William Henry

“ If anybody here ever saw William Henry with no buttons off and both shoes tied, and no rip anywhere, let ’em raise their hands!”
Everybody laughed. I thought grandmother’s eye wandered round the circle, as if half taking it all in earnest, and half hoping some hand would go up. But no hand went up.
“Billy always was hard on his clothes,” she said, with a sigh. “If he only keeps well I won’t say a word; but there’s always danger of boys eating unwholesome things, where there’s nobody to deny them.”
“Billy’s stomach’s his own, and he must learn to have the care of it,” said Mr. Carver. ”

“ Mr. Carver said there was one thing which made him entirely willing to trust William Henry away, and that was, he had always been a boy of principle. “I have watched him pretty closely,” said Mr. Carver, “and have noticed that he has a kind of pride about him that will not permit him to lie, or equivocate in any way.”
“That’s true!” cried Aunt Phebe. “True enough! Billy don’t always look fit to be seen, but he isn’t deceitful. ”

“ Then Henry's genius rose. Henry is the world's greatest kidder. Give him six days' immunity in Germany, and let him speak in Berlin, Munich, Dresden, Leipsic and Cologne and he would kid the divine right of kings out of Germany and the kaiser on to the Chautauqua circuit, reciting his wrongs and his reminiscences!
Henry, you may remember, delivered the Roosevelt valedictory at the Chicago Republican convention in 1912, when he kidded the standpat crowd out of every Republican state in the union but two at the election. Possibly you don't like that word kid. ”

“ What did he care for the war? For the Prussians? For their Babylonian philosophy? For his wounded hand? What were gardens made for in this drab earth, if not for sanctuaries of lovers? One does not go to a garden to hate, to buy, or sell, to fight, to philosophize, but to adore something or someone, somehow or somewhere. And the Young Doctor was in his Holy Temple, and we knew it. So Henry asked: "You received your letter?" And when he thanked us for our trouble, Henry asked again: "Did she tell you that the Gilded Youth was there at her hospital?" ”

“ American life has it as an ancient inheritance, and as we Americans rode through the green meadows of England up from the coast to London, for ever reviewing familiar scenes and faces and aspects of life that we had never seen before, we realized how much closer than blood or geography or politics men grow who hold the same creed. So Henry, feeling that restraints no longer were necessary when we were as near home as England, began fussing with an Englishman about something a speaker had said in parliament the day before. We may love the French, like the ladies, God bless 'em! ”

“ How should we have known, without our wives to pack our trunks for us in New York, that tails had atrophied in European society and that uniforms and dinner coats had taken their place.
But other things have disappeared from Great Britain since war began, and Henry was doomed to walk the island vainly looking for the famed foods of old England. All through Italy and France, where onion soup and various pastes were served to us, Henry ate them, but in a fond hope that when we got to England he would have some of the "superior comestibles" which a true lover of Dickens had a right to expect. ”

“ William Henry was a very comely young fellow; his complexion dark, but not swarthy; his eyes keen and bright; a profusion of black curling hair was tied by a ribbon under his hat, [26] which gave him a somewhat feminine appearance, though it was not unusual so to wear it; his attire, though neat, was far from foppish—a dark blue coat with a short light waistcoat; a neckcloth by no means so large as was worn by many young persons in his station of life ”

“ Some new fellows have come. One is a tip-top one. And one good “pitcher.” I hope you will come back very soon, ’cause I like you very much. [Pg 97]
Do you know who ’t is writing? I am that one all you fellers call
Bubby Short.
As may be gathered from the foregoing letter, William Henry did not go back to school with the rest. He was taken ill just at the close of vacation, and remained at home until spring. Grandmother said it was such a comfort that it didn’t happen away. And it seemed to me that this thought really made her enjoy his being sick at home. ”

“ He declares that Henry stood the king's obvious ennui as long as he could, then he rose and cried: "O King! live for ever, but Medill and I must pull our freight!" This version probably is apochryphal! The Italian colonel declares that Henry expostulated: "Well, how in the dickens was I to know that a king always gives the high sign for company to leave!"
This Italian king is a vital institution. He could be elected president. For he is a mixer, in spite of his diffident ways. When the army in Northern Italy was hammering away at the Austrians, the king was with the soldiers. ”

“ He was his mother’s favourite, and she bequeathed to him her English estates, which, however, he was not permitted to hold in his father’s lifetime. Henry received a good education, of which in later life he was proud; he is credited with the saying that an unlettered king is only a crowned ass. His attainments included Latin, which he could both read and write; he knew something of the English laws and language, and it may have been from an interest in natural history that he collected, during his reign, the Woodstock menagerie which was the admiration of his subjects. ”

“ In the only extant Pipe Roll of Henry's reign he appears as acting as justice itinerant in the north in conjunction with Walter Espec. He won Henry's special favour (Gesta Stephani, p. 35, Engl. Hist. Soc.) , received grants that made him very powerful in Yorkshire, and was reputed to be a man of great wisdom (Ailred of Rievaulx in Twysden, Decem Scriptores, c. 343; cf. William of Newburgh, i. 108, Rolls Ser.) ”

“ He’s got a furious head of hair, and freckles. But we don’t think at all about his looks now. If anything, we like his looks.
He’s just as pleasant and gen’rous, and not a mean [Pg 58] thing about him. I don’t believe he would tell a lie to save his life. I know he wouldn’t. He’s always willing to help everybody. And had just as lief give anything away as not. And when he plays, he plays fair. Some boys cheat to make their side beat. You don’t catch William Henry at any such mean business. All the boys believe every word he says. ”

“ Henry seems to have died young. William settled at Hawnes, [397] in Bedfordshire, bore as arms three cross-crosslets fitchée or, on a chief of the second, a martlet for difference. He seems to have died before his eldest brother. He married Elizabeth, daughter of John Francklin of Thurley in County Bedford, and widow of George Thrale. His son Thomas married Anne, daughter of Richard Bowles of Wallington and widow of Thomas Gonnel. His daughter Joan married John Moore; his daughter Elizabeth married John Lee of Harlington. ”

“ It alarmed Henry; rather than have his secret feelings betrayed for the family benefit, he could have died. In a grumbling and discontented sort of mood, he went about again, and resumed his idle occupations (such as they were) as usual. One evening William enticed him out for a walk, took possession of his arm, and pounced into Robert East's, before Henry well knew where he was. He sat down, apathetic and indifferent, after nodding carelessly to the respectful salutation of the men. "I must give just ten minutes to them, as I am here," observed William. "You can go to sleep the while." ”

“ KING HENRY VI What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted!
Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just,
And he but naked, though lock'd up in steel
Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted. ”

“ Although the eldest son, William was sent to the Inner Temple not to make a profession of law but in order to understand his own affairs, and according to his son it was against his will that he was made serjeant, and judge, by Henry VIII (Sir Richard Shelley, Letters, p. 15) . From the beginning of Henry's reign he appears on commissions of the peace for Sussex and other counties; in 1517 he was autumn reader in the Inner Temple, and about the same time became one of the judges of the sheriff's court in London. ”

“ He remained loyal to Henry II. through all changes, and fought in 1173 at Farnham against the rebels of East Anglia. Outliving his eldest son, Humphrey IV., he was succeeded in the family estates by his grandson Henry. Henry was connected with the royal house of Scotland through his mother Margaret, a sister of William the Lion; an alliance which no doubt assisted him to obtain the earldom of Hereford from John (1199) . The lands of the family lay chiefly on the Welsh Marches, and from this date the Bohuns take a foremost place among the Marcher barons. ”

“ But this public prosperity of Henry was much overbalanced by a domestic calamity which befel him. His only son, William, had now reached his eighteenth year, and the king, from the facility with which he himself had usurped the crown, dreading that a like revolution might subvert his family, had taken care to have him recognized successor by the states of the kingdom, and had carried him over to Normandy, that he might receive the homage of the barons of that duchy. ”

“ He also told the king that he had come to demand that a prebend should be assigned to the pope in every cathedral church, and a like provision from every bishopric, from every abbacy, and from every monastery. Henry replied that the matter must be laid before the great men. After spending Christmas at Winchester he removed to Marlborough, and there fell dangerously ill. He sent to the council of prelates held at Westminster on 13 Jan. 1226, bidding them not to grant the envoy's demands, which were finally set aside with an excuse. On his recovery Henry was eager to invade France. ”

“ This is Henry's: "Well, finally after Medill began cracking his knuckles and the king began crossing and recrossing his legs, I saw it was time to go. I knew how the king felt. Every busy man has to meet a lot of bores. I sit hours with bores who flow into the Wichita Beacon office, and I began to appreciate just how the king felt. So I cleared my throat and said: 'Well Medill, don't you think we'd better excuse ourselves to his majesty and go?' The king put up his hand mildly and said: 'O please!' and the colonel in charge of the party gulped at my sympathy for the king ”

“ When he became a young man, the King of France, uniting with the French Counts of Anjou and Flanders, supported his cause against the King of England, and took many of the King’s towns and castles in Normandy. But, King Henry, artful and cunning always, bribed some of William’s friends with money, some with promises, some with power. ”

“ But of all English sovereigns he stands foremost as the monarch of the sea. Young, handsome, learned, exceedingly accomplished, gloriously strong in body and in mind, Henry mounted the throne in 1509 with the hearty good will of nearly all his subjects. Before England could become the mother country of an empire overseas, she had to shake off her medieval weaknesses, become a strongly unified modern state, and arm herself against any probable combination of hostile foreign states. Happily for herself and for her future colonists, Henry was richly endowed with strength and skill for his task. ”

“ CHAPTER X THE COURT OF HENRY In the years that followed the Assize of Northampton Henry was at the height of his power. He was only forty-three, and already his triumph was complete. One of his sons was King of England, one Count of Poitou, one Lord of Britanny, one was named King of Ireland. His eldest daughter, wife of the Duke of Saxony, was mother of a future emperor, the second was Queen of Castile, the third was in 1176 married to William of Sicily, the wealthiest king of his time. All nations hastened to do honour to so great a potentate. ”

“ The war in Normandy helped on Henry's work of consolidating the Norman and English races in England, and this process was still further forwarded by his later wars with France. His subjects in England of either race were counted Englishmen as opposed to Normans or Frenchmen (Angevin Kings, i. 23, 24) . Duke Robert was kept a prisoner until his death in 1134; there is no ground for the story current in the thirteenth century (Ann. Monast. ii. 50, iv. 15, 378) that he was blinded (Orderic, p. 823) . Henry caused William of Mortain to be blinded, and kept him in prison until he died. ”

“ Small time, but in that small most greatly liv'd
This star of England: Fortune made his sword,
By which the world's best garden he achiev'd, 7
And of it left his son imperial lord.
Henry the Sixth, in infant bands crown'd King
Of France and England, did this king succeed;
Whose state so many had the managing, 11
That they lost France and made his England bleed:
Which oft our stage hath shown; ”

“ William made no reply.
"And yet, I cannot imagine it possible for Henry to have picked up any annoyance or grief," resumed Mary. "How can he have done so? He is not like one who goes out into the world—who has to meet with cares and cheeks. You do not speak," she added, looking at William. ”

“ The boys must be popular in the neighbourhood. For in the next village, which by the way was a town of ten thousand, our American Red Cross uniforms were treated with distinguished courtesy. Henry wanted a match. He could talk no French but a little boy at the inn, seeing him fumbling through his clothes with an unlighted pipe, came running to us with a little blue box of matches. Henry gave the boy a franc—more to be amiable than anything else. ”