Of Fabyan it is only necessary to say that he does not give any such details, but says generally that the “King, before the death of his father, applied himself unto all vice and insolency, and drew unto him violent and wildly-disposed persons.” Stow, therefore, it will be seen, improved upon Fabyan. Recent writers have improved upon Stow by finding a cause for these lawless proceedings in Henry’s grinding poverty. Poverty was doubtless the prevailing condition of both father and son; but the King was as liberal to his heir as his means permitted. The Prince had often, it is clear, money enough to advance his soldiers’ pay, for we hear of sums repaid him on this account. The story may be dismissed as a fable, or, if it has any foundation at all, as the exaggerated report of a youthful freak. A still more baseless invention is that the Prince and his wild companions indulged in various extravagant doings at his manor of Cheylesmore, near Coventry, and that on one occasion he and they were taken into custody by the Mayor of Coventry. The legend cannot, it seems, be traced beyond the latter part of the seventeenth century. The other charges against Henry’s character may be more conveniently considered in the next chapter. CHAPTER V ACCESSION TO THE THRONE In December 1413 the King, whose health had been failing for some years, was dangerously ill. He was then at his palace at Eltham, and for a while, says Walsingham, he seemed to be dead. But he recovered, and kept Christmas with such festivity as he might. In the following March he was again attacked as he was praying in the Confessor’s Chapel at Westminster Abbey. His attendants carried him into the Abbot’s house, where he shortly afterwards expired. One of his biographers tells us that the dying man called his successor to his side and advised him to fear God, to choose an honest confessor, to be diligent in his duty as a king, and to pay his (the speaker’s) debts. The speech has the appearance of the appropriate orations which historians were accustomed to put into the mouth of their characters. If, as seems likely, the cause of death was apoplexy, it is probable that he never recovered consciousness. The King died on March 20th. Parliament had been prorogued to the 24th of the month. It was _ipso facto_ dissolved by the demise of the Crown; but the prelates, peers, and representatives of the Commons who had been summoned to it assembled in an informal manner, and for the first time in English history, without waiting for the solemnities of coronation, spontaneously offered homage to their new Sovereign, though at the same time taking care to prevent their action from being afterwards made into a precedent.