The charge is this: That, in the parliament held in November 1411, Prince Henry desired of his father the resignation of his crown, on the plea that the malady under which the King was suffering (p. 284) would not allow him to rule any longer for the honour and welfare of the kingdom. On the King's firm and peremptory refusal, the Prince, greatly offended, withdrew from the court, and formed an overwhelming party of his own among the nobility and gentry of the land, "associating them to his dominion in homage and pay." Such is the statement made (not indeed in the form of an accusation, but merely as one of the occurrences of the year,) in the manuscript above referred to. The modern comment upon this text would probably never have been made, if the writer had given more time and patient investigation to the subject; and now, were such a suppression compatible with the thorough sifting of Henry's character and conduct, the quotation of it might well have been spared in these pages. A few words, however, on that comment, and recently renewed charge, seem indispensable. "The King's subsequent death (such are the words of the modern historian) prevented the final explosion of this unfilial conduct, which, as thus stated, deserves the denomination of an unnatural rebellion; and shows that the dissolute companion of Falstaff was not the gay and thoughtless youth which his dramatic representation exhibits to us, but that, amid his vicious gaieties, he could cherish feelings which too much resemble the unprincipled ambition of a Catilinarian temper."[279] [Footnote 279: Turner's History.]