id siege to Rouen. "See you not that God hath
brought me here as it were by the hand? There is no
longer a King in France. _I have a legal right over
that realm._ All is in confusion there; and no one
dreams of opposing me. Can I have a more sensible
proof that God, who disposes of crowns, has decreed
that I should place on my head the crown of
France?" And in his mandate to the Archbishop of
Canterbury to array the clergy against the enemies
of the church and of the faith, should any appear
in his absence, he says, "We are now going to
recover our inheritance and the rights of our
crown, now a long time, as is _evident to all_,
unjustly kept from us."--Sloane, p. 52.]

Nor can we here omit to observe, (though it be anticipating what (p. 114)
must hereafter be again referred to in the course of the history,)
that the behaviour of the Emperor, when, in the spring of the
following year, he made a personal voyage to England on purpose to
visit Henry, and the solemn declaration of the Duke of Burgundy, (of
whose sincerity, however, no one can speak without hesitation,) "that
he had at first thought Henry unjust in his demands, but was at length
convinced of their justice," show that in the estimation of
contemporaries, and those neither churchmen nor his own subjects, who
may be suspected of partiality, Henry's character deserved better than
to be stamped with the imputation of "lawless ambition and hypocrisy."
It is very easy for any one to charge a fellow-creature with immoral
and unchristian motives; and it may carry with it the appearance of
honest indignation, and of an heroic love of virtue, religion, and
truth, when one can tear off the veil of conquest and martial glory
from the individual, and expose his naked faults to pity, or contempt,
or hatred. But a good judge, in forming his own estimate of the
motives which may have given birth to acts which fall under his
cognizance, or in guiding others to return a righteous verdict, will
not consider the most ready method of solving a difficulty to be
always the safest. Take for granted that Henry's conduct towards (p. 115)
France is intelligible on the ground of lawless ambition and gross
hypocrisy, (though there is no proo