The most irreconcilable adversary of the king had at length succumbed. The old Earl of Northumberland, homeless, childless, and without riches, had wandered for more than two years from kingdom to kingdom, endeavoring to raise up embarrassments and enemies against King Henry. At the beginning of 1408, he appeared in Northumberland with Lord Bardolf, the friend and companion of his whole life. Rallying a certain number of his old vassals, he overran the country, took possession of several castles, and had gathered together a small body of troops, when he was defeated on the 28th of February, by Sir Thomas Rokeby, upon Branham Heath, near Tadcaster. He was killed in the combat; Lord Bardolf, grievously wounded, died shortly afterwards, and their bodies, cut in pieces, were sent to the towns of Northumberland, where they had found adherents. It was all over with the Percies.
The commotions in France continued to increase. The poor king, Charles VI., would pass from furious madness to docile melancholy; his kingdom, rent asunder by factions, was the scene of the crimes, debaucheries, and exactions of all parties. The Duke of Orleans had recently been assassinated in the Rue Barbette (23rd of November, 1407), by the servants of his cousin, the Duke of Burgundy, a circumstance which had not prevented the latter from reappearing at court, without fearing the punishment of the king for the death of his brother, which he caused to be publicly justified at the Sorbonne, by Maître Jean Petit, doctor in theology. From treason to treason, from reconciliation to reconciliation, the Duke of Burgundy was all powerful in 1409, when the young Duke of Orleans, who had lost his wife, Isabel of France, widow of King Richard II., was married for a second time, to Bonne, the daughter of the wealthy Count of Armagnac. The time had at length arrived for prosecuting revenge: supported by the experience and military talents of the count, the partisans of the House of Orleans assumed the name of Armagnacs; the red scarf was put on by the Duke of Berry, the Duke of Brittany, and the Duke of Alencon; John Sans Peur was driven from Paris, and the Duke of Orleans, sword in hand, demanded justice for the death of his father.
Then, for the first time, amidst the factions which had desolated France for ten years, England was called upon to play a part. John Sans Peur asked assistance of Henry IV. The latter sent in the month of October, 1411, a small body of a thousand archers and eight hundred men-at-arms, with whom the duke marched against Paris. He re-entered there in force on the 23rd, and drove out the Armagnacs, who had already begun to make themselves detested. John Sans Peur followed up his advantages, and hoped to crush his enemies; but they, in their turn, had negotiated with the King of England, promising to recognize him as Duke of Aquitaine, and to assure to him after the death of the present possessors, the counties of Poitou and Angoulême. As the price of these concessions, the English army was preparing to invade France, under the orders of the third son of the king, the Duke of Clarence, when the Duke of Berry, uncle of Charles VI., filled with horror at the prospect of the evils which the foreigners were about to bring down upon France, once more interposed between the belligerents, and effected one of those reconciliations which prepared the way for fresh acts of perfidy. The Dukes of Orleans and Burgundy entered Paris mounted upon the same horse, and repaired thus to church. The people cried "Noël," and thanked God for this hope of peace. But the Duke of Clarence had landed in Normandy; the news of the pacification had been powerless to arrest him. Maine and Anjou had already been ravaged. The Duke of Orleans contrived to purchase the retreat of the allies whom he himself had summoned; the English, laden with gold and booty, took the road to Guienne, traversing France without any obstacle. "We will return hither," they said as they passed, "to fight with our King Henry." Eight thousand Englishmen embarked at Bordeaux towards the close of the year 1412. King Henry had nearly arrived at the end of his career. He was ill and sad. His throne had always appeared to him to be tottering; conspiracies had been so often repeated around him, that he had ended by suspecting them where they did not exist. A keen jealousy towards his eldest son troubled him. The Prince of Wales had given proofs of rare courage; when yet young, he had been wounded at the battle of Shrewsbury; being afterwards despatched by his father into Wales, he had there constantly held in check Owen Glendwyr, over whom he had finally triumphed. It is related—and, in his admirable tragedy of Henry IV., Shakespeare made use of these accounts, of which the authenticity is not well proved—that the young prince, besides his budding greatness, had given other causes for anxiety to his father; it is said that his debauches and coarse amusements had caused alarm for the fate of the State which he was one day to govern, so that a judge before whom he had been brought, without knowing him, thought it his duty to condemn him like a simple private person. Perhaps the jealousy of the father and the restraint which he claimed to impose upon the son, to whom he left neither power nor resources, had contributed to plunge a sanguine, energetic young man, full of life and strength, into those excesses with which he was reproached. It is affirmed that the king had one day swooned, in consequence of one of the attacks of his distemper; he was believed to be dead. The Prince of Wales, entering the apartment, had carried off the crown, which lay upon a cushion. When Henry IV. came to himself again, he asked for the crown. The prince was sent for, "You have no right to it," cried the king. "You know that your father had none." "Your sword gave it to you, sire, and my sword will be able to defend it," replied the prince, exonerating himself as well as he could against the suspicions of his father. He demanded the punishment of those who accused him of prematurely claiming the throne, and the king referred him to the next session of the Parliament. He was weary of reigning and of living. "You shall do as you please," he said; "I have done with all these matters. May the Lord have mercy upon my soul!" But the young Prince Henry suffered in mind from the alienation of his father; he presented himself before him clad in a blue satin robe, covered with button-holes, a tag still hanging from each opening, and, in this strange costume, he threw himself at the feet of the king, drew a dagger from his bosom, and begged him to take his life if he had deprived him of his favor. The father and son became reconciled, it is said, after this scene.
The torments of jealousy, added to the troubles of his conscience and the cares of power, overwhelmed the monarch. He was not yet forty-seven years of age, and the proud Bolingbroke, formerly so handsome, so bold, so adventurous, was bowed down like an old man. He was praying, on the 20th of March, 1413, before the shrine of Edward the Confessor, in Westminster Abbey, when he fell into a swoon. He was carried into the apartment of the abbot, and as he recovered his senses, he asked where he was. "In the Jerusalem Chamber," was the reply; for such was the name of the chamber to which he had been carried. He closed his eyes. "I was always told that I should die at Jerusalem," he muttered, and he expired. He was interred in Canterbury Cathedral, beside his first wife, Lady Mary de Bohun, the mother of all his children. His second wife. Queen Joan of Navarre, had not presented any to him.
Ambitious and inflexible, harsh towards his enemies, skilful and cunning as well as enterprising, Henry IV. had always contrived to treat the Parliament with respect, and had never made any attempt against its authority. The House of Commons, especially, had seen its privileges confirmed under his reign, and its influence had been constantly growing. Thus the liberties of England, formerly conquered by the barons at the price of so much bloodshed, were gradually developing, profiting by the weakness as well as the temerity of the sovereigns, until the day when the religious reform was to raise them to their highest pitch.
Absorbed in the internal struggles consequent upon usurpation, for ever dreading real or supposed conspiracies, Henry IV. had not had leisure to think of foreign wars. The wish, however, had not been wanting; he had everywhere plunged himself into the intrigues and divisions which desolated France under the unhappy Charles VI., and he had thus prepared the return of the great English ambitions, which were destined, for awhile, to raise so high the glory of Henry V., his son, at the price of so much bloodshed and so many sorrows for the two nations.