Richard II. The Church, through her head the primate, was an accomplice with him in this deed. Arundel anointed the new king with oil from that mysterious vial which the Virgin was said to have given to Thomas aBecket, during his exile in France, telling him that the kings on whose head this oil should be poured would prove valiant champions of the Church. The coronation was followed by the dark tragedy in the Castle of Pontefract; and that, again, by the darker, though more systematic, violence of the edict De Hereretico Comburendo, which was followed in its turn by the imprisonings in the Tower, and the burnings in Smithfield. The reign thus inaugurated had neither glory abroad nor prosperity at home. Faction rose upon faction; revolt trod on the heels of revolt; and a train of national calamities followed in rapid succession, till at last Henry had completely lost the popularity which helped him to mount the throne; and the terror with which he reigned made his subjects regret the weak, frivolous, and vicious Richard, whom he had deprived first of his crown, and next of his life. Rumors that Richard still lived, and would one day claim his own, were continually springing up, and occasioned, not only perpetual alarms to the king, but frequent conspiracies among his nobles; and the man who was the first to plant the stake in England for the disciples of the Gospel had, before many days passed by, to set up scaffolds for the peers of his realm. His son, Prince Henry, added to his griefs. The thought, partly justified by the wild life which the prince then led, and the abandoned companions with whom he had surrounded himself, that he wished to seize the crown before death had given it to him in the regular way, continually haunted the royal imagination; and, to obviate this danger, the monarch took at times the ludicrous precaution of placing the regalia on his pillow when he went to sleep. His brief reign of thirteen years and five months wore away, as an old chronicler says, "with little pleasure."
The last year of Henry's life was signalized by a projected expedition to the Holy Land. The monarch deemed himself called to the pious labor of delivering Jerusalem from the Infidel. If he should succeed in a work so meritorious, he would spend what might remain to him of life with an easier conscience, as having made atonement for the crimes by which he had opened his way to the throne. As it turned out, however, his efforts to achieve this grand enterprise but added to his own cares, and to his subjects' burdens. He had collected ships, money, provisions, and soldiers.
All was ready; the fleet waited only till the king should come on board to weigh anchor and set sail But before embarking, the monarch must needs visit the shrine of St. Edward. "While he was making his prayers," says Holinshed, "there as it were to take his leave, and so to procede forth on his journie, he was suddenlie and grievouslie taken, that such as were about him feared that he should have died presentlie; wherefore, to relieve him, if it were possible, they bare him into a chamber that was next at hand, belonging to the Abbot of Westminister, where they laid him on a pallet before the fire, and used all remedies to revive him. At length he recovered his speech and understanding, and perceiving himself in a strange place which he knew not, he willed to know if the chamber had any particular name, whereunto answer was made that it was called 'Jerusalem.' Then said the king, 'Lauds be given to the Father of Heaven, for I know that I shall die here in this chamber, according to the prophecy of me, which declared that I should depart this life in Jerusalem.'"
CHAPTER 5
TRIAL AND CONDEMNATION OF SIR JOHN OLDCASTLE
Henry V. — A Coronation and Tempest — Interpretations — Struggles for Liberty — Youth of Henry — Change on becoming King — Arundel his Evil Genius — Sir John Oldcastle — Becomes Lord Cobham by Marriage — Embraces Wicliffe's Opinions — Patronises the Lollard Preachers — Is Denounced by Arundel — Interview between Lord Cobham and the King-Summoned by the Archbishop — Citations Torn Down — Confession of his Faith — Apprehended — Brought before the Archbishop's Court-Examination — His Opinions on the Sacrament, Confession, the Pope, Images, the Church, etc. — His Condemnation as a Heretic — Forged Abjuration — He Escapes from the Tower.
STRUCK down by apoplexy in the prime of manhood, March 20th, 1413, Henry IV. was carried to his tomb in Canterbury Cathedral, and his son, Henry V., mounted his throne. The new king was crowned on Passion Sunday, the 9th of April. The day was signalised by a fearful tempest, that burst over England, and which the spirit of the age variously interpreted. Not a few regarded it as a portent of evil, which gave warning of political storms that were about to convulsethe State of England. But others, more sanguine, construed this occurrence more hopefully. As the tempest, said they, disperses the gloom of winter, and summons from their dark abodes in the earth the flowers of spring, so will the even-handed justice of the king dispel the moral vapors which have hung above the land during the late reign, and call forth the virtues of order and piety to adorn and bless society. Meanwhile the future, which men were striving to read, was posting towards them, bringing along with it those sharp tempests that were needful to drive away the exhalations of a night which had long stagnated over England. Religion was descending to resume the place that superstition had usurped, and awaken in the English people those aspirations and tendencies, which found their first arena of development on the field of battle; and their second, and more glorious one, in the halls of political and theological discussion; and their final evolution, after two centuries, in the sublime fabric of civil and religious liberty that stood completed in England, that other nations might study its principles and enjoy its blessings.
The youth of Henry V., who now governed England, had been disorderly. It was dishonored by "the riot of pleasure, the frolic of debauchery, the outrage of wine." The jealousy of his father, by excluding him from all public employment, furnished him with an excuse for filling the vacancies of his mind and his time with low amusements and degrading pleasures. But when the prince put on the crown he put off his former self. He dismissed his old associates, called around him the counsellors of his father, bestowed the honors and offices of the State upon men of capacity and virtue; and, pensioning his former companions, he forbade them to enter his presence till they had become better men. He made, in short, a commendable effort to effect a reformation in manners and religion. "Now placed on the royal seat of the realm," says the chronicler, "he determined to begin with something acceptable to the Divine Majesty, and therefore commanded the clergy sincerelie and trulie to preach the Word of God, and to live accordinglie, that they might be lanterns of light to the temporalitie, as their profession required. The laymen he willed to serve God and obey their prince, prohibiting them, above all things, breach of matrimonie, custom in swearing, and wilful perjurie."
It was the unhappiness of Henry V., who meant so well by his people, that he knew not the true source whence alone a real reformation can proceed. The astute Arundel was still by his side, and guided the steps of the prince into the same paths in which his father had walked. Lollard blood still continued to flow, and new victims from time to time mounted the martyr's pile.
The most illustrious of the Protestants of that reign was Sir John Oldcastle, a knight of Herefordshire. Having married the heiress of Cowling Castle, near Rochester, he sat in Parliament under the title of Lord Cobham, in right of his wife's barony. The youth of Lord Cobham had been stained with gay pleasures; but the reading of the Bible, and the study of Wicliffe's writings, had changed his heart; and now, to the knightly virtues of bravery and honor, he added the Christian graces of humility and purity. He had borne arms in France, under Henry IV., who set a high value on his military accomplishments. Hewas not less esteemed by the son, Henry V., for his private worth, his shrewd sense, and his gallant bearing as a soldier. But the "dead fly" in the noble qualities and upright character of the stout old baron:, in the opinion of the king, was his Lollardism.
With characteristic frankness, Lord Cobham made no secret of his attachment to the doctrines of Wicliffe. He avowed, in his place in Parliament, so early as the year 1391, "that it would be very commodious for England if the Pope's jurisdiction stopped at the town of Calais, and did not cross the sea."
It is said of him, too, that he had copies made of Wicliffe's works, and sent them to Bohemia, France, Spain, Portugal, and other countries.
He threw open Cowling Castle to the Lollard preachers:, making it