Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/462

 464 REVIEWS OF BOOKS July accession. Henry V is one of those who have attained greatness by ideal- izing the existing characteristics of his time, rather than by impressing a new mould on his contemporaries. When Henry, after he had attained the first purpose of his policy by becoming regent of France, appealed to Sigismund to foster peace amongst Christian nations so that they might then ' intend together against miscreants', he only gave practical expression to a sentiment which had been voiced by such very different persons as Philippe de Mezieres, St. Bridget, and Thomas Hoccleve. Henry was not a creator of new things, and the undoubted influence which his career has had on national feeling was perhaps due as much to the idealized prince of Tudor writers, and above all of Shakespeare, as to his own actual personality. It is, however, natural in such a biography rather to empha- size the heroic, and within the limits of his space Mr. Mowat has given us a very readable and on the whole accurate history. But space would not permit the writer to add much that is new, and though Mr. Mowat gives a fresh criticism of Henry as portrayed in Shakespeare, he devotes himself chiefly to the king's career as general and administrator. Of the diplomacy of the reign we get no more than a superficial view ; but it is on this side that there is most room for new study ; the working out of the threads of Henry's diplomacy offers a promising field, which might yield instructive results. It is difficult for one who is familiar with the subject to avoid what might seem small points of criticism, but I will endeavour to touch only such things as appear essential. For Henry's birth, Mr. Mowat gives the ordinary date (9 August 1387), but I showed in this Keview^ that the probable date was 16 September 1387. A long chapter is devoted to ' The Legendary and Real Henry '. The author's interpretation of the legend is not altogether happy. He writes that the story of the prince's arrest by the chief justice is now considered referable, if at all, to the end of the thirteenth century, alluding to the story of the arrest of Edward II when prince of Wales. I, at all events, can see in that incident little more than a curious analogy ; Stow's full account of the hurling in Eastcheap (which Mr. Mowat describes only from an inferior London Chronicle) supplies enough for the genesis of the legend, and brings Gascoigne into it. In dealing with the tennis-baU story, Mr. Mowat quotes John Strecche, and observes that ' this is the historical authority for the famous incident '. In my introduction to the First English Life I pointed out that it was most unlikely that Strecche was the source of the story as given in the Famous Victories, and brought together the by no means scanty con- temporary references. Whatever the truth of the story may be, it was widely current at the time, and if this is not brought out it is not worth mentioning at all. Mr. Mowat quotes the story of the dismissal of Henry's boon companions as from an unpublished manuscript of the Brut ; it is printed in Dr. Erie's edition, and I gave the reference when quoting it. But here and elsewhere Mr. Mowat does not seem to have made use of the BnU, though next to the Gesta and Walsingham that work gives us the most valuable contemporary chronicle of the reign on the English side. It must be confessed that Mr. Mowat is not always well advised
 * AnU, XXX. 62