[Footnote 330: The Author confesses his own opinion to be that a party was formed at court (headed probably by the Queen), jealous of the Prince's influence, and determined to destroy his power with his father. That, to oppose this party, the Prince summoned his friends, and made a demonstration of his power; (it is possible that he might have expressed his readiness to act again in the government for his father, as he had undoubtedly done before:) and that, after much coldness and alienation, father and son were fully reconciled.] Although the life and reign of Henry IV. continued more than a year and four months after the passing of the ordinance respecting the coin, with an account of which this MS. abruptly closes, yet (excepting what is involved in the extract above cited) not one single word is said of the foreign and domestic affairs of the kingdom, or of the life of the King, or of his death; though much of interesting matter was at hand, and though a parliament was summoned, and actually met fourteen months after the alteration of the coin. And such is the close of a document, not like a yearly chronicle, or general register of events, satisfied with giving a summary of the most remarkable casualties in the briefest form; but a narrative which transcribes, with unusual minuteness, the very words (at full, and with all their technicalities,) of some of the most unimportant and prolix statutes of Henry IV.'s reign.[331] It is not that the MS. is mechanically (p. 444) cut short by loss of leaves, or other accident; the Sloane ends with an "etc." in the very middle of a page, and the King's at the foot of the first column. [Footnote 331: Sloane, p. 42. The statute for assigning certain imposts for the King's household is transcribed at full length, word for word. So, too, in the seventh year, the statute relative to the succession is copied verbatim. Of the same character is the copy of the Tripartite Indenture of Division.] We need not encumber this inquiry (already too long) by any reflections on the avidity with which this passage of the MS. has been seized, and made the groundwork of charges against Henry of "unfilial conduct," "unnatural rebellion" towards his father, and "the unprincipled ambition of a Catilinarian temper," with other hard words and harder surmises; because we are trying the value of testimony. If that testimony is sound, modern historians may doubtless build upon it what comments seem to them good; if we utterly destroy the validity of the evidence, their foundation sinks from under their superstructure.