Constitutional History.
[chap.
His charac-
ter in later
life.
Critical
period.
Arundel in 1397, lie takes part with John of Gaunt and
Richard, it is because he believes his old allies to have crossed
the line which separates legal opposition from treason and con-
spiracy. On both these critical occasions he shows goδd faith
and honest intent rather than policy or foresight. As king
we find him suspicious, cold-blooded, and politic, undecided in
action, cautious and jealous in private and public relations,
and, if not personally cruel, willing to sanction and profit by
the cruelty of others. Throughout his career he is consistently
devout, pure in life, temperate and careful to avoid offence,
faithful to the church and clergy, unwavering in orthodoxy,
keeping always before his eyes the design with which he began
his active life, hoping to die as a crusader. Throughout his
career too he is consistent in political faith : the house of
Lancaster had risen by advocating constitutional principles,
and on constitutional principles they governed. Henry IV
ruled his kingdom with the aid of a council such as he had
tried to force on Richard II, and yielded to his parliaments all
the power, place, and privilege that had been claimed for them
by the great houses which he represented. It is only after six
years of sad experience have proved to him that he can trust
none of his old friends, when one by one the men that stood by
him at his coronation have fallen victims to their own treasons
or to the dire necessity of his policy, that he becomes vindic-
tive1, suspicious, and irresolute, and tries to justify, on the plea
of necessity, the cruelties at which as a younger man he would
have shuddered. It may be that the disease which made his
later years miserable, and which his enemies declared to be
God’s judgment upon him, affected both the balance of his
mind and the strength of his ruling hand. That love of
casuistical argument, which is almost the only marked cha-
racteristic that his biographer2 notes in him, may have been
1 One stage of the transition may be seen in Arundel’s speech of 1407,
in which he declares that Henry has never exacted the penalties of treason
from any who were willing to submit and promise to be faithful ; JEtot. Parl.
iɪi. 608.
s lNovi temporibus meis Iitteratissimos viros, quicolloquio suo fruebantur,
dixisse ipsum valde capacis fuisse ingenii et tenacis memoriae ut multurn
xviH∙] Dark shades in his career.
a feign of the morbid consciousness that he had placed himself
jn a false position, and conscience may have urged that it was
not by honest means that he had availed himself of his great
opportunity. We can hardly think that he was so far in 2>m¾e∏S>°f
advance of his age as to believe fully in the validity of the plea
0∏ which, as the chosen of the nation, he claimed the throne.
If the formal defiance issued by the Percies contains any germ
of truth, he had acted with more than lawful craft when he
gained their assent to his supplanting of Richard ; if the French
chronicle of the time is to be credited, he had not refrained
from gross perjury. Neither the one nor the other is trust-
worthy, but both represent current beliefs. If Henry were
guiltless of Richard’s death in fact, he was not guiltless of being
the direct cause of it, and the person who directly profited by it.
Although he was a great king and the founder of a dynasty, the
labour and sorrow of his task were ever more present to him
than the solid success which his son was to inherit. Alwavs in H⅛ constant
∙z difficulties
deep debt, always kept on the alert by the Scots and Welsh; a∏ddisap-
. *^ . . pointaient»,
wavering between two opposite lines of policy with regard to
France ; teased by the parliament, which interfered with his
household and grudged him supplies ; worried by the clergy and
others, to whom he had promised more than he could perform ;
continually alarmed by attempts on his life, disappointed in his
second marriage, bereft by treason of the aid of those whom he
had trusted in his youth, and dreading to be supplanted by his
own son ; ever in danger of becoming the sport of the court
factions which he had failed to extinguish or to reconcile, he
seems to us a man whose life was embittered by the knowledge
that he had taken on himself a task for which he was unequal,
whose conscience, ill-informed as it may have been, had soured
him, and who felt that the judgments of men, at least, would
deal hardly with him when he was dead.
ɑɪeɪ expθnderet in quaestionibus BoIvendis et enodandis .... Etsi sapiens
ŋerat, ad cumulum taɪnen sapientiae qui in Salomone fuerat non perveɪɪit.
UfBciat posteriori Saeculo scire quodvir iste in moralibus dubiis enodandis
tUdiosus fuerit scrutator, et quantum regale otiuɪn a turbinibus Causarunr
^utnpermisitliberum in bis semper Sollicitum fuisse;’ Capgr. Ill. Henr.
fP∙io8,ιoρ. HewastSageetimaginatif;' Wavrin, p. 108.