Meek and content.
And be, where’er thy path,
Whate’er the trials life may to thee bring,
Grateful that Heaven has not, in its wrath,
Made thee a king!
Of the chivalrous spirit of Henry IV. no one entertains a doubt, and yet he once refused to accept a challenge. The challenger was the Duke of Orleans, who had been Henry’s sworn friend, accomplice in some of his deeds, and who, failing to realize all the advantages he expected, urged Henry to meet him in the marches of Guienne, with a hundred knights on each side. Henry fenced with the challenge rather than with the challenger, but when the latter called him rebel, usurper, and murderer, he gave his former friend the lie, in no very gentle terms, as regarded the charge of being accessory to the death of Richard. The little flower, the Forget-me-not, owes some of its popularity to Henry, who, previous to his being king, and when in exile, chose it for his symbol, wore it in gold on his collar, and added to it by way of device, the words “Souvenez de moi.” It is worthy of observation that, after Henry’s death, his widow, Joanna of Navarre, continued to be recognised as a lady of the Garter, receiving presents from Henry V. as such, and being in attendance on high festivals, in robes of the order, the gift of the new king.
That new king requires no advocacy as a knight. The simple word “Agincourt” is sufficient. His wooing of Katherine of Valois is also characteristic of the gallant, if not the amorous knight. At the betrothal of the illustrious couple, Henry presented to the lady his own favorite knight, Sir Louis de Robsart, as her personal attendant, to watch for ever over her safety; but this queen’s knight was simply the queen’s keeper, and his chief mission was to take care that the lady was not stolen from him, between the day of betrothal and that of the royal nuptials.
Although the reign of Henry V. formed a period of glory for knighthood, the victories obtained by the chivalrous combatants were effected at such a cost, that toward the close of the reign, there were not men enough in England qualified to competently carry on its civil business. It was still worse under Henry VI. When peace with France was negotiating, the Cardinal of Winchester represented to the French government that, during a struggle of a quarter of a century, there had been more men, of both countries, slain in these wars, for the title and claim to the crown of France, than there were then existing in the two nations. It was shocking, the Cardinal said, to think of so much Christian blood having been shed;—and there were not very many Christian knights left to cry “hear, hear,” to such an assertion.
Least cavalier of any of the kings who had hitherto reigned was Henry VI., but there was chivalry enough for two in the heart of his admirable wife, the most heroic, perhaps, of English queens, Margaret of Anjou. How unlike was the destiny of this ill-matched pair to that of their successors Edward IV. and his wife Elizabeth Woodville! This king assumed one privilege of knighthood, by loving whom he pleased, and marrying whom he loved. He was the first king of England who married with a simple lady, that is, one not of princely blood. He did not prosper much the more for it, for his reign was one of a rather splendid misery, in which the luxurious king was faithful to no one, neither to the friends who upheld his cause, nor to Mistress Shore, who helped him to render his cause unworthy. Passing over Edward V., we may notice that there was much more of the knightly character in Richard III., than in the fourth Edward. Richard would be better appreciated if we judged him according to the spirit of the times in which he was born, and not by the standard of our own. A braver monarch never fronted an English force; and if heavy crimes can justly be laid to his account, it should not be forgotten, that amid the bloody struggles which he had to maintain, from the day almost of his accession, he had leisure to put in force more than one enactment by which English people profit, down even to the present period.
I have elsewhere remarked that many of us originally take our idea of Henry VII. from the dashing Richmond who opens the fifth act of Richard III. in panoply and high spirits. None of Shakespeare’s characters make a more knight-like appearance than he. The fact, nevertheless, is that Henry was anything but chivalrous in mien or carriage. His mother was married, it was said, when only nine years old; and it is added that Henry was born in the year following the marriage. It is certain that the lady was not in her teens, and to this circumstance, Turner is inclined to attribute the feebleness of Henry’s constitution.