does Henry’s chantry crown the Confessor’s shrine. If some of these thoughts have come to you, this chapel will have taught you more history than any number of books or any number of dates. Because history only grows real to all of us, when the men and women about whom we read and learn cease to be mere figures and become our familiar acquaintances, till we fit them in as it were to their proper places in the story of England—places which are not always bounded by the years of a reign, which often cannot be bounded even by centuries. [Illustration: TOMBS IN THE CHAPEL OF THE KINGS.] *CHAPTER IX* *THE WARS OF THE ROSES AND THE THIRD ROYAL BUILDER* Little Henry VI. was not crowned till he was nine years old, and one old writer says that "so small was he, he could not wear the crown, and a bracelet of his mother’s was placed on his head." He was a dreamy, gentle boy, and, far from being excited or happy on his coronation day, we hear how "very sadly and gravely he beheld all the people round about him, at the sight of which he showed great humility." His mother, Katherine, had married a Welshman named Owen Tudor, much to the anger of those about the court and the nobles, who considered that by so doing she had demeaned herself, and after this she was allowed to see very little of her son, who was therefore left entirely to his uncles, the Duke of Bedford and the Duke of Gloucester. Like Edward the Confessor, Henry was fit for a cloister but not for a crown, and he was called to reign in troublous times, when strength of will and purpose were more needed in a king than saintliness or simplicity of life. His uncles, who realised his weakness, arranged that he should marry Margaret of Anjou, a woman who was brave, ambitious, and masterful; but the fact that she soon got Henry completely under her control only brought about in the end his destruction and hers. In France the English lose all that they had won, for a deliverer of France had arisen in the girl Joan of Arc, who gave fresh courage and hope to her fellow-countrymen and led them on to victory as though she had been a saint sent by God. Then back to England came those many thousands of soldiers who had been fighting abroad all these years, and they were not inclined to settle down to a peaceful life; they wanted adventure, excitement, and plunder, and they were ready to flock round any leader who could promise them the chance of a fight. You will remember how, when you looked at Edward III.’s tomb, with the figures of his sons kneeling round, I told you that the descendants of those sons brought civil war upon England; and it was in the reign of Henry VI. that this terrible war broke out. Henry, as you know, was descended from John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and his grandfather, Henry IV., had gained the throne by will of Parliament and by right of conquest, but not by right of inheritance.