inflicted on him by heaven for the prelate’s death. It grew
gradually worse, and developed into what his contemporaries
called leprosy—a loathsome skin disease accompanied by bouts
of fever, which sometimes kept him bedridden for months at a
time. From 1409 onwards he became a mere invalid, only able
to assert himself in rare intervals of convalescence. The domestic
politics of the realm during his last five years were nothing
more than a struggle between two court factions who desired
to use his name. The one was headed by his son Henry, prince
of Wales, and his half-brothers John, Henry and Thomas Beaufort,
the base-born but legitimized children of John of Gaunt.
The other was under the direction of Archbishop Arundel, the
king’s earliest ally, who had already twice served him as chancellor,
and had the whole church party at his back. Arundel
was backed by Thomas duke of Clarence, the king’s second son,
who was an enemy of the Beauforts, and not on the best terms
with his own elder brother, the prince of Wales. The fluctuating
influence of each party with the king was marked by the passing
of the chancellorship from Arundel to Henry Beaufort and back
again during the five years of Henry’s illness. The rivalry
between them was purely personal; both were prepared to go on
with the “Lancastrian experiment,” the attempt to govern
the realm in a constitutional fashion by an alliance between the
king and the parliament; both were eager persecutors of the
Lollards; both were eager to make profit for England by interfering
in the civil wars of the Orleanists and Burgundians which
were now devastating France.
The prince of Wales, it is clear, gave much umbrage to his father by his eagerness to direct the policy of the crown ere yet it had fallen to him by inheritance. The king suspected, and with good reason, that his son wished him to abdicate, and resented the idea. It seems that Prince Hal. a plot with such an object was actually on foot, and that the younger Henry gave it up in a moment of better feeling, when he realized the evil impression that the unfilial act would make upon the nation. At this time the prince gave small promise of developing into the model monarch that he afterwards became. There was no doubt of his military ability, which had been fully demonstrated in the long Welsh wars, but he is reputed to have shown himself arrogant, contentious and over-given to loose-living. There were many, Archbishop Arundel among them, who looked forward with apprehension to his accession to the throne.
The two parties in the council of Henry IV. were agreed that it would be profitable to intervene in the wars of France, but they differed as to the side which offered the most advantages. Hence came action which seemed inconsistent, if not immoral; in 1411, under the prince’s English expedition to France. influence, an English contingent joined the Burgundians and helped them to raise the siege of Paris. In 1412, by Arundel’s advice, a second army under the duke of Clarence crossed the Channel to co-operate with the Orleanists. But the French factions, wise for once, made peace at the time of Clarence’s expedition, and paid him 210,000 gold crowns to leave the country! The only result of the two expeditions was to give the English soldiery a poor opinion of French military capacity, and a notion that money was easily to be got from the distracted realm beyond the narrow seas.
On the 20th of March 1413, King Henry’s long illness at last reached a fatal issue, and his eldest son ascended the throne. The new king had everything in his favour; his father had borne the odium of usurpation and fought down the forces of anarchy. The memory of Richard II. Accession of Henry V. had been forgotten; the young earl of March had grown up into the most harmless and unenterprising of men, and the nation seemed satisfied with the new dynasty, whose first sovereign had shown himself, under much provocation, the most moderate and accommodating of constitutional monarchs.
Henry V. on his accession bade farewell to the faults of his youth. He seems to have felt a genuine regret for the unfilial conduct which had vexed his father’s last years, and showed a careful determination to turn over a new leaf and give his enemies no scope for criticism. From the first he showed a sober and grave bearing; he reconciled himself to all his enemies, His character. gave up his youthful follies, and became a model king according to the ideas of his day. There is no doubt that he had a strong sense of moral responsibility, and that he was sincerely pious. But his piety inspired him to redouble the persecution of the unfortunate Lollards, whom his father had harried only in an intermittent fashion; and his sense of moral responsibility did not prevent him from taking the utmost advantage of the civil wars of his unhappy neighbours of France.
The first notable event of Henry’s reign was his assault upon
the Lollards. His father had spared their lay chiefs, and contented
himself with burning preachers or tradesmen.
Henry arrested John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, their
Persecution of the Lollards.
Rising under Oldcastle.
leading politician, and had him tried and condemned
to the stake. But Oldcastle escaped from the Tower
before the day fixed for his execution, and framed a wild plot
for slaying or deposing his persecutor. He planned to gather
the Lollards of London and the Home Counties under arms,
and to seize the person of the king—a scheme as wild
as the design of Guy Fawkes or the Fifth Monarchy
Men in later generations, for the sectaries were not
strong enough to coerce the whole nation. Henry
received early notice of the plot, and nipped it in the bud,
scattering Oldcastle’s levies in St Giles’ Fields (Jan. 10, 1414)
and hanging most of his lieutenants. But their reckless leader
escaped, and for three years led the life of an outlaw, till in 1417
he was finally captured, still in arms, and sent to the stake.
This danger having passed, Henry set himself to take advantage of the troubles of France. He threatened to invade that realm unless the Orleans faction, who had for the moment possession of the person of the mad king Charles VI., should restore to him all that Edward III. Henry V. and France. had owned in 1360, with Anjou and Normandy in addition. The demand was absurd and exorbitant and was refused, though the French government offered him the hand of their king’s daughter Catherine with a dowry of 800,000 crowns and the districts of Quercy and Périgord—sufficiently handsome terms. When he began to collect a fleet and an army, they added to the offer the Limousin and other regions; but Henry was determined to pick his quarrel, and declared war in an impudent and hypocritical manifesto, in which he declared that he was driven into strife against his will. The fact was that he had secured the promise of the neutrality or the co-operation of the Burgundian faction, and thought that he could crush the Orleanists with ease.
He sailed for France in August 1415, with an army compact and well-equipped, but not very numerous. On the eve of his departure he detected and quelled a plot as wild and futile as that of Oldcastle. The conspirators were his cousin, Richard, earl of Cambridge, Lord Scrope, and Henry invades France. Sir Thomas Grey, a kinsman of the Percies. They had planned to raise a rebellion in the name of the earl of March, in whose cause Wales and the North were to have been called to arms. But March himself refused to stir, and betrayed them to the king, who promptly beheaded them, and set sail five days later. He landed near the mouth of the Seine, and commenced his campaign by besieging and capturing Harfleur, which the Orleanists made no attempt to succour. But such a large number of his troops perished in the trenches by a pestilential disorder, that he found himself too weak to march on Paris, and took his way to Calais across Picardy, hoping, as it seems, to lure the French to battle by exposing his small army to attack. The plan was hazardous, for the Orleanists turned out in great numbers and almost cut him off in the marshes of the Somme. When he had struggled across them, and was half-way to Calais, Battle of Agincourt. the enemy beset him in the fields of Agincourt (Oct. 25, 1415). Here Henry vindicated his military reputation by winning a victory even more surprising than those of Creçy, and Poitiers, for he was outnumbered in an even greater proportion than the two Edwards had been in 1346 and 1356,
