X. CORONATION OF HENRY THE FIFTH.
TRIUMPH OF THE LORD CHIEF JUSTICE GASCOIGNE, AND DISGRACE OF SIR JOHN FALSTAFF.
THE coronation of Henry the Fifth took place immediately on his assumption of the royal dignity. Authorities differ as to the exact date of this imposing ceremony. Fleming, in his Chronicle, fixes it as late as the 9th of April, in which he is supported by Stowe and a host of respectable authorities. Rapin comes nearer the probable truth in assigning it to the first of the same month—a date which leaves us not without slight suspicion of a seasonable pleasantry intended by the lively French historian at the expense of his readers. The general balance of probabilities, supported by important circumstantial evidence, brought to light in the search after materials for this history, points out the 22nd of March as the day on which Henry the Fifth practically succeeded to the crown of his father’s cousin. In those days a king was considered no king until he had worn the crown; and as it was never in the least degree clear, even to the most discerning intellect, to whom the crown really belonged, the important claim of possession was naturally the first thing thought of by the individual enjoying the nearest prospect of its appropriation. It is hardly probable that a sagacious prince like Henry of Monmouth should have postponed the vital ceremony a single day longer than was absolutely necessary. Pressing necessities of state afforded a decent excuse for hastening the funeral of Henry the Fourth; and there can be no doubt that his successor’s publicly announced alacrity to walk in his father’s footsteps induced him to try on the paternal coronation shoes on the earliest possible occasion.
Should any doubts on this subject exist, they are at once dispelled by reference to the facts already in the possession of the reader—which it may bo as well to recapitulate. Sir John Falstaff received the tidings of the old king’s death on the 19th of March. On the third day after this our knight was in London. That the day of Sir John’s arrival in the metropolis was so that of Henry’s coronation is a matter of history.
The chronicler Fleming, speaking of the auspicious accession of Henry the Fifth to the throne of England, informs us that—
“Such great hope and good
“expectation was had of this man’s fortunate successe to follow, that within
“three daies after his father’s decease diverse noble men and honorable
“personages did to him homage and sware to him due obedience, which had
“not beene seene done to any of bis predecessors kings of this realme, till
“they had beene possessed of the crowne.”
Differing with the learned and voluminous chronicler as to the absence of precedent in such matter of homage (the worship of the rising sun, on the appearance of his first rays of power, being older in England than Stonehenge), I can only say that there was no noble man or honourable personage whatever in the realm more eager to do to the new king homage, and swear to him due obedience, than Sir John Falstaff, Knight. Only that unfortunately Sir John was, as usual, a little too late with his homage. All the nice pickings of court favour and promotion had been snapped up before his arrival.
The coronation day, in the words of the venerable chronicler last quoted, was
“a sore, ruggie and tempestuous day, with wind, snow and sleet, that
“men greatlie marvelled thereat, making diverse interpretations what the
“same might signifie.”
To Sir John Falstaff it might have been interpreted to signify the cold blasts of adversity, icy ingratitude, flowery visions blown into the air, fair prospects nipped in the bud, the tree of Hope torn up by the roots and lying prostrate!
The day, however, so inauspiciously commenced would seem to have cleared up, as upon the conclusion of the coronation ceremony (with the details whereof it is not the present writer’s business to encumber his pages) the royal party proceeded on foot in solemn procession from the gateway of Westminster Abbey to Richard the Second’s great hall, in the neighbouring palace. It is true that the royal party might have got wet in so doing—the umbrella not having been yet invented, and the cab-stand being an institution undreamt of even by the most Utopian imagination. But I am inclined to think that if Henry the Fifth’s first public appearance as a crowned head had been made under circumstances so unfavourable to dignity as a pelting shower, some adverse chronicler would have taken care to mention the circumstance. If the newly-placed crown, for instance, had been blown off into the mud, or if the gartered leg of majesty had got over its ankle in a puddle of the period, depend upon it we should have heard of it. There were plenty of literary men present, who would not have failed to report such a circumstance. There was John Lydgate, the monk of Bury, for one, who had come to town expressly to superintend the rehearsal of a coronation anthem (composed, it was whispered, by the king himself), to which the worthy ecclesiastic had adapted words. John, as a faithful courtier and professional laureate, would infallibly have immortalised any such calamity in sympathetic verse. And we should most likely have had the subject treated from a facetious point of view, for the coronation guests of that day had from North Britain; one James Stuart, in fact, a shrewd humorist, an excellent poet, and a man of genius generally, but who having made the mistake of coming into the world some five hundred years before his time, and wishing to force upon an independent Scottish nobility the glaring anachronism of an enlightened government in the fifteenth century, was very properly shown the error of his ways, and duly assassinated at midnight in his own chamber, according to the custom of that country and period. Altogether I prefer adhering to Mr. Cruikshank’s pictorially recorded opinion of the weather on the occasion of Henry the Fifth’s first emerging a crowned monarch from the portals of Edward the Confessor’s venerable minster. The wish is father to the thought, I admit. If only for the sake of the fair spectators in the balcony, I must strive to believe that the day turned out fine. I cannot bear to think that those dainty creatures—many of whose effigies may doubtless be found, at this day, in the neighbouring cloisters, lying on their backs, with crossed hands and chipped noses (attributed, by the vergers of the abbey, as a matter of course, to the iconoclast malice of Oliver Cromwell)—should have had their hoods, kirtles, and day’s pleasure spoiled by the “wind, snow, and sleete” of a “ruggie and tempestuous day.” Depend upon it that, towards ten o’clock in the morning (the hour at which, according to the early habits of the period, the coronation ceremony would have come to a close), the sky began to clear up.
In a literal and physical sense only, be it understood. Metaphorically, as far as Sir John Falstaff was concerned, the sun was never destined to shine more; for the sun of poor old Jack’s existence was Henry Plantagenet, fifth king of England by that name, and the face of that sun Jack Falstaff was never to see but once again. And then—oh, Nemesis, Parcæ, and all unkind heathen deities whatsoever!—with what clouds before it?
Clouds of coldness, of displeasure, of—yes, I will say it, and quite in earnest—of cruelty. Aye, and a yet more impenetrable obstruction to the desired rays than any such clouds—the presence of a powerful enemy! On the brief and only occasion of Sir John Falstaff being brought face to face with King Henry the Fifth (as a crowned monarch) Chief Justice Gascoigne was at His Majesty’s elbow, the most favoured servant of the realm. Alas! poor Jack!
Let us particularise the scene.
Sir John Falstaff—with Master Shallow, his friend; Bardolph, his henchman, maître d’hotel, valet, and factotum; Pistol, his indefinite subaltern; and Robin, his page—reached the gates of Westminster Abbey just as the ringing of bells and the harmonious swelling of many hundred voices within the sacred edifice, almost drowned by the shouts of the populace outside, announced that the ceremony was at an end. Sir John had ridden post, his impatience scarcely allowing him to sleep during the whole of his three days’ journey. He was untrimmed, draggled, jaded, and travel-stained. He was nervous, breathless, excited. I am not prepared to assert positively that he was quite sober; and, indeed, it may be slightly palliative to the conduct of Henry the Fifth, which I am about to describe in terms of the severest reprehension, that—for a newly-crowned monarch of doubtful antecedents, anxious to stand well with the more respectable portion of the community—to be hailed as a bosom friend, in the presence of kings, princes, and ambassadors, by a group composed of Messrs. Falstaff, Shallow, Bardolph, and Co., under the influence of a three days’ journey, having been for the most part performed in bad weather, in the course of which frequent attempts had doubtless been made to replace the important necessity of sleep by recourse to refreshment of a widely different character,—would naturally be rather a trying business. However, let us to the facts.
Of course Sir John Falstaff had sufficient influence with the guards and retainers to force his way through barriers of every description. He was treated with negative respect on all sides; but he certainly did not meet with the enthusiastic reception he had anticipated. As he glanced anxiously round on the many familiar faces present, he noticed an expression of awkwardness and constraint upon each. Many old acquaintances averted their heads. Such as were bound to recognise the knight did so in terms of studied formality. Sir John began to feel the raw March atmosphere absolutely oppressive. He strove to crush his rising misgivings.
“Stand here, by me, Master Robert Shallow,” he said, lugging that magistrate through the last layer of the king’s Cheshire archers that stood between them and the royal pathway. “I will make the king do you grace. I will leer at him as he comes by, and do but mark the countenance that he will give me.”
“Bless thy lungs, good knight!” said the valiant Pistol, who had already shown himself publicly in his ancient haunts, and, indeed, turned a pretty penny by the acceptance of peace-offerings from myrmidons of the law, his former enemies and oppressors.
“Come here, Pistol; stand behind me,” said Sir John. Alack, how nervous he was getting! He twirled and plucked at the ends of his beard till he winced with pain. He gnawed his finger nails. He played the old gentleman’s tattoo with his mud-stained boot on the steaming rushes beneath him. He twisted buttons off his just-au-corps. His breath was short, his under lip drooped, and his teeth chattered.
“Oh, if I had had time to have made new liveries, I would have bestowed the thousand pounds I borrowed of you!”
Master Shallow winced. He, too, was nervous.
“But ‘tis no matter; this poor show doth better; this doth infer the zeal I had to see him.”
“It doth so.” Master Shallow breathed his answer thickly.
“It shows my earnestness in affection.”
“It doth so.”
“My devotion.”
“It doth, it doth, it doth.”
(Heavens! how Master Shallow must have twiddled with his chain or chewed at the cape of his riding hood as he repeated these words in rapid crescendo!)
“As it were, to ride day and night, and not to deliberate, not to remember, not to have patience to shift me.”
“It is most certain.”
“But to stand stained with travel and sweating with desire to see him; thinking of nothing else; putting all affairs else in oblivion, as if there were nothing else to be done but to see him.”
“‘Tis semper idem for absque hoc nihil est” put in Pistol. “‘Tis all in every part.”
“‘Tis so, indeed.” Master Shallow gasped out these words, which were scarcely audible. He was in a high state of trepidation, and it will be admitted that he had exactly one thousand reasons for feeling so.
The moments seemed hours. Would the king never come? Sir John almost dreaded that he should die with his eyes unblessed by the sight of his royal pupil and favourite, clad in the attributes of majesty. His gaze was riveted on the cathedral door. He was deaf to all sounds in his eager listening for one well-known footstep. Pistol vainly attempted to enlist his sympathies by a narrative of the wrongs of the Fair Dorothea. Sir John mechanically promised to deliver the captive princess from her oppressors, but his words scarcely conveyed a meaning.
The anthem swelled. The shouts were resumed. Officious retainers bustled forth to clear the way. Sir John Falstaff’s heart beat almost audibly. He felt sick and giddy as a dazzling vision burst upon his sight—round which all other objects on the scene, animate and inanimate, seemed whirling like weird shapes in a demon dance about a magic fire. King Henry the Fifth, in all the pride and splendour of newly anointed majesty, stood before him!
I dare be bound Henry of Monmouth never more thoroughly merited Master Stowe’s simple panegyric on his personal graces than at that moment. “This prince,” says the worthy old Cockney, “exceeded the mean stature of men; he was beautiful of visage, his neck long, bodye slender and leane, and his bones small; nevertheless he was of marvellous great strength, and passing swift in running.”
I have no doubt that His Majesty, on reaching the open air, would have been but too happy to exercise his skill in the latter accomplishment so as to avoid the compromising recognition of Sir John Falstaff and his friends, had circumstances permitted; but it was an ordeal not to be avoided.
“Save thy grace, King Hal! My royal Hal!” Sir John shouted at the top of his voice.
It is possible that Sir John Falstaff’s muddy boots, drenched doublet, three days’ linen and all, might have been tolerated on the score of gentle birth and past services. But there was no getting over the bodily presence of Bardolph, Pistol, and a dilapidated, draggle-tailed country justice from the wilds of Gloucestershire.
“The heavens thee guard and keep, most royal imp of fame!” was the salutation of Pistol.
“Save thee, my sweet boy!” added Falstaff.
Henry the Fifth was certainly a great man. The opportunity for exercising his “passing swiftness in running” failing him, he was fain to fall back upon his “marvellous great strength” of moral assurance, and appear to deny all knowledge of his former associates. He drew himself up to his full height, “exceeding the mean stature of men,” and, turning to the illustrious dignitary at his side, said coldly—
“My Lord Chief Justice, speak to that vain man.”
Which of course my Lord Chief Justice was only too eager to do, in his own chosen terms.
“Have you your wits? know you what ‘tis you speak?” his lordship inquired, in his most withering, commit-you-three-months-for-contempt-of-court tones.
“My king! my Jove!” Falstaff had eyes and ears for the monarch alone. “I speak to thee, my heart.”
It was no easy matter “to cut” Sir John Falstaff. He would make himself heard; and nature had provided him with the amplest resources for making himself seen. The future conqueror of Agincourt was for a moment nonplussed. But, with characteristic promptness, he rapidly decided on the part he should play. Taking Sir John’s last greeting as his cue to speak, he gave utterance to one of the most remarkable royal speeches on record. The only assumed verbatim report of this oration extant is from the pen of Shakspeare, by whom it was, doubtless, slightly modified, as to verbal construction, in obedience to the rules of versification usually observed by writers of his school and epoch. But there is no reason to believe that any undue advantage of the reporter’s prescriptive licence to correct, harmonise, and embellish, was taken on the occasion. That the substance of the speech was as follows we have the amplest corroborative evidence in the pages of various contemporary historians:—
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“I know thee not, old man! Fall to thy prayers.
How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!
I have long dreamed of such a kind of man,
So surfeit swell’d, so old, and so profane;
But, being awake, I do despise my dream.
Make less thy body, hence, and more thy grace;
Leave gormandising; know the grave doth gape
For thee thrice wider than for other men.”
As one entertaining an excusable professional jealousy on behalf of the much-maligned and decidedly unprofitable calling of “fool and jester”—(which I was so injudicious as to take up with, very early in life, and have already an “ill-becoming” sprinkling of premature “white hairs” amongst my black ones, to show as a natural consequence of that error)—I dwell with malicious pleasure on the fact that, at this juncture of his homily, his no longer jocular majesty, Henry the Fifth, was suddenly “pulled up” by a reminder, on the countenance of his senior whom he had presumed to lecture, that he, the king, had unconsciously slipped back into his old habits, and, while reprimanding levity, had committed himself by making a joke upon Falstaff’s bulk, as in the jolly old days of the Boar’s Head fraternisation. In the words of an able commentator upon this historical passage:—“He saw the rising smile and smothered retort upon Falstaff’s lip, and he checks him with—‘Reply not to me with a fool-born jest.’”
The very thing he was afraid of! He had rashly challenged old Jack with the knight’s own weapons, and was fain to plead benefit of royalty to sneak out of the combat in which he knew he must be worsted. To impose silence on his adversary was his only chance.
He continued:—
“Presume not that I am the thing I was:
For Heaven doth know, so shall the world perceive,
That I have turn’d away my former self,
So will I those that kept me company.
When thou dost hear I am as I have been,
Approach me; and thou shalt be as thou wast,
The tutor and the feeder of my riots;
Till then, I banish thee on pain of death,
As I have done the rest of my misleaders,
Not to come near our person by ten mile.
For competence of life I will allow you,
That lack of means enforce you not to evil;
And as we hear you do reform yourselves,
We will, according to your strength and qualities,
Give you advancement.—Be it your charge, my lord,
To see perform’d the tenor of our word.
Get on.”
And then King Henry the Fifth, with his crown on, followed by his brothers, cousins, nobles, ambassadors, clergy, mace-bearers, sword-bearers, pages, retainers, and what not—by no means forgetting James the First, poet and King of Scotland (who, I am sure, cast a glance of sympathy at the paralysed figure of Sir John Falstaff, kneeling aghast and open-mouthed among the damp rushes of the courtyard), and Master John Lydgate, the laureate monk of Bury (who also, I am willing to believe, was rather distressed at the turn things had unfortunately taken)—took the arm of the triumphant Lord Chief Justice Gascoigne, and proceeded to dinner in the hall of Richard the Second, as though such a person as John Falstaff had never had existence. .
Sir John, after a moment’s stupefaction, started to his feet. He pressed his hand over his burning eyeballs. A convulsive shudder passed through his entire system; and one brief sob escaped him. It was over. Sir John relieved his oppressed lungs of a long-pent-up breath; wiped his smoking forehead, and looked composedly at Justice Shallow. Justice Shallow looked at Sir John Falstaff. Not composedly though, by any means.
“Master Shallow, I owe you a thousand pounds,” said Sir John Falstaff. It was a fact at all events, and, therefore, worthy of mention.
“Ay, marry Sir John,” the justice faltered, “which I beseech you to let me have home with me.”
“That can hardly be, Master Shallow,” was the reply. “Do not you grieve at this; I shall be sent for in private to him! Look you, he must seem thus to the world. Fear not your advancement; I will be the man yet that shall make you great.”
“I cannot well perceive how, unless”—imminent pecuniary danger had lent the worthy justice unwonted smartness,—“you should give me your doublet and stuff me out with straw. I beseech you, good Sir John, let me have five hundred of my thousand.”
“Sir, I will be as good as my word: this that you heard was but a colour.”
“A colour, I fear, that you will die in, Sir John.”
“Fear no colours; go with me to dinner. Come, Lieutenant Pistol *; come, Bardolph; I shall be sent for to-night.”
* A spontaneous promotion of the worthy Ancient, as it would
seem, upon the brevet principle.
Sir John Falstaff had not to wait until nightfall ere he was sent for. Scarcely had he spoken when the Lord Chief Justice Gascoigne, accompanied by Prince John of Lancaster (whose grudge against our knight, for the Gualtree affair, was, if possible, stronger than that of the justice himself), reappeared on the scene with a posse of constables. These men had even quitted a royal dinner table for the gratification of private vengeance. Could the force of malignity go further?
The lord chief justice, not trusting himself to an accusation which might have led to discussion, wherein he would inevitably have been discomfited, ordered Sir John Falstaff and his companions to be conveyed to the Fleet Prison!
Sir John naturally attempted to protest against a persecution so unprecedented.
“My lord, my lord,——”
“I cannot now speak,” said the chief justice. “I will hear you soon. Take them away.”
And they were taken away—Bardolph, Pistol, and poor little Robin included—aye, and even Master Robert Shallow, of Gloucestershire, in the commission of the peace, custos rotulorum, whose only offence was one against the laws of ordinary human judgment; to wit, that he had lent Sir John Falstaff the sum of one thousand pounds under the impression that he would one day get it back again.
Now I should be very much obliged to any individual learned in the antiquities of English law, who will inform me by what then existing statute Sir John Falstaff, with his friend and retainers, were committed to the Fleet Prison? If, after all I have been at the pains of writing in the course of this publication,—since the acknowledged failure of my attempt to make out a case in favour of the Lord Chief Justice Gascoigne—there should remain any apologists for the character and conduct of that eminent justiciary, I should also feel thankful to them if they can inform me how they intend reconciling the behaviour of their protégé, on this occasion, with his hitherto established reputation as an upright judge. With regard to Prince John of Lancaster, afterwards Duke of Bedford, I trouble myself but little. History can have left him no friends. No amount of apologetic whitewash would serve to frost over the thick coating of smut from the funeral pyre of Joan of Arc, by which his memory must stand blackened to all eternity.
Apropos des bottes. I am happy to be able to convict Henry the Fifth in a glaring falsehood. He did not banish, “on pain of death,” the whole of his early associates in debauchery and misdemeanour, nor forbid them all “to come near his person by ten mile.” Master Edward Poins, a discreet, timeserving young gentleman, continued in the enjoyment of court favour, and received the dignity of knighthood on the very day of his majesty’s coronation.