Henry of Monmouth

“ Henry's treatment of them was necessarily firm, but conciliatory. He dared not recruit his exhausted finances by heavy impositions on the people; and the generous sacrifices made by the peers to avoid so dangerous an expedient had reduced them to poverty."
Such is the clear and able representation given to us of the state of the kingdom at large, and of the difficulties with which Henry IV. and his supporters had to struggle, whilst Henry of Monmouth was exerting himself to the very utmost in repressing the rebels in Wales. ”

“ This (p. 104) communication of Henry Percy, as remarkable as it is interesting, appears to fix to the year 1401 the date of the following, the very first letter known to exist from Henry of Monmouth. It is dated Shrewsbury, May 15, and is addressed to the Lords of the Council, whom he thanks for the kind attention paid by them to all his wants during his absence in Wales. The epistle breathes the spirit of a gallant young warrior full of promptitude and intrepidity. ”

“ John of Gaunt did not die till the 3rd of the following February, and he would, doubtless, have taken his grandson under his especial care, at all events on his father's banishment, probably assigning Henry Beaufort to be his tutor and governor. But when Richard sentenced Henry of Bolinbroke, he was too sensible of his own injustice, and too much alive, in this instance at least, to his own danger, to suffer Henry of Monmouth to remain at large. ”

“ From such a witness the testimony so borne to the charity and moderation of Henry of Monmouth is very valuable and satisfactory; abundantly outweighing all the declamation of modern enthusiastic censors. Henry was a reformer,—he could not be persuaded to become a persecutor. [59]
Henry's reputation for having at heart the correction of all abuses in the church, encouraged the University of Oxford to present to him a petition, setting forth a multitude of corrupt practices which (p. 064) were a disgrace to the Christian religion in England ”

“ These principles must be borne in mind, and acted upon whenever we would examine the spirit and character of any individual on the charge of superstition, bigotry, cruelty, and unchristian persecution. Had not these principles unhappily been laid aside for a time and forgotten, we should scarcely have been pained by so severe a portrait of Henry of Monmouth, as a writer who ought to have known better has drawn, not in the warmth of debate and the hurry of controversy, but in the hour of reflection and quietude. ”

“ They pray the King, "for-as-much as the Prince is of tender age, that he may not pass forth from this realm: for we, the Commons, are informed that the Scots are coming with a mighty hand; and they of Ireland are purposed to elect a king among them, and disdain to hold of you." This lively interest evinced thus early, and in so remarkable a manner, by the Commons, in the safety and well-being of Henry of Monmouth, seems never to have slackened at any single period of his life, but to have grown still warmer and wider to the very close of his career on earth. ”

“ Hume, unfortunately, supplied himself without stint from the stream after it had mingled with many turbid and discolouring waters. To draw, in each case of doubt and difficulty, from the well-head of historical truth, would have exacted more time and labour than he was ready to bestow. Had he prescribed to himself a system of research the very opposite to that in which he unhappily indulged, instead of representing Henry of Monmouth to have left the world with the falsehood of a self-deceiver on his tongue, he would have been compelled to record him as a man of piety, mercy, and truth. ”

“ The only other occasion which places Henry of Monmouth, whilst Prince of Wales, before us in conjunction with bigotry, intolerance, and persecution, is the martyrdom of a condemned heretic, executed in Smithfield. Fox, and those who follow him, say, that the martyr was John Badby, an artificer of Worcester, condemned first in his own county, and then definitively sentenced by the Archbishop, the Duke of York, the Chancellor, and others in London ”

“ They had, consequently, grown bold, and threatened to extirpate the English altogether. Vigorous measures became necessary, and the King twice headed an army himself to restore peace. On his first visit he was summoned home by the prelates, to put down the spreading sect of the Lollards; in his second, his delay, after the landing of Bolinbroke at Ravenspurg, cost him his crown. In this latter expedition Henry of Monmouth (as we have seen) accompanied him, and had personal experience of the uncivilized state of the country, and the savage character of the warfare carried on by the inhabitants. ”

“ The time of Hotspur's birth has generally been considered matter only for conjecture; but whether we draw our inferences from undisputed facts, and the clearest deductions of sound argument, or rest only on the direct evidence now for the first time, it is presumed, brought forward, we cannot regard Hotspur at the very lowest calculation as a single year younger than Henry of Monmouth's father, the very Bolinbroke whom the poet makes to utter such a lamentation and such a wish. ”

“ At a very early age he married Blanche, daughter and heiress of Henry Plantagenet, Duke of Lancaster, great-grandson of Henry the Third. [4] The time of his marriage with Blanche, [5] though recorded with sufficient precision, is indeed comparatively of little consequence; whilst the date of their son Henry's birth, from the influence which the age of a father may have on the destinies of his child, becomes matter of much importance to those who take any interest in (p. 004) the history of their grandson, Henry of Monmouth. ”

“ When Hotspur accompanied his father to the rescue of Berwick, he was only in his thirteenth year; his father had borne arms from the age of fifteen; and Henry of Monmouth (accompanied we know by a tutor or guardian, as probably Hotspur was at Berwick) was certainly in Wales, "chastising the rebels," soon after he had completed his thirteenth year. Another reflection, forced upon the mind by a familiar acquaintance with the political and the domestic history of those times, is on the very low average of human life at that period of the English monarchy. Few reached what is now called old age ”

“ The Parliament, either by acquiescence in his demand of the crown, or in answer to the questions put by the Archbishop, elected Henry IV. to be king, and denounced all as traitors who should gainsay his election (p. 071) or dispute his right. [73] He was crowned on the Feast of St. Edward, Monday, October 13, when his eldest son, Henry of Monmouth, bore the principal sword of state; who, on the Wednesday following, by assent of all the Estates of Parliament, was created Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, and Earl of Chester, and declared also to be heir to the throne. ”

“ Henry IV. died at Westminster on Monday, March 20, 1413, and Henry of Monmouth's proclamation bears date on the morrow, March 21. [1] Never perhaps was the accession of any prince to the throne of a kingdom hailed with a more general or enthusiastic welcome. If serious minds had (p. 002) entertained forebodings of evil from his reign, (as we believe they had not,) all feelings seem to have been absorbed in one burst of gladness. ”

“ The very last roll of Richard II. by the merest details of expenditure records the payment of sums made by that unhappy monarch to Bolinbroke, then in exile, expatriated by his unjust and wanton decree; to Humphrey, the orphan son (p. 051) of the late murdered Duke of Gloucester; to Henry of Monmouth his cousin, both then in Richard's safe keeping; and to Eleanor, the widowed mother of Humphrey, and maternal aunt of Henry. Can any event paint in deeper and stronger colouring the vicissitudes and reverses of mortality, "the changes and chances" of our life on earth? ”

“ Indeed, he and the young Prince of Wales, who was called Henry of Monmouth, were the two bravest young men in England. The king’s army met the army that Percy and Owen Glendower had raised against him near Shrewsbury, and then everybody thought a great deal about the two young Harrys, who were both so brave and handsome. The battle was fought, and the king gained the victory. Henry of Monmouth behaved as bravely as the Black Prince used to do, and he was not hurt in the battle. Harry Hotspur was equally brave, but he was killed. Oh! civil war is a sad thing. ”

“ CHAPTER XIV. Henry of Monmouth's Character. — Unfairness of Modern Writers. — Walsingham examined. — Testimony of his Father, — of Hotspur, — of the Parliament, — of the English and Welsh Counties, — of Contemporary Chroniclers. — No one single act of Immorality alleged against him. — No intimation of his Extravagance, or Injustice, or Riot, or Licentiousness, in Wales, London, or Calais. — Direct Testimony to the opposite Virtues. — Lydgate. — Occleve. ”

“ His son, Henry of Monmouth, was a fanatic, but otherwise a man of a far nobler nature than his father. He secured his position by a popular but most unjust war with France, and by his own fascinating personality. ”

“ In the (p. 348) Scrope and Grosvenor controversy, [319] the record of which supplied us with the ages of Glyndowr and his brother, the commissioners examined both Hotspur and his father. The father, usually called the "aged Earl," gave his testimony on the 19th November 1386, as "the Earl of Northumberland, of the age of forty-five years, having borne arms thirty years." Hotspur, who was examined on the 30th of the preceding October, that is, in the year before Henry of Monmouth was born, gave his testimony as "Sir Henry Percy, of the age of twenty years." ”

“ Monmouth was the birthplace of Henry V., and his statue adorns the front of the market-place, of which a sketch is given here, though of course this structure is of a more recent date than the reign of Henry. All round the market-place the celebrated{71} Monmouth caps were made that occasionally figure in old writings. ”

“ His friends were gone; many had fallen on the field of battle; many had died under the hand of the executioner; many had provided for their own safety by deserting him. Every act of grace and pardon, though it embraced almost (p. 246) all besides, made an exception of his name; till the above offer of mercy from Henry of Monmouth included Owyn himself. His sufferings were enough in number and intenseness to satisfy the vengeance of any one who was not athirst for blood. ”

“ Many an incident throughout his life tends to justify Shakspeare, when he makes Henry IV. speak of his son's philanthropy and tenderness of feeling:
"He hath a tear for pity, and a hand
Open as day for melting charity."
2 Henry IV. act iv. sc. iv.
Those united qualities of valour and mercy, of courage and kindness of heart, which are so beautifully ascribed to a modern English warrior, were never blended in any character of which history speaks in more perfect harmony than in Henry of Monmouth:
(p. 206) "A furious lion in battle ”

“ No doubt the idea of its being the news of a prince's birth, that was thus posted on, has added, in the imagination of the villagers, to the horse's fleetness and the breathless impetuosity of the messenger; but it is very probable that the news of the young lord's birth, heir to the dukedom of Lancaster, should have been hastened from the castle of Monmouth to Goodrich; and (p. 013) there is no solid reason for discrediting the story. ”

“ Footnote 3: At the foot of the Wardrobe Account of Henry Earl of Derby from 30th September 1387 to 30th September 1388, (and unfortunately no account of the Duke of Lancaster's expenses is as yet found extant before that very year,) an item occurs of 341l. 12s. 5d., paid 24th September 1386, for the household expenses of the Earl and his family at Monmouth. This proves that his father made the castle of Monmouth his residence within less than a year of the date assigned for Henry's birth. ”

“ For on Wednesday, the eleventh day of this present month of March, your rebels of the parts of Glamorgan, Morgannoc, Usk, Netherwent, and Overwent, were assembled to the number of eight thousand men according to their own account; and they went on the said Wednesday in the morning, and burnt part of your town of Grosmont within your lordship of Monmouth. And I immediately [201] sent off my very dear cousin the Lord Talbot, and the small body of my own household, and with them joined your faithful and gallant knights William Neuport and John Greindre; who were but a very small force in all. ”

“ Perhaps a word may not be amiss on the other worthy connected by birth with the fame and the ruins of Monmouth. Henry V. passed some of his earliest years in this county; but in his youth was transferred to Oxford, where he studied under his uncle Cardinal Beaufort, then chancellor of the university, and where, as Stowe relates, he “delighted in songs, meeters, and musical instruments.” He is thus described by the chronicler, on the authority of John of Elmham:
“This prince exceeded the meane stature of men, he was beautiful of visage, his necke long, body long and leane, and his bones small ”

“ Henry agreed to come to Mante, on condition that Charles and the Duke of Burgundy would come to Ponthoise. A large field on the banks of the Seine, near to the gate of Melun, was selected for the meeting. The preparations for the interview are described with great minuteness by historians. A pavilion at an equal distance from the tents of both nations was erected by the Queen of France, and presented to Henry ”