Ch. 21 - Henry the Fifth

FIRST PART

THE Prince of Wales began his reign like a generous and honest man.
He set the young Earl of March free; he restored their estates and
their honours to the Percy family, who had lost them by their
rebellion against his father; he ordered the imbecile and
unfortunate Richard to be honourably buried among the Kings of
England; and he dismissed all his wild companions, with assurances
that they should not want, if they would resolve to be steady,
faithful, and true.

It is much easier to burn men than to burn their opinions; and
those of the Lollards were spreading every day. The Lollards were
represented by the priests - probably falsely for the most part -
to entertain treasonable designs against the new King; and Henry,
suffering himself to be worked upon by these representations,
sacrificed his friend Sir John Oldcastle, the Lord Cobham, to them,
after trying in vain to convert him by arguments. He was declared
guilty, as the head of the sect, and sentenced to the flames; but
he escaped from the Tower before the day of execution (postponed
for fifty days by the King himself), and summoned the Lollards to
meet him near London on a certain day. So the priests told the
King, at least. I doubt whether there was any conspiracy beyond
such as was got up by their agents. On the day appointed, instead
of five-and-twenty thousand men, under the command of Sir John
Oldcastle, in the meadows of St. Giles, the King found only eighty
men, and no Sir John at all. There was, in another place, an
addle-headed brewer, who had gold trappings to his horses, and a
pair of gilt spurs in his breast - expecting to be made a knight
next day by Sir John, and so to gain the right to wear them - but
there was no Sir John, nor did anybody give information respecting
him, though the King offered great rewards for such intelligence.
Thirty of these unfortunate Lollards were hanged and drawn
immediately, and were then burnt, gallows and all; and the various
prisons in and around London were crammed full of others. Some of
these unfortunate men made various confessions of treasonable
designs; but, such confessions were easily got, under torture and
the fear of fire, and are very little to be trusted. To finish the
sad story of Sir John Oldcastle at once, I may mention that he
escaped into Wales, and remained there safely, for four years.
When discovered by Lord Powis, it is very doubtful if he would have
been taken alive - so great was the old soldier's bravery - if a
miserable old woman had not come behind him and broken his legs
with a stool. He was carried to London in a horse-litter, was
fastened by an iron chain to a gibbet, and so roasted to death.

To make the state of France as plain as I