Undoubtedly most of the subsequent chroniclers not only speak of his reformation, but broadly state that he had given himself very great licence in self-gratification, and therefore needed to be reformed. Before Shakspeare's day, the reports adopted by our historiographers had fully justified him in his representation of Henry's early courses; and, since his time, few writers have considered it their duty to verify the exquisite traits of his pencil, or examine the evidence on which he rested.
"His addiction was to courses vain;
His companies unlettered, rude, and shallow;
His hours filled up with riots, banquets, sports;
And never noted in him any study,
Any retirement, any sequestration
From open haunts and popularity."
Let the investigator who is resolved not to yield an implicit and blind assent to vague assertion, however positive, and how often soever repeated, well and truly try for himself the issue by evidence, and trace Henry from his boyhood; let him search with unsparing diligence and jealous scrutiny through every authentic document relating to him; let his steps be followed into the marches, the towns, the valleys, and the mountains of Wales; let him be watched narrowly month after month during his residence in London, or wherever he happened to be staying with the court, or in Calais during his captaincy there; and not a single hint occurs of any one irregularity.[303] The research will bring to light no single expression savouring of impiety, dissoluteness, carelessness, or even levity.
Testimony, on the other hand, ample and repeated, as we have already seen in these pages, is borne to his valour, and unremitting exertions and industry; to his firmness of purpose, his integrity his filial duty and affection; his high-mindedness (in the best sense of the word), his generous spirit, his humanity, his habits of mind, so unsuspecting as to expose him often to the over-reaching designs of the crafty and the unprincipled, his pious trust in Providence, and habitual piety and devotion. To these, and other excellences in his moral compound, his father,[304] and his father's antagonist, Hotspur, the assembled parliament of England, the common people of Wales, the gentlemen of distant counties, contemporary chroniclers, (combined with the public records of the kingdom and the internal evidence of his own letters,) bear direct and unstinted witness. From the first despatch of Hotspur to the last vote of thanks in parliament, there is a chain of testimonies (detailed in their chronological order in previous chapters of this work) very seldom equalled in the case of so young a man, and, through so long a period, perhaps never surpassed. And yet, though he was through the whole of that time the constant object of observation, and the subject of men's thoughts and words, no complaint of any neglect of duty arrests our notice, nor is there even an insinuation thrown out of any excess, indiscretion, or extravagance whatever. Not a word from the tongue of friend or foe, of accuser or apologist, would induce us to suspect that anything wrong was stifled or kept back. There are complaints of the extravagant expenditure of his father, and recommendations of retrenchment and economy in the King's household; but never on any occasion, (even when the Prince is most urgent and importunate for supplies of money, offering the most favourable and inviting opportunity for remonstrance or remark), is there the slightest innuendo either from the King, the Lords of the council, or the Commons in parliament, that he expended the least sum unnecessarily.[305] No improper channel of expense, public or private, domestic or personal, is glanced at; nothing is objected to in his establishment; no item is recommended to be abolished or curtailed; no change of conduct is hinted at as desirable. And yet subsequent writers speak with one accord of his reformation; "and reformation implies previous errors." After examining whatever documents concerning him the most diligent research could discover, the Author is compelled to report as his unbiassed and deliberate judgment, that the character with which Henry of Monmouth's name has been stamped for profligacy and dissipation, is founded, not on the evidence of facts, but on the vagueness of tradition. Still such is the tradition, and it must stand for its due value. And if we allow tradition to tell us of his faults, we must in common fairness receive from the same tradition the fullness of his reformation; if we give credence to one who reports both his guilt and his penitence, we must record both accounts or neither. Before, however, we repeat what tradition has delivered down as to Henry's conduct and behaviour immediately upon his father's death, it may be well for us to review some of those testimonies to his character, his principles, and his conduct, which incidentally (but not on that account less acceptably or less satisfactorily) offer themselves to our notice, scattered up and down through the pages of former days.
Were we to draw an inference from the summary way in which many modern authors have cut short the question with regard to Henry of Monmouth's character as Prince of Wales, we should conclude that all the evidence was on one side; that, whilst "it is unfair to distinguished merit to dwell on the blemishes which it has regretted and reformed," still no doubt can be entertained of his having, "from a too early initiation into military life, stooped to practise irregularities between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five."[306] Whereas the fact is, that no allusion to such irregularities is made where we might have expected to find it; and that, independently of those more formal proofs to the contrary which are embodied in these pages, and to which we have above briefly referred, contemporary writers and undisputed documents supply us with materials for judging of his temper of mind and early habit,—the character, in short, with which those who had the best opportunities of knowing him, were wont to associate his name.
All accounts agree in reporting him to have been devotedly fond of music. As the household expenses of his father informed us, he played upon the harp before he was ten years old; nor does he seem ever to have lost the habit of deriving gratification from the same art. It were easy to represent him prostituting this love of minstrelsy in the haunts of Eastcheap, and enjoying "through the sweetest morsel of the night" the songs of impurity in reckless Bacchanalian revels, self-condemned indeed, and therefore to be judged by others leniently:
"I feel me much to blame
So idly to profane the precious time:"[307]
but nevertheless guilty of profaning the sacred art of music in the midst of worthless companions, and in the very sinks of low and dissolute profligacy. This it were easy to do, and this has been done. But history lends no countenance to such representations. The chroniclers, who refer again and again to his fondness for music, tell us that it showed itself in him under very different associations. "He delighted (as Stowe records) in songs, metres, and musical instruments; insomuch that in his chapel, among his private prayers he used our Lord's prayer, certain psalms of David, with divers hymns and canticles, all which I have seen translated into English metre by John Lydgate, Monk of Bury." In this view we are strongly confirmed by several items of expense specified in the Pell Rolls, which record sums paid to organists and singers sent over for the use of Henry's chapel whilst he was in France; but this, being subsequent to his supposed conversion, cannot be alleged in evidence on the point at issue.[308] It only shows that his early acquired love of music never deserted him.
In this place, moreover, we cannot refrain from anticipating, what might perhaps have been reserved with equal propriety to a subsequent page, that the same dry details of the Pell Rolls[309] enable us to infer with satisfaction that Henry made his love of minstrelsy contribute to the gratification of himself and the partner of his joys and cares, supplying an intimation of domestic habits and conjugal satisfaction, without which a life passed in the splendour of royalty must be irksome, and blessed with which the cottage of the poor man possesses the most enviable treasure. Whether in their home at Windsor, or during their happy progress through England in the halls of York and Chester, or in the tented ground on the banks of the Seine before Melun, our imagination has solid foundation to build upon when we picture to ourselves Henry and his beloved princess passing innocently and happily, in minstrelsy and song, some of the hours spared from the appeals of justice, the exigencies of the state, or the marshalling of the battle-field.
But that Henry had also imbibed a real love of literature, and valued it highly, we possess evidence which well deserves attention. He was so much enamoured of the "Tale of Troy divine," that he directed John Lydgate, Monk of Bury St. Edmund's, to translate two poems, "The Death of Hector," and "The Fall of Troy," into English verse, that his own countrymen might not be behind the rest of Europe in their knowledge of the works of antiquity. The testimony borne by this author to the character of Henry for perseverance and stedfastness of purpose; for sound practical wisdom, and, at the same time, for a ready and ardent desire of the counsel of the wise; for mercy mingled with high and princely resolve and love of justice; for all those qualities which can adorn a Christian prince,—is so full in itself, and so direct, and (if honest) is so conclusive, that any memoirs of Henry's life and character would be culpably defective which should exclude it. The circumstance, also, of that testimony being couched in the vernacular language of the times, affords another point of interest to the English antiquary. Sometimes, indeed, we cannot help suspecting that the poem has undergone some verbal and grammatical alterations in the course of the four centuries which have elapsed since it was penned; but that circumstance does not affect its credibility.