nded on a ruling passion. His frugality, which by degrees
degenerated into avarice, made him averse to all warlike enterprises and
distant expeditions, and engaged him previously to try the expedient
of negotiation. He despatched Urswic, his almoner, a man of address and
abilities, to make offer of his mediation to the contending parties;
an offer which, he thought, if accepted by France, would soon lead to
a composure of all differences; if refused or eluded, would at least
discover the perseverance of that court in her ambitious projects.
Urswic found the lady of Beaujeu, now duchess of Bourbon, engaged in the
siege of Nantz, and had the satisfaction to find that his master's
offer of mediation was readily embraced and with many expressions of
confidence and moderation. That able princess concluded, that the duke
of Orleans, who governed the court of Brittany, foreseeing that every
accommodation must be made at his expense, would use all his interest to
have Henry's proposal rejected; and would by that means make an apology
for the French measures, and draw on the Bretons the reproach of
obstinacy and injustice. The event justified her prudence. When the
English ambassador made the same offer to the duke of Brittany, he
received for answer, in the name of that prince, that having so long
acted the part of protector and guardian to Henry during his youth and
adverse fortune, he had expected from a monarch of such virtue more
effectual assistance in his present distresses than a barren offer of
mediation, which suspended not the progress of the French arms: that if
Henry's gratitude were not sufficient to engage him in such a measure,
his prudence, as king of England, should discover to him the pernicious
consequences attending the conquest of Brittany, and its annexation to
the crown of France: that that kingdom, already too powerful, would be
enabled, by so great an accession of force, to display, to the ruin of
England, that hostile disposition which had always subsisted between
those rival nations: that Brittany, so useful an ally, which, by its
situation, gave the English an entrance into the heart of France, being
annexed to that kingdom, would be equally enabled from its situation to
disturb, either by piracies or naval armaments, the commerce and
peace cf England: and that if the duke rejected Henry's mediation, it
proceeded neither from an inclination to a war, which he experienced to
be ruinous to him, nor from