Constitutional History.
74
[chap.
stood ; notwithstanding extreme distress for money, and in
spite of much treachery and disaffection. All the intelligent
knowledge of the needs of the nation, all the real belief in the
king’s title, is centered in the knights of the shire ; there is
much treason outside, but none within the walls of the house of
Powerof commons. The highest intelligence, on the whole, however, is
∆Sndel.°p plainly seen to be Arundel’s, and next to his, although in oppo-
sition for the time, that of the prince of Wales. The archbishop
knows how to rule the commons and how to guide the king ;
he believes in the right of the dynasty, and, apart from his
treatment of the heretics, realises the true relation of king and
people. If his views of the relation of Church and State, as
seen in his leading of the convocation, are open to exception,
he cannot be charged with truckling to the court of Rome.
Characterof 321. The reign of Henry IV had exemplified the truth that
the reign of . , . . . i
Henryiv, a king acting in constitutional relations with his parliament
may withstand and overcome any amount of domestic difficulty.
He had known when to yield and when to insist, and thus, in
spite of the questionable character of his title, much ill-success,
harassing poverty, unwearied and unsuspected'treasons, bad
seasons, and bad health, he had laid the foundations of a strong
national dynasty. His parliamentary action was one long
struggle, but it was a struggle fairly conducted, and he, as
well as the parliament, stood by the constitutional compromise,
in relation maintained the constitutional balance. The history of Henry V
Henry v. exhibits to us a king acting throughout his reign in the closest
harmony with his parliament, putting himself forward as the
first man of a nation fairly at one with itself on all political
questions, a leader in heart and soul worthy of England, and
crowning his leadership with ample signal successes. HenryIV,
striving lawfully, had made his own house strong ; Henry V,
leading the forces with which his father had striven, made
England the first power in Europe. There were deep and
fatal sources of weakness in his great designs, but that weak-
ness was not in his position at home ; it was not constitutional
weakness, although the result which it precipitated went a
long way towards destroying the constitution itself.
XVIlI.]
Henry V.
75
It is one of the penalties which great men must pay for their Henry v м
x .ηι ɪ a warrior,
greatness, that they have to be judged by posterity according
to a standard which they themselves could not have recognised,
because it was by their greatness that the standard itself was
created. Henry V may be judged and condemned on moral
principles which have emerged from the age in which he was
a great actor, but which that age neither knew nor practised.
He renewed a great war, which according to modern ideas was
without justification in its origin and continuance, and which
resulted in an exhaustion from which the nation did not recover
for a century. To modern minds war seems a terrible evil, to
be incurred only on dire necessity where honour or existence is
at stake ; to be justified only by the clearest demonstration of
right; to be continued not a moment longer than the moral
necessity continues. Perhaps no war ancient or modern has Ciianges ɪn
v ' ɪ the estimate
been so waged, justified, or concluded ; men both spoke and of war.
thought otherwise in earlier times, and in times not so very
far distant from our own. For medieval warfare it might be
pleaded, that its legal justifications were as a rule far more
complete than were the excuses with which Louis XIV and
Frederick II defended their aggressive designs ; for the kings
of the middle ages went to war for rights, not for interests,
much less for ideas. But it must be further remembered, that
until comparatively late times, although the shedding of Chris-
tian blood was constantly deplored, war was regarded as the
highest and noblest work of kings ; and that in England, the
history of which must have been Henry’s guide, the only three
unwarlike kings who had reigned since the Conquest had been
despised and set aside by their subi’ects. The war with France "’ar with
J ∙ d i i ιrι Ii France an
Was not to him a new war ; it had lasted far beyond the hereditary
meïnory of any living man, and the nation had been educated
into the belief that the struggle was one condition of its
normal existence. The royal house, we may be sure, had been
thoroughly instructed in all the minutiae of their claims ; the
Parliament insists as strongly on the royal rights as on its own
Privileges ; and the fall of Henry VI shows how fatal to any
dynasty must have been the renunciation of those rights. The