Henry IV. and his queen Jan of Navarre, from their monument at Canterbury.

CHAPTER XI.

HENRY IV., HENRY V., HENRY VI.
A.D. 1399-1461.

§ 1. Accession of HENRY IV. Insurrections. Persecution of the Lollaras. § 2. Rebellions of the Earl of Northumberland. Battle of Shrewsbury. § 3. Foreign Transactions. Captivity of James of Scotland. Death and Character of the King. § 4. Accession of HENRY V. His Reformation. § 5. Proceedings against the Lollards. Sir John Oldcastle. § 6. Invasion of France. Battle of Agincourt. § 7. New Invasion of France. Conquest of Normandy. Treaty of Troyes and Marriage of Henry with Catherine of France. § 8. Farther Conquests of Henry V. His Death and Character. §9. HENRY VI. Settlement of the Government. French Affairs. § 10. Siege of Orleans. Joan d'Arc. § 11. Charles VII. crowned at Rheims. Henry VI. crowned at Paris. § 12. Capture, Trial, and Execution of the Maid of Orleans. § 13. Treaty of Arras. Death of Bedford. § 14. Marriage of Henry VI. Death of the Duke of Gloucester. The English expelled from France. § 15. Claim of the Duke of York to the Crown. His powerful Connections. § 16. Unpopularity of the Government. Suffolk accused and executed. § 17. Insurrection of Jack Cade. Disaffection of the Commons. Rising of the Duke of York. 18. The Duke of York Protector. First Battle of St. Albans. 19. Civil War. Decision of the House of Peers. Battle of Wakefield and Death of the Duke of York. § 20. Second Battle of St. Albans. EDWARD IV. saluted King by the Citizens of London.

§ 1. HENRY IV., 1399-1413.-This monarch was born at Bolingbroke, in Lincolnshire, in 1366. He was declared king, as we have already seen, Sept. 30, 1399. The rightful heir to the

crown, Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, was a child of only seven years old, and was detained by Henry in an honorable custody at Windsor Castle.

Henry was hardly seated upon the throne before several earls favorable to Richard's cause formed a conspiracy for seizing the king's person. The plot was betrayed to the king by the Earl of Rutland (Jan. 4, 1400), and the conspirators perished on the scaffold. This unsuccessful attempt hastened the death of Richard, who was shortly afterward murdered, as narrated in the preceding chapter.

Henry, finding himself possessed of the throne by so precarious a title, resolved, by every expedient, to pay court to the clergy. There were hitherto no penal laws enacted against heresy; but he engaged the Parliament to pass a law that, when any heretic who relapsed or refused to abjure his opinions was delivered over to the secular arm by the bishop or his commissaries, he should be committed to the flames by the civil magistrate before the whole people. This weapon did not long remain unemployed in the hands of the clergy; and William Sautré, a clergyman in London, atoned for his erroneous opinions by the penalty of fire (1401).

The revolution in England proved likewise the occasion of an insurrection in Wales. Owen Glendower, who pretended to be descended from the ancient princes of that country, and whose estates had been seized by Lord Grey of Ruthyn, recovered possession by the sword. Henry sent assistance to Grey; the Welsh took part with Glendower; and a troublesome and tedious war was kindled, in which Lord Grey and Sir Edmund Mortimer, uncle of the Earl of March, were taken prisoners. As Henry dreaded and hated all the family of March, he allowed Mortimer to remain in captivity; and, though that nobleman was nearly allied to the Percies, to whose assistance he himself had owed his crown, he refused to the Earl of Northumberland permission to treat of his ransom with Glendower. To this disgust was soon added another. The Percies, in repulsing an inroad of the Scots, in 1402, captured Earl Douglas and several other of the Scotch nobility. Henry sent the Earl of Northumberland orders not to ransom his prisoners, which that nobleman regarded as his right by the laws of war received in that age. The king intended to detain them, that he might be able, by their means, to make an advantageous peace with Scotland. The Percies were likewise discontented by the withholding from them the sums due to them as wardens of the marches.

§ 2. The factious disposition of the Earl of Worcester, younger brother of Northumberland, and the impatient spirit of his son,

A.D. 1399-1407.

REBELLIONS OF THE PERCIES.

203

Harry Percy, surnamed Hotspur, inflamed the discontents of that nobleman; and the precarious title of Henry tempted him to seek revenge by overturning that throne which he had at first established. He entered into a correspondence with Glendower. He gave liberty to the Earl of Douglas, and made an alliance with that martial chief; he roused up all his partisans to arms; and such unlimited authority at that time belonged to the great families, that the same men, whom a few years before he had conducted against Richard, now followed his standard in opposition to Henry. When war was ready to break out, Northumberland was seized with a sudden illness at Berwick; and young Percy, taking the command of the troops, about 12,000 in number, marched toward Shrewsbury, in order to join his forces with those of Glendower. The king, however, who had an army of about the same force on foot, attacked him before the junction could be effected (July 23, 1403). We shall scarcely find any battle in those ages where the shock was more terrible and more constant. Henry exposed his person in the thickest of the fight; his gallant son, whose military achievements were afterward so renowned, and who here performed his novitiate in arms, signalized himself in Lis father's footsteps, and even a wound which he received in the face with an arrow could not oblige him to quit the field. Percy supported that fame which he had acquired in many a bloody combat; and Douglas, his ancient enemy, and now his friend, still appeared his rival amid the horror and confusion of the day. But while the armies were contending in this furious manner, the death of Percy, by an unknown hand, decided the victory, and the Royalists prevailed. The loss was great on both sides, particularly in Percy's army, of which about a third fell; but on the king's side many persons of distinction were slain. The Earls of Worcester and Douglas were taken prisoners. The former was beheaded at Shrewsbury, the latter was treated with the courtesy due to his rank and merit. The Earl of Northumberland was tried by his peers and condemned in a fine, which, however, the king remitted.

Two years afterward Northumberland again rose in rebellion, and was joined by Thomas Mowbray, Earl of Nottingham, and Richard Scrope, Archbishop of York. But they acted without concert. The archbishop and Nottingham were seized by a stratagem of Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmoreland, though the latter was at the head of an inferior force, were tried, condemned, and executed. This was the first instance in English history in which an archbishop perished by the hands of the executioner (1405). Northumberland escaped into Scotland; but in 1407, having entered the northern counties in hopes of raising the people, he was

defeated and slain at Bramham by Sir Thomas Rokesby, Sheriff of Yorkshire. The only domestic enemy now remaining was Glendower, over whom the Prince of Wales had obtained some advantages; but the Welsh leader contrived to protract the struggle for some years after the death of Henry IV.

§ 3. The remaining transactions of this reign are not of much interest. In 1407 fortune gave Henry an advantage over that neighbor who, by his situation, was most enabled to disturb his government. Robert III., King of Scots, was a prince, though of slender capacity, extremely innocent and inoffensive in his conduct; but Scotland, at that time, was still less fitted than England for cherishing or even enduring sovereigns of that character. The Duke of Albany, Robert's brother, a prince of more abilities, at least of a more boisterous and violent disposition, had assumed the government of the state; and, not satisfied with present authority, he entertained the criminal purpose of extirpating his brother's children, and of acquiring the crown to his own family. He threw into prison David, his eldest nephew, who there perished by hunger; James alone, the younger brother of David, stood between that tyrant and the throne; and King Robert, sensible of his son's danger, embarked him on board a ship, with a view of sending him to France, and intrusting him to the protec ion of that friendly power. Unfortunately, the vessel was taken by the English; Prince James, a boy about nine years of age, was carried to London; and, though there subsisted at that time a truce between the kingdoms, Henry refused to restore the young prince to his liberty. Robert, worn out with cares and infirmities, was unable to bear the shock of this last misfortune; and he soon after died, leaving the government in the hands of the Duke of Albany. But though the king, by detaining James in the English court, had shown himself somewhat deficient in generosity, he made ample amends by giving that prince an excellent education, which afterward qualified him, when he mounted the throne, to reform, in some measure, the rude and barbarous manners of his native country. A hostile feeling prevailed throughout this reign between England and France; but the civil disturbances in both nations prevented it from breaking out into any serious hostilities. The cause of the deposed and murdered Richard was warmly espoused by the French court, but their zeal evaporated in menaces. Soon after his accession, Henry, at the demand of Charles, had restored Isabella, the widow of the late king, but retained her dowry on the pretense of setting it off against the unpaid ransom of the French king John.

The king's health declined some months before his death. He was subject to fits, which bereaved him, for the time, of his senses;

A.D. 1407-1413.

HENRY V.-HIS REFORMATION.

205

and, though he was yet in the flower of his age, his end was visibly approaching. He expired at Westminster (March 20, 1413), in the 46th year of his age, and the 13th of his reign. The great popularity which Henry enjoyed before he attained the crown, and which had so much aided him in the acquisition of it, was entirely lost many years before the end of his reign; and he governed his people more by terror than by affection, more by his own policy than by their sense of duty or allegiance. But it must be owned that his prudence and vigilance, and foresight in maintaining his power, were admirable; his courage, both military and political, without blemish; and he possessed many qualities which fitted him for his high station, and which rendered his usurpation of it rather salutary during his own reign to the English nation. The augmentation of the power of the Commons during this reign deserves notice. It was chiefly shown by the punishment which they awarded to sheriffs for making false returns, by the increased freedom of debate, and by the control which they exercised over the supplies.

Henry was twice married: by his first wife, Mary de Bohun, daughter and co-heir of the Earl of Hereford, he had four sons, Henry his successor to the throne, Thomas Duke of Clarence, John Duke of Bedford, and Humphrey Duke of Gloucester; and two daughters, Blanche and Philippa, the former married to the Duke of Bavaria, the latter to the King of Denmark. His second wife, Jane, whom he married after he was king, and who was the daughter of the King of Navarre, and widow of the Duke of Brittany, brought him no issue.

§ 4. HENRY V., 1413-1422, was born at Monmouth, Aug. 9, 1388. The many jealousies to which Henry IV.'s situation naturally exposed him, had so infected his temper, that he had entertained unreasonable suspicions with regard to the fidelity of his eldest son; and, during the latter years of his life, he had excluded that prince from all share in public business, and was even displeased to see him at the head of armies, where his martial talents, though useful to the support of government, acquired him a renown which he thought might prove dangerous to his own authority.

The active spirit of young Henry had, during his father's life, indulged in pleasure; but the common stories related by the chroniclers of his riots and debaucheries are doubtless gross exaggerations. It is said that on one occasion a riotous companion of the prince's had been indicted before Gascoigne, the chief justice, for some disorders, and Henry was not ashamed to appear at the bar with the criminal, in order to give him countenance and protection. Finding that his presence had not overawed the chief jus