Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/529

A.D. 1413.] him to seize the surplus temporalities of the Church, which they represented as containing 18,400 ploughs of land, producing 485,000 marks a year, equal to £4,750,745 of our present money.

Here, however, the king stood firm against the recommendation of the Commons; and even, to oblige the Church, he consented to the passing of the first law for the burning of heretics, that is, persons who dared to differ in opinion from the religion of the state; and in accordance with this barbarous act, William Sawtre, rector of Lynn in Norfolk, and afterwards curate of St. Osith's in London, the first English martyr, was burnt at the stake on the 10th of March, 1401.

None of our historians have given a more masterly summary of Henry IV. and his reign in a few words than Henry. He says:—"His head was better than his heart; his schemes being formed with prudence and generally successful, but not always innocent, and seldom generous. As jealous as he was fond of power, he stuck at nothing to obtain and keep it. From policy more than from principle, he protected the Church and persecuted heretics. Ambition was his ruling passion, and that, impelled by a violent gale of popular favour, hurried him into a throne, which involved him in many crimes and cares, and his country in many calamities. He would have been a better and happier man if he had never been a king." 

CHAPTER LXX.

The short reign of Henry V. is like a chapter of romance. It is the history of the life of a prince who was especially a hero. Young, handsome, accomplished, not only in arms but in learning, skilled in and fond of music, valorous, chivalrous, generous, and successful to the very height of human glory in arms, he lived beloved and died young, the pride of his native country, whose martial fame he raised above that of all others, and the wonder of the world at large. He is one of those rare sovereigns who have run a brief but brilliant career, which seems rather to belong to the realm of imagination and poetry, than that of common-place realities of life. Amongst the numerous tribe of heroes, the class is small, and while we involuntarily place in it Achilles, Alexander the Great, Cœur de Lion of England, Henry IV. of France, and Charles XII. of Sweden, we look almost in vain to others to add to the group. We exclude from it the adventurers inspired by the lust of universal conquest, the Genghis Khans and Napoleons; and not less so the Tells and Hofers, the champions of oppressed liberty, a very different and far nobler genus. The small section of the warrior class to which Henry of Monmouth belonged are kings of acknowledged thrones, growing up in the aspirations of heroic fame, and surrounded by all the splendour and prestige of their station, doing valorous deeds in a few years of youth and early manhood, which astonish their age, and remain the fixed stars of martial fame for ever. Henry of Monmouth is one of the fairest and noblest of the tribe; for, with all the passion for military glory and the power to achieve it, he was in a great measure free from the violent passions and savage excesses of some of them. He is a prince of whom England, regarding him as belonging to its feudal period, may be justly and greatly proud, and that without a blush and almost without a regret.

Henry V. was born at Monmouth Castle, belonging to the great estates of his mother, Mary de Bohun, daughter and co-heiress of the Earl of Hereford. He was born in or about the year 1388, and, therefore, was about twenty-five on ascending the throne. Various particulars of the early life of this popular prince have been carefully preserved; as that he was a sickly child, was nursed at the village of Courtfield, about six miles from his native castle, and that his nurse's name was Joan Waring, for whom he showed so much regard that he settled a pension of twenty pounds a year upon her. Even his cradle is said to be still preserved at Bristol. His mother was a lady of finished education, and is declared by Froissart to have been skilled in Latin and school divinity. Probably owing to her influence, he received a superior education also to the princes of his time. His mother died when he was but a child, but his grandmother, the old Countess of Hereford, saw that it was continued, and she had the satisfaction of living to see him the conqueror of Azincourt. He early displayed a taste for music, and was particularly fond of the harp. He was afterwards sent to Oxford, and a room is pointed out in Queen's College as that which he occupied as a student. A portrait of Henry was painted on the glass of the window, no doubt after he had become famous, with this inscription beneath it in Latin verse:—"To record the fact for ever that the Emperor of Britain, the triumphant lord of France, the conqueror of his enemies in himself, Henry V., was once the great inhabitant of this chamber." Henry was there under the tutorship of his half-uncle, Henry Beaufort, a son of John of Gaunt, by Catherine Sweynford, and afterwards Cardinal Beaufort.

When Richard II. banished his father he took charge of Henry; and Henry V., on coming to the throne, took the earliest opportunity of testifying his regard for Richard's memory. Richard continued the education of Henry in his own palace; he took him along with him on his last expedition to Ireland, and there dubbed him a knight-banneret for his bravery in a dangerous skirmish with the natives. When he was suddenly recalled to England by the return of Henry's father from his banishment, he left Henry with his cousin, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, in the castle of Trim, in Westmeath. Henry of Lancaster soon sent for his son and he joined him at Chester on his march to London.

On his father's coronation he was made heir presumptive and created Prince of Wales; and when only fifteen he fought his first great battle at Shrewsbury, and there won his spurs. Though we have seen him valiantly fighting for five or six years against Owen Glendower, yet his father's jealousy of him had kept him so completely out of both the council and all state affairs, that he was obliged to amuse his active mind by those youthful dissipations and escapades which have gained him a merry 