On May 21st Queen Katherine landed at Harfleur with her infant son. She was accompanied by a brilliant court, and by the Duke of Bedford, who had been summoned to join his brother, now feeling, we may suppose, a pressing need of the assistance of his military skill. The Queen journeyed from Harfleur on to Rouen, and from Rouen to Vincennes, where Henry met her. Their entry into Paris was magnificent. It was noticed that the English queen had two mantles of ermine borne before her carriages, to mark, it was supposed, her dignity as Queen of England and France. Charles was at that time also in Paris, and it was again noticed that it was the English court rather than the French that formed the centre of attraction. Meanwhile Henry was winning good opinion from the commonalty by his just and moderate government, and especially by his exact and impartial administration of justice, a new thing in a country where privilege was always so powerful. On June 22nd Henry and his Queen left Paris for Senlis. He was soon again in the capital to inquire into the circumstances of a plot which had been discovered for the delivery of the city into the hands of the145 Dauphin; and it was after his second return to Senlis that his health began manifestly to fail. Of the nature of his illness we are not exactly informed. Monstrelet says that it was St. Anthony’s fire or erysipelas; other accounts speak of a fistula and pleurisy; in Walsingham the cause of death is given as “a sharp fever with vehement dysentery.” Henry did not come of a long-lived race. His great-grandfather indeed reached an age (sixty-five) which, though often since exceeded, had only once before been reached by an English king; but his grandfather—the “time-honoured Lancaster” of Shakespeare—had died, worn out, at fifty-eight; his father, after years of suffering, expired at forty-seven; and his mother died in her twenty-fifth year.
Cosne-sur-Loire, a walled city belonging to the Duke of Burgundy, had been besieged by the Dauphin, and had agreed to capitulate unless relieved before August 6th. The Duke sent for help to Flanders and Picardy, and, of course, to King Henry. The King replied that he would come in person, and bring his whole army with him. The army marched out of its quarters in Paris and its environs, and Henry, after taking leave of his wife, whom indeed he never saw again, started from Senlis to join it. He was able to ride as far as Melun, where he exchanged the saddle for a litter, intending to overtake the army; but his illness increased so rapidly that he was compelled to give up his purpose. He handed over the command to the Duke of Bedford, and was carried to the Bois de Vincennes. There he took to his bed, from which he never rose again.
He seems to have been aware that his days were numbered. The Dukes of Bedford and Exeter, the Earl146 of Warwick, and some four or five more of his most trusted counsellors were called to his bedside. To his brother John he said: “My good brother, I beseech you, on the loyalty and love you have ever expressed for me, that you show the same loyalty and affection to my son Henry, your nephew.” He then gave him directions as to the policy he was to pursue. Monstrelet professes to give the dying man’s exact words, but at this point they are obscure and even contradictory. The Duke of Burgundy was to have the Regency of France, if he wished for it; otherwise his brother was to take it himself. Then, turning to his uncle, he said: “My good uncle of Exeter, I nominate you sole Regent of the kingdom of England, for that you well know how to govern it; and I likewise nominate you as guardian to my son; and I insist, on your love to me, that very often you personally visit and see him.” To the Earl of Warwick his words were: “My dear cousin of Warwick, I will that you be his governor, and that you teach him all things becoming his rank, for I cannot provide a fitter person for the purpose.”
Then followed some advice as to the management of affairs. Above all things, dissension with the Duke of Burgundy must be avoided; and this was especially impressed on his brother Humphrey, whose relations with the Duke were not friendly. Unless they could keep on good terms with him, everything would be ruined. The princes of the French royal family whom they had in custody were on no account to be released.
After an interview with Sir Hugh de Lannoy, who had come to him on a mission from the Duke of Burgundy, Henry began to prepare for his end. He147 sent for his physicians, and asked them how long they thought he had to live. They were naturally unwilling to tell him the truth, and endeavoured to evade the question: “It depended solely,” they said, “on the will of God whether he should be restored to health.” The King, dissatisfied with this answer, repeated his question, and commanded them to tell him the actual truth. They consulted together. Then one of them, whom they had appointed their spokesman, fell on his knees by the bedside and said: “Sire, you must think on your soul; for, unless it be the will of God to decree otherwise, it is impossible that you should live more than two hours.”
On hearing this, Henry sent for his confessor. He made his confession, and received the last sacraments of the Church. He then bade his chaplains recite the seven penitential Psalms. When in chanting the fifty-first they came to the words “Build Thou the walls of Jerusalem,” he interrupted them and said aloud that he had fully intended, after wholly subduing the realm of France and restoring it to peace, to conquer the kingdom of Jerusalem. The priests went on with their devotions. In the midst of them he cried out again, as if addressing some invisible adversary, “Thou liest, thou liest; my part is with the Lord Jesus”; then with a still louder voice, “In manus tuas, Domine”—and so breathed his last. The day of his death was the last day of August. He had just completed his thirty-fourth year.
The body was embalmed and placed in a coffin of lead. From Vincennes it was first taken in great pomp, attended by the English princes, his household, and a148 multitude of the people, to the Church of Notre-Dame in Paris, where a solemn service was performed over it. From Paris it was removed with the same state to Rouen.
At Rouen, Queen Katherine, who had been kept in ignorance of her husband’s perilous condition, waited with the corpse till affairs were sufficiently settled to allow of the return of the princes to England. This was not for some weeks, and it must have been about the beginning of November when the funeral procession set out. The route was through Abbeville, Hesdin, Montreuil, and Boulogne to Calais.
The coffin was placed on a car drawn by four magnificent horses. Above it was an effigy of the King, worked in leather, beautifully painted, with a crown of gold upon the head. The right hand held a sceptre; the left a golden ball; the face looked up to the heavens. The effigy lay on a mattress, on which was a coverlet of vermilion silk interwoven with beaten gold. When it passed through any town a canopy of silk, like that which is borne over the Host on Corpus Christi Day, was carried over it by men of rank. The King of Scots followed as chief mourner; with him were Henry’s kinsmen, the English nobles in France, and the officers of his household; at the distance of a league behind followed the Queen with her ladies. The first halt was at the Church of St. Wolfran in Abbeville; there the coffin rested awhile, while rows of priests on either side chanted requiems unceasingly day and night. In every town through which the procession passed, masses were daily said from break of day to noon for the dead man’s soul.
149 From Calais the body was transported to Dover. From Dover it was carried through Canterbury and Rochester to London, which was reached on Martinmas Day (November 11th). As it approached the city it was met by fifteen bishops clad in their episcopal robes, a number of mitred abbots and other dignified ecclesiastics, and a vast multitude of people of all ranks. The service for the dead was chanted as the car passed over London Bridge, down Lombard Street, to St. Paul’s Cathedral. The adornment of the horses which drew it was notably significant. On the collar of the first were emblazoned the ancient arms of England; on that of the second, the arms of France and England quartered—these the late King had borne in his lifetime, as a solemn claim to the double crown; the third showed the arms of France simply; the fourth the traditionary bearings of the invincible Arthur—for, like him, Henry had never been vanquished in the field—three crowns or on a field azure. After a great service in St. Paul’s the body was transferred to its final resting-place in Westminster. Preparations on a scale and of a kind such as had never before been thought of were there made for its reception. The relics hitherto preserved at the extreme eastern end of the Confessor’s Chapel were removed from their place, to make room for the body of the great King. Over the spot was raised a chantry, where masses were to be offered up for ever for his soul, and an altar built in honour of the Annunciation. For a year thirty poor persons were t............