The Life and Character of King Henry the Fifth. J. Endell Tyler

nevertheless, such as it is, (allowing for that mistake,) his account seems far more probable than the statement given in the Sloane manuscript,—the only authority, it is presumed, now known to have reported the alleged words of the treaty. It is much more likely, that the project of dividing South Britain among the houses of Glyndowr, Mortimer, and Percy, should have been entertained before the battle of Shrewsbury, when the Earl of Worcester's malicious love of mischief might have suggested it, and Hotspur's headstrong impetuosity might have caught at the scheme, and their troops, not yet dispirited by defeat, might have been sanguine of success, than after that struggle, when the old Earl of Northumberland152 was the only representative of the house of Percy who could have signed it. The cause of Owyn, Mortimer, and Northumberland had so sunk into its wane after Hotspur's death, that they could then scarcely have contemplated as a thing feasible the division of the fair realm of England and Wales among themselves. Of the authority of the manuscript from which the indenture is extracted, the Author (for reasons stated in the Appendix) is compelled to form a very low estimate. And if such a deed ever was signed, it is far less improbable that the manuscript (full, as it confessedly is elsewhere, of errors) should have inserted it incorrectly in point of chronological order, than that the contracting parties should have postponed their contemplated arrangement to a period when success must have appeared almost beyond hope. Independently, however, of the suspicion cast on the document by the date assigned to it in the manuscript, it seems to carry with it internal evidence against itself. The contract was made by Edmund Mortimer, the Earl of Northumberland, and Owyn, and among them the land was to be divided; but, so far from the report of such an intended distribution being corroborated by any other authority, there is much evidence to render it incredible. Edmund Mortimer's own genuine letter, for example, announcing his adhesion to Owyn, which preceded this agreement, makes no allusion to the Percies, or even to himself, as portionists. "The cause," he says, "which he espoused would guarantee to Owyn his rights in Wales, and, in case Richard were dead, would place the Earl of March on the throne." It is, indeed, scarcely conceivable that the nobles, the gentry, and the people at large would have suffered their land to be cut up into portions, destroying the integrity of the kingdom, and exposing it with increased facilities to foreign invasion, and interminable intestine warfare; whilst neither of the three who were to share the spoil had any pretensions of title to the crown. It is scarcely less inconceivable that three men, such as Mortimer, Glyndowr, and Northumberland, could have seriously devised so desperate a scheme.

      On the whole, the Author is disposed to express his suspicion that the entire story of the tripartite league is the creature only of invention, originating in some inexplicable mistake, or fabricated for the purpose of exciting feelings of contempt or hostility against the rebels.

      In examining the various accounts of the battle of Shrewsbury with a view of putting together ascertained facts in right order, and distinguishing between certainty,—strong probability,—mere surmise,—improbabilities,—and utter mistakes, we shall find it far more easy to point out the errors of others, than to adopt one general view which shall not in its turn be open to objections. Still, in any important course of events, it seems to be a dereliction of duty in an author to shrink from offering the most probable outline of facts which the careful comparison of different statements, and a patient weighing of opposite authorities, suggest. Before, however, we enter upon that task, it will be necessary to clear the way by examining some other questions of doubt and difficulty.

      To Mr. Hume's inaccuracies, arising from the want of patient labour in searching for truth at the fountain-head, we have been led to refer above. His readiness to rest satisfied with whatever first offered itself, provided it suited his present purpose, without either scrutinizing its internal evidence, or verifying it by reference to earlier and better authority, is forced upon our notice in his account of the battle of Shrewsbury. Just one half of the entire space which he spares to record the whole affair, he devotes to a minute detail of the manifesto which Hotspur is said to have sent to the King on the night before the battle, in the name of his father, his uncle, and himself. This document, at least in the terms quoted by Mr. Hume, is proved as well by its own internal self-contradictions, as by historical facts, to be a forgery of a much later date.

      The first charge which the manifesto is made to bring against Henry is, that, after his landing at Ravenspurg, he swore on the Gospel that he only sought his own rightful inheritance, that he would never disturb Richard in his possession of the throne, and that never would he aim at being King. And yet another item charges him with having sworn on the same day, and at the same place, and on the same Gospel, an oath (the very terms of which imply that he was to be King) that he never would exact tenths or fifteenths without consent of the three estates, except in cases of extreme emergence. Again, "It complained of his cruel policy (says Mr. Hume, without adding a single remark,) in allowing the young Earl of March, whom he ought to regard as his sovereign, to remain a captive in the hands of his enemies, and in even refusing to all his friends permission to treat of his ransom;" whilst it is beyond all question that the person whom this pretended manifesto confounds with the Earl of March, "taken in pitched battle," was Sir Edmund Mortimer. The Earl of March was himself then a boy, and was in close custody in Henry's castle of Windsor. The manifesto, as Hume quotes it, is evidently full of historical blunders; its author had followed those historians who had confounded Edmund Mortimer with the Earl of March; and yet Mr. Hume adopts it on the authority of Hall, and gives it so prominent a place in his work.

      But even as the manifesto is found in its original form in Hardyng, (though the blunders copied by Hume from Hall153 do not appear there in all their extravagance and absurdity,) something attaches to it exceedingly suspicious as to its character and circumstances. Independently of the internal evidence of the document itself, which will repay a careful scrutiny, the very fact of Hardyng having withheld even the most distant allusion to such a manifesto in the copy of his work which he presented to Henry VI, the grandson of the King whose character the manifesto was designed to blast, at a time so much nearer the event, when the reality or the falsehood of his statement might have been more easily ascertained, contrasts very strikingly with the forced and unnatural manner in which, many years after, he abruptly thrusts the manifesto in Latin prose into the midst of his English poem. He then154 desired to please Edward IV, to whom any adverse reflection on Bolinbroke would be acceptable.

      The document, however, itself savours strongly of forgery. In the first place, it purports to be signed and sealed by Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, (though the Earl at that time was in Northumberland,) Henry Percy, his first-born son, and Thomas Earl of Worcester, styling themselves Procurators and Protectors of the kingdom. Should this apparent contradiction be thought to be reconciled with the truth by what Hardyng mentions, that the document was made by good advice of the Archbishop of York, and divers other holy men and lords; it must be answered that it could not have been drawn up for the purpose of being used whenever an opportunity might offer, for, in the name of the three, it challenges the King, and declares that they will prove the allegations "on this day," "on this instant day," twice repeated. Evidently the writer of the document had his mind upon the fatal day of Shrewsbury.

      Again, one of their principal charges seems to have emanated from a person totally ignorant of some facts which must have been known to the Percies, and which are established by documents still in our hands. The words of the clause to which we refer run thus: "We aver and intend to prove, that whereas Edmund Mortimer, brother of the Earl of March, was taken by Owyn Glyndowr in mortal battle, in the open field, and has UP TO THIS TIME155 been cruelly kept in prison and bands of iron, in your cause, you have publicly declared him to have been guilefully taken, [ex dolo,—willingly, as Hall quotes it, to yield himself prisoner to the said Owyn,] and you would not suffer him to be ransomed, neither by his own means nor by us his relatives and friends. We have, therefore, negociated with Owyn, as well for his ransom from our own proper goods, as also for peace between you and Owyn. Wherefore have you regarded us as traitors, and moreover have craftily and secretly planned and imagined our death and utter destruction."

      This clause of the manifesto declares the King to have publicly proclaimed that Edmund Mortimer, who was taken in pitched battle, had fraudulently given himself up to Owyn. The King's own letter to the council156 is totally irreconcileable with his making such a declaration. He announces