Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/527

] knees before him, begged that he would take his life, seeing that he had withdrawn from him the royal favour.

Henry passed his last Christmas of his life at his favourite palace of Eltham. So complete was his seclusion, owing both to his illness and the awful disfigurement of his person, that he scarcely saw any one but the queen; lying frequently for hours without any sign of life. After Candlemas, he was so much better as to be able to keep his birthday, and he then returned to his palace at Westminster. He was at his devotions in the abbey, at the shrine of St. Edward, when his last fatal fit seized him. He was removed into the apartments of the abbot, and laid in the celebrated Jerusalem Chamber. The fit lasted so long that Prince Henry, who was present, knowing the plunder which often takes place at the deathbeds of kings, and which was remarkably the case at that of Edward III., ordered the crown to be removed to another and securer apartment.

On coming to himself Henry asked where he was, and being told in the Jerusalem Chamber, he regarded his last hour as come, for it had been predicted to him that he should finish his days in Jerusalem; and he had vowed, in expiation of his crimes, to make a pilgrimage thither. The days of the crusades were over, but a remarkable visit made to him soon after he ascended the throne, by Manuel Palæologus, the Emperor of Constantinople, when seeking aid against the Saracens, probably impressed his mind with this idea. He then requested that the Miserere should be read to him, which contains an especial prayer for forgiveness of "blood-guiltiness." Then looking round he missed the crown from its place, and demanded to know where it was. The scenes which followed have been faithfully and beautifully copied by Shakespeare.

"Ah! fair son," said the dying king; "what right have you to the crown, when you know that your father had none?"

"My liege," answered young Henry; "with the sword you won it, and with the sword I will keep it."

"Well," replied the king, faintly, "do as you think best. I leave the issue to God, and may He have mercy on my soul." And then followed that beautiful address so finely rendered in Shakespeare—

"Come hither, Henry; sit thou on my bed," &c.

Henry IV. was in the forty-seventh year of his age, and the fourteenth year of his reign, when he died. Perhaps no king by the troubles of his reign, the corroding remorse of his soul, and wretchedness of his last days, ever presented a more striking warning from Providence against guilty ambition. Had he resolved, in the days of his cousin Richard's misgovernment, to exert the influence which his eminent position—foremost in the realm, next to the throne—and his distinguished talents gave him, to check that monarch's arbitrary extravagances, and support him in the right, he might have won one of the most honoured names in history—the patriot of the age, and the father of his country. He yielded to a meaner ambition—that of wearing a pilfered crown; and the consequences were fatal to him, fatal to his family, and fatal to his nation. We shall yet have to wade far through the blood he caused to flow, and in another generation see his line driven from the throne he so unwisely usurped.



It is curious that as Henry usurped the throne of Richard II., he also usurped, as far as in him lay, his tomb. The body of Richard he sent to be buried at Langley, instead of permitting it to rest with the ashes of