der of Charles V.'s life, and the first years of Charles VI, war
and peace followed each other in mutual succession, without any
important or decided advantage on either side. At last, Richard II.
and Charles VI. concluded a truce for twenty-eight years, which was
ratified by the marriage of Richard with Isabel, Charles's daughter.
From the deposition of Richard to the death of Henry IV,
notwithstanding frequent violations of the truce, both sides
maintained that it still subsisted. Such was the state of the two
crowns when Henry of Monmouth mounted the throne. France having broken
the peace of Bretigny, and maintaining that the treaty was void,
evidently the Kings of England were reinstated in all their rights
which they had before that peace. On this principle, immediately
after the disclaimer of that peace on the part of France, (p. 076)
Edward III. resumed the title of King of France, which he had laid
aside; and his successors assumed it also. Since the commencement of
the war which followed the treaty of Bretigny there never had been
peace between the two crowns, but only truces, which do not affect the
rights of the parties. It is evident, therefore, that, when he
ascended the throne, Henry V. found himself under precisely the same
circumstances in point of right in which his great grandfather, Edward
III, was eighty years before, when he commenced the first war. Besides
this, Henry had to allege a solemn treaty, which, after it had been
unequivocally acted upon, France broke on a most trifling pretext."

Such is the representation made by the author of the Abrege
Historique[66] of the affairs of England; and the Author is desirous
of transferring into his pages this clear and candid statement the
rather because it is written by a foreigner, who seems to have viewed
the transaction with enlightened and unprejudiced eyes.

[Footnote 66: "Abrege Historique des Actes Publics
d'Angleterre," which now accompanies the foreign
edition of Rymer's Foedera.]

More modern writers, indeed, would teach us to deem it "unnecessary
for them to comment on the absurdity of Henry's claim to the French
crown in right of his descent from Isabella wife of Edward II. For
futile as her son Edward's (III.) pretensions were, Henry's were (p. 077)
still less reasonable, as the Earl of March was in 1415 the heir
of those persons."[67]

[Footnote 67: S