Historians have generally represented it as an established fact that the clergy, especially the Archbishop of Canterbury, alarmed at the bold and urgent call of the Commons upon the King to seize the church patrimony, and from its proceeds apply whatever was required by the exigencies of the state, hit upon the expedient of stimulating him to claim France as his inheritance; thus withdrawing his mind from a measure so fatal to their interests. Though the evidence on which such a tradition rests is by no means satisfactory, we may perhaps receive it as probable. That the Commons were clamorous for the confiscation of the ecclesiastical revenues, and that the clergy voluntarily voted a very large subsidy to aid the King in prosecuting his alleged rights on the Continent, are matters of historical certainty. That the ecclesiastics, moreover, originally suggested to him the design of reviving his dormant claim to an inheritance in the fair realm of France, and then fostered the thought, and justified the undertaking by argument, and pledged their priestly word for the righteousness of his cause, is doubtless no unreasonable supposition. Still the clergy do not appear to have been in the least more eager in the scheme, or more anxious to protect themselves and their revenues from spoliation by such a scheme, than were the laity enthusiastically bent on a harvest of national glory and aggrandizement from its success.[64] In a word, the King himself, the nobles, and the people, all seem to have been equally determined to engage in the enterprise, and to support each other in the resolution that it was not only practicable, but most fully justifiable by the laws of God and man.
That Henry's high spirit predisposed him to listen with readiness and satisfaction to the suggestions of his subjects in this behalf, we may well believe; but that he would have been driven by a dominant ambition to engage in a war of conquest against the acknowledged principles of justice, his character, firmly established by undeniable proofs of a private as well as a public nature, forbids us to admit. It must never be forgotten that those persons who were then universally regarded as the best and safest interpreters of law, human and divine, assured him, on his solemn appeal to them for their judgment,[65] that the cause in which he was embarking was just; and, as many incidents in the sequel establish, he did embark in it without any doubts or misgivings, without the slightest scruple of conscience; on the contrary, with a full confidence in the entire righteousness of his cause, and a most unbounded reliance on the arm of the God of Justice for success.
The facts which laid the groundwork for his enterprising spirit to build upon are very interesting; and, though they may perhaps belong rather to general history than to Memoirs of Henry of Monmouth, yet a brief review of them might seem altogether indispensable in this place.
"The preference given by the States-General to Philip of Valois above Edward III, when he laid claim to the crown of France, led to that disastrous war, the prominent incidents of which are familiar to every one at all acquainted with the history of that time. Edward gained a naval victory over the French, and conquered Philip at Cressy, and possessed himself of Calais, which gave him an entrance into France at all times. After some interval, Edward the Black Prince, his son, gained the famous battle of Poictiers; where King John, son and successor of Philip of Valois, was taken prisoner. Whilst that monarch was a captive in England, Edward entered France at the head of one hundred thousand men, and marched to the very gates of Paris. This successful invasion led to the treaty of Bretigny. By the terms of that peace, Edward recovered all those ancient dependencies of Guienne which had been wrested from his ancestors. These provinces had fallen to the Kings of England by the marriage of Eleanor, heiress of Guienne, with Henry II; but, from the time of John (Lackland) and Henry III, Philip Augustus and St. Lewis, Kings of France, had so shorn that vast territory, that nothing remained to England except Bourdeaux, Bayonne, and Gascony. Besides, by the same treaty, Edward secured Montreuil and Ponthieu, Calais and Guienne; and all these possessions were ceded to him in full sovereignty without any suit or homage due to France. Finally, he stipulated for the sum of three millions of golden crowns as the ransom of King John. On his side, he consented to forego all right and claim which he might have on the crown of France. Especially he renounced all title to Normandy and other places, which were said to be the heritage of his ancestors, and to all the sovereignty of Brittany. This treaty was solemnly executed by King John, and observed during his life, except as to the ransom, two-thirds of which remained undischarged at his death. But Charles V, his son and successor, finding this peace very disadvantageous to France, though he had himself been a party to it, and had sworn to observe its conditions, broke it on very frivolous grounds. He declared war against Edward, and in a very few years recovered all that had been ceded to England by the treaty of Bretigny, except Calais, Bayonne, Bourdeaux, and part of Guienne. This second war was interrupted by a truce, which continued till the death of Edward III. in 1377. During the reign of Richard II, and the remainder of Charles V.'s life, and the first years of Charles VI, war and peace followed each other in mutual succession, without any important or decided advantage on either side. At last, Richard II. and Charles VI. concluded a truce for twenty-eight years, which was ratified by the marriage of Richard with Isabel, Charles's daughter. From the deposition of Richard to the death of Henry IV, notwithstanding frequent violations of the truce, both sides maintained that it still subsisted. Such was the state of the two crowns when Henry of Monmouth mounted the throne. France having broken the peace of Bretigny, and maintaining that the treaty was void, evidently the Kings of England were reinstated in all their rights which they had before that peace. On this principle, immediately after the disclaimer of that peace on the part of France, Edward III. resumed the title of King of France, which he had laid aside; and his successors assumed it also. Since the commencement of the war which followed the treaty of Bretigny there never had been peace between the two crowns, but only truces, which do not affect the rights of the parties. It is evident, therefore, that, when he ascended the throne, Henry V. found himself under precisely the same circumstances in point of right in which his great grandfather, Edward III, was eighty years before, when he commenced the first war. Besides this, Henry had to allege a solemn treaty, which, after it had been unequivocally acted upon, France broke on a most trifling pretext."
Such is the representation made by the author of the Abrégé Historique[66] of the affairs of England; and the Author is desirous of transferring into his pages this clear and candid statement the rather because it is written by a foreigner, who seems to have viewed the transaction with enlightened and unprejudiced eyes.
More modern writers, indeed, would teach us to deem it "unnecessary for them to comment on the absurdity of Henry's claim to the French crown in right of his descent from Isabella wife of Edward II. For futile as her son Edward's (III.) pretensions were, Henry's were still less reasonable, as the Earl of March was in 1415 the heir of those persons."[67]
The fact on which this reasoning rests is undoubtedly true, and yet considerations connected with that claim require to be entertained, and weighed without haste and without prejudice; and the truth itself warns us not to dismiss the point so summarily. Henry (it must never be forgotten) had been bred up in the belief that Richard II. had in the most full and unreserved manner, by his act of resignation, yielded all his rights into the hands of the people of England, and that those rights had been as fully and unreservedly conferred by the nation on Henry's father. Whatever rights, moreover, the Earl of March possessed as lineal heir to the crown, he had, as far as his own personal interest was concerned, over and over again, not merely by a passive acquiescence, but by repeated voluntary acts, virtually resigned, and made over to Henry as actual King; and, lastly, it is clear that Henry's claim was always by himself and by the nation rested on the ground of his being King of England, and, ipso facto, as such, heir of all his predecessors Kings of England.
On these grounds, and with such an opening offered to his ardent mind by the distracted state of the realm of France, Henry resolved to prefer his claim; negociating first for its amicable concession, and, if unsuccessful in negociation, then pursuing it in the field of battle. This appears to have been his determination from the first; but from the first he seems also to have contemplated the probability of failure by treaty; for, from the first intimation of his designs, he and his subjects were steadily engaged in making every preparation[68] for a vigorous invasion of France.
In this part of our treatise a brief outline is required of the proceedings between the resolution first taken by Henry, and his appearance in arms on French land; nor can we satisfactorily pass on without taking a succinct view of the internal state of that kingdom at the time of Henry's original claim and subsequent invasion.