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and blood-surely so lamentable a condition, if it failed to excite pity, could only allure the most hardhearted and the most sordid of assailants.

Henry, on his accession to the throne of him whose parting advice we have been recording, saw the scene with other eyes than those of compassion; and, in less than half a year, he had preferred a claim to the French rulers which only their unexampled embarrassments could induce any one of sound mind to urge forward, and which even those embarrassments could not prevent from appearing ridiculous in all men's eyes. He demanded the entire and absolute cession of the kingdom of France, with all the rights appertaining to its sovereignty; or, if that were denied, then, protesting that he in no wise relinquished his claim of right by consenting to take anything less, he required, under threat of hostile operations, the immediate possession of nearly one third of the country, the hand of the King's daughter, and a portion with her amounting in value to above two millions sterling of our present money. This preposterous announcement, instead of being treated with disdain, as it must have been at any other time, now only produced an offer from the French court, too sadly showing the deplorable extremity to which their country was reduced-an offer of less, indeed, than had been required, but still of valuable and extensive provinces, of the princess's hand, and of a larger dower than had ever before been given, exceeding three quarters of a million of money at the

present day. A negotiation then took place, protracted by Henry, with repeated promises of keeping himself single from month to month, in order to give the French a hope of accommodation, and gain time for preparing his means of attack. It seemed, indeed, at one moment, as if the plan of proceeding to violent extremities had been abandoned; for, after nine months had been spent in embassies and discussions,. the parliament, which met at Leicester towards the end of the following spring, was 1414. not even asked for the usual subsidy, a tenth and a fifteenth. Bishop Beaufort, the King's uncle and chancellor, only addressed to it a speech upon the dangers that threatened the church from the Reformers, against whom he required new laws to be passed.'

April 30,

But at this critical juncture it happened that a measure hostile to the clergy, which had been proposed and rejected at the end of the last reign, was again brought forward by the friends of the new sect. The seizure of the lands and the tithes belonging to the prelates, as well as those of the monasteries, was either pressed in a petition of the Commons, or broached in their house with good prospect of success. The clergy took the alarm, and, conceiving that nothing could better turn aside the storm they were threatened with than engaging the King and his nobles in the French war, towards which he had already betrayed so strong an inclination, and which

Rot. Parl., 2 Hen. V. 1. (iv. 15).

they at any time were sure to relish, no pains were spared to encourage these propensities, and give the most flattering support to the extravagant claim which had been advanced. The old writers are very prolix in their accounts of the long harangues made. by the Primate Chichele (whether in the Lords' House, or at a council, is somewhat doubtful), defending the King's title to the French crown, exhorting him by all means to assert it with force of arms, promising him assured victory, and offering an ample contribution from the clergy towards performing this Christian work. Lord Westmoreland, warden of the Scottish marches, admitting the prelate's argument on the point of law to be irrefragable, rather counselled an invasion of Scotland as the proper preliminary to the conquest of France. But he was answered by Exeter, the King's uncle, who regarded the French invasion as involving in its expected success the fall of Scotland also. It is plain that this was the King's own opinion; he had probably never laid aside his project, though its execution was deferred; and the reasonable presumption is rather that the result of the discussion confirmed him in designs already formed, and hastened his contemplated proceedings, than that it set him upon a scheme which would not otherwise have been entertained.1

It must be remarked that there never was any argument more inconclusive, more absurd, nor ever a

1 Hall, 49. — Hol., iii. 65, — Fabyan, 578. — Polych., cccxxix. Goodwin, 42.-Duck's Life of Chichele. Note XXXI.

position more entirely untenable, than that which the Primate maintained, and which indeed formed the whole ground of Henry's pretensions. The Salic law, it was said, perhaps truly said, has not excluded women from the French throne; for its only text bearing on this point is the provision against a woman inheriting Salic land, and that is no description of France,' but of a Germanic territory. But besides that the general adoption of the principle in practice for ages supersedes all argument upon the letter of the written law, especially in a great question of constitutional right, if women were admitted to be entitled, there were at least four families whose claims must needs come before those of Henry. He deduced his title from Isabella, mother of Edward III., his great-grandfather; but her younger brothers, Charles the Fair and Philip the Long, both left daughters, and those daughters had sons; and her eldest brother, Louis X. (Hutin), left a daughter, Joan, who actually succeeded to the crown of Navarre, because from that succession females are not excluded. Thus far his title had all the incurable infirmities of his greatgrandfather's. But it had another, if possible, more fatal still, and which wholly displaced him, even if Edward III. were admitted to have been the rightful heir after Charles IV. (the Fair), and the branch of Valois were shut out. Edward's undoubted heir was Richard II.; and he had never been deposed in France. But even if he had abdicated the French

1 Brougham's Pol. Phil., part i. ch. xi. (vol. i. p. 366).

throne as well as the English, the Earl of March was the next in succession, not Henry, and there existed not the shadow of a pretext for holding him to be set aside. This pretension of Henry, therefore, may safely be said to stand, if not at the very head, yet high among the number of the most untenable claims to sovereignty that have ever been fashioned by ambitious and unprincipled men, who oftentimes pay homage to public opinion so far as to cover over their acts of mere violence with some delusive semblance of right.

The alarm which led the clergy into these reasonings, and inspired their exhortations, proved groundless. The parliament held at Leicester took no measures against church property, such as were apprehended; for the only aid given to the King at their expense was the forfeiture of priories held by aliens, an abuse which the English priests had no mind to defend. But it appears' that they failed in an attempt to proscribe the Wycliffe doctrines and prevent the circulation of the Scriptures by enactments of extreme rigour; for the only statute on religion made in this session was one forfeiting to the crown the estates of all persons convicted of heresy, whether they suffered or escaped the sentence of the law, and directing that all judges and other magistrates should take an oath to aid the prelates in extirpating heresy. But about this time Henry made a conspicuous display of his zeal for the church by founding three monasteries Rot. Parl., iv. 22. Note XXXII. 22 Hen. V., c. 7.

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