The last moments of Henry V., and his instructions to those who gathered round his bedside, are important for their bearing on the arrangements for the government of the country during the minority of his son. Considerable doubt has been cast on the details of the arrangements which Henry decreed from his death-bed, but with no great reason, for the chroniclers are almost unanimous in their assertions. The Dukes of Bedford and Exeter with other lords were gathered round the dying King, who reasserted his right to the crown of France, and urged them to fight to the end in defence of those righteous claims which were now to pass to his son, commanding them to keep the Duke of Orleans a prisoner in England till the future King should be of age. He then described his wishes for the government of the inheritance. Bedford was to be Regent of the kingdom of France and the Duchy of Normandy; Gloucester was to be Regent in England, and no qualification of the latter’s power was so much as suggested. There is less unanimity amongst the chroniclers as to the personal guardians appointed for the young King, but Exeter, Warwick, and the Bishop of Winchester were all probably mentioned. With the prophetic instinct of approaching death Henry besought his hearers to give no cause of offence to the Duke of Burgundy, and to repeat this warning to Gloucester.[411]
Having delivered his last injunctions to those who stood by, Henry’s strength rapidly failed, but after a period of quiet he rose up in agony, and with the words ‘Thou liest, thou liest, my portion is with Jesus Christ,’ the pride of England and the scourge of France passed away to a Tribunal where men’s actions are judged by their motives and not by the professions of their mouth. It seemed, so says the chronicler, as though in his last moments he fought with evil spirits;[412] certainly for many years to come England’s portion was to be with the evil spirits of faction and disaster, spirits which might have been powerless to do harm, had Henry V. adopted the course of true patriotism, and not ‘busied restless minds with foreign quarrels.’
A fresh page of history begins with the death of Henry V., and new personalities appear in the forefront of politics. The character of the young King Henry VI. is a negligible quantity, for he was only nine months old: ‘Vae cujus terræ rex puer est,’ quotes Walsingham,[413] and indeed it was mainly the youth of the King which gave such a character to his reign, as to fully justify Hall’s description thereof; it was in very truth to be ‘the troubleous season of Kyng Henry the Sixt.’[414] Three men stand out as the chief actors in the first period of the reign—the two next heirs to the throne, Bedford and Gloucester, and the Bishop of Winchester, head of the semi-legitimatised family of Beaufort.
1422] BEAUFORT AND BEDFORD
Of this Henry Beaufort, who was henceforth to play an important part in the story of Humphrey’s life, we must take some notice, for he has not hitherto come across our path. As the legitimatised son of a royal prince, his birth had taught him to push himself forward. A man of great ability, he soon made himself a power that must be reckoned with, and as Chancellor he had influenced the policy of the kingdom as early as 1404. Till now he had had no commanding position such as the minority of Henry VI. promised him; the field of his ambitions was now enlarged, and if we cannot say that he was ‘one of the pillars of the house of Lancaster,’[415] his importance must not be minimised. As a man he was unscrupulous, imperious, and impatient of control; as an ecclesiastic, he was more ostentatious than clerical. Even as Baldassare Cossa had exchanged the life of an Italian condottiere for the papal chair, so was Beaufort ever ready for an excuse to exchange the mitre for the helmet. The future was to find him the belated exponent of a wise foreign policy, and money-lender in chief to the dynasty; but we cannot fail to see in him much of that factious spirit which produced the Wars of the Roses. Such a man, of royal blood yet outside the succession, was no reassuring element for those who weighed the chances of a successful reign for Henry VI. Of quite another stamp was John, Duke of Bedford. Far above all his contemporaries did he stand out in greatness of character and statesmanship. He had none of the charm and personal magnetism which gilded the career of his royal brother in the eyes of contemporaries, but he had all the more solid qualities which stand for greatness without glamour. A wise and careful, if not brilliant, general he was to show himself; a level-headed administrator he had already proved to be during the long absences of Henry V. His death was to remove the only obstacle to French victory, and the only element of strength which the House of Lancaster possessed. With a strong affinity to Henry V. in some qualities, he despised that politic self-deception which enabled the latter to pose as the apostle of reform, and it cannot be doubted that he alone of all men might possibly have saved England from the disasters which threatened her internal peace.
His brother Humphrey, on the contrary, was in no way cut out to guide the destinies of a nation in a ‘troubleous season.’ Versatile and brilliant, endowed with the more taking but superficial qualities of his brother Henry, he had shown himself an able soldier, an efficient regent, but he had had no real training in statesmanship, and possessed no natural aptitude in this direction. Above all, he had not sufficient strength of character to meet opposition with a determination which could not be gainsaid; unlike Bedford, he could not assume a judicial attitude, but by his assertions of power only irritated, where he should have soothed, the conflicting ambitions which took the place of statesmanship in the days of Henry VI. No personal force, no determination, he became a party man, when he should have dominated all parties, merely an item among discordant factions. As yet these failings of character which rendered such great abilities useless were not clearly apparent, indeed Henry V., above all things a judge of good instruments for his work, had chosen him to govern England. All through the late King had felt a growing confidence in his youngest brother; to say that he trusted Bedford thoroughly, but Gloucester only so far as it was necessary,[416] is an unfair summary of his reign. Again and again did Henry trust Humphrey with important work, not once do we find that the trust was misplaced, whether at the siege of Cherbourg, or during his two short regencies in England. No signs of that factious spirit which party politics produced in him were as yet apparent, and a comparison between his and Bedford’s past records at this period shows no balance one way or another. If Henry was indeed the statesman he is said to have been, he must have known that the government of England was a more important post both for ruled and ruler, than the already shaky government of France, and yet he confided the chief task to Humphrey. Evidence as to his distrust of Gloucester is found in his warning to him not to alienate Burgundy, but the warning was given to all who were present, and they were commissioned to hand it on to the only man not present who had a large stake in the kingdom. Henry did not distrust his youngest brother, and perhaps some indication of his increasing regard for him may be found in the fact that, whereas in his first will he left him a mere trifle,[417] by his second will he bequeathed to him the considerable legacy of all the royal castles in the south of England.[418]
1422] BEAUFORT’S PAST RECORD
The history of Humphrey’s future career has one central theme running through every aspect of his public life—the rivalry with Henry Beaufort, a man whom Henry had no reason to trust in the way he trusted his brother. On the eve of starting for France in 1417, after all arrangements had been made, we find the sudden resignation of the Chancellorship by the Bishop of Winchester[419] under circumstances which point to royal compulsion; on the very day of resignation a full pardon for all offences whatsoever was granted to him, a grant which suggests offences which it was unwise to make public in the interests of the dynasty.[420] When about to embark on the history of the famous quarrel of Gloucester and Beaufort, let us remember that the former had been trusted by Henry V., and that the latter had not.
Thus the personality that had dominated English history for the last nine years had passed away, and the field was thrown open to other leaders. To Gloucester the change was full of significance. On the one hand, the power which had controlled the Bishop of Winchester was removed, Beaufort ambitions might now have full play, and would naturally be directed against such a possible rival as Duke Humphrey. On the other hand, the man who had leant more than he knew on the strength of his oldest brother was left to face life without this support. Henceforth Humphrey must stand alone, and very rapidly the weaknesses of his character begin to show themselves. Hitherto we have seen little more than a machine carrying out its work under strict guidance, henceforth we can discover the real man, and the inward workings of his mind. His volatile nature, his incapacity at a period of crisis, his inability to prosecute any venture to its legitimate end now begin to appear. Hitherto we have had to explain his actions by reference to the future, henceforth his true characteristics are manifest. His character does not alter under changed circumstances, only its weakness, hitherto concealed, is now revealed. Under the compulsion of independent action we shall find him displayed in his true colours, a man guided by his passions and yet hindered by a growing lassitude, a man with good intentions but no stability, a man who lives for the moment and cannot see into the future. Under the most favourable circumstances he might possibly have escaped failure, but the Fates were against him. Already Jacqueline had come to mould his policy in one false direction, already he had imbibed false ideas as to the ethics of the war with France, now he was about to meet with that opposition which was to reduce him to the ranks of a factious politician. Yet in spite of his failures he was tenacious of fixed principles, he had a sense of justice and right, and had he been left to govern England unmolested it is probable that his love of law and order, which was part of his Lancastrian inheritance, would have enabled him to leave a far worthier record on the pages of English history than the historian can now give him. He had all the negative virtues of weakness, he was open-handed, simple-minded, and incapable of a deep-laid scheme, but his instability marred all his efforts. Ambition came to him suddenly at the death of Henry V., and he had no power to deck out this ambition with strength, and to make men feel that he had any right to his immense pretensions.
1422] OPPOSITION TO GLOUCESTER