1 as "his dearest son," and expresses "his earnest wish, on account of the close tie existing between them through his dearest consort, that peace and amity may be established, to prevent the effusion of Christian blood." The duke in reply says, "As our dearest mother, the queen of England, has several times signified her wish that all good friendship should subsist between our very redoubted lord and father, Henry king of England and lord of Ireland, her lord and spouse, on one part, and ourselves on the other, we desire to enter into an amicable treaty." The result of Joanna's mediation was a truce between England and Bretagne, which was proclaimed on the 13th of September, 1407. The town of Hereford was added to the queen's dower by king Henry the same year; and she was, with his sons,-the prince of Wales, Thomas, John, and Humphrey, recommended by him to the parliament for further pecuniary grants.3 An interesting proof of Joanna's respect for the memory of her first lord, the husband of her youth and the father of her children, is to be found in one of the royal briefs in the Fœdera, dated February 24th, 1408, in which king Henry says, "At the request of our dearest consort, an alabaster tomb has been made for the defunct duke of Bretagne, formerly her husband, to be conveyed in the barge of St. Nicholas of Nantes to Bretagne, with three of our English lieges, the same who made the tomb; viz. Thomas Colyn, Thomas Holewell, and Thomas Poppeham, to place the said tomb in the church of Nantes; John Guyeharde, the master of the said barge, and ten mariners of Bretagne; and the said barge is to be considered by the English merchants under our especial protection." There is a fine engraving of this early specimen of English sculpture in the second volume of Dom Morice's Chronicles of Bretagne. It bears the recumbent figure of the warlike John de Montfort, duke of Bretagne, armed cap-à-pié, according to the fashion of the times. Henry IV. granted to Joanna six lead-mines in England, with workmen and deputies to load her ship; and this he 1 Rymer's Fœdera. 3 Parliamentary Hist. 2 Ibid. notifies to her son the duke of Bretagne in 1409, as these mines had been accustomed to export ore to Bretagne, and he wished the duke to remit the impost for the time to come. The king and queen kept their Christmas court this year at Eltham, which seems to have been a favourite abode with the royal pair. That Joanna was a patroness of the father of English poetry, Chaucer, may be inferred from her munificent grants to his son Thomas, to whom she gave, in the twelfth year of Henry IV., the manors of Wotten and Stantesfield for life.2 In the summer of 1412, Joanna received a visit from her third son, count Jules of Bretagne. Henry granted a safeconduct for him and his retinue, consisting of twenty persons, with horses and arms; with a proviso, that no banished person be brought into England in the prince's train, to the injury and peril of the realm. The young prince only came to England to die. At the close of the parliament the same year, the speaker of the commons once more recommended to the king the persons of the queen and the princes his sons, praying the advancement of their estates. The petition was quite unreasonable as regarded queen Joanna, who enjoyed so large an income as queen of England, besides her rich dower from the states of Bretagne; but she never omitted an opportunity of adding to her wealth, which must have been very considerable. Avarice was certainly the besetting sin of Joanna of Navarre; and this sordid propensity probably originated from the pressure of pecuniary cares with which she had to contend as princess of Navarre, as duchess of Bretagne, and during the first years of her marriage with king Henry. Her conduct as a step-mother appears to have been conciliating. Even when the wild and profligate conduct of the heir of England had estranged him from his father's councils and affections, such confidential feelings subsisted between young Henry and Joanna, that he employed her influence for the 1 Stowe. *Thomas Chaucer served as speaker to the house of commons in the second year of Henry V. His only daughter Alice, a great heiress, took for her third husband William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk. 3 Rymer. purpose of obtaining the king's consent to the marriage of the young earl of March, at that time ward to the prince. To the disgrace of the queen, however, it is recorded, by the indubitable evidence of the Issue rolls, that she received, as the price of her good offices on this occasion, a promissory bribe from the prince, as the following entries testify : "To Joanna queen of England. In money paid to her by the hands of Parnelle Brocket and Nicholas Alderwych,' in part payment of a greater sum due to the said queen upon a private agreement made between the said queen and our present lord the king, especially concerning the marriage of the carl of March purchased and obtained of the said lady the queen by our said now lord the king, whilst he was prince of Wales. By writ privy seal, £100." 2 "To Joan queen of England. In money paid to the said queen by the hands of Robert Okeburn, in part payment of a certain greater sum agreed upon between our said lord the king, whilst he was prince, and the said queen, for the marriage of the earl of March. "By writ, £100." 3 When we consider that, in point of legitimate descent, the earl of March was the rightful sovereign of England, it is surprising how such a measure was ever advocated by the Lancastrian prince of Wales, or permitted by so profound a politician as his father, who must have been aware of the perilous consequences to his descendants; and it is a proof that Joanna must have possessed an unbounded ascendancy over the mind of the king, to have been able to carry that point. The ladies of the Lancastrian royal family who wrote to Henry IV., do not forget to name his influential queen in their letters. His sister, queen Katherine, heiress of Castile, uses these words: "Most dear and beloved brother and lord, I entreat that by all means, as continually as you can, you will certify and let me know of your health, and life, and good estate, and of the queen your companion, my dearest and best-loved sister." His half-sister of the Beaufort line, Joanna countess of Westmoreland, wrote to him from Raby-castle, and after telling, very prettily, the story of a romantic love-marriage between Christopher Standish and This Nicholas Alderwych was one of queen Joanna's Bretagne attendants, whom she persisted in retaining at the time when the aliens were dismissed from the royal household by vote of parliament. 3 Ibid. 329. 2 Issue Rolls, 1st year of Henry V. p. 325. + Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies, vol. i. p. 82; 1406. Margaret Fleming, recommends the lady to the care of the queen. She ventures not to call the king her brother, but says, "And most puissant prince and my sovereign lord, his (Christopher's) father has dismissed him from his service, and that merely because he and Margaret married for downright love, without thinking what they should have to live upon; wherefore I entreat your most high and puissant lordship to ordain for the said Margaret some suitable dwelling, or else to place her with the queen your wife, whom God preserve." Henry IV., at that time sinking under a complication of infirmities, was probably indebted to the cherishing care of his consort for all the comfort he was capable of enjoying in life; and Joanna, who had learned so well how to adapt herself, while in early youth, to the wayward humours of her first husband, (the most quarrelsome prince in Europe,) was doubtless an adept in the art of pleasing, and of governing without appearing to do so. Henry, though only in his forty-seventh year, was worn out with bodily and mental sufferings. His features, once so regularly beautiful, and of which he, in some of his penitentiary observations, acknowledges himself to have been so proud, became, in the autumn of this year, so marred and disfigured by that loathsome disease the leprosy, as to prevent him from appearing in public.' On account of this mortal sickness, he kept his last Christmas at Eltham with his queen, in great seclusion. His complaint was accompanied by epileptic fits, or death-like trances, in which he sometimes lay for hours, without testifying any signs of life. He, however, rallied a little towards the close of the holidays, and was enabled after Candlemas to keep his birthday, and to return to his palace at Westminster. Ile was at his devotions before the shrine of St. Edward, in the abbey, when his last fatal stroke of apoplexy seized him, and it was supposed by every one that he was dead; but 'Cott. MSS. French letter: no date. Hardyng's Chronicle. If we may trust the witness of Maydestone, a priestly historian devoted to the cause of Richard II., Henry IV. was smitten with the leprosy as with a blight, on the very day Scroope, archbishop of York, was executed for treason without benefit of clergy. The extreme anxiety of his mind, at this crisis, had probably given a complete revulsion to his constitution. being removed to the abbot's state apartments, which were nearer than his own, and laid on a pallet before the fire, he revived, and asked "where he was?" He was told, "In the Jerusalem chamber." Henry received this answer as his knell; for it had been predicted of him that he should die in Jerusalem, which he supposed to be the holy city, and had solemnly received the cross, in token that it was his intention to undertake a crusade for the expiation of his sins. The blood he had shed in supporting his title to the throne lay very heavily on his conscience during the latter years of his reign; and in the hour of his departure he particularly requested that the Miserere should be read to him, which contained a penitential acknowledgment of sin, and a supplication to be delivered from "blood-guiltiness." He then called for his eldest son, Henry prince of Wales, to whom he addressed some admirable exhortations as to his future life and government. Shakspeare has repeated almost verbatim the deathbed eloquence of the expiring king, in that touching speech commencing, "Come hither, Henry: sit thou on my bed," &c.' King Henry was doubtless arrayed in his regal robes and diadem while publicly performing his devotions at the throne of the royal saint, his popular predecessor, which accounts for the crown having been placed on his pillow, whence it was removed by his son Henry prince of Wales during the long death-like swoon which deceived all present into the belief that the vital spark was extinct. Of the many historians who have recorded the interesting death-scene of Henry IV., not one has mentioned his consort, queen Joanna, as being present on that occasion. King Henry's will, which was made three years before his death, bears testimony to the deep remorse and self-condemnation which accompanied him to the grave. This curious document, a copy of which was discovered by sir Simon d'Ewes,' after diligent search, is as follows: "I, Henry, sinful wretch, by the grace of God king of England and of France, and lord of Ireland, being in mine whole mind, make my testament in manner 1 Second Part of Henry IV., act v. This was, perhaps, a codicil, for it differs from a will quoted in Rymer |