each a separate examination; and in our inquiry we must not forget the kind, and gentle, and compassionate spirit which appears to breathe so naturally and uniformly from his heart: on the other hand, we must not suffer ourselves to be betrayed into such a full reliance on his character for mercy, as would lead us to give a blind implicit sanction to all his deeds of arms. In our estimate of his character, moreover, as indicated by his conduct previously to his first invasion of France, and during his struggles and conquests there, it is quite as necessary for us to bear in mind the tone, and temper, and standard of political and moral government which prevailed in his age, as it is essential for us, when we would estimate his religious character, to recollect what were in that age throughout Christendom the acknowledged principles of the church in communion with the see of Rome.

On Monday, April 30, 1414, Henry met his parliament at Leicester.[23] Why it was not held at Westminster, we have no positive reasons assigned in history;[24] and the suggestion of some, that the enactments there made against the Lollards were too hateful to be passed at the metropolis, is scarcely reasonable.[25] The Bishop of Winchester, as Chancellor, set forth in very strong language the treasonable practices lately discovered and discomfited; and the parliament enacted a very severe law against all disturbers of the peace of the realm and of the unity of the church. It is generally said that the reading of the Bible in English was forbidden in this session under very severe penalties; but no such enactment seems to have been recorded. The prelates, however, were the judges of what heresy was; and to study the Holy Scriptures in the vernacular language might well have seemed to them a very dangerous practice; to be checked, therefore, with a strong hand. The judges, and other state officers, were directed to take an oath to exert themselves for the suppression of Lollardism.

Again and again are we reminded, through the few years of Henry's reign, that the cause of liberty was progressive; and any encroachments of the royal prerogative upon the liberties of the Commons were restrained and corrected, with the free consent and full approbation of the King. A petition in English, presented to him in this parliament, in many respects a curious document, with the King's answer, bears testimony to the same point. "Our sovereign lord,—your humble and true lieges that been come for the commons of your land, beseech unto your right righteousness, that so as it hath ever been their liberty and freedom that there should be no statute nor law made otherwise than they gave their assent thereto, considering that the commons of your land (the which is and ever hath been a member of your parliament) been as well assenters as petitioners, that from this time forward, by complaint of the commons of any mischief asking remedy by mouth of their Speaker, or else by petition written, that there never be no law made thereupon, and engrossed as statute and law, neither by addition, neither by diminution, by no manner of term or terms, the which should change the sentence and the intent asked by the Speaker's mouth, or the petitions before said, given up in writing without assent of the aforesaid commons." To this petition the following answer was made: "The King, of his grace especial, granteth, that from henceforth nothing be enacted to the petitions of his commons that be contrary to their asking, whereby they should be bound without their assent; saving alway to our liege lord his real prerogative to grant or deny what him lust of their petitions and askings aforesaid."

This parliament was adjourned from Leicester, and re-assembled at Westminster on the Octaves of St. Martin, 18th November 1414. The most gratifying record of this great council of the realm is that which informs us of the restoration of Henry Percy to his estates and honours. The most important subject to which the thoughts of the peers and commons were drawn was the King's determination to recover his rights in the realm of France.

The motives which influenced Henry to undertake this extraordinary step can be known only to the Searcher of hearts. Some writers, in their excessive zeal for Protestantism, anxiously bent on stamping upon Henry the character of an ambitious tyrant and a religious persecutor, employ no measured language in their condemnation of his designs against France. Milner thus gives his summary of the proceedings of this reign at home and abroad. "Henry Chicheley, now Archbishop of Canterbury, continued at the head of that see from February 1414, to April 1443. This man deserves to be called the firebrand of the age in which he lived. To subserve the purposes of his own pride and tyranny, he engaged King Henry in his famous contest with France, by which a prodigious carnage was made of the human race, and the most dreadful miseries were brought upon both kingdoms. But Henry was a soldier, and understood the art of war, though perfectly ignorant of religion; and that ardour of spirit, which in youth[26] had spent itself in vicious indulgences, was now employed under the management of Chicheley in desolating France by one of the most unjust wars ever waged by ambition, and in furnishing for vulgar minds matter of declamation on the valour of the English nation. While this scene was carrying on in France, the Archbishop at home, partly by exile, partly by forced abjurations, and partly by the flames, domineered over the Lollards, and almost effaced the vestiges of godliness in the kingdom."

These are very hard words, much more readily written than justified. Such sentences of condemnation require a much clearer insight into the workings of the human heart than falls to the lot of any human being to possess, when he would examine into the motives of a fellow-mortal. It is very easy by one sweeping clause to denounce the war as unjust, and to ascribe it to the ambition of Henry, reckless of human suffering. But truth requires us to weigh the whole matter far more patiently, and to substitute evidence in the place of assumptions, and argument instead of declamation. And it is impossible for the biographer of Henry V. to carry his reader with him through the scenes of his preparation for the struggle with France, and his conduct in the several campaigns which chiefly engaged from this time till his death all the energies of his mind and body, without recalling somewhat in detail the circumstances of Henry's position at this time. This, however, will require also a brief review of the state of France through some previous years of her internal discords and misery. Reserving them for another chapter, there are some circumstances of a more private and domestic character which it might be well for us first to mention in this place.

That Henry was habitually under the influence of strong religious feelings, though his views of Christian doctrine partook much of the general superstition of the age, is evident; and one of the first acts of his government was to satisfy his own conscience,