Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/531

A.D. 1413.] strictly done, to appear no more in his presence. Saying this, he dismissed them with liberal proofs of his bounty; and Henry V. had as completely put off the jovial Prince of Wales as if he had never been. This was great, and novel in its greatness; but it was only the lowest step of this remarkable reform. He not only banished from him the associates of his past follies, but he called forward and distinguished by his favour and approbation all those who had discharged their duty to the state faithfully, though in doing it they had dared to disapprove of his own conduct, and even to lay him under unceremonious restraint. The base and obsequious found to their astonishment that they had lost instead of won his favour. Those who apprehended his wrath by the fulfilment of stern duties, were agreeably cheered to find themselves appreciated and advanced. The upright chief justice Gascoigne stood first and foremost in the full sunshine of his favour.

This was the second step in the scale of his wisdom and magnanimity. There was a far higher and more difficult one; but even that he ascended with the same imperial ease. He remembered with gratitude the kindness which the unfortunate Richard II. had shown him when he was a boy, the son of a banished man, at his court; and though to recognise the deposed sovereign and do justice to his memory at once condemned the usurpation of his father, and reminded the world of the flaw in his own title, such considerations did not delay his proceedings for a moment. He hastened to Langley, whither his father had had the body of Richard conveyed, and having brought it from its tomb, and laid it on a rich car of state, he conducted it with royal pomp to Westminster, where it was laid in the tomb which Richard had built for his beloved wife, "the good Queen Anne," of Bohemia, and where he had intimated his own desire to lie.

Henry V.

Not only did Henry pay this affectionate mark of regard to the wishes of the unfortunate monarch, but he attended as chief mourner, and, says Fabyan, "After a solemn torment there holden, he provided that the tapers shuld brenne daye and nyght about his grave whyle the world endureth;" with a dole