endeavoured to burn the ships with wildfire.* Having thus performed his commission, the duke of Bedford, " with no small number of prisoners, and great abundance of prey, as well in ships as provision for the sea, returned to England with great triumph and glory;" upon which Sigismund is said to have complimented both Henry and his people, by saying that happy were the subjects who had such a king, but more happy the king who had such subjects.

While Henry was preparing for a second expedition, that he might profit by the discord which prevailed among the French nobles, the enemy increased their naval force, by hiring a great number of Italian ships, chiefly Genoese. Part of their fleet lay at the mouth of the Seine, to prevent maritime supplies from reaching Harfleur: the rest kept the sea. The king, therefore, before he embarked, sent his kinsman, the earl of Huntingdon, with a sufficient force against them. He fell in with some of the great Genoese carracks; and, after an action which lasted the most part of a summer's day, sunk three and captured three, taking the admiral Jacques, the Bastard of Bourbon, and as much money as would have been half a year's pay for the

* Hardyng, 377, 378.-I have met with no earlier mention of wildfire in any of our naval actions. The passage in Hardyng is as follows:

They fought full sore afore the water of Sayn,
With carrikes many well stuffed and arrayed;
And many other shippes great of Hispayne,
Barges, balyngers, and galleys unaffrayed,
Which proudly came upon our ships unprayed;
And by the even their sails avaled were set,
The enemies slain in battle, and sore bet.

And many dryent were that day in the sea,
That as our fleet rode there then still alway,

Unto the feast next of her Nativity

The bodies flote among our ships each day;
Full piteous was and foul to see them aye,
That thousands were twenty as they then told-
That taken were in that same battle bold.

In which, meanwhile, while as our ships there lay,
It was so calm, withouten any wind,

We might not sail, ne fro thence pass away.

Wherefore their galleys each day there gan us find,
With oars many about us did they wind,

With wild fire oft assayled us day and night,

To brenne our ships in that they could or might.

HENRY V.'S INTENDED CRUSADE.

whole fleet.*

57

These prizes he brought to Southampton; from whence the king shortly set forth with a fleet of 1500 ships, the sails of his own vessel being of purple silk, richly embroidered with gold.

British valour was never more signally displayed than under this victorious monarch, the remainder of whose short reign was one series of successful enterprises. Yet no Englishman can delight to dwell upon the details, as upon the history of Edward III. and the Black Prince. Henry of Monmouth equalled them as a warrior, and perhaps excelled them as a politician; but they were the admiration of their enemies, because of the magnanimity which they displayed in prosperity, their courtesy, their humanity. Henry was a merciless conqueror, and made himself feared. At the A. D. time of his death, after his last confession, when, at 1416. his desire, the Penitential Psalms were read to him, he interrupted the priest at the words, "Build thou the walls of Jerusalem," and declared, as a dying man, that it had been his intention, as soon as he should have settled France in peace, to undertake the conquest of Jerusalem, if it had pleased God to let him live out his days. "So ingenious," says Hume, "are men in deceiving themselves, that Henry forgot, in these moments, all the blood spilt by his ambition, and received comfort from this late and feeble resolve, which, as the mode of these enterprises was now past, he certainly would never have carried into execution.' It has now, however, been ascertained, that immediately after the treaty of Troyes, Guillibert de Launoy, a Flemish knight, who was counsellor and chamberlain to Philip the Good of Burgundy, and had been ambassador to Henry, was sent by that king, and by his own master, upon a secret mission to the Holy Land. That mission was successfully performed he made a military survey of the coasts and defences of Egypt and Syria, from Alexandria round to Gallipoli; and the two copies of this survey, intended for the two princes, are both in existence; but * Holinshed, iii. 88, 89. Speed, 636.

before the report was completed, Henry V. had been summoned to his account. No reasonable doubt, therefore, can now be entertained that it was his full intention, as it had been his father's, to undertake a crusade. As little should it be doubted, that though ambition and policy may have entered largely into his motives, devotion also moved him.*

CHAP. VIII.

FROM THE ACCESSION OF HENRY VI. TO THE DEATH OF RICHARD III.

THE Crown devolved upon an infant not .nine months old†; and, though the government during his minority was administered by able hands, the loss of a single mind was soon felt; for Henry was a king whom the turbulent feared, and whom the people loved, and who was respected by all ranks. Early in the new reign,

*Account of an unknown MS. of 1422, by Granville Penn, esq., in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, vol. i. p. 1. The report which was written for the duke of Burgundy is in Mr. Penn's possession he purchased it in Flanders; and that which was designed for the English government he discovered among the Hatton MSS. in the Bodleian.

A curious paper concerning this Gilbert de Launoy has been preserved by Rymer (xi. 22.). He had imposed upon Henry V., by a story that a carriage, containing all the money and valuables which he had received from the king for his journey, had been plundered in Picardy, and that he had thus lost every thing. Henry, believing this, replaced the sum of 2007., and gave him, moreover, a vestment of cloth of gold. He then performed his embassy, and made his report of it. But during the journey conscience had so continually reproached him with the fraud, that when he presented the report, he confessed it to cardinal Beaufort, and with such marks of contrition that he not only obtained a remission of the sin, but also of the money. This did not make him at peace with himself; and after an interval of twenty years, he entreated a confirmation of this forgiveness, or at least that some restitution might be required, which he would, he said, humbly and thankfully make. The contrite will was accepted, and the remission was confirmed as fully as it had been first granted.

It is prettily said by Speed, "The pretty hands which could not feed himself, were yet made capable to wield a sceptre; and he that was beholding to nurses for milk, did nevertheless distribute the sustenance of law and justice to so great and warlike nations."-P. 650.

THE ABBOT OF CANTERBURY.

59

sir William Bardolf was appointed admiral; but without prejudice to the duke of Exeter, the king's uncle, who was admiral of England, Ireland, and Aquitaine for life.* Abuses were committed and outrages which no man would have hazarded while he was living. Among the acts of piracy in which great men ventured to engage, one was brought home to Marcellus, the abbot of St. Augustine, in Canterbury. By his name it A.D. may be presumed that he was a foreigner. It was proved 1425. before the lords of the council, that he had been concerned in taking and plundering, upon the high seas, a ship laden with wine, belonging to John Lorsame of Abbotswell, and to certain persons of Boulogne and Bruges; and he was condemned by the council in seven nobles for every tun of the wine (thirty-nine in all), which, by his own confession, came into his hands; in six shillings each for thirty-seven which had been destroyed by his fault; and in sixty nobles for the other damages and expense of the injured parties and of their proctors. It is not stated whether he incurred any farther punishment.

The English interests in France were greatly shaken by the advantages which the French obtained under Joan of Arc; but the reputation of the English arms suffered little, because those advantages were ascribed to miracles on one part, and to witchcraft on the other; and, by the capture of that extraordinary enthusiast, they re-established the opinion of their strength, and confirmed that opinion at the cost of a national crime, by her barbarous execution. But their affairs were more seriously injured by the profligate connection of duke Humphrey with Jaqueline of Hainault, the most flagitious woman of her age; and by the light marriage of a far abler man, his brother, the great duke of Bedford, regent of France, to a daughter of the Comte de St. Pol, in the seventeenth year of her age. His former wife was sister to the duke of Burgundy: by the second he united himself

* Rymer, x. 68.

+ Brees' Cursory Sketch, 235.

to a house between which and the house of Burgundy there was an old ill-will; and Charles VII. did not fail to avail himself of the opportunity thus afforded him, for detaching from England the most efficient of A.D. her allies. He succeeded completely in this object; and 1435. before the terms by which the change of policy was purchased were made known, the duke sent ambassadors to England, notifying the new alliance which he had made, renouncing the old one, and advising the young king and his council to conclude a peace with France. It is said, that when the young Henry heard these letters read, he apprehended the losses that were likely to ensue, and that his eyes were filled with tears. The intelligence seems to have taken the king's council, as well as the people, by surprise. The former are said, on this occasion, to have manifested the discord that prevailed among them, reviling each other not less than the Burgundians; and numbers of those who, in turbulent times, arrogate to themselves the name of the people, gathered together and attacked Flemings, Dutchmen, Brabanters, Picards, Hainaulters, and other foreigners, indiscrimin

ately, as subjects of Burgundy, and murdered many of them before order could be restored. The ringleaders in this mischief were seized and brought to justice. *

The indignation of the English government was increased, when it was known that among the cessions made to Burgundy were many places which had sworn fidelity to England. To remonstrate against this disloyal conduct was in vain: the duke's "ears and senses being strongly mured" against all representations of this kind; "for king Charles had set about them, as it were, a barricado of royalties, privileges, honours, money, cities, towns, and whole provinces."+ Honour, indeed, has had little influence upon ambitious rulers at any time; and the obligations of religion were even more easily removed, two cardinals having absolved him, and the great lords of his party, from the oaths they had taken to the English. Both parties prepared

*Monstrelet, vii. 292.

† Speed, 657.