Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/694

France, Scotland, and Wales. Charles VI. was inclined to take up the cause of his daughter Isabella, wife of Richard II., and on the death of the latter (February 1400) demanded her and her dowry back. The duke of Albany in Scotland was hostile to Henry, and Owen Glendower raised a national revolt in Wales. The first attempt at insurrection was made by the earls of Richard s party early in 1400, but their plans were discovered, and their forces crushed piecemeal. Most of the leaders fell victims to popular vengeance. A more serious rebellion was that of the Percies (1403), hitherto Henry s staunchest supporters. Hotspur and his father thought themselves ill requited for their services, and made common cause with Glendower and other malcontents. A junction of the northern army with the Welsh was prevented by the battle of Shrewsbury (July 21, 1403), in which Hotspur was killed. Northumberland submitted and was pardoned. But the danger was not over. The north was still in a state of ferment, the war in Wales went on, and a French fleet ravaged the southern coast with impunity. Henry s vigilance and activity were, however, equal to the task. A plot to carry off the young earl of March (January 1405) was foiled, and a fresh outbreak in the north was crushed. Scrope, archbishop of York, and Mowbray, earl marshal, who led the rebels, wore taken and executed. The king had already got into his power the son of the duke of Albany ; he now captured James, the heir-apparent to the Scotch crown, as he was en his way to France ; and the murder of the duke of Orleans removed his chief enemy in that country. Thus secured from danger abroad, he put down a final rebellion in the north, drove Glendower back into his mountains, and henceforward had no trouble at home (1408). The late crisis had, however, compelled him to make important concessions to the House of Commons. He promised (1407) to act solely by the advice of a council nominated with their approval, and submitted to the appropriation of his revenue and to other limitations. Throughout his reign he was hampered by want of money, and the regular exercise by parliament of the right to withhold supplies gave that body great control over his actions. He had seized the crown as the champion of orthodoxy. He had therefore to pay for ecclesiastical support by persecuting Lollards against his will, while he did not dare to act upon the suggestion of the Commons that church property should be converted to purposes of state. Thus limited, his foreign policy was not energetic. He had enough to do at first to defend his coasts, and though he afterwards seized the opportunity afforded by civil war to invade France (1411), his efforts were in general confined to strengthening his dynasty by foreign marriages. In his later years he was a confirmed invalid, and had to entrust much power to his eldest son, with whom he was not always on the best of terms. He died on March 20, 1413, and was buried at Canterbury. A cautious, crafty, resolute man, naturally inclined to fair dealing and clemency, but on occasion unscrupulous and cruel, he was successful in the great enterprise of his life, and has the credit of see ing that the power ho had usurped could only maintain itself by resting on a constitutional basis.

HENRY V. (1387–1422), king of England, eldest son of Henry IV. and Mary Bohun, was born August 19, 1387. Early bred to arms, his first military effort was not successful, for at the age of thirteen he commanded an expedition to Wales which was defeated by Glendower. Three years later he was present at the battle of Shrewsbury, and in 1408 he revenged himself on Glendower by driving him back to Snowdon. At the same time his position in the council, at the head of which he appears after 1410, gave him experience in affairs, and proves the confidence already felt in his political ability. The stories of his youthful extravagance and dissoluteness are unfounded, and, as the above facts show, improbable. Although his father appears to have been jealous of his popularity, he was practically at the head of affairs for some years before the death of Henry IV. Three weeks after that event he was crowned (April 9, 1413), and entered upon his inheritance with the good-will of all classes of the nation, So unanimous was the support he met with in parliament that constitutional affairs cease to have any interest during his reign. In his ecclesiastical policy he followed the lines laid down in 1401, with much greater heartiness than his father had shown. His persecution of heretics caused a conspiracy to surprise him and his brothers, which was discovered and put down with some severity (January 1414). Sir John Oldcastle, the head of the Lollards, was condemned to be burnt, and though he escaped for the time, he was again taken in 1417, and put to death. Henry s orthodoxy brought him into connexion with the emperor Sigismund, then engaged in settling the affairs of the church at the council of Constance, and his assistance was very instrumental in the healing of the great schism. But the great work of his life was the conquest of France. It was with this object that he issued a kind of general amnesty on his accession, and appealed to the nation as a whole to support him. War was resolved on by parliament, and Henry laid claim to the French crown. This demand was afterwards reduced to one for all the districts which the English kings had ever held in France. Such claims as these, of course, precluded all negotiation. The expedition was not delayed by a conspiracy to carry off the earl of March, which was discovered before it was ripe, and on August 14, 1415, the English army landed at Havre. Harfieur was soon taken, but the English losses were so great that Henry resolved to retreat to Calais. On October 25th the French army that opposed his march was cut to pieces at Agincourt. The next two years were spent in preparations for continuing the war. In 1417 Henry again invaded France, took Rouen (1419), and with the assistance of the Burgundian party forced Charles VI. to grant his demands. By the treaty of Troyes (1420) it was arranged that he should marry Catherine, take the government in hand at once, and succeed on Charles s death. This disgraceful treaty had, however, the effect of reviving the national party in France, and during Henry s absence in 1421 the English began to lose ground. He hurried back to France, but before he had had time to recover his position, he died at the castle of Alncennes, August 31, 1422. A great soldier, an able politician, a skilful diplomatist, a generous, pure, and high-minded man, he was one of the noblest and most popular of English kings. But these good qualities should not blind one to the fact that he was a religious persecutor, and that he plunged his country into an unjust and hopeless war.

HENRY VI. (1421–1471), king of England, only son of Henry V. and Catherine of France, was born on December 6, 1421, and was therefore only eight months old at his father s death. He can hardly be said ever to have reigned, for his long minority passed into another kind of tutelage, during which the influence of his wife and favourites lire- pared the way for civil war. Ten years of anarchy culminated in his dethronement, and ten years more of wandering and imprisonment fill the interval between that event and his death. The chief interest of the first thirty years of his life lies in watching the decay of English power in France ; that of the last twenty is to be found in the civil wars which resulted from the misgovernment of the preceding period. Although the English had lost some ground towards the end of Henry V. s reign, their position, when the duke of Bedford undertook the task of continuing his brother s work, was very favourable. They held the north