ESTIMATES OF THE ENGLISH KINGS.

XIII.—HENRY IV.

THE accession of the House of Lancaster to the Throne of Eng- land ushers in a new epoch in the history of that country, to which the reign of Richard II. forms a sort of introduction. Out of the chaos of personal ambitions and class aspirations and pre- judices which constituted the main features of the latter reign was gradually evolved during the fifteenth century that type of society which was to be subjected to the great Religious and Political experiments of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Every- body must feel that while there is considerable similarity between some of the great questions which interested and agitated the public mind during the latter part of the reign of Edward III. and that of Richard H., and those with which the Tudor period was mainly occupied, there is also an essential difference in the character of the society to which these questions were addressed. The period on which we are now entering ought to supply the history of this transition, and explain the recurrence of the same problems under such very different conditions of solution ; but unhappily there is no period of our national history of which we know so little from authentic and reliable sources of information, and which has called forth so little discriminating industry on the part of competent students. The obscurity and uncertainty which attaches to the events, naturally also affects to a corresponding extent our know- ledge of the characters of the sovereigns who occupied the throne during that period, and we may therefore at once say that the Estimates of them which we venture to put forth are given with greater reserve and hesitation than any preceding ones, and must be received only as the best that we are able to form under very disadvantageous circumstances.

The fifteenth century, while it was really the workshop in which the great revolutions of the succeeding centuries were gradually being prepared, was in itself to the outward eye only a confused collection of imperfect and abortive essays of workmanship, the first attempts to realize the great ideas to which the preceding century had given birth. Full of interest so far as concerns the subject-matter of the day, it is also full of seemingly wasted efforts, and purposes distracted or postponed at the very moment of their proximate fulfilment. And as with the age, so with the leaders of the age. There are plenty of men of ability, but there are few really great careers, if greatness is to be estimated by per- manently great achievements. Nor do the Kings escape from this common imputation of fruitlessness. The ablest and greatest seem to have palpably mistaken their appropriate career, or to have wilfully stopped short in it,—the one really feeble sovereign among them is the only complete character, and his completeness fitted him only for an entirely different position.

Henry of Bolingbroke, as he was called, from the place of his birth, had very little in common with his predecessor except in the power of concealing his thoughts, and the patience to await opportunities. But what in Richard was a constrained and un- natural state of mind, which eventually destroyed the balance of

his understanding altogether, seems to have been in Henry the natural growth of his temperament. Of all his predecessors he most resembled in several points of character the founder of the Plantagenet dynasty. He might, perhaps, be called a reproduction of Henry IL, without the intensity of sub- dued passion which marked that King, but without also the elevation and breadth of mind which (after all his faults) recommend his namesake to our sympathy. Both kings acted always on deliberate and preconceived plans ; neither of them seems to have had great originality of mind, yet each studied deeply mankind and events, and each in his degree pro- fited by his study largely-. Both were studious, and both were fond of considering and discussing questions of casuistry, as a relaxation from and a school for their more immediately practical duties. A well-informed writer, who was born five years before the accession of Henry IV., declares respecting that king :—" I have known in my time that men of great literary attainments, who used to enjoy intercourse with him, have said that he was a man of very great ability, and of so tenacious a memory that he used to spend great part of the day in solving and unravelling hard questions. . . . Let it suffice for future ages to know that this man was a studious investigator of all doubtful points of morals, and that, as far as his hours of rest from the administration of his government permitted him to be free, he was always eager in the prosecution of such pursuits." He is said to have invited to England a celebrated French lady and memoir-writer, Christine de Pisan, and the careful education which he gave to Prince James of Scotland was of so superior a kind for the age, that the greatest benefit was conferred on Scotland when the long-detained prince was at last allowed to return to that country. Henry him- self is said to have jestingly remarked when the young prince first fell into his hands, on his voyage to France, that the Scots might have paid him the compliment of considering him as quite as well fitted to educate the boy as the French. These tastes and pursuits are only such as we might have expected from the son of John of Gaunt. But Henry also resembled his ancestor, the first Plantagenet king, in another respect, namely, in his great activity of body as well as of mind. He was no mere closet student or statesman of the cabinet. His whole life, until he was disabled by disease, was filled with a succession of personal enterprises, in which the physical exertion must have been as great as the individual courage was conspicuous. It must be remembered that his reign comprises only a very small portion of his life, and that he came to the throne at the age of thirty-three, a veteran in body as well as in mind. After the assumption of the reins of government by Richard, he thought it expedient to quit the political scene for a time, and in September, 1390, he went into Prussia, and joined the forces that were attacking the Pagan King of Lithuania, and distinguished himself in the battles in that country. He returned to England about the 25th of April fol- lowing ; but on the 25th of July, 1392, he made a second expedi- tion to Prussia with 300 men, and not meeting with so friendly a reception from the lords of that country as he expected, he went to Venice, and thence proceeded to Jerusalem, where he visited the Holy Places as a pilgrim, and ransomed many Christian captives. In the course of his travels he visited Italy, Austria, Bohemia, and France, and was again in England in 1397. His bold enterprise in landing at Ravenspurn in 1399, and his per- sonal attendance after his accession in the campaigns against the Percies, the Scots, and the Welsh, all attest a physical activity and energy quite equal to if not beyond that of his mind. He was personally brave to the extent of rashness, and what we have already said shows that he had a considerable amount of enter- prise and of religious faith, if not of enthusiasm. He never lost his presence of mind, and he seldom lost his temper. He pre- served calmness and coolness in the midst of great crises, and never took an active part except where he could do so with effect. But he was as prompt in action as cautious in acting. He was not unkindly in his disposition, in the earlier part of his life, at any rate, and ho was sufficiently versed in the more ornamental accomplishments of the day to hold his ground with any knight or courtier, while he had tact enough to catch the humours of the lower orders. He was a thoroughly capable man, and a not ill-meaning man. But his character seems, as far as we can judge, to have been at the bottom cold and unsympathetic, and as devoid of generous im- pulses as it was naturally free from sinister motives. Quiet, and probably unconscious, selfishness seems to have been his ruling char- acteristic, and the circumstances of his position and life intensified this selfishness and made it something more than a passive quality.

From taking good care not to injure or sacrifice himself, he went on to injure and sacrifice others. His wariness became suspicion, and his caution degenerated into dissimulation. He stood in the invidious and dangerous position of the representative of a cadet branch of the reigning family. Not only was his father the uncle of the King, but he himself through his mother represented the collateral house of Lancaster, which from its origin in the reign of Henry III. had been always a sort of centre of popular feeling, and an object of suspicion to the Crown. He was brought up among men with whom their own aggrandizement was the sole object, and with whom frequently the best path to safety and position seemed to be the destruction of all possible rivals. He thus learnt early the lesson of distrust of all men, and dissimulation with all, if not also of occasional treachery. We speak with some reserve on this last point, because our materials for judging are not sufficient or satisfactory for a positive decision. Much of Henry's conduct during the reign of Richard can be explained without attributing to him more than great reserve and a keen instinct of self-preservation. He took the field boldly against the ob- noxious favourite De Vere, and acted for some time with the Duke of Gloucester, being one of the Lords Appellant forced on Richard.

But he carefully abstained from any personal disrespect to the King, and he openly (though vainly) interposed to stop the execution of Sir Simon Burley, a courtier of the last reign, who, whatever his demerits, has the recommendation of having been selected by the Black Prince as guardian to his son. A breach, thereupon, ensued between Heury and his uncle Gloucester, and he seems to have withdrawn from the counsels of the party. The King, at any rate, always expressed friendly feelings towards him, and made from that time a marked difference in his manner of speaking of him and Mowbray from that he employed respecting the rest of the Lords Appellant. Fresh manifestations of favour were dis- played towards him when Richard assumed his authority in 1389. But Henry seems to have either somewhat mistrusted this appear- ance of favour, or to have felt his position too difficult a one, and as we have seen, quitted England for the next few years. In 1397, however, we find the King declaring that he acted with his consent in arresting the Duke of Gloucester. How far he was compelled to temporize during the succeeding period of undisguised tyranny, we do not know ; he seems to have made no open oppo- sition, at any rate ; but there can be little doubt that he, as well as Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, began to tremble lest their own turn was coming, and to believe that Richard had never forgiven their former action against the favourites. It was under these circumstances that, as Henry said, Mowbray opened his mind to him, and suggested measures of mutual protection, and that Henry disclosed the alleged communication, at the order of the King, in Parliament. How far this was mere self-preservation and how far treachery on Henry's part we are unable to say. His cha- racter does not forbid, while it does not invite, the worse interpre- tation. He may have desired to remove a rival in Mowbray, or he may have only acted on his principle of general distrust and self-regard, and have considered it necessary for his own safety to denounce his old colleague to the King. The sequel is well known. Richard, after pretending to encourage a decision of the truth of the accusation by trial by combat, seized the oppor- tunity of banishing both peers from England,—Henry at first only for ten years, afterwards, it would seem, for life—on the plea that a decision either way would be injurious to himself from the connection of both with the Royal blood, and that it would be dangerous to the peace of England for the would-be duellists to con- tinue there in deadly hostility to each other. Other offences were added to justify Norfolk's (at first) heavier sentence, but the real offence in both was carefully kept out of view. Then followed the death of John of Gaunt and the iniquitous confiscation of his pro- perty, and then came the expedition of Henry, nominally to assert his own rights and rescue the country from the evil advisers of the Crown, really, undoubtedly, to make a stroke (if feasible) for the Crown. His lessons in casuistry may have led him to distinguish between absolute and possible intentions, and so justified to his conscience his disavowal of all designs on the Crown when he first landed ; but he as well as the Percies must have known that there was really no alternative, in dealing with such a man as Richard, between his destruction and their own. It is probable that the Percies, like Henry, made their policy wait on the coarse of events, and though bent on deposing the King, would have much preferred a puppet King in a Mortimer, to a clever ruler such as they knew Henry of Bolingbroke would prove. But Henry's management and popularity combined proved too much for them, and they acquiesced, seemingly with good-will, in his accession.

We have given some idea of what Henry of Bolingbroke may petual hazard from attempts on his life, he was not driven thereby The personal reign of Henry IV. may be said, in one sense, to into passion or cruelty. Warfare under his auspices assumed a terminate with the latter part of the year 1406. From that time

much more humane and civilized character. The Royal banner, he laboured with yoke-fellows very similar in origin and authority wherever it was raised in the Scotch wars, was a secure shelter from to those which had been imposed on Richard, though the sem- the worst accompaniments of war, and in France his captains gave blance of his personal co-operationjwas kept up with more outward a noble lesson in humanity to a Duke of Burgundy. The death decency. A painful disease in the face, which had more or leas of Richard is a possible, but only a possible blot on his memory. afflicted him from a child of six years old, seems to have rapidly in- How and exactly when that prince died no one can say, but creased, and to have become a sort of leprosy ; and now to these was the suspicions against Henry, though strong, are far from added a succession of epileptic fits, which at last brought him to the

amounting to proofs. As of former charges against him, we grave. Under the influence of these complaints, his mind became . may say of this,—it is not incompatible with his character, seriously weakened, his household expenditure became so reckless, but it is not the natural deduction from it. He was for the and his general power of administration so obviously broken

first six or seven years of* his reign, at any rate, a just, if not down, that the Parliament and the Privy Council took decided perhaps a very popular ruler, and though his administration and steps, and after first curbing his extravagance and the misconduct his popularity after that time underwent a serious change for the to which his weakness had given rise by rigorous surveillance, at

worse, this was owing rather to the effects of mental and bodily last took the reins of government out of his hands, in all but the decay than to any other cause. Of his foreign policy throughout, name, and placed his eldest son at the head of the Government. a late editor of his correspondence speaks in terms of high praise. Once the King asserted his authority by dismissing his son from "It is impossible," he says, "to read and study this lengthy and the Council, but the act was the last effort on the part of the once almost unbroken series of letters without coming to the conclusion all-efficient Bolingbroke, and the Crown which, as the story goes, that [in the transactions with France and Flanders] the English Prince Henry took prematurely from his father's bedside, had really were by far the least to blame, and were evidently actuated by a for several years practically rested on his own head. Henry W. was sincere desire to make, peace on equitable terms ; a desire for not a good man or a great man, but he possessed qualities which which very little credit can be given to the other side The frequently suggest, though they do not realize, both one and the whole correspondence taken together and considered in all its de- other character. His aims in life cannot be considered either tails exhibits a new and striking illustration of one of those numerous entirely praiseworthy or entirely malign. His virtues were nearly perils and disturbances which rendered uneasy indeed the early as moderate as his vices. His intellect, like his morality, had the years of the reign of the first monarch of the House of Lancaster; type of mediocrity ; but the mediocrity in the former case was

affording yet another proof of the vigour of the mind of the man certainly of a higher type than in the latter. His virtue was too who could pass safely through so many troubles, and at last obtain Passive to endure the ordeal of an active career, but his intellect success ; and certainly not exhibiting his character in an unfavour- was strong enough to secure him a creditable place in the gallery able light beside that of neighbouring princes of his day." But of Kings. We may say of him as the old gardener says of Rob

Roy in Scott's novel of that name,—" There are mony things with all this cleverness of administration at home and abroad, Ro Henry of Bolingbroke was out of unison with his times in one essential point. of Bolingbroke.

We have spoken of the Lollard movement in its earlier social have been in himself and as a cadet of the royal family : we have and political aspects. It had been originally, it is well known, now to consider his character as affected and developed by his favoured and protected by John of Gaunt, and there is reason to elevation to the throne. He had hitherto suffered (though from a believe that his son had shared in these sympathies.. But the different cause) from the same isolation and want of sympathy levelling or democratic tendencies which were thought to be the with others to which the position of Kings exposes them. He fruit of Lollardism, and which culminated in Wat Tyler's rising, was now to suffer in character and feeling from the want of the frightened not only the middle-classes and nobles, but the House recognized position of a legitimate and undisputed succession. of Lancaster into orthodoxy and sympathy with the Church. The Unlike Henry II., whose succession to the throne had been a kind nobles and middle-classes had by the commencement of the reign of Restoration, and who thus added to personal qualifications the of Henry IV. considerably recovered from their panic. They prestige of accepted authority, Henry IV. was the nominee King proved, indeed, still doctrinally orthodox enough to pass the of the Parliament, and his primary object must be to maintain statute De lizretico Comburendo, which ushered in an era of himself on this Parliamentary throne, and to secure the succession intolerance to the death among fellow-Christians in England ; but to his children. Thus he never could achieve the independent they were not loth to copy a page out of the creed of the Lollards, • position of kingship. Every act of his beyond the walls of Par- and to propose to the King a sweeping ecclesiastical reform, liament seemed like a mere exhibition of personal will, and every which would have reduced the clergy to a condition of primitive concession of his within the walls of Parliament seemed only a Christian poverty, and enriched the King and all other classes, natural and inevitable consequence of the origin of his power. His and provided funds for the charity of the Kingdom, at their mind, though strong, was not sufficiently commanding to master expense. But the House of Lancaster had not moved in this and impress with awe, though it might sway and manage his Lords respect with the nation which had called it to the throne. Henry and Commons. There was nothing striking in his presence, had found the advantage of an alliance with the Church in his though there was nothing insignificant or mean. In person he struggle with Richard, who had most unwisely alienated its was of the middle height, but well-proportioned and compact. affections by his tyranny, and Henry therefore entertained an His address was not undignified, and could be when he chose very overweening estimate of the strength and importance of the pleasing, but he had to court Parliamentary favour too closely to Church. The old superstitious feelings of a Plantagenet (which be able to maintain altogether the dignity of a King. The Com- had peeped forth in his pilgrimage to Jerusalem) may have mons addressed him in language which will startle the student intensified this feeling, and after his accession he lent himself to who has gained his ideas of deference to the Sovereign from the the aggrandizement of the Church, without due regard for the days of the Tudors, and he was compelled generally to answer interests of the State or the wishes of the people. On this point in a fashion which sounds somewhat humiliating, even where we he was disposed to be obstinate, and to show self-assertion in his are bound to acknowledge its wisdom and its justice. There was dealings with Parliament, and, indeed, there can be little doubt not sufficient natural elevation in his character to support entirely that the Church was saved by his exertions and resistance from a this deference to popular demands which seemed, in his case, timely reformation, if not from a complete spoliation. On this rather humiliating than graceful and condescending. He had not point Henry was a bigot, and a persecuting bigot, and as he urged the elements of Royal stateliness in his nature, and his popular persecution, the Parliament and the people became more tolerant manners had outlived their proper sphere of action—the candi- towards the Lollards, and more sympathetic with their teachings. datesbip for the Crown, not its possession. Still, he might have Instead, then, of becoming the leader and moderator of what inspired regard as well as respect, if it had not been for other cir- might have been made a great and wise movement, Henry ex- cumstances. Though his policy at home and abroad was neces- pended his energies in checking and repressing it, and while he sarily to a great degree hampered and disarranged by personal and destroyed his own popularity, and undermined the position of his family considerations—though be bad to struggle for a throne family, ensured the more thorough downfall of the Church in the where he ought to have been governing a united people and succeeding century. The mind which was equal to the lessons of directing a national statesmanship, he achieved by the force and casuistry was not wide enough to grasp the bearings of a great persistence of his character, and his unwearied industry and activity, and vital question,—the faculties which were sufficient to constitute much more than could have been expected from his position. At an able administrator, fell short of the dimensions of genius and home he crushed every conspiracy, and though he lived in per- of the higher statesmanship.

petual hazard from attempts on his life, he was not driven thereby The personal reign of Henry IV. may be said, in one sense, to into passion or cruelty. Warfare under his auspices assumed a terminate with the latter part of the year 1406. From that time

much more humane and civilized character. The Royal banner, he laboured with yoke-fellows very similar in origin and authority wherever it was raised in the Scotch wars, was a secure shelter from to those which had been imposed on Richard, though the sem- the worst accompaniments of war, and in France his captains gave blance of his personal co-operationjwas kept up with more outward a noble lesson in humanity to a Duke of Burgundy. The death decency. A painful disease in the face, which had more or leas of Richard is a possible, but only a possible blot on his memory. afflicted him from a child of six years old, seems to have rapidly in- How and exactly when that prince died no one can say, but creased, and to have become a sort of leprosy ; and now to these was the suspicions against Henry, though strong, are far from added a succession of epileptic fits, which at last brought him to the

over bad for blessing and ower gudo for banning, like,"—Henry