Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 | Page 4

prayed God that, if he foresaw he was like to be any other than a just and good king, he would please to take him immediately out of the world, rather than seat him on the throne, to live a public calamity to his country."--Goodwin. See Stowe. Polyd. Verg. Elmham.]
[Footnote 3: Elmham.]
But he never seems for a day to have been drawn aside by his private devotions from the full discharge of the practical duties of his new station. On the Wednesday he issued summonses for a parliament to meet within three weeks of Easter. On Friday the 7th of April, he was conducted to the Tower by a large body of men of London, who (p. 005) went on horseback to attend him. The next day he was accompanied back to Westminster, with every demonstration of loyalty and devotedness to his person, by a great concourse of lords and knights, many of whom he had created on the preceding evening. On the following morning, being Passion Sunday, April 9th,[4] he was crowned with much[5] magnificence in Westminster Abbey.[6]
[Footnote 4: Not Palm Sunday, but the fifth Sunday in Lent, was called Passion Sunday.]
[Footnote 5: "With mickle royalty."--Chron. Lond.]
[Footnote 6: Chroniclers record that the day of his coronation was a day of storm and tempest, frost and snow, and that various omens of ill portent arose from the circumstance.]
One of the first acts of a sovereign in England at that time was to re-appoint the judges who were in office at the demise of his predecessor, or to constitute new ones in their stead. Among other changes, we find Hankford appointed as Chief Justice in the room of Gascoyne, at least within ten days of the King's accession. For any observation which this fact may suggest, so contrary to those histories which repeat tales instead of seeking for the truth in ancient records, we must refer to the chapter in which we have already examined the credibility of the alleged insult offered by Prince Henry to a Judge on the bench of justice.[7]
[Footnote 7: Henry had excited feelings of confidence and admiration in the minds of foreign potentates, as well as in his subjects at home. Among the embassies, with offers and pledges of friendship and amity, which hastened to his court on his accession, are numbered those of John of Portugal, Robert Duke of Albany, Regent of Scotland, John King of Castile, John Duke of Brittany, Charles King of France, and Pope John XXIII.]
The first parliament of Henry V. met in the Painted Chamber (p. 006) at Westminster, on Monday, 15th of May. The King was on his throne; but the Bishop of Winchester, his uncle, then Chancellor of England, opened the business of the session. On this, as on many similar occasions, the chancellor, generally a prelate, addressed the assembled states in an oration, half speech and half sermon, upon a passage of Scripture selected as a text. On the opening of this parliament, the chancellor informed the peers and the commons that the King's purpose in calling them together as the Great Council of the nation was threefold:--First, he was desirous of supporting the throne,--"his high and royal estate;" secondly, he was bent on maintaining the law and good government within his realm; and thirdly, he desired to cherish the friends and to resist the enemies of his kingdom. It is remarkable that no mention is made in this parliament at all on the part of the King, or his chancellor, of either heresy or Lollardism. The speaker refers to some tumults, especially at Cirencester, where the populace appear to have attacked the abbey; complaints also were made against the conduct of ordinaries, and some strong enactments were passed against the usurpations of Rome, (p. 007) to which reference will again be made: but not a word in answer to these complaints would lead to the inference that the spirit of persecution was then in the ascendant. It was not till the last day of April 1414, after the affair of St. Giles' Field, that the statute against the Lollards was passed at Leicester.[8] The chancellor at that subsequent period speaks of their treasonable designs to destroy the King having been lately discovered and discomfited; and the record expressly declares that the ordinance was made with the consent and at the prayer of the commons.
[Footnote 8: Sir Edward Coke, in his 4th Inst. ch. i. declares that this act was disavowed in the next parliament by the Commons, for that they never assented. The Author has searched the Parliament Rolls in vain for the authority on which that assertion was founded.]
But though neither the King nor his council gave any indication, in his first parliament, of a desire to interfere with men's consciences in matters of religion, the