consent. But corrupting
influences were at work which were destined to cheat England out of her
liberties for many a year.

The impoverishment of the country to pay for war and royal
extravagances, had awakened a troublesome spirit in the House of
Commons. Cruelty to heretics also, and oppressive enactments were
fought and defeated in this body. The King, clergy, and nobles, were
drawing closer together and farther away from the people, and were
devising ways of stifling their will.

If the King might not resist the will of Parliament, he could fill it
with men who would not resist his; so, by a system of bribery and force
in the boroughs, the House of Commons had injected into it enough of
the right sort to carry obnoxious measures. This was only one of the
ways in which the dearly bought liberties were being defeated.

Henry IV., the first Lancastrian king, lighted the fires of persecution
in England. The infamous "Statute of Heresy" was {64} passed 1401.
Its first victim was a priest who was thrown to the flames for denying
the doctrine of transubstantiation.

Wickliffe had left to the people not a party, but a sentiment. The
"Lollards," as they were called, were not an organization, but rather a
pervading atmosphere of revolt, which naturally combined with the
social discontent of the time, and there came to be more of hate than
love in the movement, which was at its foundation a revolt against
inequality of condition. As in all such movements, much that was
vicious and unwise in time mingled with it, tending to give some excuse
for its repression. The discarding of an old faith, unless at once
replaced by a new one, is a time fraught with many dangers to Society
and State.

Such were some of the forces at work for fourteen brief years while
Henry IV. wore the coveted crown, and while his son, the roystering
"Prince Hal," in the new character of King (Henry V.) lived out his
brief nine years of glory and conquest.

France, with an insane King, vicious Queen Regent, and torn by the
dissensions {65} of ambitious Dukes, had reached her hour of greatest
weakness, when Henry V. swept down upon her with his archers, and broke
her spirit by his splendid victory at Agincourt; then married her
Princess Katharine, and was proclaimed Regent of France, The rough
wooing of his French bride, immortalized by Shakespeare, throws a
glamour of romance over the time.

But an all-subduing King cut short Henry's triumph