Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 / Or, Memoirs of the Life and Character of Henry the Fifth, as Prince of Wales and King of England

by James Endell Tyler

Here we would have drawn the curtain round the bed of Henry of Monmouth; but truth and justice compel us to tarry somewhat longer in the chamber of death. The tongue and pen of calumny have not suffered the dying hero to pour out his soul with his last breath in prayer and pious ejaculations unmolested; and the accuser's name is too widely known, and has unhappily gained too much influence in the world, for his calumnies to be passed over as harmless. Henry, having "set his house in order," and being certified how short a time he had to live, declares, on the faith of a dying man, that he had been fully resolved (had the Almighty granted him length of days to put his resolve into effect) to proceed in person to the Holy Land, and rescue the city of God from the pollutions and abominations of the infidels. In recording this declaration of the expiring monarch, Hume adds a comment as full of bitter sarcasm as it is tinctured with his characteristic spirit of scepticism. "So ingenious are men in deceiving themselves, that Henry forgot in these moments all the blood spilt by his ambition, and received comfort from this late and feeble resolve; which, as the mode of those enterprises was now past, he certainly would never have carried into execution." Had Hume been as faithful and painstaking in the search of truth, as he was ready to adopt the account of any transaction which was nearest at hand, and unscrupulous in substituting his own hasty remarks in the place of well-weighed reflections on ascertained facts, he never would have suffered so ignorant and ill-founded a comment to disgrace his pages. Hume[238] charges Henry with having left the world, forgetful of the bloodguiltiness by which his soul was stained, and with a sentence of hypocrisy and falsehood on his lips. To the first charge,—that Henry, at the awful moment of his dissolution, deceived himself into a forgetfulness "of all the blood spilt by his ambition,"—needs only to be replied, that so far from his having forgotten the loss of human life attendant upon his wars, the very page on which the historian is so severely commenting, records that Henry spoke of that subject openly and unreservedly to those who stood around his bed, expressing his sure trust that the guilt of that blood did not stain his soul, who sought only his just inheritance; but rested on the heads of those who, by their obstinate perseverance in injustice, compelled him to appeal to the God of battle in vindication of his own rights.

Again, Henry declares, on the faith of a dying Christian Prince, that it had verily been his fixed resolution, as soon as his wars in France had been brought to a favourable issue, to proceed to the Holy Land. Hume says that this was a late and feeble resolve; and the ground on which he rests this charge of falsehood is, that the mode of those enterprises was then past. Hume ought to have known, as an ordinary historian, that the mode of those enterprises was not then past; and Hume might have known that Henry's was not a death-bed resolve, to which the expiring self-deceiver clung for comfort when the world was receding from his sight; but that in his health and strength, and in the mid-career of his victories, he had actually taken preliminary measures for facilitating the execution of that very design.

With regard to the first position asserted by Hume, that "the mode of these enterprises was gone by," the facts of history are so far from authorizing him to make such an assertion, that they combine to expose its rashness and unsoundness. When Henry succeeded to the throne, he found a large naval and military force actually prepared by his father for the proclaimed purpose of executing such an enterprise, the undertaking of which was only prevented by his death.[239] And even a century after, the mode of those enterprises had not yet passed; for Pope Leo X. successfully negociated a league between the chief powers of Christendom, engaging them to unite against the infidel dominion of the Turk. Not only were such crusades subjects of serious and practical consideration in Europe just before Henry's accession to the throne, and a full century after it, but, during the last years of Henry's life, most vigorous and persevering exertions were made by the Sovereign Pontiff to effect an immediate expedition of the confederated powers of Christendom to Palestine, with the avowed purpose of crushing the power of the infidels. The histories of those times bear varied evidence to the same points: we must here, however, confine our attention to some facts more immediately connected with the case before us. In the year 1420,[240] July 12, Pope Martin V, conceiving that Sigismund would very shortly bring the war which he was then waging against the Hussites in Bohemia to an end, in a bull dated Florence calls upon all Kings, Prelates, Lords, and people, adjuring them most solemnly, by the shedding of Christ's blood, to join Sigismund, and under his standard to invade the lands of the Turks, and to exterminate them. He urges the formation of one grand general army, and for all true men to take the cross; with his apostolic promise to all who should so assume the cross, and join the army in their own persons and at their own charges, and also to all who should take up arms with the bonâ fide intention of joining the army, should they die on their journey, a full remission of all sins of which they should have repented from the heart, and confessed with the mouth; and, "in the retribution of the just, we promise them (says the Pontiff) an increase of eternal salvation."[241]

In the following year the Pope wrote a most urgent letter to Sigismund, pressing upon him, before and above all things, the duty of extirpating the heresy in Bohemia; assuring him that, however brilliant might be his career in other respects, yet by no means could he so well secure the favour of God, renown among men, and the stability of his throne. The Pontiff, in the same year, wrote repeatedly to Henry, King of England, urging him to consent to terms of peace between his country and France. We should have been glad had we been able to contemplate the Pontiff of Rome, in the character of a Christian mediator, urging two contending nations to be reconciled, solely with the Christian desire of stopping the dominion of war and blood, reconciling those who were at variance, checking the violent passions of mankind, and restoring to Europe the blessing of peace. But his desire was to reconcile France and England, in order that the concentrated powers of the faithful in Europe might be turned against the heretics in the north; and, when they were exterminated, then that the same forces might proceed to crush the infidel, and rescue the lands of the faithful from his grasp. The ecclesiastical historian,[242] who records the letters of the Sovereign Pontiff, assures us that Henry, King of England, had been repeatedly admonished by "the vicar of Christ to make peace with the French, and to dedicate to Christ his skill in war against the Turks, those savage enemies of the Gospel; adding (what the facts of the case did not justify him in saying,) that, in the agonies of his last illness, Henry confessed that he was dreadfully tormented with remorse because he had not consecrated his martial powers by waging war against the Mahometans."[243] Surely this testimony is of itself sufficient to rescue Henry's memory from having vowed that he had resolved to do what he knew he never could have done. "The mode of those enterprises was" not "past."

But Hume would have it believed that this was a late and feeble resolve of Henry, formed on his death-bed, when he was acting the part of a self-deceiver, forgetful of the lamentable effects of his ambition, and seeking comfort from his self-deception in the last moments of his life. There is strong and clear evidence that he not only had contemplated such a measure, but had actually taken important preliminary steps to facilitate the execution of his design, whenever he might be happily released from his present engagements. "This vindicatory evidence" (to use the words of Mr. Granville Penn)[244] "of the veracity and sincerity of Henry, is a manuscript discovered at Lille, in Flanders, in the autumn of 1819, which proves to positive demonstration, that at the moment when Henry was suddenly arrested in his victorious progress by the hand of death, his mind was actually, though secretly, engaged in projecting an attack on the infidel power in Egypt and Syria, as soon as he should have pacified the internal agitations of France; and that a confidential military agent of high character and distinguished rank had been despatched by him to survey the maritime frontier of those two countries, and to procure, upon the spot, the information necessary towards embarking in so vast an enterprise.

"The manuscript is a small quarto in vellum, in old French, finely written in black character, and richly illuminated; consisting of fifty-four pages, and comprising a succinct military survey of the coasts and defences of Egypt and Syria, from Alexandria round to Gallipoli, made by the command of Henry within the three last years of his life, and completed and reported immediately after his unexpected death, by which death it was rendered unavailing. The confidential author of this survey was Gilbert de Lannoi, counsellor and chamberlain to Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, and that Duke's ambassador to Henry."

The same writer thus expresses himself in conclusion. "His declaration was not the prompting of a sickly conscience striving to procure delusive comfort from 'the late and feeble' resolves of a death-bed, as Hume unworthily asserts; it was the composed and deliberate communication of a dying captain and sovereign, disclosing to those around him, under a strong sentiment of devotion, a secret of that kingly office which he was then on the point of relinquishing for ever. To enter upon an appreciation of the moral value of the enterprise which Henry had then in prospect, would be as much out of place here, as it would be absurd to estimate it by the rule of the present age. In those ages, when all the higher orders of society were either clerical or martial, much real piety of sentiment must, in innumerable instances, have been compounded with the widely-extended romantic spirit which was ardent to hazard life on sacred ground of Judea, rather than to suffer the continuance of its profanation by the avowed enemy of the Christian name.

"The establishment of this point, certifying, as it does an interesting fact hitherto unknown, and effectually repelling and exposing an unjustifiable sarcasm directed against one of the most illustrious princes that have graced the English crown, may acquire in the history of truth the importance to which it might not be able to lay claim in the political history of a people."[245]

In dismissing the immediate subject of this inquiry, the Author of these Memoirs feels himself under the painful necessity of recording his deliberate judgment on the inaccuracies of that celebrated writer, whose reflections upon Henry's dying declaration have been animadverted upon here. Through the whole series of years to the events of which these Memoirs are chiefly limited, he has been able to find very few transactions in recording or commenting upon which Hume has not been guilty of error; whilst the mistakes into which he has fallen (some more, some less, gravely affecting the character of an historian,) are generally such as an examination of the best evidence, conducted with ordinary care, would have enabled him successfully to avoid. Hume, unfortunately, supplied himself without stint from the stream after it had mingled with many turbid and discolouring waters. To draw, in each case of doubt and difficulty, from the well-head of historical truth, would have exacted more time and labour than he was ready to bestow. Had he prescribed to himself a system of research the very opposite to that in which he unhappily indulged, instead of representing Henry of Monmouth to have left the world with the falsehood of a self-deceiver on his tongue, he would have been compelled to record him as a man of piety, mercy, and truth.