Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/340

Rh 320 ENGLAND [HISTORY. of Henry in his place was perfectly regular according to ancient precedent. But two things again mark the growth of the new ideas. Not only, as in the case of Edward II., Claim of was the deposed king made to resign, but Henry himself, in Henry claiming the crown, did not rely solely on his perfectly IV- good parliamentary title, but mixed up with it a vague claim by hereditary right. He was &quot; descended by right line of blood coming from the good lord King Henry III.&quot; This phrase makes it needful to explain a little more fully the state of the royal succession, which becomes of such importance in the next period. Growth Richard himself had, as we have seen, succeeded without of the opposition, according to the doctrine of representation, , ere, 1 &quot; though in earlier times the choice of parliament would have trine, rather fallen on one of his uncles. The new ideas were car ried yet further when, under Richard, Roger Mortimer, earl of March, was declared presumptive heir to the throne. The doctrines both of representation and of female succession were here implied, as Roger was through his mother grand son of Lionel, duke of Clarence, second son 1 of Edward III. In earlier times, whatever might have been thought of Richard s own claim, such a claim as this of Roger would have seemed ridiculous while three sons of Edward, the dukes John of Lancaster, Edmund of York, and Thomas of Gloucester, were all living. And in fact the claim of Roger was not put forward at the deposition of Richard and election of Henry ; but it was not forgotten, and later events again gave it importance. Henry s own challenge by descent from Henry III. was shrouded in purposed vague ness. He is commonly thought to have referred to a claim of his own yet more strange than the claim of Earl Roger. He was, through his mother, the direct representative of Edmund, earl of Lancaster, the second son of Henry III., who, according to an absurd rumour, was really his eldest son. Such a claim could hardly be put forward publicly ; and Henry s vague words might be taken as meaning only that he was the next to the crown in male succession. But that any claim of the kind should have been thought of, when Henry had a perfectly good right by parliamentary election, shows how the ancient right of the nation freely to choose its sovereign, at all events from among the members of the royal house, was gradually dying out of men s minds. Reign of The short and troubled reign of Henry IV. has commonly Henry i e( j to forgetfulness of his earlier fame as a gallant and popular prince, a pilgrim to Jerusalem, a crusader in Africa and Prussia. The fourteen years of his reign are almost wholly filled with plots, civil wars, and the endless warfare in Scotland and France. Now again Wales becomes of im portance, through the union of a Welsh pretender with the discontented party in England. In the early insurrections, as in that of 1400, the name of the late king Richard was used. The fate of the deposed king was never certainly known ; but there seems no just ground for doubting that he either died or was murdered soon after this first revolt. That a pretended Richard appeared, that he was made use of by Henry s French and Scottish enemies, was simply what commonly happens in such cases. The revolt of 1 400 was hardly suppressed when it was followed by the more dangerous revolt of Owen Glyndwr, who restored for a while the old independence of North Wales, and acted in concert with the French, the Scots, and the English rebels. In fact, down to his death in 1415, he was never fully subdued. His English allies, the Percies and Mortimers, were defeated at Shrewsbury in 1403 ; and other plots and revolts, in all of which the house of Percy had a hand, were crushed in 1405 and 1408. At the time of Henry s death, 1 Lionel was strictly the third son of Edward III. ; but he was the second of those who left descendants. As all the three elder sous of Edward died before their father, John of Gaunt was the eldest sur viving son of Edward at his father s death. IV. in 1413, there was a truce with Scotland; but the war in France, which had gone on during the whole of his reign, was being waged with a greater vigour than usual. In 1406 the crown was settled by parliament on Henry statt and his sons ; and on his death his eldest son Henry sue- Fran ceeded without opposition. A new asra in the French war at once began. France, under its weak or rather mad king Charles VI., was torn in pieces by the factions of Orleans and Burgundy. Henry IV. had, in the latter years of his reign, employed the policy of playing off one party against the other, and had given help to each in turn. The war, which had gone on, though mostly in a desultory way, ever since the return of the Black Prince to Eng land in 1370, now began again in earnest under a king who was one of the greatest of warriors and statesmen. The character of Henry s enterprise is often misunderstood. It is said that, whatever claim Edward III. might have had to the crown of France, Henry V. could have none. It is said that, according to Edward III. s doctrine, by which the right to the crown might pass through females to their male representatives, the rights of Edward III. had passed to Roger of March. So, as a matter of genealogy, they certainly had ; and, as a matter of genealogy, there was doubtless an inconsistency in the use of the French title by Henry IV. and Henry V. But the true way of looking at the matter is that both the peace of Bretigny and the truce made in the latter years of Richard II. had been broken by the French, that the war was going on at Henry s accession, that it was just then being more vigorously pressed than it The had been for some time, and that all that Henry V. did was pres to throw the whole national power, guided by his own^ y * genius, into its vigorous prosecution. At his accession, his only continental possessions were Calais and its small terri tory, and a small part of Aquitaine, including Bourdeaux and Bayonne. In Henry s policy, Southern Gaul, which Cha: had been so nearly lost, becomes secondary. He puts for- of ^ ward the treaty of Bretigny, as he also puts forward his p claim to the French crown ; but his real object seems to have been the conquest of as largo a continental territory as possible, but in any case the conquest of Normandy. At this distance of time, we see that such a scheme was neither just nor politic. His own age did not condemn it on either ground. He was checked for a moment, first by a Lollard revolt, then by a conspiracy on behalf either of Richard or of the earl of March. But in 1415 he was able to begin his great enterprise. A negotiation, in which Henry claimed, first the crown of France, then the whole continental possessions of the Angevin kings, and lastly the territory ceded at Bretigny, naturally failed. He then crossed the sea in 1415, took Harfleur, and won the battle of Agincourt. His The three next years saw his alliance with Duke John of ( l ue * Burgundy, and completed the conquest of Normandy. In 1419 the murder of Duke John by the partisans of the dauphin Charles drove Philip, the new duke of Burgundy, and the whole Burgundian party, altogether to the English side. Paris itself received Henry. Next year (1420), by the treaty of Troyes, Henry gave iip his title of Tre? King of France. Charles VI. was to keep the French Tro; crown for life ; Henry was to marry his daughter Katharine, to be declared his heir, and to be meanwhile regent of the kingdom. But the party of the disinherited dauphin still held out, and the war went on in the centre of France, while the rule of Henry was established in the north and south. On August 31, 1422, Henry V. died, revealing the true object of his policy by his last injunction that in no case should peace be made, unless Normandy was ceded to England. in full sovereignty. The infant son of Henry and He: Katharine, Henry VI., succeeded to the kingdom of England suc ; and the heirship of France. Two months later, by the *V death of his grandfather the French king, lie succeeded, dol