He broke his vow, The Church, through

the succession to the crown. and dethroned Richard II. her head the primate, was an accomplice with him in this deed. Arundel anointed the new king with oil from that mysterious vial which the Virgin was said to have given to Thomas à Becket, during his exile in France, telling him that the kings on whose head this oil should be poured would prove valiant champions of the Church. The coronation was followed by the dark tragedy in the Castle of Pontefract; and that, again, by the darker, though more systematic, violence of the edict De Hæretico Comburendo, which was followed in its turn by the imprisonings in the Tower, and the burnings in Smithfield. The reign thus inaugurated had neither glory abroad nor prosperity at home. Faction rose upon faction; revolt trod on the heels of revolt; and a train of national calamities followed in rapid succession, till at last Henry had completely lost the popularity which helped him to mount the throne; and the terror with which he reigned made his subjects regret the weak, frivolous, and vicious Richard, whom he had deprived first of his crown, and next of his life. Rumours that Richard still lived, and would one day claim his own, were continually springing up, and occasioned, not only perpetual alarms to the king, but frequent conspiracies among his nobles; and the man

who was first to plant the stake in England for the disciples of the Gospel had, before many days had passed by, to set up scaffolds for the peers of his realm. His son, Prince Henry, added to his griefs. The thought, partly justified by the wild life which the prince then led, and the abandoned companions with whom he had surrounded himself, that he wished to seize the crown before death had given it to him in the regular way, continually haunted the royal imagination; and, to obviate this danger, the monarch took at times the ludicrous precaution of placing the regalia on his pillow when he went to sleep. His brief reign of thirteen years and five

1 Walsingham, pp. 360, 361. This vial, the chronicler tells us, had lain for many years, neglected, locked up in a chest in the Tower of London.

369

months wore away, as an old chronicler says, "with little pleasure."

The chronicler, Holinshed, records a curious interview between the prince and his father, in the latter days of

The last year of Henry's life was signalised by a projected expedition to the Holy Land. The monarch deemed himself called to the pious labour of delivering Jerusalem from the Infidel. If he should succeed in a work so meritorious, he would spend what might remain to him of life with an easier conscience, as having made atonement for the crimes by which he had opened his way to the throne. As it turned out, however, his efforts to achieve this grand enterprise but added to his own cares, and to

his subjects' burdens. He had collected ships, money, provisions, and soldiers. All was ready; the fleet waited only till the king should come on board to weigh anchor and set sail. But before embarking, the monarch must needs visit the shrine of St. Edward. "While he was making his prayers," says Holinshed, "there as it were to take his leave, and so to procede forth on his journie, he was suddenlie and grievouslie taken, that such as were about him feared that he should have died

Henry. The prince heard that he had been slandered to the king, and went to court, with a numerous train, to clear himself. "He was appareled," says Holinshed, "in a gown of blue satin and full of small owlet holes, at every hole the needle hanging by a silk thread with which it was sewed." Falling on his knees, he pulled out a dagger, and presenting it to the king, he bade him plunge it into his breast, protesting that he did not wish to live a single day under his father's suspicions. The king, casting away the dagger, kissed the prince, and was reconciled to him. (Chron., vol. iii., p. 54.)

3 Collier, vol. i., bk. vii., p. 632. Holinshed, vol. iii.,

p. 57.

presentlie; wherefore, to relieve him, if it were possible, they bare him into a chamber that was next at hand, belonging to the Abbot of Westminister, where they laid him on a pallet before the fire, and used all remedies to revive him. At length he recovered his speech and understanding, and perceiving himself in a strange place which he knew

not, he willed to know if the chamber had any particular name, whereunto answer was made that it was called 'Jerusalem.' Then said the king, 'Lauds be given to the Father of Heaven, for I know that I shall die here in this chamber, according to the prophecy of me, which declared that ] should depart this life in Jerusalem.'”

STRUCK down by apoplexy in the prime of manhood, March 20th, 1413, Henry IV. was carried to his tomb in Canterbury Cathedral, and his son, Henry V., mounted his throne. The new king was crowned on Passion Sunday, the 9th of April. The day was signalised by a fearful tempest, that burst over England, and which the spirit of the age variously interpreted.' Not a few regarded it as a portent of evil, which gave warning of political storms that were about to convulse the State of England. But others, more sanguine, construed this occurrence more hopefully. As the tempest, said they, disperses the gloom of winter, and summons from their dark abodes in the earth the flowers of spring, so will the even-handed justice of the king dispel the moral vapours which have hung above the land during the late reign, and call forth the virtues of order and piety to adorn and bless society. Meanwhile the future, which men were striving to read, was posting towards them, bringing along with it those sharp tempests that were needful to drive away the exhalations of a night which had long stagnated over England. Religion was descending to resume the place that superstition had usurped, and awaken in the English people those

aspirations and tendencies, which found their first arena of development on the field of battle; and their second, and more glorious one, in the halls of political and theological discussion; and their final evolvement, after two centuries, in the sublime fabric of civil and religious liberty that now stood completed in England, that other nations might study its principles, and enjoy its blessings.

But

The youth of Henry V., who now governed England, had been disorderly. It was dishonoured by "the riot of pleasure, the frolic of debauchery, the outrage of wine." The jealousy of his father, by excluding him from all public employment, furnished him with an excuse for filling the vacancies of his mind and his time with low amusements and degrading pleasures. when the prince put on the crown he put off his former self. He dismissed his old associates, called around him the counsellors of his father, bestowed the honours and offices of the State upon men of capacity and virtue; and, pensioning his former companions, he forbade them to enter his presence till they had become better men. He made, in short, a commendable effort to effect a reformation in manners and religion. "Now placed on the royal seat of the realm," says the chronicler, "he determined to begin with something acceptable to the Divine Majesty, and therefore commanded

the clergy sincerelie and trulie to preach the Word of God, and to live accordinglie, that they might be lanterns of light to the temporalitie, as their profession required. The laymen he willed to serve God and obey their prince, prohibiting them, above all things, breach of matrimonie, custom in swearing, and wilful perjurie."

It was the unhappiness of Henry V., who meant so well by his people, that he knew not the true source whence alone a real reformation can proceed. The astute Arundel was still by his side, and guided the steps of the prince into the same paths in which his father had walked. Lollard blood still continued to flow, and new victims from time to time mounted the martyr's pile.

The most illustrious of the Protestants of that reign was Sir John Oldcastle, a knight of Herefordshire. Having married the heiress of Cowling Castle, near Rochester, he sat in Parliament under the title of Lord Cobham, in right of his wife's barony. The youth of Lord Cobham had been stained with gay pleasures; but the reading of the Bible, and the study of Wicliffe's writings, had changed his heart; and now, to the knightly virtues of bravery and honour, he added the Christian graces of humility and purity. He had borne arms in France, under Henry IV., who set a high value on his military accomplishments. He was not less esteemed by the son, Henry V., for his private worth, his shrewd sense, and his gallant bearing as a soldier. But the "dead fly" in the noble qualities and upright character of the stout old baron, in the opinion of the king, was his Lollardism.

With characteristic frankness, Lord Cobham made no secret of his attachment to the doctrines of Wicliffe. He avowed, in his place in Parliament, so early as the year 1391, "that it would be very commodious for England if the Pope's jurisdiction stopped at the town of Calais, and did not cross the sea.'

It is said of him, too, that he had copies made of Wicliffe's works, and sent them to Bohemia, France, Spain, Portugal, and other countries."

He threw open Cowling Castle to the Lollard preachers, making it their head-quarters while they itinerated in the neighbourhood, preaching the Gospel. He himself often attended their sermons, taking his stand, sword in hand, by the

7

371

preacher's side, to defend him from the insults of the friars. Such open disregard of the ecclesiastical authority was not likely long to either escape notice or be exempt from censure.

Convocation was sitting at the time (1413) in St. Paul's. The archbishop rose and called the attention of the assembly to the progress of Lollardism, and, pointing specially to Lord Cobham, declared that "Christ's coat would never be without seam " till that notorious abettor of heretics were taken out of the way. On that point all were agreed; but Cobham had a friend in the king, and it would not do to have him out forthwith into Smithfield and burn him, as if he were an ordinary heretic. They must, if possible, take the king along with them in all they did against Lord Cobham. Accordingly, Archbishop Arundel, with other bishops and members of Convocation, waited on the king, and laid before him their complaint against Lord Cobham. Henry replied that he would first try what he himself could do with the brave old knight whom he bore in so high esteem.8

The king sent for Cobham, and exhorted him to abandon his scruples, and submit to his mother the Church. 66 "You, most worthy prince," was the reply, "I am always prompt and willing to obey, forasmuch as I know you are a Christian king, and minister of God; unto you, next to God, I owe my whole obedience, and submit me thereunto. But, as touching the Pope and his spiritualitie, trulie I owe them neither suit nor service, forasmuch as I know him, by the Scriptures, to be the great Antichrist, the open adversary of God, and the abomination standing in the holy place." " At the hearing of these words the king's countenance fell; his favour for Cobham gave way to his hatred of heresy; he turned away, purposing with himself to interfere no farther in the matter.

The archbishop came again to the king, who now gave his ready consent that they should proceed against Lord Cobham according to the laws of the Church. These, in all such cases as the present, were compendiously summarised in the one statute of Henry IV., De Hæretico Comburendo. The archbishop dispatched a messenger to Cobham, summoning him to appear before him on September 2nd, and answer to the articles of accusation. Acting on the principle that he "owed neither suit nor service" to the Pope and his vassals, Lord Cobham paid no attention to the summons. Arundel next prepared citations, in due form, and had them

7 Collier, vol. i., bk. vii., p. 632.

8 Bale, p. 23. Holinshed, vol. iii., p. 62.

9 Bale, pp. 24, 25. Fox, bk. v., p. 282.

time were citations posted up, commanding his appearance, under threat of severe penalties; and again the summonses were contemptuously torn down.

Cobham had a stout heart in his bosom, but he would show the king that he had also a good cause. Taking his pen, he sat down and drew out a statement of his belief. He took, as the groundwork of his confession of faith, the Apostles' Creed, giving, mainly in the words of Scripture, the sense in which he received its several articles. paper has all the simplicity and spirituality, but

1 Bale, pp. 25-28. Collier, vii. 633. Fox, v. 282.

His

to a modern divine, but which was not accounted incongruous or startling in an age when so many legal, political, and even moral questions were left for decision to the wager of battle. He offered to bring a hundred knights and esquires into the field, for his purgation, against an equal number on the side of his accusers; or else, said he, "I shall fight, myself, for life or death, in the quarrel of my faith, with any man living, Christian or heathen, the king and the lords of his council excepted." 3 The proposal was declined, and the

2 The document is given in full by Bale and Fox. 3 Bale, p. 35.