Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/526

512 encounter foes continually springing like the teeth of Cadmus from the earth, he seemed insensible to the feeling that his crown was a theft, and his throne was the tomb of his murdered sovereign and near kinsman. He received with a face smooth as the visage of a statue, unimpressed by a feeling, unclouded by a frown, the sharpest words of his many enemies, crowned and uncrowned, hissing murder at him between their teeth; yet all the while his very soul winced and withered within him, and the deadly hand of remorse pulled at his heart-strings. While youth remained, and rapid and incessant action engrossed him, he seemed to soar above all the feelings and fears of an ordinary man. He boldly replied to those who upbraided him with his criminal seizure of his cousin's crown and realm, that the successful issue announced the approbation of the Almighty. But his health decayed prematurely. His body had been overworked, his mind had been overtasked, his conscience had been overburdened. As his strength gave way, his stoicism gave way with it. In his youth he has been described as gay and agreeable, and in his most active years, even when overwhelmed with business and menaced by the greatest dangers, he was cheerful, affable, ready to converse with the people that he came amongst. As disease and debility announced a not distant end, he grew gloomy, retiring, ascetic in his devotions, and suspicious even of his own son.

His false position had forced on him. every species of false conduct, and deeds which brought their certain punishment. There is every reason to believe that he sacrificed his sincere conviction of the truth of the Protestant doctrines, in order to purchase the powerful sanction of the Church for his unrighteous title; for before his usurpation he went along with his father in the protection of Wycliffe and the Lollards. To please the hierarchy he persecuted the Lollards, and was the first to give his sanction to the death of religious dissidents by the terrible means of fire. Yet, as if Providence would punish his apostasy by a striking antithesis, he was compelled, by the rebellion of an archbishop, to be the first in England to visit with capital punishment a prelate of the Established Church.

It is curious that soon after his execution of the Archbishop of York he was attacked by the most loathsome eruptions on the face, or, as it appears to have been, an inveterate leprosy. This the people naturally believed to be a judgment from Heaven upon him for that sacrilegious act, and probably some such conviction might haunt his own mind. Though in statute somewhat below the middle size, he was vigorously and finely formed. His features were regularly beautiful in his youth, and in some of his penitential communications he confessed to having been greatly proud of them. But, by the ravages of this repulsive complaint, they became so hideous that he was compelled at length to avoid appearing in public. To this wore added attacks of epilepsy, which became more and more violent, so that he would lie in death-like trances for hours.

As Henry declined in health, he seems to have grown increasingly jealous of the popularity of his son, the Prince of Wales. The young prince had acquired great glory by his conduct at the battle of Shrewsbury, and in his warfare against Owen Glendowor. He was free, jocund, fond of pleasure, and of mixing with all classes of the people. Shakespeare has made his life and character the most living and familiar of things. He has surrounded him by a set of jolly companions, the fat and witty Sir John Falstaff, Bardolph, "mine ancient Pistol," and the whole band of roysterers who haunted the Boar's Head, Eastcheap. He has drawn his inimitable portraiture of the merry Prince Hal from the chroniclers of the time, who describe him as the idol of the people. He was as dissipated as an heir-apparent generally is, but with his follies he displayed what his father never possessed—a generous temperament. No sooner was he on the throne than he offered terms of pacification to his most persevering enemy, Owen Glendower. The anecdote of his conduct before Judge Gasooigne has been represented as doubtful by some of our modern historians, but it is gravely related by Hardyng and Elmham, his contemporaries, and there is, therefore, no just right to question it.

One of the prince's associates had been arraigned for felony before Chief-Justice Gascoigne, the upright magistrate whom we have seen refusing to execute his father's illegal acts at York. The prince appeared before the magistrate, and peremptorily demanded the release of his boon companion. The chief-justice refused, when Henry drew his sword upon him, and swore that he would have the man liberated. The judge coolly ordered the prince to be committed to prison himself as a greater offender, since he was, by his position, bound expressly to be a maintainer of the laws. Henry at once, in the innate nobility of his own nature, felt and admired the lofty virtue of the magistrate. He submitted quietly to his order, and it is related that when the fact was mentioned to his father, he said, "Happy is the monarch who possesses a judge so resolute in the discharge of his duty, and a son so willing to yield to the authority of the law."

But, however happy Henry might express himself in such a son, it seems clear from contemporary writers that he kept him as much as possible from any participation in the affair's of state, and it is probable that this want of fitting employment threw him amongst his dissolute associates in order to pass his time. In the excited and unguarded hours of wild merriment, there were not wanting those who gathered up his thoughtless expressions against the conduct of his father, and bore them to the royal ear, coloured as malice or sycophancy dictated. It is certain that Henry entertained grave suspicions of his son. Knowing how he had offended in respect to the crown himself, he was more ready to believe it possible that his son might tread in his steps. The prince made repeated endeavours to disabuse his father's mind of these unworthy ideas, but in vain. According to Otterburn, he wrote to many of the lords letters justifying his allegiance to his father, and even went with a numerous train to demand an explanatory interview with him. Yet the Earl of Ormond, an eye-witness, says that even on this occasion the prince could not lay aside his eccentricities. That "he disguised himself in a gown of blue satin or damask, wrought full of oylet-holes, and at every oylet the needle wherewith it was made, hanging still by the silk; and about his arm he wore a dog's collar, sot full of SS. of gold, and the tirets of the same of fine gold."

He was received by the king in his closet, attended by four friends, and the prince, throwing himself on his