ter on Monday, March 20, 1413, and Henry of
Monmouth's proclamation bears date on the morrow, March 21.[1] Never
perhaps was the accession of any prince to the throne of a kingdom
hailed with a more general or enthusiastic welcome. If serious minds
had entertained forebodings of evil from his reign, (as we (p. 002)
believe they had not,) all feelings seem to have been absorbed in one
burst of gladness. Both houses of parliament offered to swear
allegiance to him before he was crowned: a testimony of confidence and
affection never (it is said) before tendered to any English
monarch.[2] This prevalence of joyous anticipations from the accession
of their young King could not have sprung from any change of conduct
or of principle then first made known. Those who charge Henry most
unsparingly represent his conversion as having begun only at his
father's hour of dissolution. But, before that father breathed his
last, the people of England were ready to welcome most heartily his
son, such as he was then, without, as it should seem, either (p. 003)
hearing of, or wishing for, any change. His principles and his conduct
as a ruler had been put to the test during the time he had presided at
the council-board; and the people only desired in their new King a
continuance of the same wisdom, valour, justice, integrity, and
kind-heartedness, which had so much endeared him to the nation as
their Prince. In his subjects there appears to have been room for
nothing but exultation; in the new King himself widely different
feelings prevailed. Ever, as it should seem, under an awful practical
sense, as well of the Almighty's presence and providence and majesty,
as of his own responsibility and unworthiness, Henry seems to have
been suddenly oppressed by the increased solemnity and weight of the
new duties which he found himself now called upon to discharge. The
scene of his father's death-bed, (carried off, as that monarch was, in
the very meridian of life, by a lingering loathsome disease,) and the
dying injunctions of that father, may doubtless have added much to the
acuteness and the depth of his feelings at that time. And whether he
be deemed to have been the licentious, reckless rioter which some
writers have been anxious to describe, or whether we regard him as a
sincere believer, comparing his past life (though neither licentious
nor reckless) with the perfectness of the divine law, the retrospect
might well depress him wi