Having now established the government of France, and provided for its maintenance during his absence, Henry proceeded with his royal bride towards England. In Normandy he was well received by the estates, who were assembled at Rouen, and who voted him a subsidy of 400,000 livres. On leaving this place, he constituted the Duke of Clarence his Lieutenant of Normandy, and gave commission to the Duke of Exeter to administer the government in Paris.[211] With his Queen and the Duke of Bedford he reached his native land in safety on the last day of January, or the first of February 1421; and he immediately communicated to the Archbishop his wish for him to appoint a day of public thanksgiving.[212]
CHAPTER XXVIII.
katharine crowned. — henry and his queen make a progress through a great part of his dominions. — arrival of the disastrous news of his brother's death (the duke of clarence). — henry meets his parliament. — hastens to the seat of war. — birth of his son, henry of windsor. — joins his queen at bois de vincennes. — their magnificent reception at paris. — henry hastens in person to succour the duke of burgundy. — is seized by a fatal malady. — returns to vincennes. — his last hour. — his death.
1421-1422.
Henry, now in the enjoyment of peace in England, Ireland, and France, (except only so far as the Dauphin was yet unsubdued,) in the enjoyment, too, of a union with the most beautiful Princess of the age, seems to have reached the highest pinnacle of his ambition and his hopes. The Queen was crowned with great solemnity and magnificence in Westminster Abbey,[213] on the third Sunday in Lent. (23rd February 1421.)
After Henry had gratified his royal consort by proving to her how deep and lively an interest the people of England took in her welfare and happiness, he retired with her for a time to Windsor. A combination, however, of various motives, induced him to propose to her to join him in the execution of a design on which he seems to have been bent, and to accompany him[214] in a progress through the kingdom. He was most anxious to ascertain by personal inspection the state and condition of his subjects in various parts of the realm; more especially with the view of satisfying himself that justice was impartially administered, crimes repressed, and innocence protected. He felt also naturally a desire to present his loyal subjects to his Queen, of whom we have many proofs that he was in no ordinary degree proud; and, at the same time, to add to her gratification by visiting in her society those places with which he had early associations of pleasure, or which it would be most interesting to a foreigner to see. He was also influenced, perhaps, in some measure by a desire of visiting, in a sort of pilgrimage, the shrine of the patron saint of his family, John of Bridlington; and that of John of Beverley, the saint to whose merits the hierarchy, as we have seen, so presumptuously ascribed the turn of the battle on the day of Agincourt.
With these motives,[215] combined, it may be, with others, Henry lost no time in carrying his intention into effect. He seems to have always acted under a practical sense of the maxim, never to put off till to-morrow what is to be done, and what may be done, to-day. Without waiting for the summer, or a more advanced stage of the spring,—and, had he delayed for longer days and more genial weather, the journey would never have been taken,—we conclude that, about the beginning of the second week in March, the King and Queen, attended by a large retinue of friends and nobles, began their journey northward.[216] The first place in which we are sure they rested is Coventry, which they reached probably about the 8th of March, and where they were certainly on the 15th of that month, the eve of Palm Sunday. Henry had a house at Coventry, in right of the duchy of Cornwall, called Cheylesmoor; and probably they took up their abode in that mansion during their stay at Coventry. The greater part of the time spent in Warwickshire was perhaps passed in the castle of Kenilworth, a favourite residence of his grandfather, John of Gaunt, who made very great additions to the mansion, always afterwards called the Lancaster Buildings. Henry himself, too, had been much employed in improving this place, and surrounding it with pleasure-grounds and arbours,[217] instead of the thorns and brakes which had formerly been seen there. Just seven years before this visit with his Queen, he had drained and planted the rough land near the castle; and the local historians tells us the spot was called "The Plesance in the Marsh."
From Kenilworth the royal party went (probably about the 20th of March) to their house at Leicester, where they kept the festival of Easter.[218] Easter Sunday fell that year on the 23rd of March. Could Henry have known of the sad calamity which befel him that very Easter, his rejoicings would have been turned into mourning. It was at that very time that the disastrous conflict took place, in which the English were routed, and the Duke of Clarence, whom Henry had left his representative on the Continent, was slain. Where the King was when the melancholy tidings reached him, and which induced him to cut short his progress, does not appear. We know that the joyful news of Agincourt reached London on the fourth morning after the battle; and probably the sad report of his brother's death, and of the discomfiture of his troops, was posted on to Henry whilst he was at York. Towards this, his northern capital, we conclude that he proceeded from Leicester, about the last day of March. The inhabitants of York had made most costly preparations for the reception of their royal visitors; and on their arrival they welcomed their conquering sovereign, and the partner of his joys and cares, with every demonstration of loyalty and devotedness. The most princely presents were offered to Henry in the most dutiful and cordial spirit of loving and admiring subjects. How many days they remained together amidst the festivities and rejoicings of the province of York, is not recorded; perhaps the limit to this festival was the hour when the gloom which spread over the kingdom on the death of Clarence reached the royal party. It is not improbable that the news of his loss gave a turn to Henry's mind, and induced him with sentiments of piety and mourning to leave the splendour of his court for a while, and, laying aside the feelings of the triumphant monarch, to give himself up to exercises of devotion, and to a preparation for the same awful change which had so unexpectedly stopped the career of his younger brother. Leaving his Queen among his friends and faithful lieges of York, he proceeded on a kind of pilgrimage to Bridlington, Beverley, and Lincoln;[219] but in what order he visited those places it does not appear. He was at York on the 4th of April, and again on the 18th; whilst it is equally certain that on the 15th he was at Lincoln. The author of the manuscript which tells us that his object in going to Lincoln was to be present at the installation of Richard Flemming, then lately elected Bishop, seems to be in error when he adds, that the King rejoined the Queen at Pontefract, and thence proceeded to Lincoln, and thence to London; unless, indeed, the King visited Lincoln once by himself, and once with Katharine; a supposition in the last degree improbable. He certainly returned to York after his sojourn at Lincoln on the 15th. It is very probable that, when he left York, he proceeded first to Bridlington, thence to Beverley, and so, crossing the Humber at Hull, reached Lincoln about the 13th of April, and, having passed two or three days there, returned to York on the 17th. The only other town mentioned by chroniclers is Pontefract. Documents may, perhaps, be hereafter discovered to account for him between the 18th of April, when he was certainly at York, and the 1st of May, when he had returned to Westminster. At present we are left to conjecture: but it cannot be thought improbable if we suppose that, from his castle of Pontefract, (where he would have seen the Duke of Orleans[220], then a prisoner there, whom he always treated with respect and kindness, and whom he indulged with as much relaxation of his confinement as was compatible with his safe custody,) he took the route for Chester, the place where he had formerly landed on his return from Trym Castle. Thence pointing out to his bride the country of Glyndowrdy, in which he passed his noviciate in arms; and the whole line of the Welsh borders, with which he had been long familiar, he would probably have passed on to Shrewsbury, where he might have taken Katharine to the spot in the battle-field on which Hotspur fell. From Shrewsbury, his line would be through Worcester, in which city he had often been stationed during the Welsh rebellion; and so onwards through Oxford, (a place he probably had visited on his journey northward, and where he would have been delighted to show Katharine the "narrow chamber" assigned to him when he studied there,) thus finishing his circuit where it began, at Windsor.
There are difficulties attending this supposition, to the existence of which the Author is fully alive; but in the whole affair there is only a choice of difficulties. He is aware that the journey from York through Chester and Shrewsbury to Windsor would have required the royal party to travel for fourteen days at the rate of twenty miles on the average each day consecutively. But, on the other hand, without such a supposition, the old chroniclers[221] must be altogether laid aside, (though there is no other evidence to make their statement improbable,) when they assure us that Henry took Katharine to visit his principality, as well as the distant parts of his kingdom.[222] It must, moreover, be borne in mind that although he might have felt a reluctance (notwithstanding the melancholy event which hastened his return to the capital) to break off his intended progress without visiting at least the borders of Wales, yet he was pressed for time, and would therefore not willingly lose a day on the road. Be this as it may, we are assured[223] that, wherever he went, his ears were in all places open to the complaints of the injured and oppressed; he redressed their wrongs, punished the perverters of public trusts, reformed many abuses in the local governments, and established such ordinances as should secure for the future the impartial administration of justice to high and low alike.
If, as we are led to believe, Henry returned by the way of Chester, his ardent imagination and pious turn of thought would have reverted with mingled feelings of wonder and gratitude to his journey along the same road two-and-twenty years before; when, returning from his own captivity in Ireland, he accompanied the captive Richard towards his metropolis, to resign his throne there, and soon afterwards to lay down his life. To Henry, indeed, mementos presented themselves on every side of the frailty of all sublunary possessions, the precarious tenure by which king or peasant alike holds any earthly thing; whilst he was himself destined, in the revolution of the next year, to become in his own person a marked example of the same uncertainty. His spirit might seem to address us from the grave, in the words of a reflecting man.[224] "A day, an hour, a moment is sufficient for the overthrow of dominions which are thought to be grounded on foundations of adamant."