head, is by supposing, that the authority of some churchmen was so great as to procure a razure, with regard to these circumstances, which the indiscretion of one of that order has happily preserved to us.

In the sixth of Henry, the commons, who had been required to grant supplies, proposed in plain terms to the king, that he should seize all the temporalities of the church, and employ them as a perpetual fund to serve the exigencies of the state. They insisted, that the clergy possessed a third of the lands in the kingdom; that they contributed nothing to the public burdens; and that their riches tended only to disqualify them from performing their ministerial functions with proper zeal and attention. When this address was presented, the archbishop of Canterbury, who then attended the king, objected that the clergy, though they went not in person to the wars, sent their vassals and tenants in all cases of necessity; while, at the same time, they themselves, who stayed at home, were employed night and day in offering up their prayers for the happiness and prosperity of the state. The speaker smiled, and answered, without reserve, that he thought the prayers of the church but a very slender supply. The archbishop, however, prevailed in the dispute; the king discouraged the application of the commons; and the lords rejected the bill which the lower house had framed for stripping the church of her revenues."

The commons were not discouraged by this repulse: in the eleventh of the king they returned to the charge with more zeal than before; they made a calculation of all the ecclesiastical revenues, which, by their account, amounted to four hundred and eighty-five thousand marks a year, and contained eighteen thousand four hundred ploughs of land. They proposed to divide this property among fifteen new earls, fifteen hundred knights, six thousand esquires, and a hundred hospitals; besides

• Walsingham, p. 371. Ypod. Neust. p. 563.

t

20,000l. a year, which the king might take for his own use; and they insisted, that the clerical functions would be better performed than at present, by fifteen thousand parish priests, paid at the rate of seven marks a-piece of yearly stipend. This application was accompanied with an address for mitigating the statutes enacted against the Lollards, which shews from what source the address came. The king gave the commons a severe reply; and farther to satisfy the church, and to prove that he was quite in earnest, he ordered a Lollard to be burned before the dissolution of the parliament."

Death and

of the

We have now related almost all the memocharacter rable transactions of this reign, which was busy king. and active; but produced few events that deserve to be transmitted to posterity. The king was so much employed in defending his crown, which he had obtained by unwarrantable means, and possessed by a bad title, that he had little leisure to look abroad, or perform any action which might redound to the honour or advantage of the nation. His health declined some months before his death: he was subject to fits, which bereaved him, for the time, of his senses; and, though he was yet in the flower of his age, his end was visibly approaching. He expired at Westminster (March 20), in the forty-sixth year of his age, and the thirteenth 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. When men came to reflect, in cool blood, on the crimes which had led him to the throne; the rebellion against his prince; the deposition of a lawful king, guilty sometimes, per

haps, of oppression, but more frequently of indiscretion; the exclusion of the true heir; the murder of his sovereign and near relation; these were such enormities as drew on him the hatred of his subjects, sanctified all the rebellions against him, and made the executions, though not remarkably severe, which he found necessary for the maintenance of his authority, appear cruel as well as iniquitous to the people. Yet, without pretending to apologize for these crimes, which must ever be held in detestation, it may be remarked, that he was insensibly led into this blamable conduct by a train of incidents, which few men possess virtue enough to withstand. The injustice with which his predecessor had treated him, in first condemning him to banishment, then despoiling him of his patrimony, made him naturally think of revenge, and of recovering his lost rights; the headlong zeal of the people hurried him into the throne; the care of his own security, as well as his ambition, made him a usurper; and the steps have always been so few between the prisons of princes and their graves, that we need not wonder that Richard's fate was no exception to the general rule. All these considerations make Henry's situation, if he retained any sense of virtue, much to be lamented; and the inquietude with which he possessed his envied greatness, and the remorses by which, it is said, he was continually haunted, render him an object of our pity, even when seated upon the throne. But it must be owned, that his prudence and vigilance and foresight in maintaining his power were admirable: his command of temper remarkable; 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, though pernicious in after-times, rather salutary, during his own reign, to the English nation.

Henry was twice married: by his first wife, Mary de Bohun, daughter and coheir of the earl of Hereford,

he had four sons, Henry his successor in 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 daughter of the king of Navarre, and widow of the duke of Britanny, brought him no issue.

By an act of the fifth of this reign, it is made felony to cut out any person's tongue, or put out his eyes; crimes which, the act says, were very frequent. This savage spirit of revenge denotes a barbarous people; though, perhaps it was increased by the prevailing factions and civil commotions

Commerce was very little understood in this reign, as in all the preceding. In particular, a great jealousy prevailed against merchant strangers; and many restraints were, by law, imposed upon them; namely, that they should lay out in English manufactures or commodities all the money acquired by the sale of their goods; that they should not buy or sell with one another, and that all their goods should be disposed of three months after importation. This last cause was found so inconvenient, that it was soon after repealed by parliament.

It appears that the expense of this king's household amounted to the yearly sum of 19,500l. money of that age.

Guicciardini tells us, that the Flemings, in this century, learned from Italy all the refinements in arts, which they taught the rest of Europe. The progress, however, of the arts was still very slow and backward in England.

× 4 Hen. IV. cap. 15. and 5 Hen. IV. cap. 9.

▾ Rymer, tom. 8. p. 610.

CHAP. XIX.

HENRY V.

The king's former disorders-His reformation-The Lollards-Punishment of lord Cobham-State of France-Invasion of that kingdom-Battle of Azincour-State of France-New invasion of France-Assassination of the duke of Burgundy-Treaty of Troye Marriage of the king-His death-and character-Miscellaneous transactions during this reign.

The king's

orders.

go

THE many jealousies to which Henry IV.'s siformer dis-tuation 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 vernment, acquired him a renown, which, he thought, might prove dangerous to his own authority. The active spirit of young Henry, restrained from its proper exercise, broke out into extravagances of every kind; and the riot of pleasure, the frolic of debauchery, the outrage of wine, filled the vacancies of a mind, better adapted for the pursuits of ambition and the cares of government. This course of life threw him among companions, whose disorders, if accompanied with spirit and humour, he indulged and seconded; and he was detected in many sallies, which, to severer eyes, appeared totally unworthy of his rank and station. There even remains a tradition, that, when heated with liquor and jollity, he scrupled not to accompany his riotous associates in attacking the passengers on the streets and highways, and despoiling them of their goods; and he found an amusement in the incidents which the terror and regret of these defenceless people produced on such occasions. This extreme of dissoluteness proved equally disagreeable to his father, as that eager application to business which had at first