13. However, he came back to England, and finding most of the nobles as well as the people willing to make him king, Richard was obliged to resign the crown, and was imprisoned in Pomfret castle, where it is supposed he died by unfair means; but as this is not quite certain, we will hope it was not so. He had reigned twenty-two years, when he was deposed, in 1399.
14. This usurpation of Henry the Fourth was the cause of the long civil wars in England, called the Wars of the Roses, which began in the time of Henry the Sixth, whose right to the throne was disputed, although his father and grandfather had been suffered to reign without opposition.
15. Henry the Fourth was, on the whole, a popular monarch, and under his government things went on pretty well with the generality of the people.
16. There was an insurrection in Wales, headed by a gentleman, named Owen Glendower, who wished to restore the Welsh to their former independence, and to be their prince, as he was of the ancient royal family; and he was joined by the powerful Earl of Northumberland, and his son Henry Percy, better known by the name of Hotspur, who was one of the bravest knights of the age.
17. These noblemen had a quarrel with the king, and wanted to depose him; but he gained a victory over them in a battle fought near Shrewsbury, where Hotspur was killed. These events are not of much importance, but I tell them because when you hear any celebrated characters spoken of, you ought to know who they were, and when they lived.
18. The prince of Wales, afterwards Henry the Fifth, was also celebrated for his valour, but not for his good behaviour in his youth; for his conduct was sometimes so disgraceful that his father was quite ashamed of him, and nobody would have supposed he was the son of a king.
19. One thing he used to do was to go out at night, with some idle companions, and rob people on the highway, for amusement; yet he had not a bad disposition, for once one of the judges sent him to prison for trying to rescue one of his wicked companions; and he not only submitted to the punishment, but when he came to be king, he treated that judge with great respect and attention, because he knew he was a just man, and would punish the rich as well as the poor, if they did wrong. King Henry the Fourth died in 1413, in the fourteenth year of his reign.
20. Henry the Fifth is famed as the conqueror of France. He went to war with that country, on the same pretext that Edward the Third did before; and with better success, for the French king was at last glad to make peace by agreeing that Henry should be king of France after his death.
21. The greatest victory gained by the English, was at the battle of Agincourt. King Henry married the French king’s daughter, but he died soon afterwards, in 1422, having reigned nine years; and leaving an infant son; and in a little while the king of France died too, and he also left a son.