To this appeal the authorities of the city paid immediate and hearty attention, and forwarded to Henry an answer under their common seal on the 8th of September, (the Nativity of our Lady, the blissful maid,) of which the following is a copy. A memorandum in Latin informs us that the clause within brackets was for different causes kept back, and not sent with the letters. The letter is a curious specimen of the flattering and complimentary style of the good citizens of London when addressing their sovereign.
"Our most dread, most sovereign Lord, and noblest King, to the sovereign highness of your kingly majesty, with all manner of lowness and reverence, meekly we recommend us, not only as we ought and should, but as we best can and may; with all our hearts, thanking your sovereign excellence of your gracious letters in making [us] gladsome in understanding, and passing comfortable in favouring our poor degrees, which ye liked late to send us from your host afore the city of Rouen. In which letters, after declaration of your most noble intent for the refreshing of your host, ye record so highly the readiness of our will and power at all times to your pleasance, and thanking us thereof so heartily, that truly, save only our prayer to Him that all good quiteth [requiteth], never was it nor might it half be deserved. And after seeing in your foresaid gracious letters ye pray us effectually to enarme as many small vessels as we may with victual, and specially with drink, for to come as far as they may in the river Seyne. And not only this, but in the conclusion of your sovereign letters foresaid, ye fed us so bounteously with the best showing of your good lordship to us in time coming as ye have ever done, that now and ever we shall be the joyfuller in this life when we remember us on so noble a grace. [O how may the simpless of poor lieges better or more clearly conceive the gracious love and favourable tendress of the King, their sovereign Lord, than to hear how your most excellent and noble person, more worth to us than all worldly riches or plenty, in so thin abundance of victual heavily disposed, so graciously and goodly declare and utter unto us, that are your liege men and subjects, your plain lust and pleasance, as it is in your said noble letters worthily contained. Certain, true liege man is there none, ne faithful subject could there non ne durst tarry or be lachesse [backward] in any wise to the effectual prayer and commandment of so sovereign and high a lord, which his noble body paineth and knightly adventureth for the right and welfare of us.] Our most dread, most sovereign Lord, and noblest King, may it please your sovereign highness to understand, how that your foresaid kingly prayer, as most strait charge and commandment, we willing in all points obey and execute anon, from the receipt of your said gracious letter, which was the 19th day of August nigh noon, unto the making of these simple letters. What in getting and enarming of as many small vessels as we might, doing brew both ale and beer, purveying wine and other victual, for to charge with the same vessels, we have done our busy diligence and care, as God wot. In which vessels, without [besides] great plenty of other victuals, that men of your city of London aventuren for refreshing of your host to the coasts where your sovereign presence is in, we lowly send with gladdest will unto your sovereign excellence and kingly majesty by John Credy and John Combe, your officers of your said city, bringers of these letters, tritty botes [thirty butts] of sweet wine, that is to say, ten of Tyre, ten of Romeney, ten of Malmesey, and a thousand pipes of ale, with two thousand and five hundred cups for your host to drink of, which we beseech your high excellence and noble grace for our alder comfort and gladness benignly to receive and accept; not having reward [regard] to the little head or small value of the gift itself, which is simple; but to the good will and high desire that your poor givers thereof have to the good speed, worship, and welfare of your most sovereign and excellent person, of which speed and welfare, and all your other kingly lusts [desires] and pleasances, we desire highly by the said bearers of these letters, and other whom your sovereign highness shall like, fully to be learned and informed. Our most dread, most sovereign Lord, and noblest King, we lowly beseech the King of Heaven, whose body refused not for our salvation worldly pain guiltless to endure, that ye, your gracious person, which for our alder good and profit so knightly laboureth, little or nought charging bodily ease, in all worship and honour evermore to keep and preserve.—Written at Gravesend, under the seal of Mayoralty of your said city of London, on the day of the Nativity of our Lady, the blissful maid.
"To the King, our most dread and most sovereign Lord."
After every deduction is made from this singular epistle on the ground of flattery and words of course, it proves that in expression, at least, the Mayor and good citizens of London not only heartily seconded Henry in his present undertakings, but identified his cause with their own, and regarded him as fighting their battles, and exposing himself to the dangers and privations of war in vindication of their own rights; and probably we are fully justified in regarding their sentiments as fairly representing the prevalent feelings of the people of England. There were, doubtless, many exceptions, as there ever must be in such a case, to the general unanimity; and we are not without evidence that, during this siege of Rouen, Henry's proceedings were commented upon unfavourably by some of his subjects at home.[173]
During this siege negociations were set on foot by the Dauphin for an alliance with Henry, who seemed to enter into the views of the ambassadors heartily;[174] but at the same time similar negociations were carried on between Henry and the King of France. In the management of these a curious dispute arose as to the language in which the conference should be carried on: the French required that their own should be the medium of communication; the English remonstrating, and requiring the Latin to be employed, that the Pope and other potentates might understand their proceedings. It was proposed that all writings should be in duplicate, one copy in French, the other in Latin; but Henry insisted that his ambassadors should sign only an English or a Latin copy. During these negociations the French ambassadors presented to the King the portrait of the Princess Katharine,[175] which he received with great satisfaction. The treaty, however, was broken off, and the Cardinal Des Ursins returned to Pope Martin at Avignon. It is painful to read the account of the siege of Rouen; misery in all its shapes is painted there.[176] Indeed, if the accounts we have received be true, so complicated a tale of wretchedness is scarcely upon record. But the details can give no satisfaction; they would only harrow up the feelings, without supplying any facts essential to the history of those months of human suffering. Henry was resolved neither to burn the town, nor to take it by storm; but to reduce it by starvation. At length his feelings overpowered this resolution, and he received the town upon conditions, on the 19th January 1419.[177] Thus was Rouen subdued to the Crown of England, two hundred and fifteen years after the conquest of it by Philip of France in the reign of King John. Stowe tells us, that to relieve this oppressed city Henry ordained it to be the chief chamber of all Normandy; and directed his exchequer, his treasury, and his coinage to be kept there. We have already seen that he caused his vast treasures before kept in Harfleur to be brought to Rouen.
It is confessedly beyond the province of these Memoirs even to glance at the affairs of Ireland, except so far as a reference to them may bear upon the character and conduct of Henry of Monmouth. Not only, however, does the presence of a body of native Irish, headed by one of the regular clergy of Ireland, aiding Henry at the siege of Rouen, seem to draw our thoughts thitherward; but some documents also, relative to our sister-land, of that date, may be thought to require a few words in this place. During the reign of Richard II. the warlike movements of the native Irish, who had never been conquered or civilized, compelled that monarch to proceed to Ireland in person, and to take the field against those wild rebels. They had formerly been kept in comparative awe by a strong hand; but the continental wars of Edward III. had much slackened the wonted vigilance and activity of his government at home in checking their outbreakings against the English settlers. They had, consequently, grown bold, and threatened to extirpate the English altogether. Vigorous measures became necessary, and the King twice headed an army himself to restore peace. On his first visit he was summoned home by the prelates, to put down the spreading sect of the Lollards; in his second, his delay, after the landing of Bolinbroke at Ravenspurg, cost him his crown. In this latter expedition Henry of Monmouth (as we have seen) accompanied him, and had personal experience of the uncivilized state of the country, and the savage character of the warfare carried on by the inhabitants. It is curious to remark, that on several occasions Richard II. employed the Irish prelates as his ambassadors to Rome, "for the safe estate and prosperity of the most holy English church." The fact, however, is too evident, that all Irish dignities were bestowed on Englishmen; and except by some assumed privilege of the Pope, or by other proceedings equally unacceptable to the English settlers, no native Irishman was ever in those times advanced to any high station in the church, or even promoted to an ordinary benefice. Indeed the law forbade such promotions.
On the principle observed throughout these Memoirs, of avoiding all reference to the political struggles and controversies of the passing hour, the Author will make no reflections on the past, the present, or the future policy of England towards a country whose destinies seem so indissolubly bound up with her own. He humbly prays that HE, who says to the tempest "Peace, be still!" and is obeyed, may so guide and govern the religious and moral storms by which our age is shaken on the subject of Ireland, that in His own good time the troubled elements may be calmed; and that truth, peace, and charity may prevail, and bless both countries, then at length become like "a city that is at unity in itself."
By most of those who take a wide and comprehensive range of its history, the dissensions which have distracted Ireland, and from time to time torn it in pieces, and caused it to flow with the blood of its neighbours and of its own children, will probably be ascribed, not more to the difference of religion among its inhabitants, than to the difference of origin. The struggles have been, not more between Protestants and Romanists, not more between Catholics of the church of England and Ireland, and Catholics in communion with the sovereign pontiff, than between English and Irish, between those who have regarded themselves as the aboriginal sons of the soil, and those of Saxon or Norman descent, whom they have hated and abhorred as intruders and invaders. The conflicts between these classes in Ireland, as they may be traced in its chronicles, were just as dreadful and as sanguinary before the Reformation, as ever they have been since the separation of the reformed church from the see of Rome. At all events, whatever may be the nature of the unhappy causes of disunion in the present day, till within comparatively modern times the struggles have been not more of a religious than of a national, or perhaps of a predial, character. Authentic history teems with evidence bearing directly on this point; and even the original documents, references to which are interspersed through this volume, are quite sufficient to establish it.
Among other documents confirmatory of the view here taken, which it would be beyond the province of these Memoirs to recite, the statute of 4 Hen. V. (1416), referring as it does to similar enactments of previous reigns, and strongly expressive of the bitter jealousies which existed between the two nations, seems to claim a place here.
"Whereas it was ordained in the times of the progenitors of our Lord the King, by statute made in the land of Ireland, that no one of the Irish nation be elected archbishop, bishop, abbot, prior, nor in any manner be received or accepted to any dignity or benefice within the said land; and whereas many such Irish, by the power of certain letters of licence to them made by the Lieutenants of the King there to accept and receive such dignities and benefices, are promoted and advanced to archbishoprics and bishoprics within the said land, who also have made their collations to Irish clerks of dignities and benefices there, contrary to the form and effect of the said statute; and consequently, since they are peers of parliament in that land, they bring with them to the parliaments and councils held in that land servants by whom the secrets of the English in that land have been and are from day to day discovered to the Irish people who are rebels against the King, to the great peril and mischief of the King's loyal subjects in that land: our said Lord the King, willing to provide remedy for his faithful subjects, with the consent of the Lords, and at the request of the Commons, wills and grants that the said statute shall be in full force, and be well and duly guarded, and fully executed, on pain of his grievous indignation."