Page:The religious life of King Henry VI.djvu/56

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KING HENRY'S

actually inflicted a serious wound on his neck in an attempt to cut off his head. The King took this most patiently, only saying: "Forsoothe and forsoothe, ye do most foully to smyte a King anointed so." Indeed, Henry bore with absolute patience all the ill-treatment, the malignity, and the blasphemies of his enemies, after he was made a prisoner in the Tower.

"I do not think it right to pass over in silence," writes Blackman, "the heavenly favours bestowed upon this King." At the Easter time when he was a prisoner in the Tower of London, one of his chaplains expressed to him astonishment at the way he could possess his soul in peace at that holy time in spite of all his troubles. The King replied by saying: "I do so by recalling the heavenly kingdom to which I have looked forward from my infancy, and I do not care much for this transitory and earthly kingdom. I only want one thing, and that is that I may receive the Sacrament of this Paschal time with other Christians, on the die Coenae (Maunday Thursday) as is our custom." He often was granted, as has been said, a vision of our Lord in the hands of the priest celebrating