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near his residence at Sheen; and two of them were for Augustines and Carthusians, orders whose rules are peculiarly severe.' In these foundations he was both influenced by his desire to please the clergy, and guided by the manifest policy of discouraging the prevalent disposition to attack the friars, especially the Mendicant orders. Hence the preference given by him to the stricter classes, and hence his endowments, which were liberal, and fully sufficient to preclude all dependence upon the bounty of the faithful.

Although the favour of the church encouraged and assisted his ambitious views, he had before taken, and he continued to take, such part in the troubles of France as seemed most conducive to the success of his schemes. Pursuing his father's policy of allying himself with the weaker faction, in order to prevent the formation of a strong government which might restore tranquillity, he commenced a deep intrigue with the Duke of Burgundy, Jean Sans Peur, leader of the party most formidable to the peace and the prosperity of that unhappy country, though excluded generally from a share in its government. This prince, whose crimes have rendered him, in the detestation of all mankind, almost a match for our third Richard, was covered with infamy of every description. He had first influenced the fury of the mob at Paris against the measures of his consin, the Regent Orleans, brother of Charles VI., and charged with the government during his insanity. He had then for a

Otterb., i. 275.

length of time maintained in the country a civil war, attended with even more than the usual horrors of that grievous calamity. An accommodation, however, with Orleans, he was compelled to make; and nothing could exceed the outward appearance of cordiality which his whole demeanour towards his kinsman displayed, except the deep hatred which rankled in his heart towards that rival for supreme power. In the midst of the most familiar and daily intercourse, he treacherously set on assassins, who murdered Orleans in the streets of Paris, with circumstances of aggravated cruelty. Forming one in the funeral procession, he bore the pall, and endeavoured, by his ostentatious display of grief, to turn men's minds aside from the suspicions which naturally filled them. A strict examination, however, of his palace, as well as those of the other princes, was ordered by the government, whereupon he anticipated the discovery of his guilt by openly avowing that the murder was his work; and he shocked all the feelings of mankind by the unheard-of audacity with which he pretended to justify this execrable crime, setting up an infamous doctor of the civil law to accuse Orleans of various offences, and to maintain that it was lawful for any one to destroy him. The name of this venal wretch has been justly preserved, for the hatred of all ages,-Maître Jean Petit. Afterwards, by the aid of the populace, and of judges acting under the influence of mob intimidation, he put to death the chief minister of the crown and other

persons of the Armagnac party. But while the three sons of Orleans lived he felt himself insecure, and he plotted their assassination when they should appear at a meeting which they were expected to attend. They escaped by the timely warning which his favourite counsellor Des Essarts, shocked at the project, conveyed to them; but that individual, for his humanity, soon fell a sacrifice himself to the duke's vengeance; and in one of the sudden changes which more than once placed this idol of the mob at the head of affairs, he by their help alternately filled the prisons with his victims of all ranks, and emptied them by his massacres, now on shore, now on the river, with an unsparing use of torture when the unhappy captives were dispatched in his dungeons."

With this bloodthirsty wretch, whose courage and capacity, however, no one ever denied, Henry the Fourth had declined to form an alliance; not, we may be well assured, from any particular abhorrence of his crimes, but because he appeared to be by much the most powerful of the French chiefs, whose profligate ambition was thus tearing their country to pieces; and the sagacious usurper deemed it his best policy to avoid increasing the strength of any party with whom he might one day have to cope. His son, now that the Burgundian had become less formi

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The Orleanists were so called from their captain, D'Armagnac; the Duke of Burgundy's (John's) were called, from him, the Bourguignons, or Burgundians.

Monstrel., ch. xxxvi.-Note XXXIII.-Mer., i. 1001.-P. Dan., vi. 469.

dable, hoped to point what remained of his power in a direction suited to his own views, and willingly entered into negotiation with him, though some unforeseen accident prevented any alliance being formed. It is quite certain that he could not have concluded with this unprincipled man such a treaty as both parties appear to have had in contemplation, without the most signal bad faith towards the French court, to whom he was all the while pretending an earnest desire for the amicable termination of their differences. But it is equally clear, and beyond all controversy, that he entertained Duke John's proposals, that he even negotiated for the hand of his daughter, Catharine of Burgundy, at the very time he was binding himself, month after month, to marry none but Catherine of France; and that he acted in this intrigue with a duplicity little consonant to the ideas commonly entertained of his open and generous cha

racter.1

But Henry's main reliance for the success of his schemes was placed on his own preparations for war, and on the crippled state of the country which he designed to attack, and which presented a remarkable contrast to his own dominions, flourishing in the enjoyment of perfect tranquillity, under a government quite united, undisturbed by any faction. At the parliament of Leicester held in spring, as we have seen, his measures were not sufficiently matured to permit any open avowal of his

May, 1414.

Note XXXIII.

intentions, so that not even the ordinary subsidy was asked. In the session held at Westmin

Nov. 1.

ster towards the end of the year his de signs were fully unfolded. The Bishop of Winchester, as Chancellor, again addressed the two Houses, and preached a kind of sermon, which, according to the fashion of the age, held the place since occupied by the speech from the throne. He took for the subject of his discourse the text, "While it is time, let us work well." He said that, as a tree is first planted, then blossoms, next bears, and afterwards reposes, so man has allotted to him time of rest and time of labour, time of peace and time of war; and he showed how God having blessed the country with perfect tranquillity and a good cause of war, there were not wanting the two things most essential to the defeat of the enemy. But from this doctrine he drew a practical inference, what the preachers term an "improvement," that three things were necessary for accomplishing the King's purpose of recovering his French dominions wrongfully detained-sound counsel, stout help from the people, and plentiful subsidies in money by the Parliament to be granted. Of this mind entirely were his hearers; they immediately gave the extraordinary aid of two-tenths and twofifteenths; and this was the only business of a public nature transacted during the session, being indeed the only occasion of the meeting, except that the King was also empowered to make orders respecting the adulteration of the coin, which should have force

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