Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/576

562 day to men-at-arms, equal to thirty shillings now; and from six to nine pence per day to archers—equal to from seven to ten shillings now. Yet, notwithstanding this, Henry was never supplied with a force capable of carrying out his designs of permanent conquest, but owed his success rather to the disunion of his enemies. The whole of his royal revenue was only about £45,000—equal in value to about £600,000 of our present money.

Henry IV. had never ventured, like the Edwards, to impose taxes without consent of Parliament, because he felt the weakness of his title to the throne. But Henry V., whose doubtful claims to the usurped power were forgotten in his fame and his popularity, appeared to grant popular privileges with a good will, resulting from a more generous nature. The Commons complained that their petitions, after being delivered to the king, were so altered by the nobles or the legal advisers of the crown, as often to become laws directly opposite to their intentions; upon which Henry instantly ordained that the Commons should in no way be bound by anything which had been put into the laws contrary to their petitions. On the whole, therefore, whether we regard the foreign or the domestic career of Henry V., we may in a great measure concur in the opinion of the historian Henry, "that he was one of the best, bravest, and most fortunate princes that ever wore the diadem of England." 

CHAPTER LXXII.

VI., on the death of his father, was scarcely nine months old. However prosperous his father had been, and however well fortified he seemed to have left him in the care of his mother and the ability and unity of his uncles, as well as the reverence of the people for their late brilliant king, no one who had studied history, even in the smallest degree, but must have foreseen in the course of so long a minority many troubles, and probably much disaster.

While a strong hand guides the course of government, discordant elements, if they do not sleep, are at least suppressed in their action, and often scarcely seem to exist. But that hand once removed, all those elements start into motion. A thousand conflicting interests manifest themselves, and numbers of men are soon found struggling for an eminence which heretofore they had deemed unattainable. By such circumstances how many a minor has been plunged into calamity, and not infrequently into speedy ruin!

But if this be true of the heir of one kingdom, how much more so must it be of the heir of two—and two such realms as England and France! It would, indeed, have been a miracle if the clashing ambitions of the blood-relations, and of other great men around the infant king's throne, had not produced much trouble and civil conflict. But the prospect of his power in France was still more critical. There he was the nominal heir to a throne of which his father had not lived to obtain possession—of a kingdom not yet entirely subdued by the British arms; a kingdom naturally hostile to an English ruler; a kingdom of proud, sensitive people, who, though they had consented to the ascendency of Henry V., in order to procure some degree of repose, yet had by no means forgotten the haughty and the cruel deeds of the English in their country; above all, a kingdom in which the rightful heir to the throne was still alive—in fact, had still most devoted adherents; and who presented to their feelings the image of a young prince unjustly and unnaturally excluded from his own great patrimony by an imbecile father and a haughty conqueror.

Though the dauphin had disgusted a large portion of the French by his adherence to the Armagnac faction, which had steeped the capital and the country in the blood of its people; though he was stained by the blood of the murdered Burgundy, and was reputed to be more fond of pleasure and disgraceful companions than of good government and love to his people, still he was their native-born prince. He had fought from his mere boyhood against the island invaders. He was a Frenchman, and the hearts of all Frenchmen turned naturally towards him, notwithstanding his faults, in the spirit of inextinguishable patriotism. It would be his fault if this feeling did not grow, and that the French should come to regard him as the hope of the nation—the hope of its ultimate redemption from the galling yoke of the foreigners.

The effect of these circumstances became first manifest in England. After the interment of Henry V., Queen Catherine retired to Windsor with her infant charge, and the Parliament proceeded to take measures for the security of the throne during the minority. The nobles during the reign of Henry V. had been held in perfect and respectful subordination by the ability and the high prestige of the king. Parliament had asserted its own, but sought not to encroach on the royal prerogative in the hands of a sovereign who showed no disposition to encroach on the popular rights. But now Parliament, and especially the House of Peers, showed unmistakable evidence of a consciousness of their augmented authority.

Henry on his death-bed had named the Duke of Bedford as regent of France, the Duke of Gloucester as regent of England, and the Earl of Warwick as guardian of his son. On the arrival of the official information of the king's death, a number of peers and prelates, chiefly members of the royal council, assembled at Westminster, and issued commissions to the judges, sheriffs, and other officers, ordering them to continue in the discharge of their respective functions; and also summoning a Parliament to meet on the 5th of November. On the day previous to the meeting of Parliament, a committee of peers offered to the Duke of Gloucester a commission empowering him, in the king's name and with the consent of the council, to open, conduct, and dissolve the Parliament. Gloucester objected to the words, "with the consent of the council." He contended that it was an infringement of 