FIRST PART
THE Prince of Wales began his reign like a generous and honest man.
He set the young Earl of March free;he restored their estates and their honours to the Percy family,who had lost them by their rebellion against his father;he ordered the imbecile and unfortunate Richard to be honourably buried among the Kings of England;and he dismissed all his wild companions,with assurances that they should not want,if they would resolve to be steady,faithful,and true.
It is much easier to burn men than to burn their opinions;and those of the Lollards were spreading every day.The Lollards were represented by the priests-probably falsely for the most part-to entertain treasonable designs against the new King;and Henry,suffering himself to be worked upon by these representations,sacrificed his friend Sir John Oldcastle,the Lord Cobham,to them,after trying in vain to convert him by arguments.He was declared guilty,as the head of the sect,and sentenced to the flames;but he escaped from the Tower before the day of execution (postponed for fifty days by the King himself),and summoned the Lollards to meet him near London on a certain day.So the priests told the King,at least.I doubt whether there was any conspiracy beyond such as was got up by their agents.On the day appointed,instead of five-and-twenty thousand men,under the command of Sir John Oldcastle,in the meadows of St.Giles,the King found only eighty men,and no Sir John at all.There was,in another place,an addle-headed brewer,who had gold trappings to his horses,and a pair of gilt spurs in his breast-expecting to be made a knight next day by Sir John,and so to gain the right to wear them-but there was no Sir John,nor did anybody give information respecting him,though the King offered great rewards for such intelligence.
Thirty of these unfortunate Lollards were hanged and drawn immediately,and were then burnt,gallows and all;and the various prisons in and around London were crammed full of others.Some of these unfortunate men made various confessions of treasonable designs;but,such confessions were easily got,under torture and the fear of fire,and are very little to be trusted.To finish the sad story of Sir John Oldcastle at once,I may mention that he escaped into Wales,and remained there safely,for four years.
When discovered by Lord Powis,it is very doubtful if he would have been taken alive-so great was the old soldier's bravery-if a miserable old woman had not come behind him and broken his legs with a stool.He was carried to London in a horse-litter,was fastened by an iron chain to a gibbet,and so roasted to death.
To make the state of France as plain as I can in a few words,I should tell you that the Duke of Orleans,and the Duke of Burgundy,commonly called 'John without fear,'had had a grand reconciliation of their quarrel in the last reign,and had appeared to be quite in a heavenly state of mind.Immediately after which,on a Sunday,in the public streets of Paris,the Duke of Orleans was murdered by a party of twenty men,set on by the Duke of Burgundy-according to his own deliberate confession.The widow of King Richard had been married in France to the eldest son of the Duke of Orleans.The poor mad King was quite powerless to help her,and the Duke of Burgundy became the real master of France.Isabella dying,her husband (Duke of Orleans since the death of his father)married the daughter of the Count of Armagnac,who,being a much abler man than his young son-in-law,headed his party;thence called after him Armagnacs.Thus,France was now in this terrible condition,that it had in it the party of the King's son,the Dauphin Louis;the party of the Duke of Burgundy,who was the father of the Dauphin's ill-used wife;and the party of the Armagnacs;all hating each other;all fighting together;all composed of the most depraved nobles that the earth has ever known;and all tearing unhappy France to pieces.
The late King had watched these dissensions from England,sensible (like the French people)that no enemy of France could injure her more than her own nobility.The present King now advanced a claim to the French throne.His demand being,of course,refused,he reduced his proposal to a certain large amount of French territory,and to demanding the French princess,Catherine,in marriage,with a fortune of two millions of golden crowns.He was offered less territory and fewer crowns,and no princess;but he called his ambassadors home and prepared for war.Then,he proposed to take the princess with one million of crowns.The French Court replied that he should have the princess with two hundred thousand crowns less;he said this would not do (he had never seen the princess in his life),and assembled his army at Southampton.There was a short plot at home just at that time,for deposing him,and making the Earl of March king;but the conspirators were all speedily condemned and executed,and the King embarked for France.
It is dreadful to observe how long a bad example will be followed;
but,it is encouraging to know that a good example is never thrown away.The King's first act on disembarking at the mouth of the river Seine,three miles from Harfleur,was to imitate his father,and to proclaim his solemn orders that the lives and property of the peaceable inhabitants should be respected on pain of death.It is agreed by French writers,to his lasting renown,that even while his soldiers were suffering the greatest distress from want of food,these commands were rigidly obeyed.
With an army in all of thirty thousand men,he besieged the town of Harfleur both by sea and land for five weeks;at the end of which time the town surrendered,and the inhabitants were allowed to depart with only fivepence each,and a part of their clothes.All the rest of their possessions was divided amongst the English army.
But,that army suffered so much,in spite of its successes,from disease and privation,that it was already reduced one half.
