Guizot's
History Of England,
Vol. II.
From the accession of Henry V.,
to the death of Queen Elizabeth, 1413-1603.
Chapter XIII.
Grandeur And Decline.
Henry V., Henry VI.
(1413-1461).
Henry of Monmouth ascended the throne under happy auspices. His father had expended the popularity which in the first place had carried him into power, and had lived amidst the anxieties and cares of usurpation; but the work was accomplished, and his son felt his authority so well established, that the first acts of his reign bear testimony to a generous disdain towards conspiracies and rivals. The body of King Richard II. was carried away from the convent of Langley, and solemnly brought back to Westminster, to be interred there beside his wife, Anne of Bohemia, as the unhappy monarch had wished during his lifetime. The king himself was the chief mourner. The young Edmund, earl of March, was restored to liberty, and the son of Hotspur Percy was recalled from his long exile in Scotland. Everywhere the former adversaries of Henry IV., exiled or punished through his fear and prudence, experienced the clemency of the young king, who contrived to gain the affection of the greater number of them, by the firmness and energy of character which were united in him with generosity.
Recovered from any follies and excesses which may have sullied his youth, Henry V., when he ascended the throne, showed himself from the first to be austere in his life and in his morals, resolved to fear God, and to cause his laws to be respected. He was not in favor of the religious movement which was being propagated in his kingdom, particularly among the lower classes of society. The doctrines and the preaching of Wycliffe, and the knowledge of the Holy Scriptures which he had begun to diffuse, had born much good fruit; but the disciples had, upon several points, swerved from the teaching of their master, and from free investigation had sprung up many dangerous errors as well as the most sacred truths. The people designated the reformers under the name of "Lollards," a word, the origin of which is not exactly known, but which very possibly came from the German heretic, Walter Lolhard, burnt at Cologne in 1322. Already, under Henry IV., the secular arm had descended heavily upon the partisans of the new doctrines. A priest, formerly rector of Lynn in Norfolk, and who had for awhile abjured his opinions, had asked to be heard by the Parliament, before which he had frankly expounded the doctrines which he had been compelled to abandon. Being declared for this deed a heretic and a relapser, Sacoytre was burnt at Smithfield in the month of March, 1401, presenting for the first time to the English people the terrible spectacle of a man put to death for his opinions. A tailor, named John Batby, suffered the same punishment in 1410. But at the beginning of the reign of Henry V., the anger and uneasiness of the Church were directed against a personage better known, and of higher rank. The Lollards had become sufficiently numerous to have attributed to them a declaration, placarded by night in London, announcing that a hundred thousand men were ready to defend their rights by arms. All regarded as their chief Sir John Oldcastle, generally called Lord Cobham, by the right of his wife. He was a good soldier, and the friend of Henry V., in his youth. When Arundel, archbishop of Canterbury, came to accuse Lord Cobham before the king, the latter could not decide to deliver him up to the Church, and he promised to labor himself to reclaim him; but the king's powers of controversy were not equal to the convictions of Lord Cobham. The monarch became angry, and as his old friend had taken refuge in his manor of Cowling, in Kent, Henry abandoned him to the archbishop. For some time the clever soldier contrived to avoid the delivery of the arrest warrant, but a body of troops sent by the king having surrounded the castle, he surrendered, and was conducted to the Tower. For two days he defended himself unaided against all the clergy assembled, he was then condemned to the stake; but the king, who still retained some affection for him, obtained a respite, during which Sir John contrived to escape from the Tower. He no longer hoped to live in peace; perhaps he reckoned upon the devotion of his brethren. It is related that he assembled a considerable number of Lollards, and that he made an attempt to surprise the king; having failed in his design, he had convoked his partisans in the fields of St. Giles, near London, on the morrow of the Epiphany. The king was forewarned of the conspiracy and repaired thither. Sir John was not there; a hundred men at the utmost had assembled in the meadow; they carried arms, and confessed that they were waiting for Oldcastle. Two or three other little assemblages were also captured, and, on the 13th of January, thirty Lollards suffered at St. Giles's the punishment of traitors. The Parliament was agitated, and the State was believed to be in danger; the judges, and magistrates were authorized to arrest every individual suspected of heresy, and made oath to prosecute the guilty in all parts. Death and confiscation were decreed against them. Sir Roger Acton, a friend of Oldcastle, was arrested, quartered, and hanged on the 10th of February. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Arundel, died on the 28th of the same month; but his successor, Chicheley, was no less ardent than he against heresy, and it was at his request and at his suit that Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, after having for a long while remained concealed, was rearrested in 1417, and burnt at a slow fire in the meadow of St. Giles, on the 25th of December following.
The terror which the Lollards had caused was beginning to subside. The king had had leisure to reflect upon the sad condition of France; the weakness in which it was plunged reminded him of the counsels of his dying father. It is said that Henry IV. had advised his son to engage his country in a great war, to divert it from conspiracies. The ardour of the young king had become inflamed at this idea, and he had come to look upon himself as the messenger of God, sent to punish the crimes of the French princes, and to deliver from their hands the kingdom which they were oppressing. In the month of July, 1414, he suddenly laid claim to the crown of France, as the decendant of Isabel, the daughter of Philip the Fair. This pretension, groundless on the part of Edward III., became absurd in the mouth of Henry V., because the right of succession if transmissible by females, belonged to the Earl of March. The Duke of Berry, then in power, peremptorily repelled the demand of King Henry, who thereupon proclaimed other pretensions. He consented to leave the throne to King Charles, but he claimed for England the absolute sovereignty of Normandy, Anjou, Maine, and Aquitaine, besides the towns and territories ceded in other parts of France by the treaty of Brétigny. He claimed at the same time one half of Provence, the inheritance of Eleanor and Sanche, the wives of Henry III., and of his brother, the Duke of Cornwall; and the fifteen hundred thousand crowns remaining to be paid upon the ransom of King John; finally, he formally demanded the hand of the Princess Catherine, the daughter of King Charles VI., with a dowry of two million of crowns. In reply to these exorbitant demands, the Duke of Berry proposed to surrender Aquitaine to the King of England, and to give him the Princess Catherine, with a dowry of six hundred thousand crowns. Never had a daughter of France brought so large a dowry to her husband, and the payment of it would probably have been difficult in the state of poverty which the country was in. King Henry thereupon recalled his ambassadors, convoked the Parliament, and, having obtained large subsidies, sent a second mission to the court of France. The Earl of Dorset entered Paris with a magnificent retinue. He proposed a prolongation of the truce for four months, and consented to receive the princess with a dowry of one million crowns only. Henry had also renounced his pretensions to Maine, Anjou, and Normandy. The answer was the same, but two hundred thousand crowns were added to the dowry of Catherine. The ambassadors started back for England in March, 1415; the preparations for war immediately commenced.