2. Lord Cobham.—The alarm created by the Lollards was increasing. Among them were numbered, not only those who questioned the generally received religious doctrines, but the discontented and revolutionary also; and they uttered threatening vaunts as to their number and power. Their chief leader, under whose patronage unlicensed preachers spread over the country, was Sir John Oldcastle, called Lord Cobham. Henry, who had an old friendship for Cobham, spent his powers of religious argument, backed up by threats, upon him without success. Being tried in the Archbishop's court, and adjudged a heretic, Cobham was sent to the Tower, from whence he escaped, and became a terror to the government, which dreaded a Lollard rising under such a leaderfor he was a tried soldier. There was some mysterious midnight meeting of Lollards in the fields at St. Giles, which was dispersed by the King, and in which Cobham was said to be concerned. After this, he lay hid for a few years; but being then discovered, he was put to death as a traitor and a heretic, being hung up in an iron chain, and burned by a fire kindled below. Whether he was a loyal subject hunted down by the priesthood, or a traitor who aimed at being president of a Lollard commonwealth, remains matter of dispute.

3. Renewal of the Hundred Years' War.— Since the breaking of the Peace of Bretigny, there had been sometimes truce and sometimes war with France, but never a peace. Henry now resolved on an attempt to recover "his inheritance," the time being favourable, as the French King, Charles VI., was insane, and the country was torn asunder between rival factions. The fulfilment of the Treaty of Bretigny Henry could demand with some show of legal right; as for Edward's claim upon the crown, such as it was, it had descended, not to the House of Lancaster, but to the Mortimers. This bowever was a point too

subtle for the minds of the English, who seem to have reasoned that since Henry was their King, he must needs be King of France too. Rejecting an offer of the whole of the ancient Duchy of Aquitaine, Henry made ready for war, and was about to embark when discovery was made of a plot to set the Earl of March on the throne. The conspirators were the King's cousin Richard, Earl of Cambridge, who had married the Earl of March's sister, Lord Scrope of Masham, and Sir Thomas Grey of Heton. All three were put to death-an unpromising beginning of an expedition. However Henry set sail, and landing, Aug. 14, 1415, near Harfleur, laid siege to the place, which yielded to his artillery and mines in five weeks. As his army was thinned by disease, his advisers now urged him to return; but, confident in what he believed to be the righteousness of his cause and relying upon Heaven, he took instead the hazardous resolution of marching to Calais. On the plain of Azincourt, in Picardy, he was confronted by the French army. The English, who had suffered much from bad weather and scanty fare, betook themselves at night to confession and reception of the Sacrament; meanwhile the Frenchmen, if we may believe the English report, played at dice for the ransoms of their expected prisoners. The battle was fought the next day, October 25. The French men-at-arms, in their heavy plates of steel, were crowded together in a space so small that they had hardly room to strike, and on ground so soft from recent rain that their horses could hardly flounder through the mire. On foot, unarmoured, some bareheaded and barefooted, the English archers came on, and discharged their deadly volleys, which threw the first division of the French cavalry into confusion. Throwing down their bows, the archers fell upon them with sword and bill, and though the French fought gallantly for two hours longer, their fine army, reckoned at from six to ten

times the number of the English, was cut to pieces. When the day was nearly won, an alarm was raised that the French were about to renew the battle, upon which Henry hastily ordered his soldiers to kill their prisoners, lest they should aid the enemy-orders which were in most cases carried out before the mistake was discovered. After the victory, Henry sailed from Calais to Dover, and, with his chief captives in his train, made a triumphant entry into London, amid gorgeous shows and pageants. He himself observed a studied simplicity in dress and bearing, and, it is said, refused to allow his helmet, dinted with many blows, to be carried before him.

4. Treaty of Troyes.-In July 1417, Henry again invaded Normandy, and won fortress after fortress, while the French were occupied with quarrels among themselves. Rouen, being starved out after a gallant defence, surrendered, and there Henry built a palace and held his court. It was however doubtful whether he would be able to keep Normandy, when the game was unexpectedly thrown into his hands. The greatest of the French vassal princes, Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, being blinded by desire to avenge his father, who had just been murdered during a conference with the French King's eldest son Charles, turned to the English for aid. He and the French Queen Isabel, who took the Burgundian side against her son, brought the incapable King to make at Troyes, May 21, 1420, a treaty with the English invader, by which Henry obtained the hand of the King's daughter Katharine, the regency of the kingdom, and the succession after King Charles's death to the crown, which was to be for ever united with that of England. The French King's son Charles — the Dauphin, to give him his proper title-who was thus disinherited, of course had nothing to do with this treaty, under which Henry undertook to carry on war against him and his friends.

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5. Death of Henry.-Henry soon afterwards returned to England with his new-made Queen; but ere long he was recalled to France by the defeat and death of his brother the Duke of Clarence in battle at Baugé in Anjou against the Dauphin's men and their Scottish auxiliaries. On this campaign Henry carried with him young King James I. of Scotland, who sixteen years ago had been unjustly made prisoner by Henry IV., and his presence served as an excuse for hanging every captured Scot as a traitor taken in arms against his sovereign. By the taking of Meaux, Henry became master of the greater part of France north of the Loire; but his career was now run. He sickened, and died at Vincennes, Aug. 31, 1422, maintaining to the end his wonted composure. When during his last hours the ministers of religion round his bed were by his order reciting the penitential psalms, he interrupted them at the words "Build Thou the walls of Jerusalem," and said that he had intended, after effecting peace in France, to go to Jerusalem and free the Holy City. This was no mere deathbed resolution. Henry had really meditated a Crusade, and had sent out a Burgundian knight, Gilbert de Lannoy, to survey the coasts and defences of Egypt and Syria. This survey was completed and reported just after the King's untimely death. Henry's own people, and especially his soldiers, well-nigh worshipped him. His funeral procession, from Paris and Rouen to Calais, and from Dover to London and Westminster, was more sumptuous than that of any King before him. The sacred relics were removed from the eastern end of the Confessor's chapel in Westminster Abbey to make room for his tomb, which was honoured almost as that of a saint. Above the tomb there still hang his saddle and his helmet. Henry left one son, an infant only a few months old, who bore his name. His widow Katharine afterwards made an ill-assorted match with

one of her attendants, a Welsh gentleman called Owen Tudor, and in course of time their descendants -the Tudor line of sovereigns-came to sit on the English throne.

6. Richard Whittington.-To this period belonged "the flower of merchants," Richard Whittington, thrice Mayor of London-first under Richard II., next under Henry IV., and again under Henry V. The familiar tale of " Whittington and his Cat" is an old legend, which has been traced to a Persian origin. Whittington at any rate had a real existence; he advanced large sums to Henry V. for his wars, and was a benefactor to the City of London.

CHAPTER XXIII.

HENRY VI.

Henry VI.; the Maid of Orleans (1)—strife among the nobles; Henry's marriage; murder of Suffolk (2)— Jack Cade's rebellion (3)—Wars of the Roses; succession of the Duke of York; his death; Edward of York raised to the throne (4)—county elections (5) attainder (6).

1. Henry VI., of Windsor, 1422-1461.-By the deaths of Henry V. and Charles VI. within two months of each other, the infant Henry of Windsor became King of England and France; though in the latter country there was a rival King, the Dauphin, who reigned at Bourges as Charles VII., and kept up the war with John, Duke of Bedford, who was Regent of France for his nephew Henry. In 1428 the English began the siege of Orleans, and its fall, which would lay the Dauphin's provinces open to them, seemed at hand, when France was delivered as by a miracle.