ned his belief in these
charges, but promised to call a Parliament for his son's vindication; and
the Parliament met in the February of 1413. But a new attack of epilepsy
had weakened the king's strength; and though galleys were gathered for a
Crusade which he had vowed he was too weak to meet the Houses on their
assembly. If we may trust a charge which was afterwards denied, the king's
half-brother, Bishop Henry of Winchester, one of the Beaufort children of
John of Gaunt, acting in secret co-operation with the Prince, now brought
the peers to pray Henry to suffer his son to be crowned in his stead. The
king's refusal was the last act of a dying man. Before the end of March he
breathed his last in the "Jerusalem Chamber" within the Abbot's house at
Westminster; and the Prince obtained the crown which he had sought.

[Sidenote: Suppression of the Lollards]

The removal of Archbishop Arundel from the Chancellorship, which was given
to Henry Beaufort of Winchester, was among the first acts of Henry the
Fifth; and it is probable that this blow at the great foe of the Lollards
gave encouragement to the hopes of Oldcastle. He seized the opportunity of
the coronation in April to press his opinions on the young king, though
probably rather with a view to the plunder of the Church than to any
directly religious end. From the words of the clerical chroniclers it is
plain that Henry had no mind as yet for any open strife with either party,
and that he quietly put the matter aside. He was in fact busy with foreign
affairs. The Duke of Clarence was recalled from Bordeaux, and a new truce
concluded with France. The policy of Henry was clearly to look on for a
while at the shifting politics of the distracted kingdom. Soon after his
accession another revolution in Paris gave the charge of the mad King
Charles, and with it the nominal government of the realm, to the Duke of
Orleans; and his cause derived fresh strength from the support of the
young Dauphin, who was afterwards to play so great a part in the history
of France as Charles the Seventh. John of Burgundy withdrew to Flanders,
and both parties again sought Henry's aid. But his hands were tied as yet
by trouble at home. Oldcastle was far from having abandoned his projects,
discouraged as they had been by his master; while the suspicions of
Henry's favour to the Lollard cause which could hardly fail to be roused
by his favour to the Lollard leader only spurred the bold spirit o