[ HISTORICAL NOTES TO ACT FIRST.]
([B]) King Henry on his throne,] King Henry V. was born at Monmouth, August 9th, 1388, from which place he took his surname. He was the eldest son of Henry Bolingbroke, Earl of Derby, afterwards Duke of Hereford, who was banished by King Richard the Second, and, after that monarch’s deposition, was made king of England, A.D. 1399. At eleven years of age Henry V. was a student at Queen’s College, Oxford, under the tuition of his half-uncle, Henry Beaufort, Chancellor of that university. Richard II. took the young Henry with him in his expedition to Ireland, and caused him to be imprisoned in the castle of Trym, but, when his father, the Duke of Hereford, deposed the king and obtained the crown, he was created Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwall.
In 1403 the Prince was engaged at the battle of Shrewsbury, where the famous Hotspur was slain, and there wounded in the face by an arrow. History states that Prince Henry became the companion of rioters and disorderly persons, and indulged in a course of life quite unworthy of his high station. There is a tradition that, under the influence of wine, he assisted his associates in robbing passengers on the highway. His being confined in prison for striking the Chief Justice, Sir William Gascoigne, is well known.
These excesses gave great uneasiness and annoyance to the king, his father, who dismissed the Prince from the office of President of his Privy Council, and appointed in his stead his second son, Thomas, Duke of Clarence. Henry was crowned King of England on the 9th April, 1413. We read in Stowe— “After his coronation King Henry called unto him all those young lords and gentlemen who were the followers of his young acts, to every one of whom he gave rich gifts, and then commanded that as many as would change their manners, as he intended to do, should abide with him at court; and to all that would persevere in their former like conversation, he gave express commandment, upon pain of their heads, never after that day to come in his presence.”
This heroic king fought and won the celebrated battle of Agincourt, on the 25th October, 1415; married the Princess Katherine, daughter of Charles VI. of France and Isabella of Bavaria, his queen, in the year 1420; and died at Vincennes, near Paris, in the midst of his military glory, August 31st, 1422, in the thirty-fourth year of his age, and the tenth of his reign, leaving an infant son, who succeeded to the throne under the title of Henry VI.
The famous Whittington was for the third time Lord Mayor of London in this reign, A.D. 1419. Thomas Chaucer, son of the great poet, was speaker of the House of Commons, which granted the supplies to the king for his invasion of France.
([C]) Bedford,] John, Duke of Bedford, was the third son of King Henry IV., and his brother, Henry V., left to him the Regency of France. He died in the year 1435. This duke was accounted one of the best generals of the royal race of Plantaganet.
King Lewis XI. being counselled by certain envious persons to deface his tomb, used these, indeed, princely words:— “What honor shall it be to us, or you, to break this monument, and to pull out of the ground the bones of him, whom, in his life time, neither my father nor your progenitors, with all their puissance, were once able to make fly a foot backward? Who by his strength, policy, and wit, kept them all out of the principal dominions of France, and out of this noble Dutchy of Normandy? Wherefore I say first, God save his soul, and let his body now lie in rest, which, when he was alive, would have disquieted the proudest of us all; and for his tomb, I assure you, it is not so worthy or convenient as his honor and acts have deserved.” —Vide Sandford’s History of the Kings of England.
([D]) Gloster,] Humphrey, Duke of Gloster, was the fourth son of King Henry IV., and on the death of his brother, Henry V., became Regent of England. It is generally supposed he was strangled. His death took place in the year 1446.