Henry of Monmouth was assigned on the 12th of May 1407, with the consent of the council, to remain about the person of the King, that he might devote himself more constantly to the public service; probably the declining health of the King even then made such a measure desirable. From the hour when the Prince became president of the council, his influence through every rank of society naturally grew very rapidly, and extended to every branch of the executive government. Petitions were presented to him by name, not only by inferior applicants, but even by his brothers. Letters of recommendation were addressed to him by foreigners; and, in more than one instance, his interest was sought even by the Pope himself. When the King was personally present in the council, the record states, that the business was conducted "in the presence of the King, and of his son the Prince." The father retained the name, the son exercised the powers of sovereign. Such pre-eminence, as long as human nature remains the same, will give offence to some, and will engender envyings and jealousies and oppositions: nor was the Prince suffered long to enjoy his high station unmolested. Who were the persons more especially engaged in the unkind office of severing the father from his son, is matter of conjecture; so is also the immediate cause and occasion of their disunion. One of the oldest chroniclers[283] would induce us to believe that a (p. 295) temporary estrangement was effected in consequence of some malicious detractors having misrepresented the Prince's conduct with reference to the Dukes of Burgundy and Orleans. Some may suspect that the appointment of his brother Thomas to take the command of the troops in the expedition to Guienne, when their father's increasing malady prevented him from putting into execution his design of conducting that campaign in person, might have given umbrage to the Prince, and led to an open rupture. And undoubtedly it would have been only natural, had the Prince felt that, in return for all his labours and his devoted exertions in the field and at the council-board, the honourable post of commanding the armament to Guienne should have been assigned to him as the representative of his diseased parent.[284] But, perhaps, this was not in his thoughts at all. Certainly no (p. 296) trace in our histories or public documents is discoverable of any coolness or distance[285] prevailing afterwards between himself and his brother Thomas, as though he regarded him as a rival and supplanter. Hardyng (the two editions of whose poem, brought out at distant times, and under different auspices, in many cases give a very different colouring to the same transaction,) represents the time of the Prince's dismissal from the council, and the temporary quarrel between him and his father, to have followed soon after the return of the English soldiers sent to aid the Duke of Burgundy. His second