his son's minority. But notwithstanding a general expression of his confidence in the "promising state of his affairs," one part of his dying commands betrayed in a remarkable manner his distrust of the ultimate result:-he strictly charged his brother on no account whatever to make any treaty with the Dauphin by which the Duchy of Normandy should be restored to the French crown.

When the lords had retired from this scene so deeply affecting, he summoned his physicians, and demanded how long they considered he had to live. Evading the question, they said the issue was in the hands of God; but they forgot with whom they had to deal. He expressed himself dissatisfied with the answer and repeated the question, desiring that the truth might be told him at once. They conferred together for a few moments, and then, one of their number falling upon his knees, bade him think of his soul, for without an interposition of Divine Providence he could not survive two hours. He then sent for his confessor and chaplains, whom he desired to sing the seven penitential psalms. When they came to the verse in one of these which makes mention of Jerusalem, he declared that it was always his intention, after completing the conquest of France and restoring peace, to undertake a crusade for the recovery of the Holy City, had it pleased the Almighty to spare his life; thus joining in the grossest of all the follies by which those times were distinguished, nay, a delusion which had even then become in a

manner obsolete, that the spot was sacred in which, according to our religion, the Saviour had been put to death, and that his sepulchre was the place in which, according to the same religion, his body had not been buried. The service which Henry had or- Aug. 31, dered was closed, and soon after he expired, amidst the loud but sincere lamentations of his attendants.1

1422.

The disease which carried him off is variously represented by contemporary writers and those who have followed them. One says it was a pleurisy, and cites P. Basset, his chamberlain, as the authority." Another calls it St. Anthony's fire. Several accounts agree in representing it as a fistula; and one zealous Frenchman conceives it to have been a judgment of Heaven because Henry had dared to sit on the throne of France; while another, a zealous Catholic, says he died of the bowel complaint termed St. Fiacre, and holds his death to have been a visitation on him for intending to remove the relics of that saint.5

The faithful record of any one's life is the best description that can be presented of his character; yet some ancient and nearly all modern authors have been used to give a summary of the merits and demerits of those whose history they write, as if they

Monstrelet, ch. cclxvi. Juv. des Urs., 395. P. de Fen., 493. T. Wals., 457. T. Liv., 95. T. Elm., 333. Monstrelet mistakes Exeter for Gloster as Regent.

2 Hall, 113.

Mezer., i. 1030.

3 Monstrelet, ch. cclxvi.

5 Juv. des Urs., 394.

distrusted either the descriptive powers of their own narrative, or the capacity of their readers to draw from it a just conclusion. Regarded as affording a con‐ densed view of the subject, this practice has its advantages, although there are few eminent persons of any age upon whom it would be less difficult from the facts to pronounce a correct judgment than Henry V.

That he possessed in an extraordinary degree all the qualities which constitute a great commander and a skilful ruler cannot for a moment be contested. It is equally certain that he had the firmness of mind, the steadiness of purpose, not always found united to great civil and military capacity, but without which no talents can, unless by some mere accident, be of any avail. No less undeniable is it that he devoted all those rare endowments, with all that determined spirit, throughout his whole reign to the gratification of his ambition, and applied the whole energies of his nature, with very few and very short intervals, exclusively to the pursuit, first of plunder, then of conquest; bent only upon plunder when both his invasions were undertaken-upon conquest when unforeseen events gave him hopes of a greater success. In pursuing these objects he wholly disregarded every principle of justice, violated wantonly all feelings of humanity, sacrificed the interests of his own country, shed the blood of his subjects as well as of his neighbours, ravaged with fire and sword the fields of a people who had never given him the least offence, and, availing himself of their domestic quarrels and

of their King's insanity, seized upon his crown, to which he had not the shadow of a title except what mere force bestowed. The only consideration that can be urged to palliate conduct which nothing can excuse, is the barbarous spirit of the times-the habits in which men's minds were trained to confound all the ideas of right and wrong-the dreadful familiarity with rapine and slaughter which they had come to regard as the natural condition of society. The advance towards refinement which alone they professed to have made and alone valued, the usages of chivalry, sanctioned, though somewhat capriciously, many acts of gross perfidy, and made a contempt of death the substitute for all virtues, the excuse for all crimes. That he flourished in such an age must be admitted in extenuation of Henry's guilt; this, together with the gratification of national prejudices afforded by his reign, also accounts for the high estimation in which his conduct and character has ever been held by the English people.

In enumerating his merits it is not enough that we make mention of his great capacity for affairs both in peace and in war. He was a person of brilliant accomplishments, of knowledge somewhat in advance of his age, and fond of encouraging learned men; for Waldensis, the most voluminous writer of the times, and skilled in most of the sciences then cultivated, was his confessor, and Lyndewode, the famous canonist, his ambassador; he made his friend Rocleve, an astronomer of note, Bishop of St. David's, and projected the foundation of a college at Oxford

for teaching the seven sciences. Educated at that illustrious seminary, he was long remembered as a student, and his chamber over the gate of his college was shown to all who went thither.' He had the far higher virtues of patience, fortitude, temperance, in an extraordinary degree; his attention to all religious duties was constant and it was exemplary, nor could it be accused of ostentation, except in so far as it was made by so politic a prince the means of securing support both of the church and the laity; and in regarding this part of his character we must again bear in mind the ignorance and the prejudices of his age. He suffered his stepmother, Joan, to be harshly treated, and her supposed accomplice to be imprisoned for life, because they were thought to be guilty of an offence which we now know and believe to be impossible-the seeking to shorten his life by incantations. But witchcraft was, four centuries ago,

as much considered to be a crime as treason; and no one would have been heard to question the possibility of assailing the King by sorcery, more than if he doubted that the offence could be committed of compassing and imagining his death by poison.

Henry's demeanour answered at once to the gravity of his virtues and the elegance of his genius, for he was both dignified and graceful. More thoughtful than eloquent, his words, if few, yet were

1 J. Ross, 207. (Rous): "Cujus camera supra portam in introitû dicti collegii." Rous says he had seen Henry's deed of foundation at Oxford.