erous resolution to
restore the crown to its alleged rightful heir,[105] or by some less
honourable and more selfish feeling;[106] whether by any offence taken
against Henry, or, as it is alleged, by the vast bribe offered to them
by the crown of France; or whether by more than one of these motives
combined, must remain a matter of conjecture. We cannot, perhaps, be
certified of the means by which Henry became acquainted with the plot,
nor if, as we are told, he was informed of it by the Earl of March
himself, can we ascertain beyond doubt how large or how small a share
that nobleman had in the previous deliberations and resolutions of the
conspirators. Whether he first consented to their design of (p. 134)
setting him up as king, and then repented of so ungrateful an act
towards one who had behaved to him with so much kindness and
confidence, or whether he instantly took the resolve to nip this
treason in the bud, no documents enable us to decide. If the Earl of
Cambridge's confession be the truth, the Earl of March at one time was
himself consenting to the plot.

[Footnote 105: To suppose that this conspiracy
could have originated, as it has been lately
(Turner's History) suggested, in "the resisting
spirit which Henry's religious persecutions
occasioned, and which led some to wish for another
sovereign," is altogether gratuitous, and contrary
to fact. He was not carrying on religious
persecution, and no resisting spirit on that ground
had manifested itself at all.]

[Footnote 106: Richard of Coningsburg, second son
of Edmund of Langley, Duke of York, fifth son of
Edward III, was high in favour with Henry V, who
created him Earl of Cambridge in the second year of
his reign. He married Ann, daughter of Roger
Mortimer, Earl of March, whose son Richard (aged
fourteen in the third year of Henry V,) was heir to
Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March. Leland says, that
the "main design of the Earl of Cambridge's
conspiracy was to raise Edmund Mortimer, Earl of
March, to the throne, as heir to Lionel, Duke of
Clarence; and then, in