"Ah! fair son," said the dying king; "what right have you to the crown, when you know that your father had none?"
"My liege," answered young Henry; "with the sword you won it, and with the sword I will keep it."
"Well," replied the king, faintly, "do as you think best. I leave the issue to God, and may He have mercy on my soul." And then followed that beautiful address so finely rendered in Shakespeare—
"Come hither, Harry; sit thou by my bed," etc.
Henry IV. was in the forty-seventh year of his age, and the fourteenth year of his reign, when he died. It is curious that as he usurped the throne of Richard II., he also usurped, as far as in him lay, his tomb. The body of Richard he sent to be buried at Langley, instead of permitting it to rest with the ashes of his father, the Black Prince; but there his own body was ordered to be conveyed, for he had expressed a superstitious desire that he might lie near the shrine of Thomas Becket.
Henry IV. was twice married. His first wife was Mary de Bohun, daughter and co-heir of the Earl of Hereford. By her he had four sons and two daughters. Henry was his successor to the throne; Thomas was Duke of Clarence; John, Duke of Bedford; and Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. His eldest daughter, Blanche, was married to the Duke of Bavaria, and the second to the King of Denmark.
Conscious of the defect of his title, Henry was careful to avoid, on ascending the throne, asking for any act of settlement. He contented himself with receiving the oath of allegiance from Parliament to himself, and after himself to his eldest son or heir-apparent. But after the battle of Shrewsbury he introduced a bill resting the succession on his four sons, but excluding his daughters. But on being reminded that to exclude his daughters annihilated all his claim to the throne of France, he reluctantly consented to the passing of an act admitting the general issue of his sons, but still passing over that of his daughters, as if fearful to bring in some foreign aspirant.
By his second wife, Joanna of Navarre, daughter of Charles the Bad, he had no children. Joanna made a much better queen than might have been expected from her parentage. Her worst faults appear to have been great fondness for money, and for a numerous train of French attendants, which obliged Parliament frequently to interfere, as did that of Charles I., and insist on their being sent home. She was handsome in person, but had the reputation of being addicted to the arts of necromancy, no doubt arising from the evil reputation of her father. We shall hear of her again in the next reign.
The defect of Henry's title was a circumstance favourable to the progress of the constitution, though prolific of much controversy and bloodshed. Compelled to court the goodwill of the people, and to come to them often for money, the House of Commons availed themselves of this circumstance to increase their demands of privilege and liberty. In his very first year they passed a law depriving the Crown of the power of protecting an unjust judge. In the second, they insisted on the removal of obnoxious persons from his household, and prevailed; in the sixth, they appointed treasurers to superintend the expenditure of the supplies; in the eighth, they enacted thirty articles for the regulation of the royal household, and compelled the judges, the council, and all the officers of the household to swear to the observance of them. The practice of the Crown corrupting Parliament had shown itself in the reign of Richard II., and was now rife, through means of the sheriffs. The Commons obtained an act to compel them to make just returns. They even went so far, when pressed by the king for money, as to recommend him to seize the surplus temporalities of the Church, which they represented as containing 18,400 ploughs of land, producing 485,000 marks a year, equal to £4,750,745 of our present money.