some fortresses, and held them in his father's name. Henry returned from England to suppress this revolt against his authority; but while at Paris, was taken ill, and died in 1422, in the thirty-fourth year of his age. His body was carried to England, and amidst the great grief of the people, interred in Westminster Abbey.

Henry, by his rapid and brilliant success, deserves to be ranked in that small class of conquerors, of which Alexander the Great is the type. He possessed many eminent virtues; and his character was unstained by any considerable blemish. His abilities appeared equally in the cabinet and in the field. The boldness of his enterprises was no less remarkable than his personal valour in conducting them. He had the art of attaching his friends by his affability, and of gaining his enemies by address and clemency.

CHAP. XIX.

HENRY VI. 1422-1461.

THE infant son of Henry the Fifth, when but a few months old, was crowned King of France at Paris, and became King of England under the title of Henry the Sixth.

But the French nation was now eager to recover the liberty it had lost; and its hopes were excited by the death of the great Henry, and the infancy of his son. The dauphin of France had never submitted to England, and on his father's death he was looked upon as

the true heir of the French throne.

The national spirit

was aroused, and the people began to oppose a vigorous resistance to the foreign conquerors.

The first attempt of the Dauphin Charles was to relieve Orleans, which was besieged by an English army under the Duke of Bedford, Henry's uncle, the English governor of France. For a time the attempt seemed hopeless, till at the last moment, when about to give up in despair, Charles was startled by a strange visitant. This was a young woman, named Joan of Arc, the daughter of a poor innkeeper and herdsman of Loraine. She offered to lead the French army to victory, and said that in her solitude she had long mourned the fate of her desolated country, and that she had seen visions of saints and angels, who exhorted her to undertake its liberation, and restore her king to his rightful throne. Charles was incredulous, but determined to make use of her enthusiasm. She was clothed in armour, mounted on a white charger, and shown to the troops, who received her with acclamations. With her at their head, they again attacked the English, and triumphantly carried supplies into Orleans in the face of the enemy, who were soon after compelled to retire.

From this, her first exploit, after as the Maid of Orleans.

she was known ever After many gallant

actions she fulfilled, as she said, her mission, when she stood by the side of Charles in the cathedral of Rheims, where he was crowned king. She then solicited permission to return home, but Charles persuaded her to remain, and again lead his armies to victory. Her good fortune now forsook her, and she was captured at the siege of Compiegne by the English, who had long feared

Henry and his son, the future conqueror of Agincourt, penetrated Wales with an army in every direction, the Welsh did not lay down their arms, but kept up a guerilla warfare amongst the mountains.

A more formidable enemy at the same time troubled the king, in the north. This was Hotspur, Earl Percy, son of the Duke of Northumberland, an ambitious and warlike man, and the head of the powerful family of the Percys, who, as Lords of the Scottish marches, possessed great power, and commanded a numerous array of well-trained vassals in the northern counties.

The ostensible reason of revolt was, the conduct of Henry, after the battle of Homildon Hill, fought in 1402, where Percy had defeated, and taken prisoner, Earl Douglas, his Scottish rival. In accordance with the custom of the time, the ransom of a prisoner belonged to his captor: but Henry ordered Percy not to accept a ransom for Earl Douglas, but to keep him a prisoner for the king. This interference with what he considered his rights excited the Earl to revolt; and setting his captive at liberty, he marched south, with an army of Scots and English to join Owen Glendower, in Wales. Henry and his son met him at the battle of Shrewsbury, and in a fiercely contested battle the royal troops were victorious. Hotspur and Douglas were slain. After this battle, the war in Wales gradually ceased, and the Welsh returned to their allegiance.

In 1405, Prince James (afterwards James the First of Scotland), when on his voyage to the French court, was captured by an English vessel, and brought to. London, where Henry ungenerously detained him in captivity for nineteen years.

Another insurrection took place in the north, which was followed by the execution of Scrope, Archbishop of York. This was the first instance in English history of a clergyman of high rank suffering a public and ignominious death. Yet though Henry punished so severely an archbishop, he was careful to conciliate the Church, by measures of a persecuting character.

His father, John of Gaunt, had been the chief supporter of Wickliffe, and had saved that eminent man and his followers from persecution and death; but Henry, in opposition to his convictions, it is said, and for the security of his power, allowed the clergy to pass several penal statutes against the Lollards, as the Wickliffites began to be designated. The statute passed in the second year of his reign, is the first of that long series of persecuting laws, which, till a very recent period, disgraced our statute book. It was not allowed to become a dead letter; for two martyrs, William Sautre and William Thorpe, were burned in Smithfield for believing in and propagating their doctrines. A strong party in the Commons ineffectually opposed the persecution; and a majority of that House even recommended the king to confiscate the lands of the clergy to the use of the State; as nearly one-third of all the property in the kingdom at this time belonged to the Church.

The severe punishment, inflicted on the corrupt judges of Richard's reign, seems to have purified the bench of justice. The place of the infamous Tresilian was occupied by the virtuous and learned Gascoigne of whose fearless integrity is told the following well-known story:

her more than the whole French army. She was tried for sorcery and magic, and barbarously condemned to death as a witch. Her own countrymen, of the Burgundian faction, shared with the English the disgrace of her death, which took place in 1431.

But notwithstanding the death of Joan of Arc, and the obstinate valour of the English, the conquests of Henry the Fifth were gradually lost, and in a few years nothing remained of them but the town and district of Calais. During this war the government of England was conducted by the Dukes of Bedford and Gloucester, the king's uncles. The people grew discontented, partly in consequence of the loss of national glory by the disasters in France, but more especially in consequence of the misgovernment of the kingdom at home. The king, as he grew up, exhibited great imbecility of mind, and the factions which alternately possessed themselves of his person, appealed for support against their rivals to Parliament, and principally to the House of Commons, which in this reign exhibited greater boldness than it had ever done before.

In 1445, Henry was married to Margaret of Anjou, a woman of an imperious and masculine temper, quite different from her timid and weak-minded husband, who, as was said by one of his barons, was more fitted for a cloister than a throne. The queen favoured the rising power of the Duke of Suffolk in opposition to Gloucester; and in 1447, by her influence, the latter was arrested under the false pretence of high-treason, and committed to the Tower, where he was shortly after found dead. His death was universally attributed by the people to Suffolk; and it was not long till a some