tant and prolix statutes
of Henry IV.'s reign.[331] It is not that the MS. is mechanically (p. 444)
cut short by loss of leaves, or other accident; the Sloane ends with
an "etc." in the very middle of a page, and the King's at the foot of
the first column.

[Footnote 331: Sloane, p. 42. The statute for
assigning certain imposts for the King's household
is transcribed at full length, word for word. So,
too, in the seventh year, the statute relative to
the succession is copied verbatim. Of the same
character is the copy of the Tripartite Indenture
of Division.]

We need not encumber this inquiry (already too long) by any
reflections on the avidity with which this passage of the MS. has been
seized, and made the groundwork of charges against Henry of "unfilial
conduct," "unnatural rebellion" towards his father, and "the
unprincipled ambition of a Catilinarian temper," with other hard words
and harder surmises; because we are trying the value of testimony. If
that testimony is sound, modern historians may doubtless build upon it
what comments seem to them good; if we utterly destroy the validity of
the evidence, their foundation sinks from under their superstructure.

The reader, however, has probably already determined that, unless
there be in reserve some other independent, or at least auxiliary
source of evidence, the palpable contradiction and manifest confusion
reigning through this part of the MS., together with the high degree
of improbability thrown over the whole statement by the undoubted
records of the very parliament in question, justify the rejection of
the passage altogether from the pale of authentic history. The Author
confesses that he has step by step come to that conclusion.

THE END.

LONDON
PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY,
Dorset Street, Fleet Street.

End of Project Gutenberg's Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2, by J. Endell Tyler

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