Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2: Or, Memoirs of the Life and Character of Henry the Fifth, as Prince of Wales and King of EnglandTyler, James Endell
History
Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2: Or, Memoirs of the Life and Character of Henry the Fifth, as Prince of Wales and King of England
Tyler, James Endell
Henry V, King of England, 1387-1422
There are, however, two or three more circumstances upon which it may
appear material to make some observations; or even, should these
closing observations not seem altogether indispensable, yet, since
this is all new and untrodden ground, it may yet be thought safer to
anticipate conjectures, than to leave any questions unopened and
unexamined on this point--a point which the Author trusts may be set
at rest at once, and for ever.
The Author then is ready to confess his belief that both the MS. and
its commentator, the modern historian, have confounded this parliament
of November 1411 with the parliament of February 3, 1413, which was
opened in the illness of the King, and which he never was able to
attend. But if it be attempted to engraft on this fact the surmise
that it might have been in the latter parliament that the Prince
demanded the surrender of the throne, and that it is after all a mere
mistake of dates, the material fact being unshaken and unaffected,--to
this suggestion he replies, that there is no evidence, directly or
indirectly bearing on the subject, in support of such a surmise. The
only statement in printed book or manuscript known, is that which we
have now been sifting; and which with a precision, as though of set
purpose, minute and pointed, fixes the alleged transaction to the year
1411.[329] Not only so. We have, on the contrary, reason to believe
that before the meeting of the next parliament, February 1413, _all
differences had been made up between the King and his son_; and that
from the day of their reconciliation they lived in the full
interchange of paternal and filial kindness to the end. For that (p. 443)
jealousies and alienations of confidence, fostered by the malevolence
of others,[330] had taken place between them in the course of the
preceding year, the very mention of the "ridings of gentils and huge
people with the Prince," twice recurring in the Chronicle of London,
seems of itself to force upon us. The accounts, at all events, such as
they are, which chroniclers give of their reconciliation, fix the date
of that happy issue of their estrangement to a period antecedent to
the last parliament of Henry IV. February 3.--Cras. Purif. 1413.
[Footnote 329: It cannot, however, be supposed that
this anonymous writer fabricated the story; he must
have copied it from some other writer, or put down
what he had learned by hearsay.]
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