURRENDER OF HARFLEUR 69 
 
 been damaged in the passage across the Channel, and 
 supplies from the country could only be obtained by 
 sending out large bodies of men. It was not long before 
 disease began to show itself in the camp. Bad and 
 scanty food, and the wetness of the weather, which seems 
 to have been constantly unfavourable throughout the 
 campaign, caused an epidemic of dysentery. As many 
 as two thousand men are said to have perished of this 
 disease. Among them was the Bishop of Norwich — who, 
 churchman as he was, seems to have been a trusted and 
 efficient counsellor in military matters — and many nobles 
 and knights. 
 
 Henry did not fail to perceive the gravity of the 
 situation, and determined to risk an assault. This was 
 to be delivered at dawn, after a cannonade had been 
 kept up during the night. But before morning came, 
 the commander of the garrison sent an envoy to the 
 King, bearing the offer to capitulate unless the town 
 should be relieved by the King of France within three 
 days. It was now the 19th of September, and the siege 
 had lasted exactly thirty days. No help arrived within 
 the stipulated time ; indeed the French king and his 
 counsellors had at once informed the inhabitants that 
 their army was not ready to act. On Sunday the 22nd, 
 the Lord of Gaucourt, accompanied by a number of the 
 chief inhabitants of Harfleur, made a formal surrender 
 of the keys to the English king. Henry received 
 his visitors in a magnificent tent which had been 
 raised for the purpose on a hill fronting the town. 
 Everything was arranged to suit the royal state which it 
 was a point of principle with him to assume. Sir Robert 
 Umfraville stood on his right hand holding a spear, on the 
 
70 HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 point of which was the crowned helmet which it was his 
 custom to wear, and which denoted that the King was 
 seeking to recover his own by arms. The English nobles 
 stood in ranks on either side. The ceremony over, the 
 Governor and his company were royally feasted, and on 
 the next day Henry entered the town. 
 
 It was characteristic of the devout temper of the man 
 that his first thought was for his religious duties. He 
 dismounted on reaching the gate, had his shoes and 
 beaver removed, and walked barefooted to the church of 
 St. Martin, where he offered up a thanksgiving for his 
 success. This piety, however, did not prevent him from 
 pushing to the extreme his use of a conqueror's rights. 
 The nobles and men-at-arms were stripped of their 
 armour and sent away, " clothed in their jackets only,'' 
 after giving a promise on oath to surrender themselves 
 prisoners at Calais on the Martinmas following (Novem- 
 ber 11th). This, perhaps, was no more than defeated 
 combatants might have expected. But the treatment of 
 the inhabitants seems to have been harsh. They were 
 compelled to ransom their lives with all that they 
 possessed, and then, with their wives and children, were 
 driven out of the town. To each was given a miserable 
 pittance of five sous, and they were permitted to take 
 with them a part of their clothing. " It was pitiful," 
 says Monstrelet, writing apparently from the report of 
 an eye-witness, "to see and hear the sorrow of these 
 poor people, thus driven away from their dwellings and 
 property." 
 
 Harfleur was undoubtedly a great prize. The actual 
 amount of booty taken in the town was large, and the 
 harbour was the most important in Western Normandy. 
 
viii THE MARCH TO CALAIS 71 
 
 The loss of it, too, was deeply galling to the French king, 
 who made it the ground of an urgent summons to his 
 nobles that for want of succour his gallant and loyal 
 subjects of Harfleur had been forced to surrender. But 
 the capture of a single town, however important and 
 wealthy, was not an adequate result of an expedition 
 which had aimed at nothing less than the conquest of 
 France. It became a pressing question what was to be 
 done. The first expedient tried, if we may so speak, 
 was to send a challenge to the Dauphin, offering to 
 submit the decision of the claim to the throne of France 
 to the issue of a single combat. Henry was too good a 
 soldier not to know that his antagonists were not likely 
 to give him so easy a way of escaping from a perilous 
 position, and could not have been disappointed when no 
 .answer was sent to his message. The safest course 
 would now have been to return at once ; and this seems 
 to have been pressed upon the King by the majority of 
 his counsellors. But this prudent advice did not approve 
 itself to Henry's adventurous temper. He was deter- 
 mined to show that, at least, he was not afraid of the 
 foes whom he had challenged, and who, as he declared — 
 it is hard to say with what belief in his own words — 
 had unjustly seized his inheritance. He determined 
 accordingly to make what may be called a military parade 
 to Calais. This involved a march of not less than a 
 hundred and fifty miles through a hostile country, a 
 dangerous, and, but that one who cherishes such designs 
 as Henry's must make a reputation for daring, a useless 
 operation ; but the King's determined wiU overcame all 
 opposition, and preparations were made to carry out the 
 plan. 
 
72 HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 The sick and wounded were sent back to Eng- 
 land, and with them the prisoners — who, however, 
 could not have been numerous — the booty, and the 
 engines of war, for which Henry probably felt that 
 he had not adequate means of, transport. It suggests a 
 curious contrast to the conditions of modern warfare to 
 find a skilful general voluntarily ridding himself of his 
 artillery. Five hundred men-at-arms and a thousand 
 archers were left to garrison Harfleur. On October 
 8th the King commenced his march with such forces 
 as were left. Elmham, his chaplain, who was probably 
 present, puts them at scarcely nine hundred men-at- 
 arms and five thousand archers ; Monstrelet esti- 
 mates the former at two thousand, the latter at fifteen 
 thousand. 
 
 Nearly half of his purposed journey Henry seems to 
 have accomplished unmolested. At Eu, near Tr6port, 
 the seat of the Counts of Artois, his light troops were 
 attacked, but repulsed the enemy with loss. And now 
 his difficulties began. His position, indeed, was 
 curiously like that in which his great-grandfather, the 
 third Edward, had been before the victory of Creey. 
 He was in the presence of superior forces, and he 
 had to cross the Somme, a considerable river, ford- 
 able in few places, in despite of them. Edward had 
 made the passage at Blanchetaque, a ford near the 
 sea, which got its name from the white stones which 
 there formed the bottom of the river. Henry's first 
 idea was to follow his example, but he learned from 
 his scouts that the ford was strongly guarded by 
 the French, and altering his line of march made for 
 Pont-de-Eemy, a place about as much above Abbeville 
 
vnr PASSAGE OF THE SOMME 73 
 
 as Blanchetaque is below it. The detachment sent 
 to force the bridge found it strongly occupied by the 
 enemy, and was unable to dislodge them. Edward 
 had made an equally fruitless attempt at the same 
 place. 
 
 Fortune, or rather the fault of his enemies, be- 
 friended him, as it had befriended his predecessor. A 
 Norman peasant, who preferred a hundred nobles to 
 his duty to his country, had guided Edward to the ford 
 of Blanchetaque; and now the neglect of the people 
 of St. Quentin, who had been commanded to stop 
 the ford between Betencourt and Voyenne, allowed a 
 passage to Henry. The crossing was no easy task. The 
 river was swollen with rain, and the army had no little 
 difficulty in approaching the bank. If a sufficient 
 French force had come in time to dispute the passage, 
 the English might have lost heavily, or even been 
 destroyed; but the first part of the army had made its 
 way over unmolested, the King himself superintending 
 the operation, before the enemy came in sight, and 
 then not in sufficient force to prevent the completion 
 of the passage. Before nightfall the whole army had 
 safely reached the right bank of the Somme. Henry had 
 been marching and counter-marching for nine days on 
 the other shore, and had been forced to make a long 
 detour from his proposed line. If he could have made 
 the passage of the river, as he had once hoped to do, 
 at the ford of Blanchetaque, he would have been at 
 less than half the distance from Calais than that at 
 which he now found himself. 
 
 The line of march from which he had been driven 
 by the necessity of crossing the Somme he was bent on 
 
74 HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 regaining. 1 The nearer to the sea the easier the road, 
 and there would be the advantage that one flank of the 
 army would be safe against attack. Accordingly he 
 moved westward unmolested, it would seem, by the 
 French troops which had been previously guarding the 
 right bank of the Somme, and had now fallen back on 
 the main body of their countrymen. His route led him 
 through the villages of Peronne, Albert, Bonnieres, 
 and Frevent. On October 24th he reached the village 
 of Blangy-on-the-Ternoise, a stream with an average 
 breadth of about thirty feet and of considerable depth. 
 It is possible, however, that it was not then, as it 
 is now, dammed up to work a mill ; and it is at 
 this mill that local tradition fixes the place of his 
 crossing. Continuing his march up the slope which 
 leads to the table -land above the valley of the 
 Ternoise, he found himself close to the enemy, who 
 indeed had posted themselves in great force across the 
 way to Calais. Their presence was announced to the 
 Duke of York, who was in command of the van. The 
 King, calling a halt, rode forward to reconnoitre, and 
 began at once to make his arrangements for the battle 
 which he now felt to be imminent. His main body 
 took up its position at Maisoncelles, the baggage 
 being placed in the rear of the wood that still bears 
 that name. The front lines of the French army were 
 but three bow-shots off; according to one account still 
 
 ' A story is told to tlie effect that on one occasion he passed the 
 jilace which had been arranged for his quarters. He would not 
 return. He was in his war-coat, and could not go hack without 
 displeasing God. The anecdote seems characteristic of the man, 
 and, indeed, to suit the temper which had suggested the march to 
 Calais. 
 
vm THE EVE OF THE BATTLE 75 
 
 less ; their headquarters seem to have been somewhere 
 behind the village of Azincour or Agincourt. 
 
 The night was spent by the English in much dis- 
 comfort. The King's chaplain tells that he turned aside 
 to a village where there were houses, but very few of 
 them. Some of the principal personages had a roof 
 over their heads; the main body of the army had to 
 be content with such rest as they could find in gardens 
 and orchards, and this amidst drenching rain. The 
 supply of meat and drink was, however, a little better 
 than usual. The chaplains with the army were busy 
 almost till morning with receiving confessions and 
 giving absolution, and the complaint was that there were 
 not enough of them for this duty, although one of their 
 number speaks of them as a clerical army. On the 
 other hand, the French passed the time in feasting and 
 merriment, and found one source of amusement, it is 
 said, in casting dice for their prisoners. The same 
 story is told of the demeanour of the victors and the 
 vanquished before the battle of Hastings. It is possible 
 that it may be true, but it certainly points a moral 
 very aptly. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 AGINCOURT 
 
 After a night of heavy rain, the morning of October 
 25th dawned bright and clear. The French army 
 barred, as has been said, Henry's road to Calais, but, 
 relying on their vast superiority of force,^ they had not 
 been at the pains to take up what could be called a 
 military position. A huge mass of men occupied the 
 level ground that lies between the villages of Agincourt 
 and Eousseauville. Their extreme right touched the 
 road to Calais, and if Henry was to gain that, he would 
 have to make his way through their ranks. So 
 impossible did this seem, that they took none of the 
 ordinary precautions observed by an army that is going 
 to give battle. The villages of Agincourt and Trame- 
 court, which were respectively in a slight advance of 
 their right and left wings, were left to be occupied by 
 
 ' Contemporary estimates of their numbers vary very much. 
 Monstrelet, who probably drew his information from French sources, 
 puts them at one hundred and iifty thousand. Elsewhere he says 
 that they were more than six times the number of the English. 
 The latter, however, could not have numbered as many as twenty- 
 five or even twenty thousand. There would be a, tendency, of 
 course, after the battle to diminish and to exaggerate the numbers 
 engaged. It is certain that the French superiority was very great, 
 More it is impossible to say. 
 
CHAP. IX THE DISPOSITION OF THE ARMIES 77 
 
 the English. No attempt was made to take advantage 
 of the woods which flanked their position. To stand 
 still and to let their enemy dash himself to pieces on 
 their ranks was the policy of their generals, if a policy 
 they had. Even to this plan, which indeed might well 
 have been successful, it will be seen that they did not 
 adhere. 
 
 The disposition of the French army may be thus 
 described: — D'Albret, Constable of France, with theDukes 
 of Orleans and Bourbon, commanded the front line, 
 which consisted, it was said, of twenty thousand men. 
 They were on foot, heavily armed with long coats of 
 mail, greaves, and helmets; but on either wing there 
 were posted bodies of cavalry, ready to charge when 
 the occasion offered. Behind this came another line, 
 commanded by the Duke d'Alen90n ; and behind this 
 again a third, which was composed chiefly of cavalry. 
 
 The English army consisted of one single line. So 
 narrow was the space of the future battle-field that the 
 English front was equal in extent to the French. Com- 
 paratively small, too, as were their numbers, they were 
 sufficient for the practical purpose of giving an adequate 
 solidity to the line. In the first clash of battle, at least, 
 the two would be on equal terms. The small force of 
 men-at-arms, not more than three or four thousand, was 
 posted in the centre. The right and left divisions were 
 mainly composed of archers, some of whom were also 
 interspersed among the men-at-arms. Each archer had 
 a stake shod with iron, which he planted in the ground 
 before him. The men had carried these with them 
 almost from the beginning of their march from Har- 
 fleur. They were to act as an extemporised palisade 
 
78 HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 in the case of an attack. Detachments of archers were 
 posted in the villages of Agincourt and Tramecourt, 
 and were ready to harass the enemy should they advance 
 to the attack. A body of cavalry vi^as even pushed 
 forward beyond the French left. The baggage was 
 placed, under the protection of a small guard, behind the 
 village of Maisoncelles. 
 
 Henry himself commanded in the centre, a conspicuous 
 object to all eyes. He was not one of the kings who went 
 into a battle disguised. There was doubtless a personal 
 taste for splendour and ornament shown in his dress and 
 accoutrements ; but he was also impressed with the belief 
 that a king must be, and show himself to be, the foremost 
 fighter as well as the leader of his army. He wore a 
 surcoat which with its gay blazonry set forth his claim 
 to the double throne, showing as it did the lilies of 
 France and the leopards of England. His helmet was 
 circled with a rich crown of gold. While he was mar- 
 shalling his lines and encouraging his men to do their 
 best, he rode a small grey horse. This part of his work 
 finished, he dismounted, and took his place on foot in 
 front of his line. The Duke of York commanded the 
 right wing, which was slightly in advance of the line : 
 the left, on the other hand, was slightly withdrawn, 
 and this was in charge of Lord Camoys. Each division 
 had its proper banner; over the head of Henry was 
 displayed the royal standard with the quarterings of 
 France and England. 
 
 For some time after daybreak no movement was made 
 on either side till both armies had taken their break- 
 fast. Then followed an attempt, probably made by some 
 influential ecclesiastic on the French side, to negotiate 
 
THE BATTLE 79 
 
 a peace. We may be sure that the demands made were 
 impossible ; in any case, Henry peremptorily refused 
 them. A movement on the part of the French cavalry 
 followed, and it was seen that the French artillery was 
 ready to commence operations. Henry saw that he 
 must act, and, with the happy audacity which has its 
 occasions not less often than prudence in the conduct 
 of great captains, ordered an advance. Sir Thomas 
 Erpyngham, a knight grown grey in campaigning, threw 
 his truncheon into the air. This was the signal for the 
 forces that lay in ambush, and for the line that fronted 
 the enemy, to advance. Aloud cry of "St. George!" 
 was raised from flank to flank, and the English moved 
 forward with their king at their head. 
 
 The advance was a feint. Perhaps it would be more 
 correct to say that, in case of need, it would have been 
 converted into a serious attack, but it was probably in- 
 tended to provoke the French into a forward movement. 
 If it was so, the purpose was accomplished with the 
 happiest result. To the French, in the pride of their 
 overwhelming numbers and splendid equipment, it 
 seemed nothing less than an insult that this little band 
 of ragged, wayworn soldiers should actually advance to 
 attack them. In a moment the plan of waiting for the 
 enemy to waste his strength upon their solid line was 
 abandoned. They crowded forward, as if to trample 
 down by sheer weight of numbers the insolent invaders. 
 
 Then the English halted. The archers planted their 
 stakes in the ground, and stood sheltered behind them, 
 while they poured forth that deadly hail of arrows which 
 more than once before all the chivalry of France had 
 been unable to withstand. At first it seemed as if 
 
8o HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 numbers must prevail, even against all Henry's skilful 
 dispositions and all the desperate valour of his men. 
 For a time the English line was borne backward by the 
 sheer weight of the advancing enemy. It is not easy to 
 state precisely what turned the fortune of the day. 
 There was the marvellous efficiency of the archers, whose 
 clothyard shafts were driven with a force which we, 
 who know the bow only as a toy, can hardly conceive ; 
 there was the resistance of the palisade of stakes, which 
 stopped the charge of the French cavalry, and left the 
 men and their horses a helpless mark for the aim of the 
 bowmen ; there was the paralysing crowd of the French 
 attack, a crowd so thick that only those in front could 
 even lift their hands to strike a blow ; and there was, 
 almost as potent a cause as any, the deep clay of the 
 Agincourt plateau. It would not be easy to find a 
 stiffer and more tenacious soil ; and it was now more 
 than usually deep and cumbersome. The long autumn 
 rains, which had helped to thin the English army 
 as it lay before the walls of Harfleur or painfully 
 struggled along the bank of the Somme, now lent them 
 a most valuable aid. Even where a man-at-arms or 
 a knight found space to act, he was kept in a forced 
 indolence by the sheer impossibility of moving. 
 
 And, when the day had begun to turn against the 
 French, the panic which their valour, so powerful in 
 attack, seems unable to resist in the moment of defeat, 
 set in, and made it hopeless to retrieve the fortunes of 
 the fight. Yet there were not wanting gallant attempts 
 to turn the defeat into victory. Every one recognised 
 how great a share the tactical skill and courage of 
 Henry were having in the victory which now seemed 
 
IX 7^HE DUKE D'ALENCON 81 
 
 about to be won. If he could be struck down where 
 he stood, conspicuous in his embroidered surcoat and 
 crown -encircled helmet, all might yet go well for the 
 French. Accordingly the Duke d'Alengon pressed 
 forward with a company of knights and men-at-arms 
 to the spot where Henry was fighting. He struck to 
 the ground with a dangerous wound in his groin the 
 King's youngest brother, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester; 
 and when Henry stepped forward to protect the fallen 
 man, the Duke dealt him a blow so violent that it dinted 
 his helmet and brought him to his knees. But the 
 effort was hopeless ; the odds were too great. " I yield 
 my sword," cried the Duke, and Henry called to his 
 knights to save the Frenchman's life. It was too late ; 
 he fell pierced by numerous wounds, and all his com- 
 panions shared his fate. 
 
 The rally led by the Duke d'Alen9on was the final 
 effort of the first line of the French. It was now, 
 we must suppose, that the English found themselves 
 indebted to the strange protection of which one of the 
 chroniclers speaks — a pile of French corpses so high that 
 it sheltered them as they poured their arrows into the 
 foe. The second line seems to have made no separate 
 attempt to restore the fortune of the day. The un- 
 ceasing shower of the English shafts, the advance of 
 Henry and his men-at-arms, and, finally, the charge 
 of the force which had been put in ambush on their 
 left flank, drove them in unresisting flight. Among 
 the leaders of the third line there were found some 
 who showed more courage, perhaps we should say 
 presence of mind, for courage was not wanting to the 
 vanquished on that day. The Lord of Fauquemberg, 
 
82 HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 with some other nobles, had with difficulty kept a few 
 hundred men-at-arms together, with whom they now 
 made a gallant charge on the English : it was useless ; 
 they were killed or made prisoners to a man. A few 
 other such efforts were made by isolated bodies in various 
 parts of the field, but all were equally hopeless. Every- 
 where the French were routed, slain, or taken. The 
 victory of the English was complete. 
 
 The glory of this victory was marred by a deplorable 
 incident. News was brought to Henry that the enemy 
 were attacking his rear, and had already captured a large 
 part of his baggage. The battle was not yet over, but 
 it was already clear which way it was going : " during 
 the heat of the combat, when the English had gained 
 the upper hand and made several prisoners," are the 
 words which Monstrelet uses to describe the time. But 
 victory, though in sight, was not yet gained. Henry 
 knew that the forces of the enemy still outnumbered his 
 own. Even yet, were they to know that any part of his 
 line had been broken, they might rally and change the 
 fortune of the day. Were such an eflfort to be made, 
 the prisoners, of whom a considerable number had 
 already been taken, would be a formidable danger. At 
 the best they would require a guard of fighting men, 
 which he could not spare ; they might even take part in 
 the attack. The safety of the army seemed to require 
 decisive and instant action, and accordingly Henry 
 issued orders that the prisoners were to be killed. It may 
 well have been a necessity, but it was a necessity of the 
 most deplorable kind. Yet we must not suppose that 
 the opinion of those days regarded the act as it would 
 be regarded by ourselves. "It was a most lamentable 
 
IX SLAUGHTER OF THE PRISONERS 83 
 
 thing," writes a Norman gentleman who was with the 
 English army, and who was probably an eye-witness 
 of the scene, "for all these noblemen of France were 
 there killed and cut to pieces, heads and faces ; it was 
 a fearful sight to see." The natural human horror at 
 so bloody a spectacle comes out in the last words ; but 
 what seemed so lamentable a thing to the Sieur de St. 
 Eemjr was that so many nohlemen of France should be 
 thus slaughtered. For prisoners, it must be remembered, 
 were not taken out of mercy. The ransoms that they 
 would pay were the points in the great war-game 
 which nobles and knights were playing. No man, we 
 may be sure, ever encumbered himself with a prisoner 
 from whom nothing could be expected. The penniless 
 common soldier was slaughtered without mercy. It 
 perfectly agrees with this that the knights to whom the 
 King issued his command flatly refused to obey it, and 
 that he had to send a squire with three hundred archers 
 to execute it. The money-interest of the knights in the 
 lives of the prisoners was too powerful for the sense of 
 discipline, seldom very strong in a feudal army, and 
 even for the instinct of self-preservation. To kill their 
 prisoners would be to lose their only hope of repaying 
 themselves for the vast outlay of their equipment. 
 Doubtless it was against the strong class-feeling of 
 the day that a gentleman should be so put to death; 
 this would be against the rules of the game. But it 
 is certain that considerations of finance more than 
 of humanity dictated this refusal to execute the King's 
 orders. 
 
 As a matter of fact, the horrible deed was not, 
 after all, a military necessity. The news that was 
 
84 HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 brought to Henry had been grossly exaggerated. The 
 attack on the rear of the army was really nothing but an 
 attempt to plunder. A few men-at-arms and about six 
 hundred peasants, led by one Isambart, a resident in the 
 village of Agincourt, whose local knowledge probably 
 suggested the attempt, fell upon the baggage of the 
 English army and succeeded in rifling a large part of it. 
 A long list of the jewels which were lost on that occasion 
 is preserved among the public records. Walsingham 
 tells us that the English crown was captured, and being 
 sent, as we may suppose, to Paris, caused great delight, 
 as it seemed to augur the capture of the King himself. 
 Monstrelet mentions, as part of the spoil, a sword, 
 ornamented with diamonds, that was also part of the 
 royal property : with this precious offering Isambart of 
 Agincourt vainly endeavoured to appease the wrath of 
 the Duke of Burgundy, who, justly regarding him as 
 responsible for the massacre of the prisoners, had him 
 thrown into prison. 
 
 Henry now rode round the field of battle, accom- 
 panied by his kinsmen and the great nobles attached 
 to his person. He called to him the French herald, 
 Montjoye, king-at-arms, and other heralds, French and 
 English. "It is not we,'' he said, "who have made 
 this great slaughter, but the omnipotent God, and, as 
 we believe, as a punishment for the sins of the French." 
 He then asked Montjoye, " To whom does this victory 
 belong — to me, or to the King of France ? " "To you, 
 sire," was Montjoye's answer. Then looking round him, 
 he saw the turrets of a castle rising out of the wooded 
 hollow in which lay the village of Agincourt. " What 
 castle is that ? " he asked. He was told that it was the 
 
IX THE FRENCH LOSS 85 
 
 castle of Agincourt. "Well, then," said he, "since 
 all battles should bear the name of the fortress 
 nearest to the spot where they were fought, this battle 
 shall from henceforth bear the ever durable name of 
 Agincourt." 
 
 The French loss was enormous. Monstrelet gives 
 a long list of the chief princes and nobles who fell on 
 that fatal field. It contains, doubtless, some errors ; but 
 it has the look of having been prepared after careful 
 inquiry. Hence we are disposed to trust his estimate, 
 which, including princes, knights, and men-at-arms of 
 every degree, he puts at ten thousand. The loss at 
 Crecy, if we may trust Froissart, who, however, was 
 not there writing of his own knowledge, had indeed 
 been much greater, for more than thirty thousand men 
 had been then left dead on the field. But of these not 
 more than twelve hundred were nobles and knights, 
 whereas at Agincourt, out of the ten thousand only 
 sixteen hundred are said to have been " of low degree." 
 One hundred and six-score banners are also said to have 
 been taken. 
 
 Besides the Duke d'Alen9on, whose death has been 
 described above, there fell two brothers of the Duke 
 of Burgundy, Charles d'Albret, Constable of France, 
 the Admiral of France, and the Master of the King's 
 Household. Three hundred others of the slain were 
 persons of sufficient importance to make Monstrelet give 
 their names and titles. The number of knights and 
 gentlemen taken prisoners was fifteen hundred. Among 
 them were Charles, Duke of Orleans, and the Duke of 
 Bourbon, both princes of the blood-royal. Henry, it 
 will be seen, attached much importance to their capture. 
 
86 HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 Monstrelet puts the English loss at sixteen hundred. 
 The principal persons among the dead were the Duke 
 of York, who is said to have been crushed to death in 
 the throng, and Michael de la Pole, the young Earl of 
 Suffolk. Walsingham's estimate is improbable. Besides 
 York and Suffolk he says that only one squire (David 
 Gam by name), four men-at-arms, and twenty-eight 
 common soldiers fell. It seems impossible that several 
 hours of severe fighting between two armies, fairly 
 matched in armour and equipment, should not have 
 resulted in greater loss to the conquerors. His estimate 
 of the French loss is also much smaller than Monstrelet's : 
 "Of great lords," he writes, "there fell to the number 
 of nearly one hundred, and of soldiers and men-at-arms 
 four thousand and sixty-nine." He also reduces the 
 number of prisoners to seven hundred; and on this 
 point he would very probably have better means of 
 information than Monstrelet. 
 
 The English army remained on the field of battle till 
 it was quite clear that nothing more was to be feared 
 from the enemy, and then they returned to the village of 
 Maisoncelles, their quarters on the previous night. The 
 next morning they again visited the scene of their victory. 
 All the French they found there alive were put to death 
 or made prisoners — a significant comment on what has 
 been said above as to the slaughter of the prisoners. 
 To kill the wounded is now considered an atrocity 
 which no civilised enemy would commit. In the 
 fifteenth century it was evidently the usual alternative 
 when the wounded person was not likely to turn out 
 a profitable prisoner. The chronicler mentions it as 
 a matter of course, without so much as a hint of blame. 
 
IX DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD 87 
 
 Nothing more conclusively shows the absolute collapse 
 of the French Government than the neglect of the field 
 of battle. For nearly a week the dead were left uncared 
 for. The most valuable parts of the spoil had been 
 carried off by the English. " The greater part of the 
 armour,'' writes Monstrelet, "was untouched on the 
 dead bodies, but it did not long remain thus, for it was 
 very soon stripped off, and even the shirts and all other 
 parts of their dress were carried off by the peasants 
 of the neighbouring villages. The bodies were left 
 exposed, as naked as when they were bom." The 
 remains of the great nobles were indeed carried away — 
 some to be buried in the Church of the Friars Minor 
 in the neighbouring town of Hesdin ; others were 
 taken to their own homes in various parts of France. 
 At last the compassion of the Count of Charolois, eldest 
 son of the Duke of Burgundy, was moved by the deplor- 
 able spectacle. By his orders the bodies still left on the 
 field, to the number of five thousand eight hundred, 
 were interred in three trenches twelve feet wide, dug 
 within a measured square of twenty-five yards, which 
 was surrounded by a thorn hedge strong enough to keep 
 out wolves and wild dogs. The enclosure still remains, 
 a small wooded clump among the rich corn-fields of 
 the upland of Agincourt. Within it stands a pillar 
 erected some few years ago by the lord of the neigh- 
 bouring manor, the Marquis of Tramecourt, himself a 
 descendant of one who fought at the battle, and had 
 the good fortune to escape with both life and liberty. 
 
CHAPTEE X 
 
 AJFTER AGINCOURT 
 
 Brilliant as was the victory which Henry had won at 
 Agincourt, it had, it may be said, no immediate results. 
 The English king was not in a position to follow it up. 
 His loss on the field of battle had, as we have seen, been 
 considerable — amounting to nearly a sixth of his army, 
 if we are to accept the smaller estimate of his numbers, 
 to a twelfth, if we take the larger. Nor is it likely that 
 the sickness which had already so terribly diminished 
 his force had altogether ceased. We are indeed ex- 
 pressly told that the soldiers were "sorely fatigued 
 by their efforts in the battle, and greatly troubled by 
 famine and other wants." But, indeed, so sagacious and 
 far-seeing a general could never have contemplated any 
 other result. He had, in truth, got all that he could have 
 hoped for. He had done what he had said he would do. 
 He had marched from his town of Harfleur to his town 
 of Calais, and all the hosts which the King of France 
 had gathered to bar his way had been scattered before 
 him. This chivalrous, even rash, undertaking had been 
 accomplished, and accomplished with a success so 
 splendid that it had seemed to be the very wisest thing 
 that he could have done. He had not, it is true, 
 
HENJiY'S POLICY 
 
 achieved anything more towards the actual conquest of 
 French territory than had been achieved on the day 
 when Harfleur surrendered, but in prestige and in all 
 that prestige can effect he had gained immensely. The 
 glories of Crecy and Poictiers, dimmed by sixty years of 
 feebleness and dissension, had been revived. English- 
 men had again found that they could conquer even 
 against desperate odds ; and they had learnt that they 
 had a captain at their head who was at least the equal 
 in skill and courage of the greatest of those who had 
 gone before him. Though the close of the day of 
 Agincourt did not leave the conqueror in possession of 
 one foot more of French soil than he had owned at its 
 beginning, it brought him sensibly nearer to the end of 
 his ambition, the crown of France. Any attempt to seize 
 it at once would have been sheer madness. If he had 
 ventured on a march to Paris, even the broken and 
 dispirited remnant of the French army would have been 
 sufficient to crush his feeble force. His policy was to 
 wait, to gather fresh strength for a renewed effort. 
 Meanwhile the profound discouragement that could not 
 but be the result of a defeat so disastrous, suffered in 
 circumstances so discreditable, would sink into the 
 minds of his adversaries. Other causes, too, would be 
 at work, the force of which he was shrewd enough to 
 foresee. Dissension and jealousy were rife among the 
 governing classes of France. Neither of the great 
 feudatories of the French crown had been present at 
 the battle of Agincourt. Two brothers of the Duke of 
 Burgundy were there and fell in the conflict, but the 
 Duke himself was absent, and absent, it would seem, of 
 set purpose. The Duke of Britanny would have been 
 
go HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 present, says Monstrelet, if the battle had been delayed 
 till the Saturday. But his tardy movements, in view 
 of the ample notice which he must have received, are 
 suspicious. As for the governed, there was a general 
 feeling among them that they could not suffer more 
 from the rule of the English than they were suffering 
 already from their own princes and lords. 
 
 Henry's course, then, after the victory was plain. 
 Before everything acknowledgment must be made to 
 God. Accordingly a service of solemn thanksgiving 
 was performed by the clergy on the field. The Psalm 
 In Exitu Israel ("When Israel came out of Egypt") 
 was chanted, and when the singers came to the words 
 "Not unto us, not unto us," every man knelt on the 
 ground : the Te Devm followed. Then the army resumed 
 its interrupted march to Calais, which was about forty 
 miles distant At Calais a council of war was held, and 
 the resolution to return to England unanimously taken. 
 A few days were allowed for refreshment, and about the 
 middle of November the army embarked. The passage 
 of the Channel was effected without loss ; but though 
 the wind was favourable, the sea was, as usual, rough, 
 and the French prisoners, the chief of whom were 
 carried in the King's ship, declared that their sufferings 
 were not less than those which they had endured on the 
 disastrous day of Agincourt. They regarded with nothing 
 less than astonishment the cheerful unconcern of Henry. 
 
 When the fleet reached Dover the people gave it a 
 triumphant reception. Many of the citizens waded out 
 to the royal ship, anxious to carry their King to shore. 
 The streets were crowded with persons, religious as well 
 as lay, who had gathered to do him honour. After 
 
X RECEPTION IN LONDON 91 
 
 some days spent at Dover, Henry proceeded to London. 
 There, of course, a still more magnificent reception 
 awaited him. The mayor and aldermen, with a vast 
 throng of citizens, came out to meet him, and the scene 
 in the city recalled the splendours of a Roman triumph. 
 Banners inscribed with the achievements of the con- 
 queror's predecessors were displayed at the gates and 
 in the streets, as if to show that his victories were to 
 be ranked with theirs. The conduits ran with wine. 
 Platforms were erected and hung with splendid draping, 
 on which boys, habited like angels, sang the praises of 
 the King. The people were especially anxious for a 
 sight of the helmet still bearing the dint of that 
 mighty stroke with which Alengon had almost changed 
 the fortune of the day; but Henry's modesty would 
 not allow it or the rest of his armour to be exhibited. 
 The same enthusiastic welcome was given to him in 
 other places which he 'visited in the course of the next 
 few weeks. 
 
 Among these festivities those who had fallen were 
 not forgotten. On December 1st a solemn service, 
 attended by a multitude of great ecclesiastics from all 
 parts of the kingdom, was held in memory of the 
 Duke of York and others, French as well as English, 
 who had fallen at Agincourt. The King's uncle, the 
 Earl of Dorset, came over from Harfleur, of which 
 place he had been made governor, to attend it. 
 The news that he brought from France was so far 
 satisfactory that he could report another victory over 
 the French ; but it was clear that, if the enemy already 
 ventured to show himself so near to the English posses- 
 sions, the work of conquest had yet to be done. 
 
93 HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 For this work preparations on the largest scale had 
 to be made. After keeping his Christmas at Lambeth, 
 the King issued writs for a new Parliament. This met 
 at Westminster on March 16th, and was exhorted by 
 the Lord Chancellor (Bishop of Winchester) to assist 
 the King in the completion of an enterprise which 
 had been already so well begun. Accordingly the 
 Commons voted, with the assent of the Lords and 
 spiritual Peers, that the subsidies granted in the pre- 
 vious year should be collected sooner than had been 
 before ordered, made a grant of equal amount for the 
 year to come, and, in addition, gave the King tonnage 
 and poundage for the safeguard of the sea, and settled 
 on him for life the duties on wool and leather. 
 
 Henry's attitude to his Parliaments remained, so far 
 as we can judge, judicious and iirm. It would be a 
 mistake to suppose that the petitions which they pre- 
 sented to the sovereign always or even commonly 
 represented a popular demand. They were oligarchical 
 assemblies, and the interests which they asserted were 
 often the interests of a class. The Crown might often 
 be compelled to assert the right of those who were not 
 represented by churchmen and barons on the one hand, 
 or by knights of the shire and burgesses on the other. 
 This was a duty which Henry seems not to have 
 neglected. He certainly enjoyed what may fairly be 
 called an unprecedented popularity. His Parliaments 
 were invariably complaisant, and his people were en- 
 thusiastically attached to him. Dangers that would 
 have seriously threatened a throne less firmly estab- 
 lished in the afi"ections of the natives passed by and did 
 no harm. Neither the badness of his title to the crown. 
 
SIGISMUND 93 
 
 nor the anger of the Lollards, who conceived themselves 
 betrayed by his House, nor the expenses of a costly war 
 did anything to compromise his position. It would not 
 be possible to find a greater contrast than was presented 
 between France, distracted by factions struggling for 
 the power which a lunatic king dropped from his hands, 
 and England, harmonious and enthusiastic, welcoming 
 back after a brilliant victory its vigorous prince, and 
 united in giving him all the help that he demanded. 
 If the darling scheme of the Plantagenets, the union of 
 the two crowns, had been within the limits of possibility, 
 Henry would certainly have effected it. 
 
 While the King was making preparations for another 
 effort, a desultory warfare and negotiations for peace 
 were going on simultaneously. In the May of 1416 
 an illustrious negotiator appeared upon the scene. 
 Sigismund, King of the Romans, aspired to perform the 
 functions of a moderator of European affairs — functions 
 which he doubtless regarded as belonging to the im- 
 perial dignity. He had taken a principal share in 
 bringing together the Council of Constance, which was 
 to put an end to the scandalous Papal schism and to 
 restore unity to the doctrine of Christendom. He now 
 conceived the idea of bringing about a reconciliation 
 between the rulers of France and England. After 
 paying a visit to Paris he pursued his journey to 
 England. Henry, always fond of magnificence, gave 
 him splendid entertainment. But he was careful to let 
 it be understood that he admitted no imperial preten- 
 sions which might interfere with his own sovereign 
 rights. A story was brought to England of Sigis- 
 mund's behaviour in Paris from which it was gathered 
 
94 HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 that such pretensions might possibly be put forward. 
 The Emperor - elect had knighted an esquire who 
 was a subject of the French king. Whatever he may 
 have meant by the action, which indeed was probably 
 suggested by personal feeling, it undoubtedly implied a 
 very serious claim. Henry had sent to Calais a numer- 
 ous fleet, which was to convey and escort his guest. 
 When the ship that carried Sigismund approached the 
 English coast, the Duke of Gloucester, with other nobles, 
 rode into the water and demanded, before he was per- 
 mitted to land, whether he claimed any imperial jurisdic- 
 tion in England. On assurance being given that he medi- 
 tated nothing of the kind, he received a royal welcome. 
 Another visitor who came to England on the same 
 errand was William of Bavaria, Duke of Holland. The 
 Duke of Burgundy also sent a representative, and 
 ambassadors from the French court were present to 
 discuss the conditions of peace. It is not easy, nor 
 indeed is it important, to determine precisely what 
 followed. The parties to the negotiations entered upon 
 them with difierent objects, and are not likely to have 
 been very frank in their dealings with each other. Henry 
 was not willing to recede from the demands to which he 
 had steadfastly adhered on the eve of Agincourt, when 
 his position was apparently so desperate. He would be 
 satisfied with nothing less than what had been conceded 
 to his great-grandfather, Edward, by the Treaty of 
 Bretigny. It is difficult to believe, even on the testi- 
 mony of Sigismund, that the French envoys made such 
 a concession. Its effect would have been to undo the 
 work of years, and make the king of France what the 
 king at Paris had been two centuries before. 
 
X AFFAIRS IN FRANCE 9S 
 
 In September Henry accompanied his imperial guest 
 to Calais, where they were met by the Duke of Burgundy. 
 A treaty was drawn up by which it was stipulated that 
 the Duke should assist the English king in his proposed 
 conquest of France, and should have in return a share 
 of the spoil. But it was not executed. The Duke 
 shrank from committing himself to a course of action 
 so unprincipled, and indeed so perilous to himself, for 
 his best hope of independence lay in the rivalry between 
 France and England. But though the treaty was not 
 executed, the very fact of the meeting at which it had 
 been discussed did much to serve Henry's purpose. It 
 increased the dislike and suspicion which the party that 
 was in power in France already entertained for the Duke. 
 
 Meanwhile hostilities, which there is no need to 
 describe in detail, had been going on. The Earl of 
 Dorset (soon afterwards created Duke of Exeter), 
 who was in command of the garrison at Harfleur, 
 made a plundering expedition into the adjoining 
 country, and found some difficulty in making his way 
 back. In May the French made a retaliatory expedi- 
 tion against the southern shore of England, and ravaged 
 the island of Portland. Later in the year Harfleur 
 itself was besieged, and though it was twice successfully 
 relieved, the fact made it evident that so far France 
 remained unconquered. It is said that Henry was bent 
 on conducting one of these relieving expeditions in 
 person, but was dissuaded by his new friend Sigismund 
 on the ground that the enterprise was not sufficiently 
 important to call for his interference. Whatever the 
 cause, he remained at home, organising his forces, collect- 
 ing by whatever means were available — some of them, 
 
96 HENR Y THE FIFTH chap, x 
 
 one cannot but think, not altogether creditable — the 
 necessary funds, and generally preparing himself for an 
 effort that should be final and conclusive. Early • in 
 1417 he sent letters under the Privy Seal addressed to 
 the nobles and gentlemen of the country, enjoining their 
 attendance, either in person or by deputy, and making 
 inquiry what number of men they could bring into the 
 field. Further instructions were given a little later in 
 the year to the effect that all persons so serving should 
 attend at court and execute the indentures which should 
 secure them their pay. Special attention was paid to 
 the efiiciency of the force of archers, and orders were 
 issued to the sheriffs, enjoining the supply of a certain 
 quantity of goose-quills for the feathering of the arrows. 
 Henry's relations with the Duke of Burgundy natur- 
 ally occupied much of his attention. It was the Duke's 
 Flemish possessions that brought him and the English 
 king together. The trade between the Flemings and 
 the English was a matter of great importance to both 
 nations, and possibly of supreme importance to the 
 former. Hence a treaty that gave it as much safety 
 as was attainable was sure to be popular. The Duke 
 sent ambassadors to England early in the year, when the 
 truce concluded in 1416 was further extended. It was 
 specially provided that no ships of war intended to act 
 against the territories of either of the contracting parties 
 should be fitted out in their ports, and no ships taken 
 by pirates should be taken into such ports. The treaty 
 was ratified in the month of August, and not till then 
 did Henry feel himself ready to start on his second 
 campaign, though he had named June 24th as the day 
 of gathering at Southampton. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 HENRY AND THE LOLLARDS 
 
 It might have been supposed that Henry's family asso- 
 ciations would have led him to a certain sympathy with 
 the aims of the party which looked up to Wickliffe as 
 its principal leader ; nor is it unlikely that something 
 of a sense of ingratitude was aroused by the adverse 
 course of action which was followed by his father and 
 himself. John of Gaunt had been at one time the strong 
 supporter of Wickliffe. On the famous day when the 
 reformer was arraigned before the princes and prelates 
 of England, the Duke of Lancaster had stood by his 
 side and had virtually saved him. 
 
 Whatever may have been the Duke's motive in 
 taking up this attitude, it was one which he was not 
 able nor perhaps willing to maintain. It certainly did 
 not make him popular ; indeed it is possible that the 
 Lollards themselves were not generally popular. Any- 
 how he was one of the most hated men in England 
 when Wat Tyler's insurrection broke out. His palace 
 in the Savoy was burned, and he himself narrowly 
 escaped with his life. During his latter years we find 
 no traces of championship of the Lollards. 
 
 The discontent of this party with the established 
 H 
 
98 HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 order of things was probably one of the causes which led 
 to the establishment of the house of Lancaster on the 
 English throne. If so, any services that were rendered 
 by the party were ill repaid. When Henry the Fourth 
 came to the throne he found himself under considerable 
 obligations to Thomas Arundel, who had been expelled 
 from the see of Canterbury, and who now received it 
 again. Arundel was vehemently opposed to the new 
 ways of thinking, and took an active part in the 
 measures — measures of a severity unprecedented in 
 England — which were taken to suppress them. 
 
 It has been suggested that among the faults of which 
 Henry made confession after he succeeded to the throne 
 was a favourable reception which his conscience accused 
 him of giving to heretical opinions. The suggestion 
 cannot be said to be founded on anything like evidence. 
 Theological errors are not the usual temptation of a young 
 prince, and there is nothing in Henry's after-life to make 
 us fancy that in his youth he was inclined to freedom of 
 thought. All that we know of him would rather incline 
 us to a contrary belief. There is, however, the fact that 
 there was some relation, perhaps we may say, of personal 
 friendship between Henry and the Lollard leader, Old- 
 castle. 
 
 Sir John Oldcastle, sometimes styled Lord Cobham, 
 as having married the heiress of that peerage, was 
 a distinguished soldier who had served in the cam- 
 paigns of the reign of Henry the Fourth. It is probable, 
 though we do not know for certain, that he was associated 
 with the young Prince during a part at least of his 
 operations on the Welsh borders. Henry must have 
 appreciated his qualities as a soldier; at any rate, the 
 
XI PROCEEDINGS AGAINST OLDCASTLE 99 
 
 action that he took with respect to him indicates, as 
 we shall see, some amount of personal interest. Wal- 
 singham, indeed, expressly says that he was Henry's 
 familiaris, or, we may say, intimate friend. 
 
 In Henry's first year. Convocation requested the Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury to proceed against Sir John Old- 
 castle for offences against ecclesiastical law and for 
 heresy. The Archbishop was willing enough to act, but 
 did not care to do so without permission of the King, of 
 whose friendship for the accused he was aware. He 
 represented the matter to the King, and the King, send- 
 ing for Oldcastle, bade him attend at cotirt to recant his 
 heretical opinions. His arguments and remonstrances 
 were of ijo avail ; Oldcastle was willing to render him 
 all obedience and service in temporal things, but to the 
 Pope and his commands he owed no allegiance. The 
 King, finding him immovable, remitted him to the judg- 
 ment of the Ecclesiastical Court. 
 
 It is needless to relate in detail the proceedings which 
 followed. Oldcastle, still dissatisfied with the tribunal 
 before which he was to appear, again appealed to the 
 King. First he presented to him a statement of the 
 articles of his belief. Henry refused to receive it. 
 He then offered to bring a hundred knights and esquires 
 who would clear him, it is to be presumed, by challenge 
 of battle. This proposal was rejected, but Henry ad- 
 mitted him to a private interview. He again pleaded 
 to have his cause tried by the King in person. The 
 King repeated his refusal, this time with some irrita- 
 tion : the accused, he said, could not have all things 
 ordered after his own pleasure : the Archbishop ought 
 to be, and should be, his judge. Meanwhile, till the 
 
HENRY THE FIFTH 
 
 time came for him to stand his trial, he must be kept 
 a prisoner in the Tower. 
 
 The trial, of which a complete account has been pre- 
 served, was held on September 23rd. Oldcastle was of 
 course condemned, and delivered over to punishment by 
 the secular arm. Time, however, was given him to 
 reconsider his opinions, and he was again committed to 
 the Tower. 
 
 What followed, it is impossible to say with any cer- 
 tainty. Oldcastle, we know, escaped from the Tower, but 
 the insurrection which is said to have been made by some 
 of his friends and followers is a matter involved in great 
 mystery. That the King apprehended some danger is 
 manifest. On December 4th we find him sending orders 
 to certain magistrates enjoining them to arrest various 
 persons whom he had otherwise named to them. There 
 is also record of a pardon granted to a person who had 
 given intimation of the conspiracy, and of a pension 
 settled upon him for life in reward of his services. Early 
 in the next month a proclamation was sent out, offering 
 large rewards for the arrest of Sir John Oldcastle, who 
 had escaped from the Tower. 
 
 So much we know from documents of State. To 
 what overt acts the conspirators proceeded, if conspira- 
 tors there were, is not so clear. Walsingham gives a 
 circumstantial account of the affair, which, omitting his 
 reflections, is as follows : 
 
 " The King kept Christmas duly at Eltham, and there the 
 Lollards, making a conspiracy, resolved to take or slay the King 
 unawares with his brothers. But certain of the conspirators 
 warned the King of his danger, so that the King quietly 
 removed himself to Westminster, that place being safer and 
 
WALSINGHAM'S NARRATIVE 
 
 more populous. The Lollards met at niglitfall in the fields 
 that are called St. Giles', near to London, where it was reported 
 that Sir John Oldeastle was waiting for his followers. You 
 might see crowds of men hurrying throughout the streets, 
 who had been drawn from all the counties of the realm by 
 great promises of reward. All these, being asked why they 
 made sugh haste, declared that they were going to meet the 
 Lord Cobham, who had hired them at his own costs. But 
 the King, knowing what had been done, bade his followers 
 arm themselves. Some counselled delay, but the King would 
 not listen to them, having heard that the rebels purposed, if 
 they should prevail, to destroy straightway the monasteries 
 of Westminster, of St. Albans, and St. Pavil, and aU the 
 Friars' houses in London. Hereupon a proclamation was 
 issued, ofl'ering a general pardon to all persons that had 
 preached heretical doctrines and had plotted against the 
 King's life. But Sir John Oldeastle and eight others, these 
 eight being prisoners in the Tower, were exempted by name. 
 For this cause the King proceeding to the said Fields, 
 against the advice of his people, some time after midnight, 
 waited for what the next day might bring forth. Many who 
 sought the camp of the Lord Cobham came unawares into the 
 King's camp, and were so taken prisoners. The chief of 
 the rebels heard how that the King had come with a 
 strong army, and had taken, many of their men. They 
 were much troubled also that no one came to join them 
 out of the city, from which they had looked for many thou- 
 sands. For the King had given orders that the gates should 
 be shut and be kept close, that none save such as were known 
 to be of his party might go forth. And indeed 'tis said that 
 had he not so done, there would have gone forth of servants 
 and apprentices as many as fifty thousand. Thereupon the 
 Lollards tooli to flight. As for their leader, none knew to 
 what place he had betaken himself, for though the King off'ered 
 a thousand marks, to any who should give him up, yet no one 
 was found who for so great a reward would give him up." 
 
 That this is the account of an unfriendly historian 
 need not be said. It is more to the point to remark 
 
HENRY THE FIFTH 
 
 that for most of his narrative Walsingham relies upon 
 hearsay. And even so, there is not a syllable said about 
 armed resistance. That there was a great concourse of 
 people may be taken as certain, as also that they were 
 called together by sympathy for their leader. That they 
 meditated any designs against the King is not by any 
 means so clear. Henry had all a soldier's impatience 
 of such gatherings ; nor was he yet so assured of his 
 throne as he shortly became. He may have been justi- 
 fied in apprehending a danger which yet, after all, may 
 not have really existed. 
 
 Walsingham was a monk, and wrote from a monk's 
 point of view. Titus Livius, who, though not a contem- 
 porary, must have heard many contemporaries discuss the 
 matter, says simply that the King, having learnt on 
 Twelfth-day that certain persons had assembled in a 
 field at the back of St. Giles' Church, led some soldiers 
 against them, who easily dispersed them, killing some 
 and taking others prisoners. 
 
 His words read like the account of an attack upon a 
 body of unarmed men. It is noticeable that the punish- 
 ment which followed was punishment for heresy, not for 
 treason; and it is expressly stated that priests as well as 
 laymen suffered. The rest of the story may be briefly 
 told. Oldcastle remained at large for nearly four years. 
 Walsingham reports him to have attempted a rising 
 on the occasion of Henry's departure on his French 
 expedition, and mentions rumour of a plot which he 
 had formed against the King's person in the beginning 
 of 1417, and of negotiations with the Scots later on in 
 the same year. The monk clearly saw the hand of the 
 arch-Lollard and his followers whenever there was any 
 
XI THE EXECUTION OF OLDCASTLE 103 
 
 mischief going on. The end came not many weeks 
 after. He was captured in Wales after what would seem 
 to have been a fierce resistance, for several of his captors 
 as well as the prisoner himself were wounded. Taken 
 to London, he was brought before Parliament, the session 
 being specially prolonged in order that his case might 
 be heard. The proceedings that followed cannot be 
 described as a trial. He was asked what he had to say 
 on his behalf why he should not be condemned. His 
 answer seemed to be irrelevant to his judges, and the 
 Duke of Bedford, who was acting as Eegent, bade him 
 keep to the point. His doom was sealed, if indeed it 
 had not been fixed before, when he denied the jurisdic- 
 tion of his judges, and declared that he would answer 
 only to his liege-lord Eichard, then alive in Scotland. 
 He suffered death by burning, being hung on a chain 
 fastened to a gallows, while a fire was lighted beneath. 
 Of the special barbarity of this punishment Henry may 
 be acquitted. He was absent in France ; nor is it likely 
 that the execution was delayed till he could be consulted. 
 We may even believe that it would not have been allowed 
 had he been in England. Indifferent as he was to 
 suffering, and relentless where any military necessity was 
 concerned, he was not cruel, and would hardly have 
 ordered the torture of a brave soldier for whom he had 
 once had some personal regard. But there is no reason 
 to suppose that he would have spared Oldcastle's life. 
 There was a growing severity in the treatment of heresy, 
 and he was quite in accord with it. Shocking as such 
 severity seems to us now, it was one of the ways in 
 which the religious earnestness of the age expressed 
 itself. The Council of Constance, while active to 
 
104 HENRY THE FIFTH chap, xi 
 
 cleanse the Church of abuses, saw, we cannot doubt, 
 a cognate duty in sternly repressing what it considered 
 the vagaries of heresy. The safe -conduct of Sigis- 
 mund had not protected John Hus from this ortho- 
 dox zeal ; nor is there any reason to suppose that this 
 postponement of good faith to a pious duty called forth 
 anything more than a transient feeling of self-reproach. 
 The " blush of Sigismund " has become historical ; but 
 this Prince seems to have soon recovered his self-satis- 
 faction ; nor did the jjerjury committed in the interests 
 of the true faith make him a less honoured guest or 
 less trusted adviser of the English king. Henry, in fact, 
 though he may be acquitted of any personal barbarity, 
 was in full accord with the spirit which sent Sir John 
 Oldcastle to the stake. 
 
CHAPTEE XII 
 
 HENKY AND QUEEN JOANNA 
 
 There is a strange episode in Henr/s history which 
 cannot be passed over, but about which it is difficwlt to 
 form any satisfactory conclusion. This episode concerns 
 his relations with his stepmother, Joanna of Navarre. 
 I deal with it now, though it belongs by right to a later 
 period of the narrative, because when this is disposed of, 
 nothing need interrupt the story of Henry's career as a 
 conqueror. 
 
 Under the year 1419 Walsingham writes : "In this 
 year the King's stepmother, Queen Anne, was accused 
 by certain persons of some wickedness that she had 
 contrived to the injury of the King. All her attendants 
 were removed, and she was committed to the custody of 
 Sir John Pelham, who, hiring five new attendants, put 
 her into the castle of Pevensey, there to be kept under 
 his control." 
 
 At Pevensey Queen Joanna remained till within a few 
 weeks of Henry's death. On July 13th, 1422, the King 
 made a communication to the Council at home to the 
 following effect : — That for reasons known to them he 
 had for a time taken into his own hand the dower of 
 his mother, Queen Joanna ; that, doubting whether it 
 
io6 HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 would not be a charge on his conscience to keep the said 
 dowry any longer, and being indeed advised not to suifer 
 such a charge to lie, he now instructed them to make 
 deliverance unto the said Queen wholly of her said dower. 
 She was to appoint her own servants, so that they were 
 the King's liegemen. All her furniture was to be 
 delivered to her again. She was to have five or six 
 gowns of cloth, and of such colour as she was used 
 to wear. As she would not choose to remain in the 
 place where she then was, she might have horses for 
 eleven cars to remove her goods, and she might go to 
 any place which she might choose. 
 
 It is not difficult to see causes of an estrangement 
 between the Queen and her stepson. Her eldest son, the 
 Duke of Britanny, had been expected to become a warm 
 ally of the English in the war against France. He had 
 disappointed this hope. It would even seem that it was 
 only by an accident that he had not fought against 
 Henry at Agincourt. Her second son, Arthur, though 
 an English subject, as having done homage for the 
 earldom of Eichmond, had been actually taken prisoner 
 in that battle. Some accounts even represent him as 
 having made an attack on the English camp during the 
 night of the 24th of October. The Duke d'Alen9on was 
 her son-in-law. Charles of Navarre, Constable of Prance, 
 was her brother. A lady so closely connected with the 
 enemy might well become an object of suspicion. And 
 she was, or had been, unpopular in England. Parliament 
 had complained of the foreigners whom she kept about 
 her person, and with such effect that the King (Henry 
 the Fourth) had dismissed all but a few. But one can- 
 not help thinking that her dowry had more to do with the 
 
XII CHARGE AGAINST QUEEN JOANNA 107 
 
 matter than anything else. Henry, compelled even to 
 pawn the royal jewels for the expenses of his expedition, 
 may have looked with coveting eyes on his stepmother's 
 wealth, wealth which she seems to have been careful to 
 save, and even to increase by trade. A jointure of ten 
 thousand marks had been settled on her by the House of 
 Commons in 1406. She enjoyed, in addition, a large 
 income as Dowager-Duchess of Britanny. We hear of 
 various trading ventures, especially of the export of ore 
 from certain lead mines which her second husband had 
 granted her. Special privileges as regards export and im- 
 port duties seem also to have been accorded to her. On the 
 other hand, it has been pointed out that her charities were 
 unusually small for a person of her exalted station. On 
 the whole the impression is left that she had both the 
 opportunity and the will to accumulate wealth. Such 
 accumulations, if they existed, could hardly have failed 
 to attract the attention of a sovereign who was doing 
 all that he could to procure the sinews of war. In- 
 deed we hear of Henry directing one of his officials to 
 send all the money that he could possibly borrow from 
 the dower of Joanna the Queen, leaving her only money 
 enough for her reasonable expenses and to pay any 
 annuities that she might have granted. This injunction 
 was followed in the same year by the arrest of the 
 Queen. It is not unlikely that she resisted the attempt 
 to extort the money, and that her resistance was 
 punished by the accusation which Walsingham records. 
 The crime charged against her was probably sorcery : 
 " she had compassed," it was said, " the death of our 
 lord the King in the most high and horrible manner that 
 could be imagined." On the Parliamentary roll that 
 
io8 HENRY THE FIFTH chap, xii 
 
 contains this statement there follows with .suspicious 
 promptitude the confiscation of all the accused person's 
 property. 
 
 Henry was not in England at the time when this 
 happened, but he cannot be acquitted of responsibility 
 in the matter. It is certain that when he returned he 
 did nothing to redress his stepmother's wrongs. This 
 was left, as has been said, till nearly the end of his life, 
 when her imprisonment had lasted for more than three 
 years. The only excuse that can be offered is that he 
 probably regarded the confiscation of Joanna's wealth 
 as a military necessity ; and where a military necessity 
 was concerned, no other considerations were allowed to 
 interfere with his action. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE SECOND CAMPAIGN IN FRANCE 
 
 The time was now come when Henry was to make his 
 great effort for the conquest of France. The first 
 necessity was to provide for the safe passage of the 
 army by clearing the Channel of the enemy's ships. 
 This was done by the Earl of Huntingdon. He met 
 nine ships, which had been hired by the French king 
 from the Eepublic of Genoa, sank three of them, and 
 captured three more with their admiral and a large sum 
 of money. On July 23rd the army started from South- 
 ampton. In addition to one thousand pioneers and other 
 workmen, it numbered twenty-five thousand five hundred 
 and twenty-eight combatants, of whom between sixteen 
 and seventeen thousand were men-at-arms. The trans- 
 porting fleet consisted of about fifteen hundred ships of 
 all sizes. 
 
 No attempt was made to oppose the landing of the 
 army. The disaster of Agincourt had so far broken 
 the courage of the French that they had no idea of meet- 
 ing the English in the field. The plan of campaign 
 seems to have been that the fortified towns should be 
 garrisoned as strongly as possible, and the invading force 
 left to exhaust itself by the effort of tstking them. Two 
 or three sieges, as costly to the conquerors as that of 
 
HENRY THE FIFTH 
 
 Harfleur had been, would leave little to be done by way 
 of active operations for the defence of the country. The 
 plan, we shall see, failed of success. Henry was earlier in 
 the field than he had been in the campaign of Agincourt, 
 his army was better furnished for siege operations, he 
 had acquired new experience, and he had the advantage 
 of a more favourable season. 
 
 Castles and walled towns fell in rapid succession into 
 the hands of the English. Touques, a royal castle, which 
 was the first to be assaulted, offered some resistance. The 
 garrison made a vigorous sally upon the besiegers, and 
 held out for two days against the incessant cannonade 
 with which it was plied. But on August 3rd (the army 
 had landed on the first of the month) it was agreed that 
 if the place were not relieved in six days it should be 
 surrendered. Eelieving force indeed there was none, 
 and the scattered garrisons throughout Normandy soon 
 realised the hopelessness of their situation. Damvilliers, 
 Harcourt, Evreux, and other places were surrendered 
 without a struggle. Monstrelet says that the other towns 
 in the duchy were astonished at the facility of the Eng- 
 lish conquests, and that scarcely any place attempted a 
 defence. And he goes on to give a reason which must 
 have been at least as potent for this result as any 
 demoralisation caused by the remembrance of the English 
 victories. It was due, he says, to the divisions among 
 the nobles, some of whom were for the King and some 
 for the Duke of Burgundy, and each party was in con- 
 sequence fearful of trusting the other. Moreover, the 
 Constable had drawn off most of the forces in the 
 district to be re^dy to act against the Duke, who was 
 daily expected with a large army. 
 
CAEN INVESTED 
 
 Not the least important factor in Henry's success was 
 the admirable order in which he kept his army. All 
 violence and plunder were forbidden. Ecclesiastical 
 persons were put, as might be expected, under a special 
 protection, and to insult or rob one of this privileged class 
 was an offence to be punished with death. To the laity 
 was offered a similar protection if they would own the 
 English king's authority. This policy, carried out with 
 the unflinching firmness which was one of Henry's 
 characteristics, at once secured the kindly feeling of 
 the population and made the army a more effective 
 instrument. 
 
 About the middle of August Henry commenced the 
 siege of Caen. Anticipating that the garrison would 
 destroy the suburbs and so deprive him of the cover by 
 help of which he could approach the town, he sent the 
 Duke of Clarence with a strong force to occupy them. 
 The Duke was just in time to save them from being 
 burnt. Henry's character for piety may have had 
 something to do in gaining for him another advantage. 
 The French forces had occupied St. Stephen's Abbey, 
 which lay outside the town. On the approach of the 
 English they resolved to destroy it. The monks, on the 
 other hand, were bent on saving it ; and they did so by 
 secretly introducing an English force. 
 
 On the King's arrival before the town, an attempt 
 was made to carry it by assault. The storming parties 
 were repulsed with heavy loss. Henry then set his 
 engineers to work. Mines were carried up to the walls, 
 which were also battered by the cannon. When all was 
 ready for an assault, he offered terms to the garrison. 
 They were refused. The next morning the assault was 
 
HENRY THE FIFTH 
 
 delivered, every detail of the operation having been 
 first carefully arranged by the King. It was completely 
 successful, the attacking parties making their way into 
 the town on both sides, and this without any great loss. 
 From first to last the siege did not cost the English 
 more than five hundred men, a number which contrasts 
 strongly with the almost disastrous expense that had 
 attended the capture of Harfleur. Henry, after duly 
 returning thanks in the cathedral, proceeded to deal 
 with the conquered town. The castle, which still held 
 out, was admitted to surrender on certain conditions if 
 not relieved in twelve days' time. The inhabitants gener- 
 ally were mercifully treated. Indeed Henry's conduct 
 so raised his reputation for clemency that many neigh- 
 bouring towns at once offered to capitulate. As usual, 
 however, nothing was allowed to interfere with military 
 policy. Caen was to be made a garrison, and accordingly 
 fifteen hundred " women and impotent people, who 
 were unserviceable and useless,'' were sent out of it. 
 
 After the fall of Caen, Lisieux, Alen9on, and many 
 other places capitulated without making any attempt at 
 resistance. A more important gain than the possession 
 of any city or fortress was the adherence of the Duke of 
 Britanny. On October 27th this Prince came under 
 safe-conduct to a conference with Henry. The terms 
 of their agreement were not precisely known; but it 
 was certain that a truce was made which was to be 
 in force till the following Michaelmas. It was also 
 reported that the Duke kneeled to the King as to his 
 suzerain, and offered to hold Britanny as a fief under 
 the English crown, or rather the French crown as now 
 united with that of England. Falaise, which was sur- 
 
XIII ROUEN INVESTED I13 
 
 rendered on January 2nd, was the last conquest of the 
 year 1417. The castle did not capitulate until six weeks 
 later. 
 
 It would be unnecessary to relate in detail the 
 military operations that now followed in uninterrupted 
 succession. During the first weeks of the new year 
 (1417-18) Henry was active in the field, and though, with 
 the devoutness which so strongly characterised him, he 
 spent Lent in strict retirement, his brothers were busily 
 employed. The great successes of the year were won at 
 Cherbourg and Eouen. Cherbourg was taken by the 
 Duke of Gloucester, aided by a force which the King 
 had ordered to be despatched from some of the western 
 harbours of England. The mere sight of its approach is 
 said to have determined the surrender of the garrison. 
 The siege of Rouen was one of the most important 
 operations of the war, and as it Was carried on through- 
 out under Henry's superintendence it demands a more 
 particular notice. 
 
 In May the King left Bayeux and marched up the 
 southern bank of the Seine. His first object was to 
 possess himself of the strong position of Pont de I'Arche, 
 situate about eight miles above Eouen, and commonly 
 called the Key of the River. The bridge itself was held 
 by the French in such strength that it could not have 
 been forced without a great sacrifice of men. Henry 
 accordingly marched some three miles lower down the 
 stream to a place where it was divided by an island. 
 The French followed him. While their attention was 
 distracted by a feint (one of the ingenious stratagems 
 with which great commanders are so ready), the island 
 was occupied by a small force of English gunners. A 
 
 I 
 
114 HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 cannonade drove away the troops that had been left 
 to guard the passage, and some thousands of men then 
 crossed without meeting any resistance. Henry now 
 held both banks of the Seine. He constructed a bridge 
 of boats to join his two camps, and in about three 
 weeks' time received the capitulation of Pont de I'Arche. 
 Leaving a considerable garrison in it, he proceeded to 
 invest Eouen, which was now practicallj'' isolated from 
 the rest of France. It was a great, and, considering the 
 strength of the place, even a perilous enterprise. But 
 success would be of inestimable value : the possession of 
 Rouen would mean the acquisition of Normandy. 
 
 The place was very strong. It lay, not, as now, on 
 both sides of the river, always a circumstance adverse 
 to effective defence, but wholly on the northern side. 
 The walls were high and strong, and well supplied with 
 artillery, with cannons of a size then unusual, and with 
 catapults, an engine of war which the invention of 
 gunpowder had not yet driven out of use. The gar- 
 rison again was unusually large. There was a local 
 militia numbering at least fifteen thousand men, and a 
 force of not less than seven thousand regular troops and 
 artillerymen. On the other hand, the provisioning of so 
 large a force would in any circumstances have been 
 a matter of difficulty. As it was, this difficulty was 
 enormously increased by circumstances which Henry 
 had doubtless taken into account. To the usual popula- 
 tion of the town was added a multitude of country-folk 
 who had flocked in from the neighbourhood to avail 
 themselves of the shelter of the walls. And the siege 
 was begun so early that the harvest of the year could 
 not be secured, 
 
XIII THE IRISH KERNES 115 
 
 Henry speedily completed the investment of the land 
 side of the town. Each of the six gates was commanded 
 by a strong fort, and these forts were connected by 
 palisaded trenches. The river was rendered impassable, 
 both above and below, to any relieving force that might 
 attempt to approach the town. Chains and booms were 
 stretched across it, and a flotilla was brought up from 
 Harfleur, part of which, as it would have been dangerous 
 to pass under the guns of the town, was dragged over 
 land to a point above the walls. A body of Welshmen 
 watched the town from the south bank of the river, 
 and many hundreds of Irish kernes, lightly armed and 
 fleet of foot, accompanied the English cavalry in their 
 excursions into the neighbouring country. " The greater 
 part of them," says Monstrelet, " had a stocking and shoe 
 on one foot only, while the other was quite naked. They 
 had targets, short javelins, and a strange sort of knives. 
 Those who were on horseback had no saddles, but rode 
 excellently well on small mountain horses, and were 
 mounted on such panniers as are used by the carriers of 
 corn in parts of France. They were, however, miserably 
 accoutred in comparison with the English, and without 
 any arms which could much hurt the French, whenever 
 they might meet them." 
 
 This miscellaneous force was kept by their general 
 under the strictest discipline. He was especially careful 
 to prevent all straggling. The men were rigidly for- 
 bidden to lodge outside the military lines ; and on one 
 occasion two soldiers who were discovered transgressing 
 this order were summarily executed. 
 
 Henry made no assault upon the town. He was too 
 careful of the lives of his men to waste them in so 
 
Ii6 HENRY THE FIFTH CHAP. 
 
 perilous an enterprise. He contented himself with re- 
 pelling the frequent sallies of the besieged, which the 
 strength of his lines of circumvallation and the state of 
 readiness in which he always kept his troops enabled 
 him to do without serious loss. He kept his men 
 employed indeed with the construction of siege works, 
 with the driving of mines, and with the construction of 
 systematic approaches to the town ; but his chief reliance 
 was a blockade. The vast population, military and 
 civil, ordinary and extraordinary, that crowded the walls 
 of Eouen could not be long fed on any stores that had 
 been laid up in this place, while effectual measures had 
 been taken against the throwing in of any relief. 
 
 The first-fruits of this policy of starvation were seen in 
 the surrender of the fortiiied post of the Abbey of St. 
 Catherine. This was given up by the force that garri- 
 soned it within a month of the investment of the city, 
 and given up because provisions had failed. Henry's 
 own camp meanwhile was abundantly supplied with pro- 
 visions, furnished by stores of his own, or brought in by 
 the parties which ravaged the neighbouring country. 
 
 Eouen soon began to feel the pressure of famine. Its 
 governor made an attempt to relieve it by expelling 
 from the town twelve thousand non-combatants. Henry 
 refused to' let these miserable creatures pass through his 
 lines, and they perished by degrees under the walls. 
 The story of their fate is pitiable in the extreme. Some 
 of them lingered on till the very end of the siege. 
 Many of the soldiers on either side had hearts more 
 tender, or perhaps it should be said intelligences less 
 alive to the necessities of the military situation, than the 
 generals who directed the attack and the defence of 
 
xiH HENR y 'S INFLEXIBILITY 1 1 7 
 
 Rouen. These secretly supplied the outcasts with such 
 provisions as they could spare. Henry himself departed 
 from the severity of his policy by furnishing the few 
 who were left alive on Christmas Day with a meal. 
 But neither the Governor nor the King relented. It may 
 be mentioned as an incident eminently characteristic of 
 the time, that new-born children were raised in baskets 
 to the top of the walls, duly baptized, and then let down 
 again to perish of hunger. 
 
 Henry has been severely blamed for the inhumanity 
 that he is said to have displayed on this occasion. It 
 may be allowed that there have been great soldiers who 
 would sooner have relinquished a military advantage 
 than allow such misery to exist under their eyes, but 
 Henry was not of this type. He was a soldier first ; 
 and to his conception of a soldier's duty, which was to 
 use every military advantage that fell in his way, he 
 subordinated everything. For wanton cruelty he had 
 no taste : it did not come within the scope of his 
 business ; but from cruelty that was not wanton — that 
 is, was dictated by some consideration of necessity 
 or expediency — he never shrank There is some- 
 thing, it must be allowed, that is repulsive about this, 
 and it is made more repulsive by the contrast which it 
 makes with Henry's almost ostentatious piety. This 
 is a contrast, however, which is apparent rather than 
 real. Henry's behef that the French crown belonged to 
 him of right was, incredible as it may seem, a genuine 
 conviction, even, it may be said, a religious convic- 
 tion. This feeling, it may well be believed, still 
 further fortified his heart against any thought of con- 
 cession to mere human weakness. As far as regards his 
 
Ii8 HENRY THE FIFTH CHAP. 
 
 military pitilessness he strongly resembles Csesar and 
 Napoleon. 
 
 A messenger from the besieged succeeded in making 
 his way through the English lines and in reaching Paris. 
 He saw the Duke of Burgundy, and delivered in em- 
 phatic terms the message of the citizens of Eouen : " If 
 by your negligence we are conquered by the King of 
 England, we shall become the worst and bitterest enemies 
 you have." The Duke promised help, a promise which 
 greatly encouraged the town to persevere in its defence. 
 The oriflamme, the sacred banner of France, was indeed 
 taken from the Abbey of St. Denis later in the year, and 
 an army nominally at least intended to relieve Rouen 
 followed it ; but it never approached the town. There 
 was indeed no one to act for France. 
 
 This appeal, as has been said, was made to the Duke 
 of Burgundy. The Dauphin meanwhile had opened 
 negotiations for peace with the English king. 
 
 A formal peace Henry would not make. To do so 
 would, he conceived, be a renunciation of his claims to the 
 French crown. Indeed he carefully avoided conceding 
 directly to the Dauphin the title of Regent of France : 
 in the commissions which were issued to the English 
 ambassadors he is the " Regent so-called." A truce was 
 proposed, which was preliminary to a treaty. The 
 English demands included all the territories mentioned 
 in the great Peace of Bretigny, and Guienne as well. A 
 stipulation was added that if the Duke should refuse 
 to come into this treaty the king of England should 
 march with as many troops as might be necessary 
 to Paris, and deliver that city with the royal family into 
 the hands of the Dauphin. In return for this service 
 
XIII NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE DAUPHIN 119 
 
 he was to have Flanders, a possession of the Dukes of 
 Burgundy. 
 
 In an interesting document Henry sets forth for the 
 consideration of his ambassadors various difficulties 
 which were involved in these proposals. Could he, 
 without prejudice to his right to the crown of France, 
 join arms with the Dauphin % Could he still receive the 
 Duke of Burgundy, should the Duke submit to him % 
 Could he justly invade Flanders while the truce was 
 unexpired % A number of military problems were also 
 suggested. Finally it was asked whether the Dauphin 
 was qualified to conclude a valid truce. 
 
 A supplementary commission authorised the ambassa- 
 dors to treat for the hand of the Princess Katherine ; 
 and elaborate instructions were given to them as to their 
 action in case of a partial concession of their demands. 
 
 The negotiations went on for a time, if not with 
 success, at least without coming to a manifest end. On 
 one point the Dauphin returned an emphatic answer. 
 He would not join with the English king in acting against 
 the Duke of Burgundy. " I will never make peace," he 
 said, "with the ancient enemy of my country in order 
 to destroy a vassal." 
 
 On November 17th the French commissioners, accom- 
 panied by the Cardinal d'Ursins, who was to act as 
 mediator, came to Pont de TArche, and there met the 
 English ambassadors. After a preliminary difficulty 
 about the language in which the proceedings of the 
 conference should be carried on had been disposed of, 
 the conditions wei'e discussed. The French envoys 
 presented the King with a picture of the Princess 
 Katherine, a present which he is said to have received 
 
HENRY THE FIFTH 
 
 with the greatest satisfaction. But he did not abate one 
 jot from his demands, which indeed it is not too much to 
 say he had made of set jjurpose impossible. He claimed 
 the hand of the Princess Katherine, the duchies of Nor- 
 mandy and Acquitaine, and other principalities, all of 
 them to be held in his own right and without any 
 dependence on the king of France. The French com- 
 missioners at once rejected these terms as impossible, 
 and the English retorted by questioning their authority 
 to treat. In the end nothing was done. 
 
 Eouen was now left to its fate, and that fate was 
 evidently close at hand. Early in December a sally was 
 planned, it being arranged that two thousand men 
 were to issue simultaneously from each of the gates. 
 The plan was only partially carried out, and though 
 some loss was suffered by the English, nothing of 
 real importance was effected. About the middle of 
 the month a definite intimation was given to the in- 
 habitants of Rouen that they must no longer expect 
 relief. The distress in the town had by that time 
 reached the point of agony. The richest among 
 the citizens were reduced to eating horse-flesh; the 
 poorer were glad to devour dogs and. cats, rats and 
 mice. Terrible stories were told that some had eaten 
 human flesh. According to one chronicler, not less than 
 fifty thousand died of starvation during the six months 
 of the siege. The number is incredible, but it is certain 
 that the famine reached an intensity that has seldom 
 been equalled. When the last hope of relief was gone, 
 it became absolutely intolerable. The inhabitants rose 
 in revolt against the magistrates, demanding that nego- 
 tiations should be immediately opened with the be- 
 
CAPITULATION OF ROUEN 
 
 siegers. There was indeed no reason why this should 
 not be done, and on January 2nd the envoys of the town 
 were admitted to Henry's presence. At first he refused 
 to grant any terms : Rouen must open its gates and 
 admit its conqueror. A truce indeed for eight days was 
 allowed ; but the days passed without any result being 
 attained. All that the English King would say was 
 that the inhabitants of Rouen must submit themselves 
 absolutely to his mercy. The people then formed a 
 desperate resolution. They would fire their town in 
 several places ; a great length of the wall was to be 
 undermined and supported temporarily with props ; 
 these were to be suddenly removed, and the whole 
 population was simultaneously to sally forth. All who 
 could bear arms were to fight their way out, while 
 the women and children were to endeavour to make 
 their escape. 
 
 Henry then relented. This purpose of the people 
 meant the destruction of Rouen, and he did not wish to 
 lose the chief city of Normandy. He renewed negotia- 
 tions, and terms of capitulation that were at least 
 tolerable were finally agreed upon. A ransom of three 
 hundred thousand crowns of gold was to be paid, and all 
 material of war was to be delivered to the King. The 
 lives of all persons in the town, with a few named 
 exceptions, were to be granted to them, and all who 
 would swear allegiance to the King should retain their 
 property; others might depart. One noteworthy pro- 
 vision, as indicating Henry's persuasion that he was 
 dealing, not with an enemy, but with rebellious subjects, 
 was that the King should have a space, either within 
 or without the walls, for the building of a palace, 
 
i;22 HENRY TBE FIFTH chap, xiii 
 
 but that he should duly purchase such ground from 
 its owners. 
 
 On January 22nd Henry entered the town with his 
 customary show of magnificence. • It was noticed, with 
 much speculation as to the meaning of the symbol, that 
 a page rode behind him bearing a lance to which a fox's 
 brush was attached after the manner of a pennon. His 
 first care, as usual, was to return thanks in the cathedral 
 for his victory. That done, he received the homage of 
 the citizens. All but five of the persons excepted from 
 the amnesty were either pardoned or released on pay- 
 ment of a fine. A noted partisan leader, Alan Blanchart, 
 who had treated his prisoners with great cruelty, was 
 beheaded ; and the Vicar-General, who had excommuni- 
 cated the English king, was condemned to imprisonment 
 for life. 
 
 The fall of Rouen was soon followed by the sub- 
 mission of the rest of Normandy. Henry at once set 
 himself to the task of administering the province 
 which he had acquired. He kept his court as Duke of 
 Normandy, wearing the robes which belonged to that 
 dignity. The province was to have its proper exchequer 
 and coinage ; a standard for measures was established, 
 and regulations were made for the conduct of trade. In 
 the brief opportunities that were given him Henry seems 
 to have showed himself a capable administrator of civil 
 affairs. His new subjects were impressed by the experi- 
 ence of a government more firm and just than that 
 which their native rulers had exercised. 
 
CHAPTEE XIV 
 
 HENRY S MARRIAGE 
 
 The first part of the following year (1419) was spent 
 in negotiation. Early in March the Duke of Britanny 
 paid another visit to the King for the purpose of con- 
 firming the friendly relations between them. At the 
 same time overtures were made to him by both the 
 parties who claimed to direct the government of France^ 
 by the Dauphin ^ on the one hand, and the Duke of 
 Burgundy, acting in the name of King Charles the 
 Sixth, on the other. 
 
 The negotiations with the Dauphin came to nothing, 
 nor was it indeed possible that they should have any 
 
 ^ Charles the Sixth had twelve children, whom it will be conveni- 
 ent to enumerate : — (1) Charles, died in infancy ; (2) Charles, died 
 1400, at the age of nine ; (3) Louis, died December 1415 — though 
 " stout of body, and skilful in arms," he had refused to tight at Agin- 
 court ; (4) John, died August 1417 ; (5) Charles, afterwards Charles 
 the Seventh, the "Dauphin" mentioned in the text ; (6) Philip, 
 died in infancy ; (7) Isabella, second wife of Richard the Second of 
 England, afterwards married to the Duke of Orleans, who was 
 murdered 1407 at the instigation of the Duke of Burgundy ; (8) 
 Jane, died in infancy ; (9) Mary, took the veil ; (10) Jane, married to 
 the Duke of Britanny ; (11) Michelle, married to Philip, Count of 
 Charolois, eldest son of the Duke of Burgundy ; (12) Katherine, 
 born October 17th, 1400. 
 
124 HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 result. Henry persisted in his claim to be king of 
 France ; and if he consented to discuss any other con- 
 ditions of peace, always reserved this right. The 
 Dauphin, as the eldest son of the reigning king, could 
 not seriously treat with such a claimant. Overtures made 
 on either side could only have been feints. The Duke of 
 Burgundy, on the contrary, had no pretensions that were 
 absolutely irreconcilable with Henry's claim. He had 
 in his power the imbecile King, the Queen, and all the 
 royal family, the Dauphin only excepted. In right of 
 the authority which the King was said to have delegated 
 to him, he claimed to be Regent of France. He would 
 doubtless have wished to be Regent under the imbecile 
 Charles rather than under the vigorous Henry. So far 
 he was adverse to the success of the English king ; but 
 it was quite possible for him to secure out of that success 
 terms advantageous to himself. The accession of the 
 Dauphin, in the probable event of the death of Charles, 
 would make his position untenable. On the whole we 
 may conclude that he was not indisposed to come to 
 an agreement with Henry, but did not see his way to 
 obtaining such an agreement as he wanted. 
 
 On May 30th, after various negotiations, which it is 
 needless to relate in detail, a formal meeting took place 
 at Melun. All the arrangements were of the greatest 
 magnificence, and the most rigorous etiquette, dictated 
 doubtless by mutual suspicion, was observed. 
 
 On the side of the French came the Duke of Bur- 
 gundy, Isabeau, Queen of France, and the fair Katherine 
 herself. It was on her charms indeed that the French 
 negotiators relied greatly for their success. All accounts 
 agree in giving the greatest praise to her beauty, though 
 
XIV MEETING WITH KATHERINE 125 
 
 it is a praise scarcely justified by her portrait. The nose 
 especially is of an excessive length, and falls a little over 
 the mouth, a characteristic of the Valois face ; but, says 
 Monstrelet, " King Henry was very anxious to marry 
 her, and not without cause, for she was very handsome, 
 of high birth, and of the most engaging manners." 
 Henry's attachment indeed had something almost 
 romantic about it. There had been many plans of find- 
 ing an alliance for him, but ever since he had been able 
 to act for himself he had never swerved from his purpose 
 of winning Katherine the Fair of France for hjs wife. 
 He was now a man of thirty -two, and, if we put 
 aside the dubious reports about the excesses of his 
 youth, we may say that, as far as we know, he had 
 never thought of any woman but her. Marriage to a 
 daughter of France might help him, he thought, to gain 
 the crown ; nor was he willing to abate his claim, even 
 in the minor matter of dower, in consideration of 
 Katherine's beauty. Still we cannot doubt that he was 
 a sincere and even ardent lover. 
 
 At three in the afternoon Queen Isabeau came out of 
 her tent, the Lords of her Council walking two and two 
 before her, and the Duke of Burgundy leading her by 
 the hand. The Princess Katherine followed, led by the 
 Count of St. Pol. Henry, who was accompanied by his 
 two brothers Clarence and Gloucester, and by his uncles 
 the Duke of Exeter and the Cardinal Beaufort, advanced 
 to meet them. He bowed, took the Queen by the hand, 
 and kissed her. Then he saluted the Princess in the 
 same way. His brothers did the same, but instead of 
 bowing, bent the knee almost to the ground. It was 
 observed that the Duke of Burgundy, in saluting the 
 
126 HENRY THE FIFTH 
 
 King, made the same gesture of respect. The whole 
 party then entered the pavilion that had been prepared 
 for their conference. For all his courtesy Henry did not 
 forget his pretensions. He claimed to have the upper 
 hand of the French queen, and, after a long dispute, had 
 his way. A conference followed, but it was not in- 
 tended that business should be transacted on that day. 
 This was postponed till the next meeting, which, it was 
 arranged, was to take place on June 1st. 
 
 The month was spent in further discussion. We may 
 gather from what has been recorded that Henry was 
 content to fall back, at least for the time, on the terms 
 of the Treaty of Bretigny, and that the French com- 
 missioners, on the other hand, sought to minimise their 
 concessions. They could not execute the Treaty of 
 Bretigny, because many of the places named in it were 
 in the hands of the Dauphin. Henry, who had not been 
 allowed another sight of the Princess, was profoundly 
 irritated at the manifest intention on the part of the 
 French negotiators to baflSe him, and especially at the way 
 in which they sought to utilise his position as a suitor. 
 His anger broke out in a fierce reply to the Duke of 
 Burgundy, when this prince reproached him with the 
 want of moderation in his demands. " I will have you 
 know," he cried, "that I will not only have your 
 Princess, but your King himself in my power ; and that I 
 will obtain the marriage that I seek, or force him from 
 his throne, and drive you out of the kingdom." The 
 Duke replied, "You may say what you please; but I 
 doubt not that before you force him from his throne or 
 drive me out of France, we shall make you weary of 
 your undertaking." 
 
XIV NEGOTIATIONS BROKEN OFF 127 
 
 Another meeting had been fixed for July 3rd ; but 
 Henry, coming to attend it, found that the French 
 commissioners had left the place. It seemed that peace 
 was as far off as ever. 
 
 The fact was that the Duke of Burgundy was playing 
 a double part. While the conferences at Melun were 
 going on, he had been in frequent communication with 
 the Dauphin. Twelve days after his last conference with 
 Henry, the Dauphin and the Duke met at Pouilly-le-Fort, 
 a place only a league distant from Melun itself. The 
 interview of the two was, to all appearance, cordial and 
 even affectionate. The Duke bowed several times very 
 low, and finally kneeled to the Dauphin, who raised him 
 in the most gracious way from the ground. At parting 
 the Duke insisted on holding the stirrup while the 
 Dauphin mounted. The two princes were to share the 
 administration of the kingdom between them ; they were 
 to give each other all the help in their power ; they were 
 not to enter into any agreement without mutual consent. 
 The treaty, which was finally concluded on July 29th, 
 was published throughout France. 
 
 To Henry, of course, this was a declaration of war. 
 He immediately took the field. The first point of attack 
 was Pontoise in the Isle of France. The town was 
 taken by a surprise, skilfully planned by Henry himself. 
 The English troops arrived in the early morning, scaled 
 the walls before the guard was even aware of their 
 presence, and, after a sharp struggle with the garrison, 
 made themselves masters of the town. Pontoise was a 
 great prize. It contained a great store of war-material 
 and a large sum of money; and it was the only forti- 
 fied place between the country occupied by Henry and 
 
128 HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 Paris itself. The King declared in a letter to his Council 
 at home that it was the most important place that he 
 had taken since the beginning of the war. The fact was 
 emphasised in the course of a few days by the appearance 
 of the Duke of Clarence before the walls of Paris. 
 
 But Henry's victories, ' brilliant as they were, could 
 hardly have brought him final success but for the 
 criminal folly of his adversaries. On September 10th 
 the Duke of Burgundy was murdered at the Bridge 
 of Montereau. What share the Dauphin had in this 
 atrocious deed — whether he commanded it and even 
 gave the signal for the assassins to strike, or whether 
 he simply stood by and suffered it to be perpetrated 
 without interfering — scarcely concerns us. Perhaps we 
 may take the more favourable account of Monstrelet, 
 who indeed had the best opportunities for learning the 
 truth. "While these things were passing," he says, 
 " the Dauphin leaned on the barrier, looking on, but soon 
 drew back, as one much frightened." And indeed the 
 Duke had private and public enemies who would not 
 scruple to take his life. One cannot wonder at the 
 violent death of the man who had perpetrated such a 
 deed as the assassination of the Duke of Orleans. 
 
 But whether the Dauphin was an accomplice before or 
 after the act, the result was the same. The murder of 
 the Duke gave Henry the crown of France. Paris, where 
 the dead prince had been popular, was furious at his 
 death. The provosts of the city, assembled by the 
 Count of St. Pol, swore a solemn oath that they would 
 employ their lives and fortunes in avenging this execrable 
 deed. The King and Queen renounced their son, and 
 declared their intention of making peace with the king 
 
XIV THE PEACE OF TROVES 129 
 
 of England, as the only hope for the country. And, 
 most important of all, Philip, Count of Charolois, eldest 
 son and heir of the murdered Duke, threw himself heart 
 and soul into the English alliance. 
 
 The Dauphin withdrew to Poictiers. France south of 
 the Loire was in his hands, but north of that river it 
 substantially belonged to the English king and to his 
 Burgundian ally. During the autumn of 1419 and the 
 following spring there were no military operations of 
 much importance. A desultory warfare was waged with 
 the Dauphin, while, on the other hand, there was a suc- 
 cession of truces between Henry and the party of the 
 French king. Negotiations, meanwhile, went busily on, 
 and this time with a real intention on all sides that they 
 should lead to some result ; and this result may be seen 
 in what was called "The Perpetual Peace of Troyes," 
 finally concluded on May 21st. King Charles was to 
 have undisturbed possession of the crown during his 
 life ; after his death the crown should go to Henry and 
 his heirs; during Charles's incapacity to reign, Henry 
 should be Eegent of France, and should be styled by the 
 King " our most dear son Henry, King of England and 
 heir of France "; the Princess Katherine was to become 
 Queen of England, with the customary annuity of forty 
 thousand crowns. 
 
 On the same day that the treaty was finally ratified, 
 the betrothal took place in the Church of St. Peter at 
 Troyes. The Queen of France and the Princess were 
 attended by the Duke of Burgundy and forty of his 
 council. Before the betrothal Isabeau and Henry went 
 together to the high altar, where the articles of peace were 
 read aloud, and both affixed their seals to them. Then 
 
 K 
 
I30 HENRY THE FIFTH chap, xiv 
 
 Henry and Katherine joined hands and were contracted, 
 while the Duke of Burgundy took an oath to obey 
 Henry as Regent of France so long as King Charles 
 should live, and after the latter's death, to acknowledge 
 him as his liege-lord. Nine days later, the marriage 
 was celebrated with great magnificence. Henry had 
 attained the object of his ambition — he was Regent 
 and heir of France, and he was the husband of the Fair 
 Katherine. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE SIEGE OF MELUN 
 
 Henry did not give any long time to his honejrmoon. 
 The story indeed is told of him that when some English 
 knights asked him whether a tournament should not 
 be included among the festivities of his marriage, he 
 answered that they should have tilting enough, but 
 that it should be tilting in earnest. He was as good as 
 his word, for he was not going to waste the best time 
 for campaigning. Early in June he laid siege to Sens, 
 a Burgundian town of which the Dauphin had possessed 
 himself. Sens capitulated after a resistance of twelve 
 days. From Sens he proceeded to Montereau, the place 
 where the Duke of Burgundy had been murdered. 
 The town was taken with little difficulty, but the castle 
 held out for some days. Henry, loath to waste his time 
 in reducing it, had recourse to a proceeding which 
 is another proof how pitiless was his temper when 
 any military advantage was concerned. Some of the 
 principal prisoners captured in the town were sent to 
 parley with the commander of the citadel. Their lives, 
 they said, depended upon his at once surrendering it; 
 and they represented that he could not hold out long 
 against the overwhelming force of the English king. 
 
132 HENRY THE FIFTH CHAr. 
 
 The Governor met them with a refusal, and Henry, 
 aware that such threats would lose all efficacy for the 
 future if they were not executed, ordered them all 
 to be hanged. But when, eight days after, the garrison 
 offered to surrender, he granted favourable conditions. 
 He observed what may be called the rules of the game 
 with undeviating strictness. The execution of the 
 prisoners was, according to the notions of the time, 
 within his right ; and the Governor was equally within 
 his right in holding out as long as he could. Monstrelet 
 mentions at the same time another incident which illus- 
 trates the same aspect of Henry's character. A running 
 footman who always followed his horse, and was a great 
 favourite with him, had the misfortune to kill a knight 
 in a quarrel. The King ordered him at once to be 
 hanged. 
 
 The next event of importance was the siege of Melun, 
 a strongly fortified town on the Seine, and of great 
 importance as commanding the passage of the river. 
 Henry, who had recently been joined by his second 
 brother the Duke of Bedford, invested it on one side, 
 and the Duke of Burgundy on the other. It was no 
 easy task which they had undertaken, for they had 
 themselves to be on their guard against attack from 
 without ; Meaux and other towns in the neighbourhood 
 were garrisoned by the Dauphin's troops, and frequent 
 sallies were made on the besiegers' trenches. The camps 
 were accordingly strongly fortified. A bridge of boats 
 connected them with one another, and also prevented 
 any relief of the town by water. 
 
 The English cannon played upon the walls with 
 such effect that what appeared a practicable breach was 
 
XV HENRY IN THE MINE 133 
 
 made. Henry's quick eye, however, discovered that the 
 attempt would cost too many lives, and refused to make 
 it, even when urged by the Duke of Burgundy. Another 
 ally who soon afterwards arrived in the camp, the Duke 
 of Bavaria, expressed his surprise that the attempt had 
 not been made. Henry heard him with patience, repre- 
 sented to him his own views, but finally consented that 
 an assault should be delivered. It does not, however, 
 appear that he allowed his own troops to be employed. 
 As commander-in-chief he gave permission to the two 
 Dukes to make the attempt. The storming party from 
 the Burgundian camp advanced boldly to the assault, 
 but was repulsed with great loss. 
 
 The next attempt was made by mining. The work 
 was discovered when it was brought close to the walls of 
 the city. A counter-mine was made by the garrison, 
 and before long the two partitions between the two 
 mines were broken down, and the passage, which was 
 now of considerable breadth, became the scene of fre- 
 quent combats. On one occasion we hear of Henry 
 fighting in person. Monstrelet speaks of him and the 
 Duke of Burgundy engaging two of the Dauphinois 
 " with push of pike." Titus Livius tells a more romantic 
 story, how, entering at the head of his men, he engaged 
 in single combat with the commander of the garrison, 
 the Lord de Barbasan. Neither of them knew the 
 other. After a while they paused. The King asked his 
 antagonist who he was. "I am Barbasan," said he, 
 "and you?" "You have fought," said Henry, "with 
 the King of England." Henry was a stout man-at-arms, 
 and loved the excitement of changing blows ; but he did 
 not neglect for this delight the more important duties of 
 
134 HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 a general, which seldom permit such an indulgence. It 
 is only here and at Agincourt, when indeed a desperate 
 situation demanded his display of personal valour, that 
 we hear of his actual prowess in the field. 
 
 Melun held out bravely till far in the winter. Bar- 
 basan had strictly forbidden any talk of surrender, and 
 the townspeople lived in hope of relief from the 
 Dauphin. Meanwhile the besiegers were suffering 
 greatly from the same disease that had caused such loss 
 before the walls of Harfleur. The Prince of Orange, 
 too, withdrew all his troops. " He was ready," he 
 declared, " to serve the Duke of Burgundy, but he would 
 not put France under the power of her ancient enemy.'' 
 But the presence of famine became more and more 
 intolerable, and when towards the end of November a 
 definite message came from the Dauphin that he was 
 not strong enough to attempt a relief, Barbasan pro- 
 posed a capitulation. The terms granted were not 
 liberal : those who surrendered were to have life but 
 not liberty ; they must remain prisoners unless they 
 could give security not to bear arms again against the 
 King of France and his Regent, the King of England. 
 Special exception was made against all who had been 
 concerned in the murder of the Duke of Burgundy. The 
 Governor himself was charged with having been an 
 accomplice in this crime, and remained in prison for 
 nine years. There was a considerable number of Scotch 
 soldiers among the prisoners : these, too, had been 
 exempted from the offer of mercy, and twenty of them 
 were executed. Henry's increased severity was probably 
 due not to any change of temper, but to the feeling 
 that he was now dealing with rebels rather than enemies. 
 
XV THE DAUPHIN BANISHED 135 
 
 Melun was surrendered at the beginning of December, 
 after holding out between three and four months. 
 
 From Melun Henry proceeded to Corbeuil, where the 
 French court had taken up its abode ; and from Cor- 
 beuil the two Kings, with the Duke of Burgundy, 
 made a solemn entry into Paris, where they were re- 
 ceived with what appeared to be an enthusiastic welcome. 
 The first business transacted was to cite and to con- 
 demn as contumacious the murderers of the late Duke. 
 The Dauphin, summoned under the title of Charles, 
 Duke of Touraine, was declared to be attainted and 
 convicted of the crime laid to his charge, banished 
 from France, and pronounced for ever incapable of suc- 
 ceeding to the inheritance of the crown or of any 
 dominions that might be acquired for it. Henry thus 
 saw another obstacle to the ambition of his life cleared 
 out of his way. This done. King Charles, sitting in 
 the hall of his palace of St. Paul, publicly declared his 
 assent to the treaty which had given the reversion of 
 the crown to the king of England. 
 
 The two sovereigns kept distinct courts. That of 
 Henry was by far the more splendidly equipped and 
 numerously attended of the two. He was the rising 
 sun, and all men looked to him. All offices of trust 
 and profit were at his disposal, and the nobles and 
 gentlemen of France flocked into his ante-chambers. 
 More important visitors than these courtiers were the 
 two Lords of Albret, a family of the highest importance, 
 who offered him their homage as Duke of Acquitaine ; 
 and many other great lords, spiritual and temporal, 
 followed their example. 
 
 Meanwhile Henry busied himself with the duties of 
 
136 HENRY THE FIFTH chap, xv 
 
 government. He set himself to redress the grievances 
 and reform the abuses which a time of disorder and 
 division had produced in abundance. He devoted 
 special attention to the coinage, vrhich, to the great 
 injury of trade, had been much debased. At Paris, 
 as in Normandy, his subjects were favourably impressed 
 with the promise of a just and vigorous rule that his 
 civil administration held out. 
 
 Shortly after Christmas Henry left Paris for Eouen, 
 where he devoted some days to settling the affairs of 
 the Norman duchy. From Eouen he went to Amiens, 
 and thence again to Calais, crossing over to Dover on 
 February 1st. A few days were spent at Canterbury, 
 and then followed a triumphal entry into London and 
 the coronation of Queen Katherine at Westminster 
 Abbey. The Duke of Clarence had been left as the 
 King's Lieutenant-General in France, but with a special 
 charge as Governor of Normandy. Paris was put 
 under the care of the Duke of Exeter. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE LAST CAMPAIGNS 
 
 The coronation of Queen Katherine was performed on 
 February 24th. About a month later came the news of 
 a great disaster to the English arms in France. The 
 Duke of Clarence had been defeated and slain at Beauj6 
 in Anjou. He had made a plundering expedition into 
 that province, and lay at Angers, on the Mayenne, when 
 he heard of the presence of the Dauphin's army a few 
 miles to the east. Misinformed of the real strength of 
 the enemy, or perhaps taught by a long succession of 
 victories to despise him, he hurried to the attack, refus- 
 ing even to wait till his whole force could be brought up, 
 and riding on with his cavalry only. The details of the 
 conflict that followed are obscure, but the result was a 
 disastrous defeat. The Duke was killed, and with him 
 fifteen hundred, or, according to some accounts, two 
 thousand of his troops, among whom were the Lords 
 Ross and Gray, and the Earls of Huntingdon and 
 Somerset. The honours of the victory belonged to the 
 Scotch, seven thousand of whom were present under 
 command of the Earl of Buchan, youngest son of the 
 Duke of Albany. 
 
 And in other ways things were not going well. The 
 
138 HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 Duke of Exeter's position in Paris was unsafe, while in 
 Northern France, of which the English had seemed to 
 have undisputed possession, the party of the Dauphin 
 was again making head. Henry saw that his presence 
 was imperatively needed, and hastened his preparations 
 for another expedition. 
 
 There were signs of exhaustion in the country. It 
 was becoming increasingly difficult to raise both men 
 and money. At least a hundred thousand troops had 
 already crossed the Channel ; and the losses, by battle 
 and disease, had been very large. The difficulty of money 
 had, as we have seen, always been serious; and six 
 years of incessant war had greatly increased it. Henry, 
 however, persevered with indomitable energy, and the 
 nation, among whom his popularity seems to have 
 suffered no diminution, seconded his efforts. On June 
 10th he embarked with an army numbering no less than 
 four thousand men-at-arms and twenty-four thousand 
 archers. This time Dover was his point of departure, 
 and a prosperous voyage brought him to Calais on the 
 same day at noon. 
 
 His first care was to relieve the Duke of Exeter. A 
 force of twelve hundred men was at once despatched, 
 and reached Paris without encountering the enemy. 
 The King's presence, indeed, seemed to revive the 
 English cause almost instantaneously throughout Nor- 
 mandy and Northern Prance. One of the principal 
 operations of the campaign was the relief of Chartres, 
 which the Dauphin had invested while Henry was still 
 in England. On the approach of the English army the 
 French retired without fighting a battle : the victory 
 of Beauj6had not restored the confidence which had 
 
XVI PJiOGSESS OF THE ENGLISH ARMS 139 
 
 been lost at Agincourt. It is significant to find that in 
 the account of a battle fought in the course of the 
 campaign between the Dauphin and the Duke of Bur- 
 gundy the chronicler tells us that the French were much 
 encouraged by finding that there were no English in the 
 Duke's army. The capture of Dreux, which was sur- 
 rendered on August 20th, was also an important gain. 
 Henry — and the fact is a notable proof of his military 
 capacity — had in the course of some ten weeks regained 
 all that had been lost during his absence. 
 
 The English arms being again supreme in Northern 
 France, he proceeded to extend the limits of the terri- 
 tory which they occupied, and marched southwards to 
 the Loire. Venddme fell into his hands, and, after 
 Vend6me, Beaugency. Crossing the Loire, he proceeded 
 as far south as Bourges, where the Dauphin, who 
 steadily persisted in his policy of avoiding a battle, had 
 shut himself up. But Bourges was too strong to be 
 taken except by operations for which Henry had not 
 then the means ; and Orleans, still unreduced, was in 
 his rear. A more pressing necessity was the capture of 
 Meaux. As long as this fortress remained in the hands 
 of the Dauphin, the position of the English in Paris was 
 not safe. Meaux was accordingly invested on October 
 6th. The King left the conduct of the siege for a time 
 in the hands of the Duke of Exeter, and returned to 
 Paris, where many civil matters called for his presence. 
 
 The pressure on his supply of troops had now 
 become exceedingly severe. He was forced to enlist 
 large numbers of French soldiers to fill up the gaps in 
 his English army : he sent envoys to the Emperor 
 Sigismund soliciting help in men-at-arms and archers ; 
 
140 HENRY THE FIFTH 
 
 and a similar request was also made to John, King of Por- 
 tugal. In addition to losses in the field and by sickness, 
 four thousand of his men are said to have died of an 
 epidemic in the course of a single march during the 
 campaign on the Loire; and still it was necessary to 
 garrison every town or fortress of military importance 
 that might be won from the enemy. Arthur, younger 
 brother of the Duke of Britanny, who had some time 
 before been released from his long imprisonment, came 
 with a considerable reinforcement to join the army; 
 and after Christmas the Duke of Burgundy paid a visit 
 to the King, who had by that time returned to the camp. 
 But the Duke did not stay long, for a serious family 
 quarrel had arisen between the two Princes. Jacque- 
 line, Duchess of Brabant, had left her husband and 
 taken refuge at the English court, where Henry had 
 welcomed her with assurance of his protection. The 
 Duke of Burgundy, on the other hand, took up the 
 cause of his kinsman the Duke of Brabant with much 
 energy, and a serious difference was the result. 
 
 Meanwhile, on December 6th, Queen Katherine had 
 given birth to a son, the unfortunate Henry of Windsor. 
 The King, for some reason that is not explained, found 
 an augury of evil — so at least runs the story — in the 
 fact that Windsor was the birthplace of his heir. He 
 is reported to have said to his chamberlain, "I, Henry 
 born at Monmouth, shall small time reign, and get 
 much; and Henry born at Windsor shall long, long 
 reign, and lose all ; but God's will be done." The pro- 
 phecy, whether made before or after the event, was 
 certainly fulfilled with singular exactness. Perhaps the 
 great conqueror already felt that his own time was short. 
 
XVI THE SIEGE OF MEAUX 141 
 
 and he had certainly had sufficient proof that, when his 
 own presence was withdrawn, things were not Hkely to 
 go well. 
 
 During the winter and early spring the siege of 
 Meaux was vigorously prosecuted. The King had, 
 however, scarcely sufficient troops for the work, the 
 more so as he was more than once obliged to detach a 
 force to serve elsewhere. The Dauphin's troops had 
 surprised Auraches, and it had to be recovered from 
 them. More ominous, as showing the insecurity of the 
 conquests made, was the call for troops in Normandy, 
 where Oliver de Mauny, Lord of Falaise, who had 
 sworn allegiance to the King of England, was ravaging 
 the country. The Dauphin could not relieve Auraches, 
 and De Mauny was taken prisoner ; but it was evident 
 that a work of immense difficulty and extent still re- 
 mained to be done. 
 
 Meaux held out for seven months. Its Governor, 
 who went by the name of the Bastard of Maurus, had 
 offended so deeply against the laws of war that he could 
 have no hope of pardon were he to capitulate. Instead 
 of carrying on hostilities according to ordinary methods, 
 he had behaved like a robber chief. Any party that 
 ventured without sufficient strength near his fortress he 
 would sally forth and attack; nor did he make any 
 difference whether it was bent on a peaceable or warlike 
 errand. Nor was he careful to inquire into its 
 nationality, especially if it carried anything worth 
 plundering. Any prisoners that he supposed or alleged 
 to be English or Burgundians he used to hang on an 
 elm that grew outside the walls and was called by his 
 name. 
 
142 HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 In April the state of affairs in the town grew desper- 
 ate. An attempt at relief made by the Dauphin had 
 failed, ending in the capture of the leader who com- 
 manded it. The first proceeding of the besieged was to 
 abandon the main part of the town, and concentrate 
 their force in what was called the market-place, which 
 was separated from the rest of the city by the river. 
 The attempt of the townspeople to remove their pro- 
 perty to this stronghold was interrupted by a sudden 
 attack from the besiegers, but the garrison made good 
 their escape into it. 
 
 Henry proceeded to attack this stronghold. He 
 began by occupying a small island in the river, from 
 which he kept up a vigorous attack with several siege- 
 cannon and catapults. An important position was 
 lost to the besieged by the capture of the mill, 
 and a breach was made in the wall. Before ordering 
 an assault Henry summoned the garrison to surrender. 
 This summons the besieged met with an insulting 
 answer, which they followed up by a successful sally, 
 killing the whole of a party which they surprised in a 
 meadow under the walls. 
 
 Orders were now given for a general and immediate 
 assault. For seven or eight hours the conflict raged 
 fiercely. So obstinate was the courage of the besieged, 
 that when their lances were broken they defended 
 themselves with iron spits, and night fell before an 
 entrance could be effected. At one time the storming 
 party had gained the ditch, but they were driven out 
 of it again. 
 
 Further resistance, however, was hopeless. The 
 walls lay in ruins, and another assault could hardly be 
 
XVI CAPITULATION OF MEAUX 143 
 
 repulsed. Henry again offered terms. He had been 
 personally insulted during the siege, but this did not 
 affect his temper, which indeed was remarkably im- 
 perturbable, either by pity or anger. The terms 
 offered and accepted were not more severe than the 
 military practice of the time permitted. Four persons, 
 among whom was the Bastard of Maurus, with all Eng- 
 lish, Scotch, and Irish soldiers, were excepted from the 
 King's clemency : the rest of the captives were to be 
 kept close prisoners till the close of the war. On May 
 11th Meaux was given into the King's hands. The 
 Bastard of Maurus was behieaded, and his body hanged 
 on the tree which he had made notorious by his cruelty. 
 The other excepted prisoners were taken to Paris, 
 and executed after due trial. We do not hear of any 
 other severities. 
 
 The capture of this town was Henry's last exploit. 
 
CHAPTEE XVII 
 
 THE DEATH OF HENRY 
 
 On May 21st Queen Katherine landed at Harfleur 
 with her infant son. She was accompanied by a 
 brilliant court, and by the Duke of Bedford, who had 
 been summoned to join his brother, now feeling, we 
 may suppose, a pressing need of the assistance of his 
 military skill. The Queen journeyed from Harfleur on 
 to Eouen, and from Eouen to Vincennes, where Henry 
 met her. Their entry into Paris was magnificent. It 
 was noticed that the English queen had two mantles 
 of ermine borne before her carriages, to mark, it was 
 supposed, her dignity as Queen of England and France. 
 Charles was at that time also in Paris, and it was again 
 noticed that it was the English court rather than the 
 French that formed the centre of attraction. Meanwhile 
 Henry was winning good opinion from the commonalty 
 by his just and moderate government, and especially by 
 his exact and impartial administration of justice, a new 
 thing in a country where privilege was always so power- 
 ful. On June 22nd Henry and his Queen left Paris for 
 Senlis. He was soon again in the capital to inquire 
 into the circumstances of a plot which had been dis- 
 covered for the delivery of the city into the hands of the 
 
CHAP. XVII THE ILLNESS OF HENRY 145 
 
 Dauphin \ and it was after his second return to Senlis 
 that his health began manifestly to fail. Of the nature 
 of his illness we are not exactly informed. Monstrelet 
 says that it was St. Anthony's fire or erysipelas ; other 
 accounts speak of a fistula and pleurisy ; in Walsingham 
 the cause of death is given as " a sharp fever with vehe- 
 ment dysentery.'' Henry did not come of a long-lived 
 race. His great-grandfather indeed reached an age 
 (sixty-five) which, though often since exceeded, had only 
 once before been reached by an English king ; but his 
 grandfather — the "time-honoured Lancaster" of Shake- 
 speare — had died, worn out, at fifty-eight; his father, 
 after years of suffering, expired at forty -seven ; and 
 his mother died in her twenty-fifth year. 
 
 Cosne-sur-Loire, a walled city belonging to the Duke 
 of Burgundy, had been besieged by the Dauphin, and 
 had agreed to capitulate unless relieved before August 
 6th. The Duke sent for help to Flanders and Picardy, 
 and, of course, to King Henry. The King replied 
 that he would come in person, and bring his whole 
 army with him. The army marched out of its quarters 
 in Paris and its environs, and Henry, after taking leave 
 of his wife, whom indeed he never saw again, started 
 from Senlis to join it. He was able to ride as far as 
 Melun, where he exchanged the saddle for a litter, in- 
 tending to overtake the army; but his illness increased so 
 rapidly that he was compelled to give up his purpose. 
 He handed over the command to the Duke of Bedford, 
 and was carried to the Bois de Vincennes. There he 
 took to his bed, from which he never rose again. 
 
 He seems to have been aware that his days were 
 numbered. The Dukes of Bedford and Exeter, the Earl 
 
146 HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 of Warwick, and some four or five more of his most 
 trusted counsellors were called to his bedside. To his 
 brother John he said : " My good brother, I beseech you, 
 on the loyalty and love you have ever expressed for me, 
 that you show the same loyalty and affection to my son 
 Henry, your nephew." He then gave him directions 
 as to the policy he was to pursue. Monstrelet professes 
 to give the dying man's exact words, but at this point 
 they are obscure and even contradictory. The Duke of 
 Burgundy was to have the Regency of France, if he 
 wished for it ; otherwise his brother was to take it him- 
 self. Then, turning to his uncle, he said : " My good 
 uncle of Exeter, I nominate you sole Regent of the 
 kingdom of England, for that you well know how to 
 govern it ; and I likewise nominate you as guardian to 
 my son ; and I insist, on your love to me, that very often 
 you personally visit and see him." To the Earl of 
 Warwick his words vrere : " My dear cousin of Warwick, 
 I will that you be his governor, and that you teach him 
 all things becoming his rank, for I cannot provide a 
 fitter person for the purpose.'' 
 
 Then followed some advice as to the management of 
 aff"airs. Above all things, dissension with the Duke of 
 Burgundy must be avoided; and this was especially 
 impressed on his brother Humphrey, whose relations 
 with the Duke were not friendly. Unless they could 
 keep on good terms with him, everything would be ruined. 
 The princes of the French royal family whom they 
 had in custody were on no account to be released. 
 
 After an interview with Sir Hugh de Lannoy, who 
 had come to him on a mission from the Duke of 
 Burgundy, Henry began to prepare for his end. He 
 
xvii HENRY'S LAST MOMENTS 147 
 
 sent for his physicians, and asked them how long they 
 thought he had to Hve. They were naturally unwilUng 
 to tell him the truth, and endeavoured to evade the 
 question: "It depended solely," they said, "on the 
 will of God whether he should be restored to health.'' 
 The King, dissatisfied with this answer, repeated his 
 question, and commanded them to tell him the actual 
 truth. They consulted together. Then one of them, 
 whom they had appointed their spokesman, fell on his 
 knees by the bedside and said : " Sire, you must think 
 on your soul ; for, unless it be the will of God to 
 decree otherwise, it is impossible that you should live 
 more than two hours." 
 
 On hearing this, Henry sent for his confessor. He 
 made his confession, and received the last sacraments of 
 the Church. He then bade his chaplains recite the seven 
 penitential Psalms. When in chanting the fifty- first 
 they came to the words "Build Thou the walls of 
 Jerusalem," he interrupted them and said aloud that 
 he had fully intended, after wholly subduing the realm 
 of France and restoring it to peace, to conquer the 
 kingdom of Jerusalem. The priests went on with their 
 devotions. In the midst of them he cried out again, as if 
 addressing some invisible adversary, " Thou liest, thou 
 liest; my part is with the Lord Jesus"; then with a 
 still louder voice, " In manus tuas, Domine '' — and so 
 breathed his last. The day of his death was the last 
 day of August. He had just completed his thirty- 
 fourth year. 
 
 The body was embalmed and placed in a coffin of 
 lead. From Vincennes it was first taken in great pomp, 
 attended by the English princes, his household, and a 
 
148 HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 multitude of the people, to the Church of Notre-Dame 
 in Paris, where a solemn service was performed over 
 it. From Paris it was removed with the same state 
 to Rouen. 
 
 At Eouen, Queen Katherine, who had been kept in 
 ignorance of her husband's perilous condition, waited 
 with the corpse till affairs were sufficiently settled to 
 allow of the return of the princes to England. This was 
 not for some weeks, and it must have been about the 
 beginning of November when the funeral procession 
 set out. The route was through Abbeville, Hesdin, 
 Montreuil, and Boulogne to Calais. 
 
 The coffin was placed on a car drawn by four 
 magnificent horses. Above it was an effigy of the 
 King, worked in leather, beautifully painted, with a 
 crown of gold upon the head. The right hand held 
 a sceptre ; the left a golden ball; the face looked up to 
 the heavens. The effigy lay on a mattress^ on which 
 was a coverlet of vermilion silk interwoven with beaten 
 gold. When it passed through any town a canopy of 
 silk, like that which is borne over the Host on Corpus 
 Christi Day, was carried over it by men of rank. The 
 King of Scots followed as chief mourner; with him 
 were Henry's kinsmen, the English nobles in France, 
 and the officers of his household; at the distance of a 
 league behind followed the Queen with her ladies. The 
 first halt was at the Church of St. Wolfran in Abbe- 
 ville ; there the coffin rested awhile, while rows of 
 priests on either side chanted requiems unceasingly 
 day and night. In every town through which the 
 procession passed, masses were daily said from break 
 of day to noon for the dead man's soul. 
 
THE FUNERAL 149 
 
 From Calais the body was transported to Dover. 
 From Dover it was carried through Canterbury and 
 Rochester to London, which was reached on Martinmas 
 Day (November 11th). As it approached the city it 
 was met by iifteen bishops clad in their episcopal 
 robes, a number of mitred abbots and other dignified 
 ecclesiastics, and a vast multitude of people of all ranks. 
 The service for the dead was chanted as the car passed 
 over London Bridge, down Lombard Street, to St. Paul's 
 Cathedral. The adornment of the horses which drew 
 it was notably significant. On the collar of the first 
 were emblazoned the ancient arms of England ; on 
 that of the second, the arms of France and England 
 quartered — these the late King had borne in his life- 
 time, as a solemn claim to the double crown ; the 
 third showed the arms of France simply ; the fourth 
 the traditionary bearings of the invincible Arthur — for, 
 like him, Henry had never been vanquished in the field — 
 three crowns or on a field azure. After a great service 
 in St. Paul's the body was transferred to its final resting- 
 place in Westminster. Preparations on a scale and of 
 a kind such as had never before been thought of were 
 there made for its reception. The relics hitherto pre- 
 served at the extreme eastern end of the Confessor's 
 Chapel were removed from their place, to make room 
 for the body of the great King. Over the spot was 
 raised a chantry, where masses were to be offered up 
 for ever for his soul, and an altar built in honour 
 of the Annunciation. For a year thirty poor persons 
 were to recite there the Psalter of the Virgin, adding to 
 it in English the words| "Mother of God, remember thy 
 servant Henry, who putteth his whole trust in thee ! " 
 
150 HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 The masses have long since ceased to be said ; but the 
 chapel with its elaborate sculptures still remains to 
 show the reverence in which the pious soldier was held 
 — reverence such, wiites Monstrelet, "as if it were 
 certain he was a saint in Paradise.'' The shape of the 
 chapel is that of the iirst letter of his name. Among the 
 statues which adorn it are those of St. George of England 
 and St. Denis of France, the two kingdoms which for a 
 time at least he had united ; and the sculptures repre- 
 sent the scenes of his life, his coronation, and his victories 
 in France. The shield and the helmet that are still to 
 be seen above the tomb belong indeed to Henry's time, 
 but are not, as they have been represented to be, his 
 actual arms, having been furnished by the undertaker as 
 part of the funeral equipment. On the tomb below may 
 still be seen the image of the King, but sadly stripped 
 of its ancient splendour. For the leather effigy which 
 was carried from Eouen to London was substituted, 
 as a more permanent memorial, a figure cut out of 
 heart of oak, covered with silver-gilt and with a head 
 of solid silver. These ornaments were too tempting 
 for the cupidity of some of his degenerate countrymen. 
 Sepulchrum modicum et mansurum is the terse phrase of 
 Tacitus, but Henry's tomb did not fulfil the condition. 
 Two teeth of gold were carried off in the reign of 
 Edward the Fourth, and the silver was stolen at the time 
 of the Dissolution. Had it been wrought of humbler 
 stone or alabaster, it might not have been the headless 
 effigy which stirred the wrath of Addison, and still re- 
 bukes us with the thought of to what meanness humanity 
 can descend. 
 
 The author of the curious Versus Bhythmid de 
 
PERSONAL APPEARANCE 151 
 
 Henriro Quiiiio has given us an elaborate description 
 of the King's personal appearance. The name of this 
 writer is unknown, but it is clear from many of the 
 expressions that he uses that he was a Westminster 
 monk who held some office in the royal household. 
 Henry's head, he tells us, was spherical, his forehead 
 smooth (planus), an epithet which may possibly 
 mean not receding. These two characteristics were, 
 in his view, signs of intelligence ; whether he is 
 right or wrong in his generalisation, we may gather 
 that Henry had an intelligent aspect. His hair was 
 brown, thick, and smooth : here the writer uses 
 again the epithet plani, for want, it would seem, of 
 a more convenient word ; he was moving, it should be 
 • said, in the very cramping fetters of Leonine verse. 
 His nose was straight, and his face long (extensus) : 
 he had, that is, the oval face so characteristic of the 
 great Englishmen of a later age, the golden time of 
 Elizabeth. His complexion was bright (floridus is the 
 word used, but " florid " would give a false impression) : 
 his eyes clear and brilliant, opening wide, with a reddish 
 tinge in them (if this is the true translation of subrufe 
 patentes); they were the eyes of a dove when he was 
 not provoked, of a lion when he was stirred with anger. 
 His teeth were white as snow and evenly set ; his ears 
 small and well shaped ; his chin divided (fissum, mean- 
 ing that it had a noticeable indentation) ; his neck of a 
 becoming thickness, and fair ; his cheeks flat (non inflatm 
 is the phrase, meaning that they were not "puffy," as 
 were the cheeks of Henry the Eighth) and of a good 
 colour, and his lips of a vermilion hue. His limbs 
 were strongly and handsomely formed, with bones and 
 
152 HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 sinews firmly knit together. The chronicler Hall 
 . gives a description which is substantially the same : " He 
 was of stature more than the common sort, of body 
 lean, well-membered and strongly made, a face beautiful, 
 somewhat long-necked, black haired." Black as the 
 colour of his hair is doubtless a mistake for brown, 
 the epithet used by the contemporary chronicler. 
 
 The author of this description goes on to relate the royal 
 virtues. Henry was regular in his attendance at mass, 
 which he heard in his private closet, diligently abstract- 
 ing his mind at the time from worldly cares. He made 
 weekly confession. He was moderate in food and 
 drink, liberal in almsgiving, regular in his fasts. His 
 mood varied between liveliness and gravity (morosus). 
 He was diligent in the administration of justice, specially ■ 
 ready to help the cause of the widow, prompt to put 
 down abuses, " often reading books he surrenders himself 
 to an honourable occupation ; and," goes on the writer 
 with an abrupt transition, "as a bold archer he avoids 
 inaction ; therefore he is not fleshy, nor burdened with 
 corpulence, but a handsome man, never weary, whether 
 he be on horseback or on foot." Elsewhere, too, he 
 speaks of the King's fondness for hunting, fowling, and 
 fishing, and of his activity as a walker and rider, charac- 
 teristics which follow his praises as " one who was not 
 given to vice or gluttony." There can be no doubt that, 
 at least from the time when his father's death brought 
 home to him the responsibilities of power, he emphatic- 
 ally deserved the praise of purity of life. 
 
 The devotional aspect of his character has been spoken 
 of more than once in these pages. It would be unjust 
 to doubt the sincerity of his piety because many of his 
 
CHARACTER 153 
 
 acts seem inconsistent with our own conceptions of the 
 character which piety should produce. It was not the 
 less genuine in him hecause it did not make him tender- 
 hearted or philanthropic, because he pursued his great 
 scheme of conquest without scruple, without remorse, 
 without a thought for the blood which he was shedding, 
 or for the desolation which he was causing. His religion 
 made him what few kings have been, temperate and 
 chaste. It did not make him merciful ; it would not be 
 too much to say that in Henry's age it made no man 
 merciful. We must compare it, not with the religion of 
 a Havelock or a Gordon, but with the grovelling super- 
 stition of a Lewis the Eleventh. It would certainly 
 be more just to charge him with fanaticism than with 
 hypocrisy. He seems to have looked upon his wars for 
 the acquisition of the French crown as a devout prince 
 two centuries before might have looked upon a crusade. 
 It was his mission to recover what he seems, difficult 
 as it is to believe it, to have sinfterely regarded as his 
 rightful inheritance. By one of those processes of self- 
 deception that are so difficult to imagine of others, so 
 easy to perform for ourselves, he had persuaded himself 
 of the soundness of a title which seems to us to need 
 no refutation ; and all his candid, his almost audacious 
 confidence, his unhesitating rejection of compromises, as 
 well as the earnestness of his prayers and thanksgivings 
 for victory, indicate a profound conviction that he was 
 doing a work to which he had been divinely sent. If we 
 are to compare him with the famous conquerors of the 
 world, we should find his parallel in Alexander, con- 
 vinced that it was his mission to take the vengeance of 
 force for centuries of Persian wrong, rather than in 
 
154 HENRY THE FIFTH chap. 
 
 Napoleon, whose faith did not go beyond a conviction of 
 the power of his big battalions. 
 
 Of Henry's qualities as a military leader it is impos- 
 sible to speak too highly. The one possible exception 
 where he may be thought to have failed, not indeed in 
 skill, but in prudence, was the march from Harfleur to 
 Calais. Yet it was a piece of calculated audacity 
 abundantly justified by the result. To have gone 
 back from Harfleur with nothing to show for a wasted 
 army but a single seaport, would have discredited 
 him both at home and abroad. He had to make 
 an impressive display of his superiority if he was to 
 be accepted as the future conqueror of France. His 
 career after this was one of unbroken success — success 
 earned by courage, foresight, tactical skill, fertility of 
 resource, economy of strength, in short, by all the 
 qualities of a great captain. There is no more con- 
 clusive proof of his greatness than the instantaneous 
 change which his presence wrought in the prospects of 
 a campaign : I])so adventu profligata bella. 
 
 Of his qualities as a ruler it is difficult to speak. 
 It would be unjust to compare him with Richard 
 Cceur de Lion, and speak of him as a great soldier 
 and nothing more. On the other hand, we do not find 
 in him — we have indeed no opportunity of finding 
 in him — the great legislative power of Edward the 
 First. But he was not unmindful of his duties as a 
 king, and in the midst of his campaigns he found 
 time for the cares of civil government. England never 
 had a more popular sovereign, though he made demands 
 upon it in men and money which, considering the short- 
 ness of his reign, must have exceeded all precedent ; 
 
XVII THE MEASURE OF HIS SUCCESS 155 
 
 and even in the country which he ruled as a stranger 
 he won a general admiration and respect. 
 
 It should not affect our estimate of his greatness 
 that we now see his schemes of conquest to have been 
 chimerical, his purpose of uniting the crowns of England 
 and France an impossible dream. He must have him- 
 self found it to be so had he lived. When thirty 
 years had passed, after an enormous expenditure of 
 blood and treasure, nothing was left of his French con- 
 quests. But he had come nearer than any who had 
 gone before him to the accomplishment of the great 
 hope of his predecessors. He died in Paris, the " Heir 
 of France." 
 
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