who had been with him in France, followed him to his grave as chief mourner. He had chosen the place for his tomb himself, just behind the shrine of Edward the Confessor. It is more than a tomb, it is a separate little chapel, ornamented with sculpture and statues, and built in the shape of his initial letter H. His image was made of English oak, and covered with silver; the head was of solid silver. All the silver is gone now; but the oaken figure is still to be seen; above it on a bar are his dinted helmet, his shield, and his saddle.

35. Thus this short glorious reign ended, like a dream, or like a tale that is told. The next reign, that of Henry's son, was long, inglorious, and melancholy. All Henry's great victories, all his great schemes, went for nothing; we shall have to see all his work undone. And though we can hardly help feeling some English pride as we read of his and his people's splendid deeds, we ought not to be sorry that it ended as it did. Henry had no right to the French crown, and England had no right to govern France. In these days it would be thought very wicked for one nation to make war on another for any such reason. Though Henry must not be judged as we should judge a king who acted as he did in our own days, neither must it be regretted that all his great conquests were lost, and his great hopes fell to the ground. Not only for the sake of France, but for the sake of England too, it was best.

36. It has been remarked before, as the English kings gradually lost bit by bit of their possessions in France, that it was much for the interest of England that they did so. Had it ever come

to pass that France and England should be really governed by one king, even though that king had been an Englishman, there is no doubt that England, which is much the smaller of the two, and cut off by the sea from the rest of Europe, would have become a mere province of France. The king must have principally lived in France, as Henry II. and Richard I. did, instead of living in and caring most for England; and England would never have developed her own special character, or taken her own great place in the world. So though we shall soon have to hear of many disasters and losses to the English, we may take heart, and look on them as "blessings in disguise."

LECTURE XXXV.-FRANCE RECOVERS.

Henry VI. The Dukes of Bedford and Gloucester. Cardinal Beaufort. The Maid of Orleans. Coronation of Charles VII. of France. Death of the Maid.

1422. Henry VI.

1. THE young prince, son of Henry V. and Katherine of France, was only nine months old when his father died. The government would therefore naturally fall into the hands of his uncles, the last king's brothers. There were two of these, the Duke of Bedford and the Duke of Gloucester. The Duke of Bedford was the same as the young Prince John who fought in the Battle of Shrewsbury, His uncles. in the days of Henry IV., and of whom we read in Shakespeare's play. He seems to have been his father's favourite, and was now grown to be a very wise and clever man. His brother, Henry V., placed great confidence in him, and when he was dying appointed him to be Regent of France, giving him much good advice as to how he was to proceed. The other brother, Humphrey, was a turbulent, ambitious, and selfish prince, who did a great deal of mischief as long as he lived. Though his brother Henry appointed him to be Regent of England, he had warned him with his dying breath never to set his own selfish interests above those of his country; and the English parliament, perhaps knowing already the sort of man Gloucester was, thought it better that England should be governed by a council. Still he was called Protector, and when his brother, the Duke of Bedford, was away in France, he naturally had a great deal of power and influence. He was liked by the people, and was called, one hardly knows why, the "Good Duke Humphrey." He certainly had one good point about him, which was that he liked books and literature; he collected a very beautiful library, and he used to invite foreign scholars to England, and employ them to translate books for him.

2. Though at this time there were no very clever English writers, like Chaucer or William Langlande, people were growing

more and more fond of reading. All books were still in "manuscript," written out by the hand, and about this period it is said that there is a great change in the appearance of these manuscripts. The old ones were very beautifully written; the scribe, or writer, took his time; the pages were often exquisitely ornamented, and every letter perfectly formed. There were not very many books then, nor, indeed, could there be, when they were produced at this rate. But now that so many people wanted to read books, the scribes had to hurry more, and to get a great many more written. They began to write a sort of running hand; not half so beautiful to look at, and not always very easy to read ; but by this means books grew more plentiful. This is again rather like "coming events casting their shadows before." Duke Humphrey afterwards presented his fine library to the University of Oxford.

Cardinal
Beaufort.

3. Besides the two dukes, Henry V.'s brothers, there was another very powerful man, his uncle, Cardinal Beaufort, who was Bishop of Winchester. He was enormously. rich and ambitious. He and the Duke of Gloucester were continually quarrelling and striving for the mastery, and kept England in a constant state of disquiet. The French historians give him a very bad character; one of them calls him plainly "a Satan," though no longer "the old Satan, shameful and outcast, but a Satan who is acknowledged, decent, respectable, and rich; sitting on a bishop's throne."

4. Almost directly after the death of Henry V. the unfortunate King of France died also. The Treaty of Troyes had appointed that when this happened Henry V. was to succeed him as King of France. But as Henry was already dead, the right, such as it was, descended to his little son, who was accordingly called King of France. How things might have turned out had Henry V. lived we cannot tell, but most likely, even then, the dauphin would have made some resistance. As it was, he at once came forward with his partisans, and declared himself King of France, under the name of Charles The French VII. And though the Treaty of Troyes had been called "the perpetual peace," the war broke out again.

war breaks out afresh.

5. The Scotch were, as usual, allies of the French. Although their king had been a prisoner, and in Henry V.'s power, .they had fought on the French side even during his reign, and some of the Scotch nobles had received great titles and honours in France. The Scotch, indeed, were so brave and so accustomed