r
benevolentiis eorundem, et eis supplicabat,] for respect to the King
himself, because he had been his intimate friend, and also from
respect to the military order, they would defer process and execution
of every kind against him; promising them that he would labour, with
regard to him, to bring him back with all mildness and lenity from the
error of his way to the right path of truth. And if he could not
succeed in this endeavour, he would deliver him to them according to
the canonical obligations to be punished, and would assist them in
this with all his aid and with the secular arm. And the said
Archbishop and prelates acquiesced in the King's desire, but not
without the dissatisfaction and murmurs of the clergy. Then, after the
lapse of some time, when our said Lord the King had laboured long and
in various ways in the endeavour to bring back the said knight to the
sheepfold of Christ, and had reaped no fruit of his toil, but the
knight continually relapsed into a worse state than before, at length
the King, in the following month of August, being at Windsor, (p. 363)
without further lenity sharply chided the said Lord John for his
obstinacy. And the said Lord, full of the Devil, not enduring such
chiding, withdrew without leave to his castle of Cowling in Kent; and
there fortified himself in the castle, as was publicly reported. After
that, the King sent for the Lord Archbishop, who was then at
Chichester, celebrating the Assumption of the blessed Virgin; and, on
his coming to the King at his house in Windsor Park, the King, after
rehearsing the pains he had taken, enjoined on the Archbishop, and
required him on the part of God and the Church, to proceed with all
expedition against the said Lord John Oldcastle according to the
canonical rules; and then the Archbishop proceeded against him as the
law required."[277]

[Footnote 276: Henry V.'s own chaplain declares,
"that Oldcastle attempted to infect the King's
highness himself with his deadly poison by his
crafty wiles of argument." If the King argued the
points with Oldcastle, how could that confessor
have done otherwise than strenuously endeavour to
bring his liege Lord to the same views of doctrine
which he entertained himself?]

[Footnote 277: Lingard speaks of "a mandate to the