Several contemporary writers, as well as general tradition, state that, on occasion of one of the various embassies sent to and fro between the courts of London and Paris, the Dauphin, then about eighteen or nineteen years of age, sent an insulting present to Henry of a tun of tennis-balls, with a message full of contempt and scorn,[84] implying that a racket-court was a more fit place for him than a battle-field. It is well observed, that such an act of wilful provocation must have convinced both parties of the hopelessness of any attempts towards a pacific arrangement; and, since the negociations were carried on to the very last, some discredit has thence been attempted to be thrown on the story altogether. But it must be remembered (as the author of the Abrégé Historique justly remarks) that these negociations were continued, on the part of France, merely to gain time, and withdraw Henry from his purpose; whilst Henry, on the other side, by his renewed proposals for the hand of Katharine, (an union on which he appears from the first to have been heartily bent,) kept up in his enemies the hope that, to gain that object, he would ultimately relax from many of his original demands. Henry certainly afterwards challenged the Dauphin to single combat, as though he had a quarrel with him personally; and nothing can fairly be inferred against the truth of the tradition, from the silence in the challenge on the point of such an insult having been offered. On the whole, the evidence is decidedly in favour of the reality of the incident; whilst Henry's reported answer is very characteristic: "I will thank the Dauphin in person, and will carry him such tennis-balls as shall rattle his hall's roof about his ears." And they, says the contemporary chronicler,[85] were great gunstones for the Dauphin to play withal.
Anxious to proceed in our narrative without further allusion to such sweeping and unsupported charges, we must, nevertheless, here introduce (though reluctantly) the remarks which have been suffered to fall from the same pen, as its chief comment on the closing words of Henry's last Will, made at this time.[86] He signed that document at Southampton, July 24th, just three days after discovering the conspiracy of which we must soon speak. Probably a sense of the uncertainty of life, and the necessity of setting his house in order without delay, were impressed deeply upon him by that unhappy event. He felt not only that he had embarked in an enterprise the result of which was doubtful, in which at all events he must expose his life to numberless unforeseen perils; but that the thread of his mortal existence might at a moment be cut asunder by the hands of the very men to whom he looked for protection and victory. Compared with the wills of other princes and nobles of that day, there is nothing very remarkable in Henry's. From first to last it is tinctured with the superstitions of the corrupt form of our holy religion, then over-spreading England.[87]
The subscription to this testament is couched in these words: "This is my last Will subscribed with my own hand. R.H. Jesu Mercy and Gramercy Ladie Mary Help:" and on these words the same author makes this observation: "According to all the biographers of Henry, extraordinary piety was a leading trait in his character, from which feeling the addition to his Will appears to have arisen. It seems indeed difficult to reconcile the lawless ambition, much less the hypocrisy,[88] which Henry displayed in his negociations, with an obedience to the genuine dictates of Christianity; but as he rigidly observed every rite of the church, was bountiful towards its members, and uniformly ascribed success to the Almighty, it is not surprising that his contemporaries should have described him as eminently pious."
On this passage the biographer of Henry had rather that his readers should form their own comment, than that he should express the sentiments which he cannot but entertain: he invites, however, the lover of truth to compare this charge of lawless ambition and hypocrisy with the actual conduct of Henry at this very time.
Whilst resident in the Abbey of Tichfield,[89] about ten miles from Southampton, he despatched to the Council of Constance, addressing himself chiefly to the Emperor Sigismund and the other princes assembled there, copies of the treaties between Henry IV. and the French court relative to the restoration of Aquitain to the English crown; remarking upon the wrong that was done to him by the gross violation of those treaties. This shows at all events that he was not conscious of being actuated by lawless ambition, or of acting the part of a hypocrite; it proves that he was desirous of having the merits of his quarrel with France examined and understood: and he seems to have felt an assurance that those who made themselves acquainted with the real grounds of his intended invasion would pronounce his quarrel to be just. Otherwise he would scarcely have gone out of his way to draw the eyes of assembled Europe, (not to the boldness of an enterprise, nor to the splendour of conquests, but) to a calm investigation of the righteousness of his cause.[90]
The words of his chaplain in recording this measure of Henry deserve a place here. Indeed, every page of contemporary history proves that the King himself had no misgivings as to the uprightness and justice of his cause, and was ready to refer the whole to the judgment of Christendom. "The King caused transcripts of all treaties to be forwarded to the general council, to the Emperor Sigismund and other Catholic princes, to the intent that all Christendom might know how great injuries the duplicity of the French had inflicted upon him, and that he was, reluctantly and against his will, compelled, as it were, to raise his standard against the rebels."[91]
Nor can we here omit to observe, (though it be anticipating what must hereafter be again referred to in the course of the history,) that the behaviour of the Emperor, when, in the spring of the following year, he made a personal voyage to England on purpose to visit Henry, and the solemn declaration of the Duke of Burgundy, (of whose sincerity, however, no one can speak without hesitation,) "that he had at first thought Henry unjust in his demands, but was at length convinced of their justice," show that in the estimation of contemporaries, and those neither churchmen nor his own subjects, who may be suspected of partiality, Henry's character deserved better than to be stamped with the imputation of "lawless ambition and hypocrisy." It is very easy for any one to charge a fellow-creature with immoral and unchristian motives; and it may carry with it the appearance of honest indignation, and of an heroic love of virtue, religion, and truth, when one can tear off the veil of conquest and martial glory from the individual, and expose his naked faults to pity, or contempt, or hatred. But a good judge, in forming his own estimate of the motives which may have given birth to acts which fall under his cognizance, or in guiding others to return a righteous verdict, will not consider the most ready method of solving a difficulty to be always the safest. Take for granted that Henry's conduct towards France is intelligible on the ground of lawless ambition and gross hypocrisy, (though there is no proof of either,) it is equally, at least, intelligible on the supposition of his full and undoubting conviction of his right to all he claimed. And just as open would any individual plaintiff be to the charge of hypocrisy, who, after having insisted upon his full rights, and given notice of trial, and collected his witnesses, should, on the very eve of the issue being tried, write to the defendant, urging him to yield, and avoid the expense and irritation of a protracted law-suit, offering at the same time a remission of some portion of his claim,—as Henry is in fairness chargeable with hypocrisy because he wrote to his "adversary of France," urging him to yield, and avoid the effusion of blood. On the very eve of his departure for the shores of Normandy, many facts and circumstances assure us that Henry acted under a full persuasion that he demanded of France only what was in strict justice his due when he laid claim to those territories and honours which had been so long withheld from the Kings of England, his predecessors. Facts are decidedly against the charge of hypocrisy; but, even were the facts doubtful, his general character for honesty, and openness, and manly straightforward dealing, (to which history bears abundant evidence,) would make the scale of justice preponderate in his favour.
In dismissing this subject, parallel with these modern accusations of Henry on the ground of "cajoling hypocrisy" we may lay the testimony borne by his contemporary, Walsingham,[92] to the unsuspecting simplicity of his mind, which exposed him to the overreaching designs of the unprincipled and crafty. In his Ypodigma Neustriæ, a work expressly written for the use and profit of Henry, and with a view of putting him upon his guard against the intrigues of foreign courts, he refers to his "innocence liable to be circumvented, and his noble character likely to be deceived, by the cunning craftiness and hypocritical fraud and false promises of his enemies."