hich, by their
account, amounted to four hundred and eighty-five thousand marks a
year, and contained eighteen thousand four hundred ploughs of land. They
proposed to divide this property among fifteen new earls, one thousand
five hundred knights, six thousand esquires, and a hundred hospitals,
besides twenty thousand pounds a year, which the king might take for his
own use; and they insisted, that the clerical functions would be better
performed than at present by fifteen thousand parish priests, paid at
the rate of seven marks apiece of yearly stipend.[*] This application
was accompanied with an address for mitigating the statutes enacted
against the Lollards, which shows from what source the address came. The
king gave the commons a severe reply and further to satisfy the church,
and to prove that he was quite in earnest, he ordered a Lollard to be
burned before the dissolution of the parliament.[**]

* Walsing. p. 379. Tit. Livius.

** Rymer, vol. viii. p. 627. Otterborne> p. 267.

{1413.} We have now related almost all the memorable transactions of
this reign, which was busy and active, but produced few events that
deserve to be transmitted to posterity. The king was so much employed in
defending his crown, which he had obtained by unwarrantable means, and
possessed by a bad title, that he had little leisure to look abroad, or
perform any action which might redound to the honor and advantage of the
nation. His health declined some months before his death; he was subject
to fits, which bereaved him, for the time, of his senses; and though he
was yet in the flower of his age, his end was visibly approaching. He
expired at Westminster, in the forty-sixth year of his age, and the
thirteenth of his reign.

The great popularity which Henry enjoyed before he attained the crown,
and which had so much aided him in the acquisition of it, was entirely
lost many years before the end of his reign; and he governed his people
more by terror than by affection, more by his own policy than by their
sense of duty or allegiance. When men came to reflect, in cool blood, on
the crimes which had led him to the throne; the rebellion against his
prince; the deposition of a lawful king, guilty sometimes, perhaps, of
oppression, but more frequently of indiscretion; the exclusion of the
true heir; the murder of his sovereign and near relation; these were
such enormities as drew on him the hatred of his subjects, sanctified
all t