Page:The religious life of King Henry VI.djvu/75

Rh may be said of him: 'It is holy and pious and proper to his royal Majesty, to order nothing that is not honest: he judges only according to justice: he orders nothing that is not right: and he first does himself, what he proposes to order others to do.'

"Would that his subjects might only follow the example of our King! With what reverence does he not sign himself with the sign of the cross, when he meets his priests! I know many men in the vigour of life, who never held the cross in much veneration, who by the King's example were brought to a greater fervour and to a more faithful practice of making use of the glorious sign of the cross of Christ. One instance of this may perhaps be not unpleasing to our Lord King as showing how his subjects are being reformed by his example. It is said of him—and this is proved by long experience—that he never allowed the Church or ecclesiastics to be molested. Following the example of the great Constantine, he took special delight in pious talks with ecclesiastics. This most devout King Henry, in the nineteenth year of his reign, founded two colleges, and on these works he expended great sums of money and