In December 1413 the King, whose health had been failing for some years, was dangerously ill. He was then at his palace at Eltham, and for a while, says Walsingham, he seemed to be dead. But he recovered, and kept Christmas with such festivity as he might. In the following March he was again attacked as he was praying in the Confessor’s Chapel at Westminster Abbey. His attendants carried him into the Abbot’s house, where he shortly afterwards expired. One of his biographers tells us that the dying man called his successor to his side and advised him to fear God, to choose an honest confessor, to be diligent in his duty as a king, and to pay his (the speaker’s) debts. The speech has the appearance of the appropriate orations which historians were accustomed to put into the mouth of their characters. If, as seems likely, the cause of death was apoplexy, it is probable that he never recovered consciousness.
The King died on March 20th. Parliament had been prorogued to the 24th of the month. It was ipso facto dissolved by the demise of the Crown; but the prelates, peers, and representatives of the Commons44 who had been summoned to it assembled in an informal manner, and for the first time in English history, without waiting for the solemnities of coronation, spontaneously offered homage to their new Sovereign, though at the same time taking care to prevent their action from being afterwards made into a precedent.
The young Henry’s accession to the throne is said to have been the occasion of a sudden change which converted a reckless and profligate youth into a sober God-fearing man. The contemporary evidence for this assertion comes from two sources—Thomas Walsingham, one of the long line of writers who formed the historical school of St. Alban’s, and Thomas Elmham, who was then a monk of Canterbury and afterwards became one of Henry’s chaplains. Elmham writes:
“He was in the days of his youth a diligent follower of idle practices, much given to instruments of music, and one who, loosing the reins of modesty, though zealously serving Mars, yet fired with the torches of Venus herself, and, in the intervals of his brave deeds as a soldier, wont to occupy himself with the other extravagances that attend the days of undisciplined youth.”
And after treating of the death of the King he goes on to put a confession of sin into the mouth of the Prince. Strong as are the expressions, they are nothing more than what are uttered day after day by worshippers whom neither the world nor their own conscience accuses of any heinous crime. Further on we read:
“After he had spent the day in wailing and groaning, so soon as the shades of night covered the earth, the weeping Prince, taking advantage of the darkness, secretly visited a certain recluse of holy life at Westminster; and laying bare45 to him the secret sins of his whole life, was washed in the laver of true repentance, and receiving the antidote of absolution against the poison that he had before swallowed, so put off the mantle of vice and returned decently adorned with the cloak of virtue. Thus a barren willow was changed into a fruitful olive, a Cocytus into an Euphrates, a Paris into a Hippolytus, the left into the right, by a happy miracle.”
Hardyng, Walsingham, and Otterbourne all use language to the same effect; and finally we have the testimony of the Italian who wrote under the pseudonym of Titus Livius. He was not strictly a contemporary; but he seems to have been in the service of Humphrey of Gloucester, the King’s brother, and some weight must be given to his words. They are, it will be seen, little more than another version, couched in less extravagant language, of the chronicle of Elmham, and run thus:
“Wherefore he was said by his father and by the royal council to be especially dear to the said King, although his good report was damaged by certain blame cast upon him by some in this matter—in that he took great pleasure in music, and followed in moderation (mediocriter) the pleasures of love and war, and other things which the licence of a soldier’s life is wont to permit, so long as his father lived.... While King Henry was yet dying, reflecting that he was about to come to the kingdom, he called unto him a priest, a monk of most virtuous life, and confessing to him his past errors, radically amended his life and manners in such fashion that no occasion of wantonness (lascivi?) was ever afterwards found in him.”
There is nothing said, it will be observed, about loose and vicious companions whom the young King banished from his presence as soon as he felt the responsibilities46 of power. It is scarcely conclusive, perhaps, to show that the officers of his household during the days when he stood next to the throne were persons of respectable character. The same might be said of other heirs-apparent who yet have been undoubtedly profligate. The associates of a young prince’s private life are not necessarily his chamberlain, the treasurer of his household, or other dignified officials. But there is absolutely no evidence to show that Henry was accustomed to the society of vicious and disreputable companions. His intimacy with Oldcastle, of which we shall have occasion to speak hereafter, certainly could not be so described.
On the other hand, we cannot wholly disregard the contemporary evidence (for all other has been left out of the account) which attributes to him a certain laxity of life during the years that preceded his accession to the throne. Such a laxity is only too probable in a young prince. The temptations to which the young kinsmen of the ruler are exposed, before they feel the responsibilities of power, are the weak point of the system of hereditary monarchy. It would have been scarcely indeed a miracle, but certainly a most uncommon experience, if Henry had passed through them altogether unscathed. But the language in which the errors of his youth are described may easily have been exaggerated. And this exaggeration may have been partly at least due to Henry himself. Those who read the confessions and self-reproaches of John Bunyan might easily believe him to have been guilty of excesses into which he did not really fall. Henry had something of the same devout temper, and may, it is at least47 probable, have used language about himself that leaves a too unfavourable impression of his conduct. That he was no idler, wasting his time and strength in riotous excess, but on the contrary a vigorous and energetic youth, even precociously distinguished as a soldier and statesman, is abundantly clear. He was trusted by the King and the King’s counsellors; the nation which had watched his career for more than ten years welcomed his accession, not with the doubtful hope that would be extended to a profligate promising reform, but with an enthusiasm of confidence and joy. And yet he may have been conscious to himself of transgressions in the past of which others took little or no account, but for which the fervour of his reception by his people might have made him feel a keener reproach. With this we may leave the subject.
The young King was crowned on April 10th, the Sunday before Easter, in the midst, as Walsingham tells us, of a great snowstorm, from which the people drew various auguries, favourable or unfavourable, of the character of the future reign. Meanwhile a new Parliament had been summoned to meet on May 15th. The Commons presented a number of petitions to the King, praying for the removal of grievances. It is impossible to judge of the justice or injustice of these complaints, and of the King’s attitude with regard to them; but it is abundantly clear that he had a will of his own, and a definite determination to maintain his prerogative. Certain malpractices in the ecclesiastical courts were, he promised, to be corrected: if the bishops failed in their duty he would act himself. But a request that the knights and burgesses summoned to Parliament48 might be allowed their expenses, met with the guarded answer that it should be done if a precedent could be found. To a petition for an extensive process of disforesting it was replied that such as had just complaints against the charters of the forests should be heard. Requests for the mitigation of the law of deodand4 and for a concession of certain freedoms in trade were refused.
Henry’s generosity of temper, or at least his confidence in his position, a frame of mind which often leads to the same course of action, was shown by his treatment of those whom a meaner or weaker prince might have regarded as rivals or enemies. The young Earl of March, who was still regarded by some as the rightful heir to the crown, was released from imprisonment to which the suspicious fears of the deceased King had condemned him. Henry had been the guardian of the young man’s estates, and seems to have discharged the trust with fidelity. The Earl repaid him with affection, and, as will be seen, when a critical occasion came, with loyalty.
Another hereditary enemy was treated in the same generous fashion. The heir of the Percies, son of the Hotspur who fell on the field of Shrewsbury, had been carried by his grandfather into Scotland. Henry, in the second year of his reign, restored him to his title and estates.
Finally, what may be called a reparation was made49 to the memory of the prince whom Henry’s father had dispossessed. Richard had been buried almost secretly at Langley, in the Church of the Preaching Friars. His body was now removed to London, and buried in royal style in the Abbey of Westminster; “not,” says Walsingham, “without great expense on the part of the King, who now confessed that he owed him the same respect that he did to his own natural father.” At the same time the King provided that “four tapers should burn day and night about his grave while the world endureth;” once a week a dirige was to be chanted, and on the next day a requiem. After a mass a distribution was to be made of eleven shillings and eightpence; while on the obit, or anniversary of death, as much as twenty pounds was to be given away.
Thus reconciled to the enemies, living or dead, of his house, Henry could address himself with good conscience and hope to the work of his life.