Advantages
of his posi-
tion com-
pared with
that of
Henry IV.
He imme-
diately dis-
places
Arundel,
March 1413.
Dismissal
of justice
Gascoigne.
Legend of
Gascoigne.
78 Constitiitional History. [chap.
elevation ; and he had, what Henry IV perhaps had not, an
unshaken confidence in his own position as a rightful king. He
could afford to be merciful; he loved to be generous; he
saw it was his policy to forgive and restore those whom his
father had been obliged to repress and punish. The nobility
and the wisdom of this policy not only made him supreme as
long as he lived, but insured for his unfortunate son thirty
years of undisputed sovereignty, a period of domestic peace
which ended only when the principles on which that policy was
based were, by misfortune, impolicy, and injustice, themselves
subverted.
322. Henry IV died on the 20th of March, and on the 21 st
Henry V removed archbishop Arundel from the chancery and
put bishop Beaufort in his place ; on the same day he made the
earl of Arundel treasurer in the place of lord Ie Scrope ; on the
29th he removed Sir William Gascoigne the chief justice of the
bench1. In the two former appointments nothing more was
done than was reasonably to be expected. Beaufort was
Henry V’s minister as distinctly as Arundel was Henry IV’s ;
the earl of Arundel had supported him as prince contrary to
the wishes of his uncle the archbishop, and it was important to
the new king not to offend the Arundel interest, although he
could not act cordially with its most prominent representative.
The dismissal of Sir AVilliam Gascoigne can by itself be easily
accounted for; Gascoigne was an old man, who had been long
in office, and a great country gentleman, who might fairly
claim to rest in his later years. But tradition has attached to
the name of Gascoigne a famous story, which, were it true,
would have its bearing on the character of Henry V. Gas-
coigne had probably, for the evidence is not very clear, refused
to join in the judicial murder of archbishop Scrope : popular
tradition, more than a hundred years later, made him the hero
of a scene in which Henry, when prince of Wales, was repre-
sented as striking the judge upon the bench in defence of an
accused servant, and as obeying the mandate of the same judge
when he committed him to prison for the violence done to the
1 Foss, Tabulae Curiales, p. 32 ; Dugdale, Origines, ad ann.
XVIIi.] Traditions about Henry V. 79
majesty of the law1. It is not only highly improbable, but
almost impossible that such an event could have taken place :
the story was one of a series of traditions which represented
Henry V as a wild dissolute boy at the very times when either
at the head of his father’s forces he was repressing the incursions
of the Scots and Welsh, or at the head of his father’s council
was leading high deliberations on peace and war and national
economies. The story of Gascoigne must be taken at its true
value. The legends of the wildness of Henry’s youth are so far Traditional
countenanced by contemporary authority that the period of his of Henry v
accession is described as a point of time at which his character sio∏.
underwent some sort of change ; ‘ he was changed into another
man,’ says Walsingham, ‘ studying to be honest, grave, and
modest2.’ If the words imply all that has been inferred from
them, Henry may at least plead that his wild acts were done in
public ; his follies and indiscretions, for vice is not laid to his
charge, were the frolics of a high-spirited young man indulged
in the open vulgar air of town and camp ; not the deliberate
pursuit of vicious excitement in the fetid atmosphere of a court.
The question however concerns us here only as connected with
the change of ministers. If there had been any real change in
Henry’s character, manifested on the occasion of his father’s
death, it would have been more likely to make him retain
than remove his father’s servants. One difficulty immediately
resulted from the measure : the removal of Arundel from the
chancery at once enabled him to renew his attack on the
Lollards, and emboldened the Lollards to more hopeful resist-
ance.
323. The parliament which had met before the death of Henry⅛ first
Henry IV continued to sit as the first parliament of his лргн™™*’
ɪ On this and the points of chronology connected with it, see Foss,
Kographia Juridica, pp. 290 sq. Recent investigation has thrown no new
light upon the story, which first turns up in Elyot’s Governour, Book II.
c∙ 6, written in 1534; cf. Pauli, Gesch. v. Engl. v. 71.
. 2 Wals. ii. 290; Capgr. Chr. p. 303. Hardyng’s words (p. 372) read
l⅛e a translation of Walsingham. Fabyan, p. 577, charges Henry before
!'is father’s death with all vice and insolency ; after it ‘ Sodaynly he
became a newe man.’ Cf. Hall, Chr. p. 46 ; Elmham (ed. Hearne), p. ɪ 2 ;
and Pauli, G esch. v. Engl. v. 70 sq.