Born in Scotland, and heir to the crown of England at a time when the mutual jealousies of the two nations were running so high, the boy often had occasion to express the unity of affection which was really in his heart. Being questioned by a nobleman, whether, after his father, he had rather be king of England or Scotland, he asked, "Which of them was best?" Being answered, that it was England; "Then," said the Scottish-born prince, "would I have both!" And once, in reading this verse in Virgil,
Tros Tyriusve mihi nullo discrimine agetur,
the boy said he would make use of that verse for himself, with a slight alteration, thus,
Anglus Scotusve mihi nullo discrimine agetur.
He was careful to keep alive the same feeling in another part of the British dominions; and the young prince appears to have been regarded with great affection by the Welsh; for when once the prince asked a gentleman at what mark he should shoot, the courtier pointed with levity at a Welshman who was present. "Will you see, then," said the princely boy, "how I will shoot at Welshmen?" Turning his back from him, the prince shot his arrow in the air. When a Welshman, who had taken a large carouse, in the fulness of his heart and his head, said in the presence of the king, that the prince should have 40,000 Welshmen, to wait upon him against any king in Christendom; the king, not a little jealous, hastily inquired, "To do what?" The little prince turned away the momentary alarm by his facetiousness: "To cut off the heads of 40,000 leeks."
His bold and martial character was discoverable in minute circumstances like these. Eating in the king's presence a dish of milk, the king asked him why he ate so much child's meat. "Sir, it is also man's meat," Henry replied; and immediately after having fed heartily on a partridge, the king observed that that meat would make him a coward, according to the prevalent notions of the age respecting diet; to which the young prince replied, "though it be but a cowardly fowl, it shall not make me a coward." Once taking strawberries with two spoons, when one might have sufficed, our infant Mars gaily exclaimed, "The one I use as a rapier and the other as a dagger!"
Adam Newton appears to have filled his office as preceptor with no servility to the capricious fancies of the princely boy. Desirous, however, of cherishing the generous spirit and playful humour of Henry, his tutor encouraged a freedom of jesting with him, which appears to have been carried at times to a degree of momentary irritability on the side of the tutor, by the keen humour of the boy. While the royal pupil held his master in equal reverence and affection, the gaiety of his temper sometimes twitched the equability or the gravity of the preceptor. When Newton, wishing to set an example to the prince in heroic exercises, one day practised the pike, and tossing it with such little skill as to have failed in the attempt, the young prince telling him of his failure, Newton obviously lost his temper, observing, that "to find fault was an evil humour." "Master, I take the humour of you." "It becomes not a prince," observed Newton. "Then," retorted the young prince, "doth it worse become a prince's master!" Some of these harmless bickerings are amusing. When his tutor, playing at shuffle-board with the prince, blamed him for changing so often, and taking up a piece, threw it on the board, and missed his aim, the prince smilingly exclaimed, "Well thrown, master;" on which the tutor, a little vexed, said "he would not strive with a prince at shuffle-board." Henry observed, "Yet you gownsmen should be best at such exercises, which are not meet for men who are more stirring." The tutor, a little irritated, said, "I am meet for whipping of boys." "You vaunt, then," retorted the prince, "that which a ploughman or cart-driver can do better than you." "I can do more," said the tutor, "for I can govern foolish children." On which the prince, who, in his respect for his tutor, did not care to carry the jest farther, rose from the table, and in a low voice to those near him said, "he had need be a wise man that could do that." Newton was sometimes severe in his chastisement; for when the prince was playing at goff, and having warned his tutor, who was standing by in conversation, that he was going to strike the ball, and having lifted up the goff-club, some one observing, "Beware, sir, that you hit not Mr. Newton!" the prince drew back the club, but smilingly observed, "Had I done so, I had but paid my debts." At another time, when he was amusing himself with the sports of a child, his tutor wishing to draw him to more manly exercises, amongst other things, said to him in good humour, "God send you a wise wife!" "That she may govern you and me!" said the prince. The tutor observed, that "he had one of his own;" the prince replied, "But mine, if I have one, would govern your wife, and by that means would govern both you and me!" Henry, at this early age, excelled in a quickness of reply, combined with reflection, which marks the precocity of his intellect. His tutor having laid a wager with the prince that he could not refrain from standing with his back to the fire, and seeing him forget himself once or twice, standing in that posture, the tutor said, "Sir, the wager is won, you have failed twice." "Master," replied Henry, "Saint Peter's cock crew thrice."—A musician having played a voluntary in his presence, was requested to play the same again. "I could not for the kingdom of Spain," said the musician, "for this were harder than for a preacher to repeat word by word a sermon that he had not learned by rote." A clergyman standing by, observed that he thought a preacher might do that: "Perhaps," rejoined the young prince, "for a bishopric!"
The natural facetiousness of his temper appears frequently in the good humour with which the little prince was accustomed to treat his domestics. He had two of opposite characters, who were frequently set by the ears for the sake of the sport; the one, Murray, nicknamed "the tailor," loved his liquor; and the other was a stout "trencherman." The king desired the prince to put an end to these broils, and to make the men agree, and that the agreement should be written and subscribed by both. "Then," said the prince, "must the drunken tailor subscribe it with chalk, for he cannot write his name, and then I will make them agree upon this condition—that the trencherman shall go into the cellar, and drink with Will Murray, and Will Murray shall make a great wallet for the trencherman to carry his victuals in."—One of his servants having cut the prince's finger, and sucked out the blood with his mouth, that it might heal the more easily, the young prince, who expressed no displeasure at the accident, said to him pleasantly, "If, which God forbid! my father, myself, and the rest of his kindred should fail, you might claim the crown, for you have now in you the blood-royal."—Our little prince once resolved on a hearty game of play, and for this purpose only admitted his young gentlemen, and excluded the men: it happened that an old servant, not aware of the injunction, entered the apartment, on which the prince told him he might play too; and when the prince was asked why he admitted this old man rather than the other men, he rejoined, "Because he had a right to be of their number, for Senex bis puer."
Nor was Henry susceptible of gross flattery, for when once he wore white shoes, and one said that he longed to kiss his foot, the prince said to the fawning courtier, "Sir, I am not the pope;" the other replied that "he would not kiss the pope's foot, except it were to bite off his great toe." The prince gravely rejoined: "At Rome you would be glad to kiss his foot and forget the rest."
It was then the mode, when the king or the prince travelled, to sleep with their suite at the houses of the nobility; and the loyalty and zeal of the host were usually displayed in the reception given to the royal guest. It happened that in one of these excursions the prince's servants complained that they had been obliged to go to bed supperless, through the pinching parsimony of the house, which the little prince at the time of hearing seemed to take no great notice of. The next morning the lady of the house coming to pay her respects to him, she found him turning over a volume that had many pictures in it; one of which was a painting of a company sitting at a banquet: this he showed her. "I invite you, madam, to a feast." "To what feast?" she asked. "To this feast," said the boy. "What! would your highness give me but a painted feast?" Fixing his eye on her, he said, "No better, madam, is found in this house." There was a delicacy and greatness of spirit in this ingenious reprimand far excelling the wit of a child.