other faithful nobles. He gave them his advice that England should
establish a friendship with the new Duke of Burgundy, and offer him
the regency of France; that it should not set free the royal
princes who had been taken at Agincourt; and that, whatever quarrel
might arise with France, England should never make peace without
holding Normandy. Then, he laid down his head, and asked the
attendant priests to chant the penitential psalms. Amid which
solemn sounds, on the thirty-first of August, one thousand four
hundred and twenty-two, in only the thirty-fourth year of his age
and the tenth of his reign, King Henry the Fifth passed away.
Slowly and mournfully they carried his embalmed body in a
procession of great state to Paris, and thence to Rouen where his
Queen was: from whom the sad intelligence of his death was
concealed until he had been dead some days. Thence, lying on a bed
of crimson and gold, with a golden crown upon the head, and a
golden ball and sceptre lying in the nerveless hands, they carried
it to Calais, with such a great retinue as seemed to dye the road
black. The King of Scotland acted as chief mourner, all the Royal
Household followed, the knights wore black armour and black plumes
of feathers, crowds of men bore torches, making the night as light
as day; and the widowed Princess followed last of all. At Calais
there was a fleet of ships to bring the funeral host to Dover. And
so, by way of London Bridge, where the service for the dead was
chanted as it passed along, they brought the body to Westminster
Abbey, and there buried it with great respect.
CHAPTER XXII – ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE SIXTH
PART THE FIRST
IT had been the wish of the late King, that while his infant son
KING HENRY THE SIXTH, at this time only nine months old, was under
age, the Duke of Gloucester should be appointed Regent. The
English Parliament, however, preferred to appoint a Council of
Regency, with the Duke of Bedford at its head: to be represented,
in his absence only, by the Duke of Gloucester. The Parliament
would seem to have been wise in this, for Gloucester soon showed
himself to be ambitious and troublesome, and, in the gratification
of his own personal schemes, gave dangerous offence to the Duke of
Burgundy, which was with difficulty adjusted.
As that duke declined the Regency of France, it was bestowed by the
poor French King upon the Duke of Bedford. But, the French King
dying within two months, the Dauphin instantly asserted his claim
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to the French throne, and was actually crowned under the title of
CHARLES THE SEVENTH. The Duke of Bedford, to be a match for him,
entered into a friendly league with the Dukes of Burgundy and
Brittany, and gave them his two sisters in marriage. War with
France was immediately renewed, and the Perpetual Peace came to an
untimely end.
In the first campaign, the English, aided by this alliance, were
speedily successful. As Scotland, however, had sent the French
five thousand men, and might send more, or attack the North of
England while England was busy with France, it was considered that
it would be a good thing to offer the Scottish King, James, who had
been so long imprisoned, his liberty, on his paying forty thousand
pounds for his board and lodging during nineteen years, and
engaging to forbid his subjects from serving under the flag of
France. It is pleasant to know, not only that the amiable captive
at last regained his freedom upon these terms, but, that he married
a noble English lady, with whom he had been long in love, and
became an excellent King. I am afraid we have met with some Kings
in this history, and shall meet with some more, who would have been
very much the better, and would have left the world much happier,
if they had been imprisoned nineteen years too.
In the second campaign, the English gained a considerable victory
at Verneuil, in a battle which was chiefly remarkable, otherwise,