d
of Katharine, (an union on which he appears from the first to have
been heartily bent,) kept up in his enemies the hope that, to gain
that object, he would ultimately relax from many of his original
demands. Henry certainly afterwards challenged the Dauphin to single
combat, as though he had a quarrel with him personally; and nothing
can fairly be inferred against the truth of the tradition, from the
silence in the challenge on the point of such an insult having been
offered. On the whole, the evidence is decidedly in favour of the
reality of the incident; whilst Henry's reported answer is very
characteristic: "I will thank the Dauphin in person, and will (p. 110)
carry him such tennis-balls as shall rattle his hall's roof about his
ears." And they, says the contemporary chronicler,[85] were great
gunstones for the Dauphin to play withal.

[Footnote 84: Otterbourne says Henry received the
tennis-balls whilst he was keeping his Lent at
Kenilworth.]

[Footnote 85: Cotton MS. Claudius, A. viii.]

* * * * *

Anxious to proceed in our narrative without further allusion to such
sweeping and unsupported charges, we must, nevertheless, here
introduce (though reluctantly) the remarks which have been suffered to
fall from the same pen, as its chief comment on the closing words of
Henry's last Will, made at this time.[86] He signed that document at
Southampton, July 24th, just three days after discovering the
conspiracy of which we must soon speak. Probably a sense of the
uncertainty of life, and the necessity of setting his house in order
without delay, were impressed deeply upon him by that unhappy event.
He felt not only that he had embarked in an enterprise the result of
which was doubtful, in which at all events he must expose his life to
numberless unforeseen perils; but that the thread of his mortal
existence might at a moment be cut asunder by the hands of the very
men to whom he looked for protection and victory. Compared with the
wills of other princes and nobles of that day, there is nothing (p. 111)
very remarkable in Henry's. From first to last it is tinctured with
the superstitions of the corrupt form of our holy religion, then
over-spreading England.[87]

[Footnote 86: His very last will is not known to be
in existence. This testament was made seven years