【英文读物】Henry the FifthCHAPTER I THE BOYHOOD OF HENRYHenry was born in the castle of Monmouth on August 9th, 1387. He was the eldest of the sixchildren of Henry of Lancaster by Mary de Bohun, younger daughter and co-heiress of Humphreyde Bohun.l Humphrey, as the last male descendant of the De Bohuns, united in himself thedignities and estates of the Earls of Hereford, Northampton, and Essex. The elder daughter,Eleanor, was married to Thomas of Woodstock, youngest son of Edward the Third. Eleanor shusband hoped to secure the whole of the Hereford estates, amounting, it is said, to fiftythousand nobles of annual income (not less, it may be calculated, than two hundred thousandpounds of money at its present value). He took charge of his sister-in-law, and had her carefullyinstructed in theology, intending that she should take2 the veil in a convent of the Sisters of St.Clare. John of Gaunt had other views for her future. He took occasion of his younger brother sabsence in France to have her removed to Arundel Castle, where she was very soon afterwardsmarried to his son Henry. She died in 1494 in her twenty-fifth year. She was better educated, itappears, than most of the ladies of her day, and it would seem that some of her taste for booksdescended to her son. The character of Henry of Lancaster has been variously estimated. He wonin his youth a high reputation for enterprise and courage. We find him fighting against theMahommedans in Barbary in one year, and in the next against the Pagan tribes of Lithuania. Hisskill in all martial exercises was conspicuously great. But, according to one account, he was sostained with crime that his own father wished him to be put to death. He was a bold andprobably an unscrupulous man, whom circumstances exposed to a very strong temptation. Theweaknesses and vices of Richard the Second put the throne within his reach. We can easilybelieve that he really felt himself better qualified to rule than his feeble and capricious cousin,and it is just possible that he may have persuaded himself or been persuaded by others thatthere was something in his claim of hereditary right to the throne. The power unjustly gained wasretained by the methods to which an usurper is commonly driven, by falsehood and by cruelty.Former friends were betrayedas, for example, the Lollards, who certainly had helped him tothe throneand enemies were ruthlessly crushed. The power thus won and maintaineddescended to his son in happier circumstances. The younger Henry s title was3 not seriouslyquestioned. There was, it is true, a conspiracy against him, but it was not supported by anyformidable party in the nation. A great success, won early in his reign, made him the object ofpopular enthusiasm. At the same time he had the advantage of a singularly attractive exterior:the hereditary beauty of the Plantagenets was conspicuous in him. And he was felixopportunitate mortis: he died before the lustre of his achievements and the charm of hispersonal qualities were dimmed by failure and the corrupting influences that wait on power. Itwas with him as it would have been with the Black Prince if he had died after Poictiers. Yet,allowing for some differences of a finer organisation, it is not difficult to see some of the maincharacteristics of the fourth Henry in his more fortunate son.If tradition may be trusted, the young Henry was a delicate child, and was put out to be nursed atcontinued to hold the office of Lieutenant of that principality. He seems to have resided chiefly inLondon or at the seat of his new duties. This, then, seems a convenient opportunity of discussingthe famous story of his insolent behaviour to the Chief Justice, his punishment, and hissubmission. Shakespeare, indeed, would seem to place the incident in the first period of thePrince* s life. In the first act of the second part of Henry the Fourth, Falstaff? s page says to hismaster; when the Chief Justice enters, “ Here comes the nobleman who committed the Prince forstriking him about Bardolph. * This, therefore, puts it back to some time before the battle ofShrewsbury, which, it will be remembered, is supposed to have been fought just before23 thebeginning of the second drama. This is manifestly impossible. If there were nothing else todisprove itand the Prince* s age, barely fifteen, would be itself sufficientthere is the fact thathe resided continuously in Wales. The incident, if it be a fact, must be assigned to the time whenHenry was living in or near London.We may notice, before proceeding, the curious carelessness in the great dramatist which makesthe Prince strike the Chief Justice 44 about Bardolph.v Bardolph is one of the boon companions ofFa I staff. The Prince never expresses anything but contempt for him.A few lines from the famous scene may be quoted. The King, then newly seated on the throne,asks the Chief Justice, w