archbishops and bishops to take measures, each within his respective diocese, to resist the malice of the Lollards. The King merely answered, that he had given the subject in charge to his chancellor; and we are assured that Dr. Thomas Walden,[10] one of the most learned and powerful divines of the day, but very violent in his opposition to the new doctrines, openly inveighed against Henry for his great negligence in regard to the duty of punishing heretics.[11] To his religious sentiments we must again refer in the sequel, and also as the course of events may successively suggest any observations on that head.

When Henry IV. ascended the throne, parliament prayed that the Prince might not leave the realm, but remain in England as the anchor of the people's hopes; and, soon after his own accession,[12] Henry V. is advised by his council to remain near London, that he might receive prompt intelligence of whatever might arise in any quarter, and be able to take immediate steps for the safety of the commonweal. He seems to have carried with him even from his earliest youth, wherever he went, a peculiar talent of exciting confidence in every one. Whether in the field of battle, or the chamber of council,—whether as the young Prince, just initiated in affairs of war and government, or as the experienced captain and statesman,—his contemporaries looked to him as a kind of guardian spirit, to protect them from harm, and lead them onward to good success. No despondency, nor even misgivings, show themselves in the agents of any enterprise in which he was personally engaged. The prodigious effects of these feelings in the English towards their prince were displayed in their full strength, perhaps, at the battle of Agincourt; but similar results are equally, though not so strikingly, visible in many other passages of his life.

Among the various causes to which historians have been accustomed to attribute the general anticipations of good from Henry's reign, which pervaded all classes, is the appointment of Gascoyne to the high station of Chief Justice immediately upon his ascending the throne. But we have already seen that, however gladly an eulogist would seize on such an exalted instance of magnanimity and noble generosity, the truth of history forbids our even admitting its probability in this place. Henry certainly did not re-appoint Gascoyne. But, whilst we cannot admit the tradition which would mark the true character of Henry's mind by his behaviour to the Chief Justice, there is not wanting many an authentic record which would amply account for his almost unprecedented popularity at the very commencement of his reign. Among these we must not omit to notice the resolution which he put in practice of retiring for an hour or more every day, after his early dinner, to receive petitions from any of his subjects, however humble,[13] who would appeal to him for his royal interposition; to examine and consider the several cases patiently; and to redress real grievances. Indeed, numberless little occurrences meet us on every side, which seem to indicate very clearly that he loved the right and hated iniquity; and that he was never more happy than whilst engaged in deeds of justice, mercy, and charity. He seems to have received the golden law for his rule, "See that they who are in need and necessity have right;" and to have rejoiced in keeping that law himself, and compelling all within the sphere of his authority and influence to observe it also.

Another incident recorded of Henry of Monmouth at this period, strongly marking the kindness and generosity and nobleness of his mind, was the removal of the remains of Richard II. from Langley to Westminster. Without implying any consciousness, or even suspicion of guilt, on the part of his father as to Richard's death, we may easily suppose Henry to have regarded the deposition of that monarch as an act of violence, justifiable only on the ground of extreme necessity: he might have considered him as an injured man, by whose fall his father and himself had been raised to the throne. Instead of allowing his name and his mortal remains to be buried in oblivion, (with the chance moreover of raising again in men's minds fresh doubts and surmises of his own title to the throne, for he was not Richard's right heir,) Henry resolved to pay all the respect in his power to the memory of the friend of his youth, and by the only means at his command to make a sort of reparation for the indignities to which the royal corpse had been exposed. He caused the body to be brought in solemn funeral state to Westminster, and there to be buried,[14] with all the honour and circumstance accustomed to be paid to the earthly remains of royalty, by the side of his former Queen, Anne, in the tomb prepared by Richard for her and for himself. The diligent investigator will discover many such incidents recorded of Henry V; some of a more public and important nature than others, but all combining to stamp on his name in broad and indelible letters the character of a truly high-minded, generous, grateful, warm-hearted man.

Another instance of the same feeling, carried, perhaps, in one point a step further in generosity and Christian principle, was evinced in his conduct towards the son of Sir Henry Percy, Hotspur, the former antagonist of his house. This young nobleman had been carried by his friends into Scotland, for safe keeping, on the breaking out of his grandfather's (Northumberland's) rebellion; and was detained there, as some say, in concealment, till Henry V. made known his determination to restore him to his title and estates. The Scots, who were in possession of his person, kept him as a prisoner and hostage; and although Henry might have considered a foreign land the best home for the son of the enemy of his family, yet so bent was he on effecting the noble design of reinstating him in all which his father's and his grandfather's treason had forfeited, that he consented to exchange for him a noble Scot, who had been detained in England for thirteen years. Mordak of Fife, son and heir of the Duke of Albany, had been taken prisoner at the battle of Homildon Hill, in 1402, (it is curious to remark,) by Hotspur, and his father Northumberland; and now Henry V. exchanges this personage for Hotspur's son, the heir of Northumberland. This youth was only an infant when his father fell at the battle of Shrewsbury; his mother was Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Edmund Mortimer,[15] Earl of March: and thus a king, under the circumstances of Henry, but with a less noble mind, might have regarded him with jealousy on both sides of his parentage, and been glad (without exposing himself to the charge of any positive act of harshness) to