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A.D. 1422, when they came to "benigne fac, Domine," where there is at the end of the verse, "muri Therusalem," he made them stop, and said aloud, that by the death he was now expecting, he had intended after he had settled the kingdom of France in peace, to go and conquer Jerusalem, if it had been the pleasure of his Creator to let him live his term of years. After the king had said this he made them depart, and soon afterwards according to the time the physicians had said, he yielded up his spirit to God, on the last day of August. Duke John of Bedford his brother, with the other princes, and generally all the people of his English kingdom, made great weeping and lamentation for his death, and remained in much sadness. Immediately afterwards his inward parts. were buried within the church and monastery of St. Maur-des-Fossés, and his body, well embalmed, was placed in a leaden coffin.

At this time the Duke of Burgundy came to the said place of the wood of Vincennes to visit the Duke of Bedford, brother of King Henry, and the other princes remaining there, with whom he held some brief conversation; then departed and came to Paris to lodge at his Hotel of Artois.

The body of the said deceased, King Henry, was carried with great pomp, and nobly attended, into the church of Notre Dame in the city of Paris, in which place a very solemn funeral service was performed; then it was taken to the city of Rouen, where it remained a good while, during which the princes met at Paris for consultation, that is to say, the Dukes of Burgundy, Bedford, and Exeter, besides several other great lords, in order to consider and maturely deliberate together on the government and maintenance of the

1 Psalm 51, verse 18.

kingdom of France; and there it was decided and A.D. 1422. promised anew by them that the final peace which had been promised and sworn between the parties should be maintained in the form and manner that had been settled between the two kings of France and England in the town of Troyes in Champagne.

I have since been truly informed concerning the principal disease by which the said king was brought to his death, namely that it was by an inflammation. which seized him in the fundament, and which is called the disease of St. Anthony.

After those princes had formed their conclusions about the government of France, as you have heard above in the city of Paris, the Duke of Burgundy departed thence, and returned with his Picards into his country of Artois and into Flanders; while the Duke of Bedford with the other English princes went to Rouen to put in order the affairs of the Duchy of Normandy, and thither in great state they brought the Queen of England, who as yet knew nothing of her husband's death.

After the princes of the blood royal of the said king had placed him on a chariot drawn by four large horses, they made his likeness and representation in boiled leather, very finely moulded, bearing on his head a crown of gold, very precious, and holding in his right hand the sceptre or royal bâton, in the left hand a golden apple, and lying in a bed on the aforesaid chariot, the face uncovered and turned towards the sky. The coverlet of this bed was of scarlet silk embroidered with gold, and besides this in passing through the large towns there was carried aloft over the chariot a rich canopy of silk, like what is usually borne above1 the holy Sacrament. Proceeding thus,

The sacred body of Jesus Christ. II.

A.D. 1422. and grandly attended by his princes and the chivalry of his household he was taken by the straight road from Rouen to Abbeville, and placed in the church of St. Affrain. There were many clergymen on the right hand and on the left, who night and day, one after the other, whether, riding, walking, or stopping, chanted and read the office for the dead; and masses were celebrated for him every day in the churches where they lodged from the dawn until none.

From Abbeville they went to Hesdin, from Hesdin to Monterau, and thence to Calais by Boulogne; and while thus proceeding there were always on the road round the chariot several men, robed in white, carrying lighted torches in their hands, behind came those of the king's family and household, attired in black, and afterwards followed those of his lineage clothed in vestments of wailing and tears. After all these and about a league behind came the queen, with a large company, following her lord and husband, who, as we have said, was brought to Calais, where there was great sorrow for his death. Thence they went by sea to Dover in England, then by Canterbury and Rochester to London, where they arrived on the night of St. Martin in the Winter.

To meet the king there issued from the city of London fifteen bishops clothed in pontifical chasubles, and many mitred abbots, and other clergy in great numbers, with a great multitude of burgesses and others of the common people. These ecclesiastics all together took the body of the deceased king within the city, chanting the office for the dead; then took it by London Bridge and Lombard Street to the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, the princes of his lineage being nearest the chariot weeping and lamenting. Moreover the first of the four horses which drew the chariot in which lay the said king's corpse, wore a collar emblazoned with the ancient arms of England; on the

collar of the second horse were painted the arms of A.D. 1422. England and France quarterly, which he bore himself while living; on the collar of the third horse were painted plainly the arms of France without difference; and on the collar of the fourth horse were painted the arms which were borne while he lived in this world by the noble King Arthur, so powerful that none could conquer him; which arms were an azure shield with three golden crowns.

After the service for the said King Henry had been performed, royally as was meet, they carried him to be buried in Westminster Abbey, near his predecessors the kings of England, at which interment everything generally was performed in grander style than had been seen for any king of England for two hundred years. And even to him, dead and lying in his tomb, they daily paid as great reverence and honour as if they were assured that he was or might be a saint in paradise.

Thus then as you have heard, this noble King Henry lost and finished his life in the flower of his age, for he might be about forty years old. He was a wise man, skilful in everything he undertook, and of very imperious will. In the seven or eight years that his reign lasted he had made great conquests in the kingdom of France, indeed more than any of his predecessors had done before, and he was so feared and dreaded by his princes and knights, captains, and all kinds of people, that there was no one, especially of the English, ever so near or favoured by him. that durst transgress his orders; and likewise to the same state were reduced the people of the kingdom of France, whatever might be their rank, who were under his authority or domination; and the principal reason was that he punished with death without any mercy those who went contrary to and infringed his commands or orders, and he fully maintained the discipline of chivalry as the Romans did of old.

A.D. 1422.

After all the business of the king's obsequies was finished the three estates of England met, and there came together a great number of various people to consider and decide what was proper to be done about the rule and government of the kingdom. In the end they agreed to this, that they would bring up as king the only son of the said King Henry lately deceased. He was then only sixteen months old or thereabouts, yet all sorts of people submitted entirely to his authority notwithstanding his great youth; so they presently granted him kingly rank, and the Earl of Warwick with some others began to guide and govern him.

Here is made mention of the death of Lady Michielle of France, wife of Duke Philip of Burgundy; and of the death of King Charles her father. CHAPTER XXX.

AT the time that the musterings were made for the expedition to Cosne, as has been told above, there passed from this world in the good town of Ghent the Lady Michielle, daughter of the King of France, wife of Duke Philip of Burgundy, and sister of the Duke of Touraine, the Dauphin; for which death the members of her family were much distressed, and generally all the people of Ghent, and of the countries of Duke Philip. And pretty soon afterwards, Charles, King of France, also was laid up ill in the Hotel of St. Pol at Paris; and on the twenty-second of October, the day of the eleven thousand virgins, he gave up the ghost. At his death-bed there were present only his chancellor, his first chamberlain, his confessor and almoner, with a

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