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their success, of helping themselves from such ships as they met with, against the owner's will; and these complaints were urged with so much apparent, if not actual truth, that Prendergest, being in London, took sanctuary at Westminster. The king forbade all persons to harbour him; and the fear of any way appearing to disregard this prohibition was so great, that even the church afforded him little protection, and but cold shelter; so that he was fain to set up a tent within the abbey porch, and have his servants keep nightly watch, lest he should there be put to death by his enemies. Long, the while, kept the sea, thinking that there he should always have the means of escape. The lord admiral went in person to pursue and seize him. Long, however, kept at safe distance, till he had obtained from him not only a promise of pardon, but an assurance, upon his pledged faith, that he should receive no harm; yet, "notwithstanding all promises, upon his coming in, he was shut up fast in the Tower, and so for a time remained in durance." Probably he was released when Prendergest either made his peace with the king or exculpated himself, and, being restored to favour, was sent out with a fleet of thirty sail. He made a successful expedition, and " took good prizes of wine and victuals," which are said to have "relieved the commons greatly." By this expression, it should seem as if the value of the prizes were carried to the public account, and the naval charges thereby diminished in an equal amount; yet no facts are known that support such an inference, and the only apparent benefit that any part of the commons could have derived from such captures must have been a reduction in the price of wine, and some few other things, in the ports into which the prizes were taken. Among other enterprises, Prendergest landed at a place which the English chronicler calls Craal, on the fair day, "took the town," it is recorded, "and robbed the fair; so as they that were come thither to sell their wares had quick utterance and slow payment." How little such warfare differed from robbery,

A.D.

- how little moral improvement since the time of the Danes had been effected in this respect,

was not per

ceived by the chronicler, nor, indeed, acknowledged in the days of queen Elizabeth. Yet it must be borne in mind, that the usages of the age warranted it; and that practices which would now, deservedly, be deemed infamous, were then sanctioned by the common consent of nations.*

66

Towards the end of this reign†, three floods are said 1413. to have followed, one upon the other, in the Thames, and no ebb between, the like of which no man living could remember. Henry Bolingbroke had reigned thirteen years, "in great perplexity and little pleasure.” He had reaped as he had sown — - care, insecurity, suspicion, enmity, and treason ‡, and curses not loud but deep"-" for," says Holinshed, "by his proceedings, after he had attained to the crown, what with such taxes, tallages, subsidies, and exactions as he was constrained to charge the people with; and what by punishing such as, moved with disdain to see him usurp the crown, (contrary to the oath taken at his entering into the land, upon his return from exile,) did at sundry times rebel against him, he won himself more hatred than in all his lifetime (if it had been longer by many years than it was) had been possible for him to have weeded out and removed. And yet, doubtless, worthy were his subjects to taste of that bitter cup,-sithence they were so ready to join and clap hands with him, for the deposing of their rightful and natural prince, king + October 12. 1413. Fabyan, 576.

* Holinshed, iii. 50. 55. ↑

+

O very God! what torment had this king!
To remember in brief and short entent:
Some in his shirt put oft time venoming,
And some in meat and drink great poisonment;
Some in his hose, by great imagenement,
Some in bed-straw, irons sharp ground and whet,
Envenomed sore to slay him, if he had on them set.

Some made for him divers enchantement,
To waste him out and utterly destroy :
And some gave him battle full felonement,
In field within his realm, him for to noy;
And on themselves the hurt and all the annoy
Aye fell, at end that hang'd were and headed,
As traitors ought to bene in every stede.

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Richard, whose chief fault rested only in that, that he was too bountiful to his friends, and too merciful to his foes." He was now in the forty-sixth year of his age, when, at a council held at the White Friars in London, "order was taken for ships and galleys to be built and made ready, and all things necessary provided for a voyage which he meant to make into the Holy Land, there to recover Jerusalem from the Infidels ; for it grieved him (it is said) to consider the great malice of Christian princes, that were bent upon a mischievous purpose to destroy one another, rather than to make war against the enemies of the Christian faith, as in conscience it seemed to him they were bound." That he seriously entertained this intention there is no doubt: he was moved to it by the common belief of that age, by an apprehension (from an inward sense of premature decay) that his life would not be long, by the desire of obtain ing such assurances for the next world as were liberally promised to those who engaged in such meritorious expeditions, and, perhaps, as tradition has said, by a prediction that he was to die in Jerusalem, which would seem to him prophetic of his salvation. Preparations were made with all speed; and when "his provisions were ready, and that he was furnished with sufficient treasure, soldiers, captains, victuals, munitions, tall ships, strong galleys, and all things necessary for such a royal journey," while he was praying at St. Edward the Confessor's shrine, “to take there his leave, and so to speed him upon his voyage," he was seized with a fit, and being carried into an apartment in the abbot's house, called Jerusalem, there he expired.* It is remarkable that he should have been buried at Canterbury, beside the Black Prince, whose son he had deposed and murdered.

*Fabyan, 576. Holinshed, iii. 58. An account is preserved de stuffurâ navis, in which Philippa, Henry IV.'s daughter, on her marriage to the king of Denmark, sailed for that country. This stuffura consisted of two guns, forty pounds of powder for those guns, and forty stone bullets for them (petras pro gunnes), forty tampons, four touches, one mallet, two firepans, forty pavys, twenty-four bows, and forty sheaves of arrows.Rymer, viii. 447.

A.D.

One of the first acts of Henry V. was to remove the 1415. body of that murdered king from its obscure burialplace, and deposit it, with royal solemnities, in a sumptuous tomb at Westminster *, as if to proclaim unto the world that although he had succeeded to the throne, he had not partaken in the guilt by which it had been purchased. The truce which subsisted at this time had produced little security to seafaring people; and safeconducts were set at nought, piracy being carried on both upon the high seas and on the coasts, and even in the ports of England, Ireland, and Wales, with an audacity that defied the laws; and it appears that pirates found every where from the inhabitants that sort of encouragement which even in better times is shown to smugglers. It was therefore found necessary, early in the new reign, to declare such breaches of the king's truce and of his safe-conduct high treason, and subject to the same punishment, as also all voluntary secret abetment, procuring, concealing, hiring, sustaining, and maintaining of persons engaged in such courses. And conservators of the truce and of the king's safe-conducts were appointed in the ports, with full power to proceed against offenders ; it being required that every conservator should for his qualification have an estate of forty pounds in land by the year at least. Two men learned in the law were to be associated in the commission with each conservator. But then, as in every age, it was soon found that measures, which were designed for the protection of the peaceable part of mankind, were immediately taken advantage of by men of predatory habits. The Scotch, and other enemies of England, availed themselves of this law, because it secured them against reprisals so long as it was enforced; and a subsequent statute, after setting forth that this consequence had been experienced, declared, that whenever the king's subjects had thus suffered wrong, the king would, to their greater comfort, and to the intent that they should have remedy without delay, grant them letters of marque and reprisal.*

Holinshed, iii. 62.

† 2 Hen. 5. c. 6.

VICTORIES OF HENRY V.

53

When the king had determined upon leading an army into France, he hired ships from Zeelandt, Holland, and Friseland, his own naval means not being sufficient for the transport: among his other preparations, "requisite for so high an enterprise," boats covered with leather, for the passage of rivers, are enumerated. The fleet with which he crossed from Southampton, and landed at the mouth of the Seine, consisted of 1000 sail. The siege and capture of Harfleur followed, and the battle of Agincourt, one of those ever-memorable victories, the remembrance of which contributes to support the national spirit whereby they were achieved. Like those of Cressy and of Poictiers, it was gained under circumstances of such extraordinary disadvantage, that the conqueror himself was impressed with reverential awe at his own success; and when on his return to England the Londoners met him in solemn procession on Blackheath, he, as one remembering from whom all vic tories are sent," would not allow his helmet to be carried before him, whereon the people might have seen the blows and dints that he had received; "neither would he suffer any ditties to be made and sung by minstrels of his glorious victory, for that he would have the praise and thanks altogether given to God.” §

66

Soon afterwards the emperor Sigismund, who was A.B. related to Henry by marriage, came to Calais as a 1416. mediator between the two kingdoms, bringing with him the archbishop of Rheims, as ambassador from the French king. Thirty great ships were sent to bring him and his train over. When he entered the harbour at Dover, the king's brother, Humphrey duke of Gloucester, “and divers other lords, were ready to receive him: at his approaching to land, they entered the water sword in hand, and by the duke's mouth declared, that if he intended to enter the land as the king's friend, and as a mediator to entreat for peace, he should be suffered to

4 Hen. 5. c. 7.
Holinshed, iii. 72.

† Holinshed, iii. 68. Rymer, ix. 215, 216.
Ib. 84.

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