HENRY V. VI. OP ENGLAND 



647 



inherited ;i e.-rtain taste for liooks. \>-> Hiding to 

 a local tradition, In- studied for a time at tjiiei-n'- 

 College, Oxford, perhaps in 131)9-1400. From 1401 

 we liml him engaged against Glendower, ami in 

 1403 the year of Shrewsbury, where he was 

 wounded in tlie forehead by an arrow he was 

 appointed tin- kind's lieutenant in Wales. Here 

 In- remained in command of operations until 140H, 

 and raooeeded at least in keeping Glendower 

 behind tin- harriers of his mountains. In 1409 he 

 became constable of Dover, and in 1410 captain of 

 the town >l Calais; and in one of these places, 

 or in London, he resided until his father's death. 

 The story of his committal to prison is a fiction 

 (see GASCOIONK), and may lie traced to a passage 

 in the life of Edward II. when Prince of Wales. 

 Tin-re is some evidence that Henry was for a 

 time not on good terms with his father; but 

 the charges of not and profligacy are at least 

 gross exaggerations of a young soldier's harm- 

 li 'ss, boisterous frolics. He was crowned on 10th 

 April 1413, and at the outset of his reign liber- 

 ated the young Earl of March, who was the 

 true. heir to the crown, restored the son of Hot- 

 spur to the lands and honours which his father 

 had lost by rebellion-, and had Richard II.'s body 

 brought up from Langley and buried in West- 

 minster. The great effort of his reign was an 

 attempted conquest of France, now ruled by an 

 imbecile king and distracted by internal factions ; 

 and in 1414 Henry formally demanded the French 

 <:rown, to which he seems to have believed sincerely 

 that he had a valid claim, through his great-grand- 

 father, Edward III. On llth August 1415 he 

 sailed with an army of 30,000 men, after crushing 

 a, conspiracy to carry off the Earl of March ; and 

 on 22u September he took Harfleur, after five 

 weeks' siege, at a great cost of life, including 2000 

 men carried off by dysentery. On 8th October he 

 set out on a inarch to Calais, and at Agincourt 

 (<|.v.), on the 25th, where his way was olocked 

 by a French army, gained a battle against such 

 enormous odds as to make his victory one of the 

 most notable in history. Two years after he again 

 invaded France, and by the end of 1418 Normandy 

 was once more subject to the English crown. 

 Henry's forces had appeared before the walls of 

 Paris, when the murder of the Duke of Burgundy 

 {10th September 1419) aroused the indignation 

 of France against the dauphin, who had to with- 

 draw beyond the Loire ; and on 21st May 1420 

 -was concluded the ' perpetual peace ' of Troyes, 

 under which Henry was recognised as regent and 

 ' heir of France,' and received the French king's 

 youngest daughter, Catharine, in marriage. In 

 February 1421 he took his young queen to Eng- 

 land to be crowned, having shown the same pro- 

 mise of just and vigorous rule as he had already 

 done in Normandy ; but in a month he was 

 recalled by news of the defeat at Beauje of his 

 brother the Duke of Clarence, by a force con- 

 sisting largely of Scotch, commanded by the Earl 

 of Buchan. Henry returned to France for a third 

 campaign, and his wonted success in arms was 

 attending him, when he was seized with illness, 

 .and died at Vincennes on the 31st August 1422, at 

 the age of thirty-five, leaving an infant to succeed 

 him. Henry was a deeply clevout prince, temper- 

 .ate, just, and pure of life ; yet his religion, though 

 he was free from wanton cruelty, did not make 

 him merciful to a conquered enemy. He followed 

 his father, too, though apparently with reluctance, 

 in his treatment of the Lollards ; even his old 

 companion-in-arms, Sir John Oldcastle (q.v.), was 

 sent to the stake. He was a brave soldier, a firm 

 disciplinarian, a brilliant general ; and he died 

 when his fame was brightest. 



See Stubbs ; Gairdner, Lancaster and York ; Nicolas, 



It // of the Battle <>f A'lincourt (1827); and A. J. 

 , 11,,,,-y the Fifth (188U), in the 'Eiigluh Men of 



Action ' 



Henry VI., the only child of Henry V. and 

 ( 'at harine of France, was born at Windhor on (Hit 

 December 1421. As he was not quite nine months 

 old when his father died, his uncle, .John, Duke 

 of Bedford, was appointed to govern France, and 

 another uncle, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, to 

 be protector of England in Bedford's absence, with 

 a council appointed by parliament to aid and 

 control him, the parliament declining to appoint 

 him regent, though the late king had desired it. 

 After twenty-four years' captivity, the Scotch 

 king, James I., was set at liberty in the hope of 

 securing peace on the northern border. In France, 

 the incapable Charles VI. having died, his son the 

 dauphin assumed the title of Charles VII., and 

 went on fighting with the English. His army, 

 commanded by tlie Scottish Earl of Buchan, now 

 constable of France, was almost annihilated by the 

 English at Verneuil (1424). But this victory was 

 the last great success obtained by the English in 

 France, and their power, which could only be 

 maintained by force, gradually crumbled away. 

 Gloucester's marriage with Jacqueline of Haiiiault 

 (1423) during the life of her husband, John of 

 Brabant, had strained the alliance with Burgundy, 

 which soon after lost its strongest link by the 

 death of Bedford's wife, Duke Philip's sister, in 

 1432. In 1429 the siege of Orleans was raised by 

 the French, inspired by Joan of Arc (q.v.); and 

 after this the English power declined steadily, in 

 spite of their having burned Joan as a witch in 

 1431. Henry was crowned king of England at 

 Westminster in 1429, and king or France at Paris 

 in 1431 ; but the struggle, though continued for 

 twenty years, was seen to be desperate. Bedford, 

 the only great and statesmanlike leader on the 

 English side, died in 1435 ; Paris was recovered 

 by the dauphin in the following year ; Normandy 

 was completely lost by the fall of Cherbourg in 

 1450 ; and ultimately, in 1453, the English were 

 expelled from all France (Calais excepted), greatly 

 to the time advantage of both countries. 



Disputes between Gloucester and his uncle, 

 Cardinal Beaufort (q.v.), the powerful Bishop of 

 Winchester, as well as war with France, prevailed 

 during the king's minority. Besides being bodily 

 weak, Henry inherited the mental infirmity of his 

 grandfather, Charles VI. of France. In 1445 a wife 

 was found for him in the strong- minded Margaret 

 of Anjou ; and in 1447 the Winchester party, sup- 

 ported by her, succeeded in having Gloucester 

 arrested for high -treason. Five days later he was 

 found dead in his bed ; but that he was murdered 

 there is no proof, and such evidence as we have 

 tends to the opposite belief. Beaufort, who had 

 served the state faithfully for fifty years, survived 

 his nephew only six weeks, and after his death 

 everything went wrong. The want of strength 

 in the king, as well as in his title to the crown, 

 was an invitation to every form of faction to 

 display itself. Jack Cade (q.v.), an Irish adven- 

 turer who pretended to be a Mortimer, obtained a 

 temporary possession of London ; but the citizens 

 overcame him and his pillaging followers, and 

 he was killed in Sussex. The true representa- 

 tive of the Mortimers was Richard, Duke of 

 York, and he was one of the unquiet spirits of 

 the reign. As a descendant of Lionel, l)uke of 

 Clarence, the third son of Edward III., his title 

 to the crown was superior to that of the king. 

 who was descended from the Duke of Lancaster, 

 the fourth sou of that monarch, and he laid claim 

 to the crown with more or less openness, accord- 

 ing to circumstances. His influence and address 

 were so great that in 1454, on the occasion of 



