Page:The religious life of King Henry VI.djvu/12

vi during which he was forced to live in seclusion, has probably been held to be more than sufficient to show that he was never, at any time, a prince worthy to reign over England.

Few people, who have taken their notions of this period of time from our modern school histories, will be disposed to think otherwise of this unfortunate monarch. There is, however, another side to this matter: that is, so far as his personal qualities are concerned, at one time, and for a long period of time, Henry VI was recognized and revered generally as one of the glories of the Kingdom. He was known in fact as the national saint of the country.

It was perhaps not unnatural that, after his death, the party that had dispossessed him of his throne and done him to death, should have endeavoured to prevent him from becoming a popular hero by lowering his character in the minds of the people generally. And so the notion that Henry was a weak-minded and useless ruler thus set forth was believed by a few contemporary authors, and found its way, for example, into the