After his father's death, however, on ascending the throne as Henry V., he discarded his unworthy followers, and applied himself with both assiduity and talent to the government of his kingdom.
We learn from Tressel's continuation of "Daniel's Collection of the History of England, 1641," that the King, addressing himself to his former friends, said:
"It was sufficient that for many years he had fashioned himself according to their unruly dispositions, and had wandered with them in a wilderness of riot and unthriftiness; whereby he had made himself almost an alien to the hearts of his father and allies, and had so disparaged himself, that in the eyes of mankind his presence was grown vulgar and stale, and like the cuckoo in June, was heard but not regarded." The King then proceeds to relate in brief, that when one of his associates was summoned before the Lord Chief Justice he had interposed, and had even struck the Judge, and that for this offence he had deservedly been committed to prison by the Chief Justice. The King thus terminates his speech: "For which act of justice I shall ever hold him worthy of the place and of my favour. I wish all my judges to have the like undaunted courage to punish offenders of what rank soever."
It is greatly to the honour of Henry V. that the brave and good old Chief Justice retained his post until age and infirmities compelled him to relinquish it.
Sir William Gascoigne appeared in his place in Parliament and sat in Court in Westminster Hall during the first year of the reign of King Henry V. But his long and arduous career had aged him before the allotted threescore years and ten that are given to man, and in 1413 he quitted public life.
He did not long survive his retirement, but, after a short illness, expired within a year of his resignation.
His funeral was celebrated with the magnificence due to his eminent dignity, his honourable family, his large fortune, and his exalted fame.
On a stately monument in Harwood Church, Yorkshire, where he was interred, he is represented lying at full length, attired in his judge's robes, with a hood drawn over his head. At his right side is a long dagger; on the left, a purse fastened to his girdle. One of his wives lies beside him. There are the remains of an inscription cut in brass around the edge of the tomb. Unfortunately, during the Civil Wars much of this brass-work was torn away.
In the east window of the same church there still remain some portions of the ancient glass, and in this glass can be traced the figure of a man arrayed in the scarlet robes of a judge. Both on his right hand and on his left is the figure of a kneeling woman, and above these three figures are the arms of the Gascoigne family, and also those of the Mowbrays and of the Pickerings.