Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 26.djvu/64

Henry VI Gloucester encouraged his interference, while Beaufort and Warwick were for keeping him under restraint. Their influence probably led the council on 12 Nov. 1434 to solemnly warn Henry that he was not yet endowed with so great knowledge and discretion as to be able to choose in matters of difficulty, or change the governance that had been appointed for his tender age. Even if we reject as mere flattery the assurance of the council that ‘God had endowed his grace with as great understanding and feeling as any prince or person of his age’ (Ord. P. C. iv. 267), such premature struggling for power refutes Hardyng's story that Henry grew up almost an idiot, unable to distinguish between right and wrong. Nor was his education confined to affairs of state. Warwick taught him the use of arms. An extant inventory mentions the swords, ‘some greater and some smaller, for to learn the king to play in his tender age,’ and the ‘little harness that the Earl of Warwick made for the king ere he went over the sea, garnished with gold’ (, Geschichte von England, v. 263). Gloucester watched over his literary education.

In 1435 Bedford died and Burgundy deserted the English alliance. Henry wept bitterly at Burgundy's treachery. In January 1437 Henry lost his mother, though her secret alliance with Owain Tudor had long deprived her of any influence with the council or control over her son's education. In July 1437 Henry lost a good friend by Warwick's removal from his preceptorship to undertake the regency of France (Fœdera, x. 674). This marks a stage in the king's emancipation, since no successor seems to have been appointed. Henry had now for some time regularly attended the meetings of the council (e.g. Ord. P. C. v. 1–16). A great council was held in November at Clerkenwell Priory, where in Henry's presence a new privy council was appointed, including all the old and some new members, with the same powers which parliament had conferred on the council of Henry IV (ib. v. 71). But Henry was now admitted into a share of the government, charters of pardon, the collation of benefices and offices and ‘other things that stand in grace’ being reserved to him ‘for to do and dispose as him good seemeth.’ In matters of great weight the council was directed not to conclude without the king's advice, and if there arose difference of opinion, as ‘peradventure half against half or two parties against the third,’ the king had power ‘to conclude and to dispose after his good pleasure’ (ib. vi. 312–15). But the king exercised his powers so recklessly, that less than three months afterwards the council warned him that he was granting power ‘to his great disavail,’ and that his grant of the stewardship of Chirk involved a loss of a thousand marks to his sorely distressed revenues (ib. pp. 88–90). In 1439 Henry began his foundations at Eton and Cambridge.

The defection of Burgundy and the loss of Paris (1436) made the English cause in France hopeless. The death of Bedford brought Cardinal Beaufort into greater prominence. Beaufort, resolved on the restoration of peace, thought to strengthen England's foreign relations by arranging a marriage for the king. But his first efforts were utter failures. Already in 1434 the council had suggested that peace could best be effected with Scotland ‘by way of the marriage of the king with one of the daughters of the king of Scots,’ but, fearing to incur responsibility, they referred the matter to a great council, and nothing further came of it (ib. iv. 191; cf. Pref. pp. lx, lxii). Again, in 1435, during the negotiations at Arras, it had been suggested that Henry should marry the eldest daughter of Charles VII (Fœdera, x. 643–4), but the French laid the proposal so lightly by that the English were offended (Ord. P. C. v. 361), and the rupture of the whole negotiations followed. Unable to establish new ties, the council, with similar want of success, sought in 1438 to strengthen old ones, by marrying Henry to a daughter of the new emperor Albert II, ‘if the emperor will condescend to marriage’ (ib. v. 86, 96, 97; cf. Pref. pp. xxix–xxx).

As Henry grew nearer manhood he heartily seconded Beaufort's plans. In 1439 the cardinal and the Duchess of Burgundy, his niece, held, between Gravelines and Calais, long conferences to procure a truce. The negotiations with France failed, and the English refused to entertain any plan for marrying Henry to a daughter of his ‘adversary of France’ until a sure peace had been established (ib. v. 361). But a truce was agreed on with Burgundy, and commercial relations renewed with the Low Countries.

Better prospects for England now arose from a fresh combination of the feudal princes of France in a new praguerie against the increasing power of Charles VII (, Hist. de Charles VII, vol. iii. chaps. vi. and viii.). If England would renounce the vain claim to the French throne, Burgundy and Brittany would have welcomed her aid, and left Normandy and Guienne in English hands. Beaufort fell in with the plan, and procured in 1440 the release of Charles, duke of Orleans (a prisoner since Agincourt), who vigorously supported the feudalists. Glou-