On the 6th of December 1421, being S. Nicolas' Day, the unhappy Henry of Windsor was born. On the 1st of September in the following year, as an infant of less than a year old, he began his reign of forty miserable years as Henry VI. There is no more pitiful character in all English history than he. Henry V., his father, had been by far the greatest king of Christendom, and England, under his rule, had rejoiced in a light which was all the brighter for the gloom that preceded and followed it. The dying energies of mediæval life sank into impotency with his death. The long reign of his son is one unbroken record of divided counsels, constitutional anarchy, civil war, national exhaustion; only too faithfully fulfilling the prophecy which his father is said to have uttered, when he was told in France of the birth of his son at Windsor: "I, Henry of Monmouth, shall gain much in my short reign, but Henry of Windsor will reign much longer and lose all; but God's will be done." "Henry VI."--I quote the pathetic words of my kinsman, the historian of the Constitution-- "Henry was perhaps the most unfortunate king who ever reigned; he outlived power and wealth and friends; he saw all who had loved him perish for his sake, and, to crown all, the son, the last and dearest of the great house from which he sprang, the centre of all his hopes, the depositary of the great Lancastrian traditions of English polity, set aside and slain. And he was without doubt most innocent of all the evils that befell England because of him. Pious, pure, generous, patient, simple, true and just, humble, merciful, fastidiously conscientious, modest and temperate, he might have seemed made to rule a quiet people in quiet times.... It is needless to say that for the throne of England in the midst of the death struggle of nations, parties, and liberties, Henry had not one single qualification."[50] [Illustration: King's Parade] And yet he did leave an impression on the hearts of Englishmen which will not readily be erased. For setting aside the fabled visions and the false miracle with which he is credited, and upon which Henry VII. relied when he pressed the claims of his predecessor for formal canonisation on Pope Julius II., it was certainly no mere anti-Lancastrian loyalty or party spirit which led the rough yeomen farmers of Yorkshire to worship before his statue on the rood-screen of their Minster and to sing hymns in his honour, or caused the Latin prayers which he had composed to be reverently handed down to the time of the Reformation through many editions of the "Sarum Hours." One enduring monument there is of his devotion to learning and of his saintly spirit, which must long keep his memory green, namely, the royal and religious foundation of the two great colleges which he projected at Eton and at Cambridge.