great possessions in France secured, and his beautiful
wife to cheer him, and a son born to give him greater happiness, all
appeared bright before him. But, in the fulness of his triumph and the
height of his power, Death came upon him, and his day was done. When he
fell ill at Vincennes, and found that he could not recover, he was very
calm and quiet, and spoke serenely to those who wept around his bed. His
wife and child, he said, he left to the loving care of his brother the
Duke of Bedford, and his other faithful nobles. He gave them his advice
that England should establish a friendship with the new Duke of Burgundy,
and offer him the regency of France; that it should not set free the
royal princes who had been taken at Agincourt; and that, whatever quarrel
might arise with France, England should never make peace without holding
Normandy. Then, he laid down his head, and asked the attendant priests
to chant the penitential psalms. Amid which solemn sounds, on the thirty-
first of August, one thousand four hundred and twenty-two, in only the
thirty-fourth year of his age and the tenth of his reign, King Henry the
Fifth passed away.

Slowly and mournfully they carried his embalmed body in a procession of
great state to Paris, and thence to Rouen where his Queen was: from whom
the sad intelligence of his death was concealed until he had been dead
some days. Thence, lying on a bed of crimson and gold, with a golden
crown upon the head, and a golden ball and sceptre lying in the nerveless
hands, they carried it to Calais, with such a great retinue as seemed to
dye the road black. The King of Scotland acted as chief mourner, all the
Royal Household followed, the knights wore black armour and black plumes
of feathers, crowds of men bore torches, making the night as light as
day; and the widowed Princess followed last of all. At Calais there was
a fleet of ships to bring the funeral host to Dover. And so, by way of
London Bridge, where the service for the dead was chanted as it passed
along, they brought the body to Westminster Abbey, and there buried it
with great respect.

CHAPTER XXII--ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE SIXTH

PART THE FIRST

It had been the wish of the late King, that while his infant son KING
HENRY THE SIXTH, at this time only nine months old, was under age, the
Duke of Gloucester should be appointed Regent. The English Parliament,
however, preferred to appoint a Council of Regency, with