unscrupulous ruler; nor would it have been less than political insanity, to have neglected any fair means of conciliating the priesthood, whose support to the cause of the malcontents might have turned the scale. But there was a safe and honourable medium: his own convictions were probably in opposition to the new doctrines, and, politically speaking, he could not have been blamed for the fair exercise of his influence, in behalf of the dominant system; beyond this he could not go, without deeply offending those to whom it behoved him to be most cautious of giving offence-the people of England, of whom the larger and better portion were, if not adverse to Romanism, abhorrent of blood. Unmoved, however, by these considerations, and preferring violence to discretion, he enforced extreme measures, and obtained for them the sanction of a parliamentary enactment. The statute de Heretico comburendo was passed early in his reign, and it was not suffered to remain a dead letter. William Sautre, priest of St Osyth's, London, was the first victim to this detestable abuse of legislation. It is somewhat difficult to account for the subserviency of parliament in this matter, since the house of commons at least, appears to have been disposed to treat the sacerdocy with very slight ceremony. The speaker was instructed, in one instance, to make urgent remonstrances against the immunity from regular taxation enjoyed by the hierarchy; but the peers supported the ecclesiastics, and the archbishop of Canterbury assumed a high tone on the occasion. "If I live," said that prelate, addressing the speaker, "thou shalt have hot taking away any thing that I have." The primate, Arundel, was proud

and pitiless, and it was probably at his instigation, that measures of such outrageous severity were adopted. It may be farther suggested, in extenuation of conduct which does not admit of direct defence, that Henry with all his shrewdness and energy, seems never to have succeeded in establishing a government intrinsically strong. His foreign policy appears to have been feeble and wavering; and there are indications which may justify the suspicion that his civil administration was, from whatever cause, not always equal to the exigences of the time.

In his reign, however, the immunities and authority of the commons house of parliament assumed a consistency and independence, which began to give a new character to the government of England. The constitution of the house was essentially improved, by provisions for the freedom of elections, and by an important abridgment of the frequently abused power of the sheriff. An unceasing jealousy was manifested towards all attempts to restrain the liberty of debate, and the then necessarily extensive privilege of security from arrest was firmly maintained. The same determination was exhibited in the dispute concerning the registration of parliamentary proceedings, which had been heretofore effected always negligently, and sometimes abusively. Henry resisted their requisition of a fair and equitable process of verification, but they persisted until the concession was made. They were, moreover, sternly vigilant over the fiscal measures of the court; and their conduct, altogether, illustrates the steady progress that Englishmen were making, in the knowledge and maintenance of their political rights. • Hollinshed.

Rot. Parl. III. 466.

↑ Ib.

Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March.

Died A. d. 1425.

THE house of Lancaster, in the person of Henry, had now reached the summit of its ambition; but there existed- -as we have already hinted a formidable competitor, whose claims rested on the principle of hereditary succession. Had this principle been allowed to regulate the high transactions of state, on the deposition of Richard, the crown would have devolved on the posterity of Lionel, duke of Clarence, the second son of Edward III. By the decease of that prince without male issue, his rights fell to his daughter, Philippa, who had married Roger Mortimer, earl of March, the male representative of the powerful baron who was attainted and executed for the murder of Edward II. The forfeited earldom had been regained by Roger's son, who, in the 26th of Edward III., obtained a reversal of the judgment against his parent, and thenceforth bore the title of earl of March. His son and successor, Edmund, worthily supported his high rank, by his splendid services in France and Ireland; and, by his marriage with Philippa of Clarence, transmitted the rightful claim to the crown of England to his descendants. Roger Mortimer, the fourth in descent from the regicide, succeeded his father in the government of Ireland. He was a knight of great personal accomplishments, and celebrated for the magnificence of his household, and the reckless gaiety of his life. In a combat with the sept of O'Brien, his headlong valour distanced his followers, and, fighting in the disguise of an Irish horseman, he was overpowered by numbers, and torn to pieces by his savage enemies, ere his friends could come up to his rescue. The helpless heir, Edmund Mortimer, was at this time only an infant of ten years of age, and was instantly given by Henry of Lancaster in ward to his son, the prince of Wales, who placed him in Windsor castle, where, though strictly guarded, he seems to have been treated in a courteous and indulgent manner. It does not appear that Edmund inherited either the restlessness and ambition which characterized some of his ancestors, or the martial gallantry which blazed forth in others; but his existence was often used as an apology, by more ambitious spirits, for their own factious proceedings; and might, but for his own want of enterprize, have seriously incommoded the councils of regency, during the minority of Henry VI. His appointment to the command of Ireland, on the accession of the young king, was a piece of dexterous policy. While it gratified that love of show and magnificence which seemed to be his only master passion, it removed him from intercourse with those men and measures which might have roused some latent spark of ambition in the breast of one, the heir of so many dangerous pretensions. His death, which took place in the third year of Henry VI., seemed to secure the permanent establishment of the Lancastrian family upon the throne.

Owen Glendower.

BORN CIRC, A. d. 1349.—DIED a. D. 1415.

OWEN GLENDOWER,' whose noble resistance of the English arms amid the declining fortunes of his native country has obtained for him the appellation of the Wallace of Wales, was born, as is commonly supposed, in the year 1349. Historians have agreed on the minute date of the day of the year-which they all concur in fixing on the 28th of May—but there exists a wide discrepancy amongst them in the more important article of the year itself which ushered this hero into the world: Lewis Owen says 1349, whilst other annalists determine it to have been 1354. Trefgarn, in Pembrokeshire, was the place of his birth. His father was Gryffyd Vyehan; by the mother's side he was lineally descended from Llewellyn, the last prince of Wales. The birth of our hero was not without its portents, to mark him extraordinary.' Holinshed relates that his father's horses were found that night standing in the stables up to their girths in blood, and the traditionary legends of Wales abound in equally marvellous stories concerning so important an event. The young Owen received a liberal education, according to the estimate of the age. He is represented as having started in life in the profession of a pleader in the inns of Court; but afterwards relinquishing his profession, he received the appointment of esquire in the household of Richard II., and adhered to that unfortunate prince till his surrender of the crown had released all his followers from their obligations to his person.

6

During the reign of Richard, Owen had been engaged in a dispute about the boundaries of his lordship of Glendowrdy with Reginald, Lord Grey de Ruthyn, an Anglo-Norman, whose seignories lay immediately adjoining; and had recovered at law a piece of ground which lay betwixt the two properties. But Reginald, upon the accession of Henry IV., again resumed possession of the disputed territory, whilst Owen appealed in vain for redress to the first parliament of the new monarch.3 Disappointed in his suit in this quarter, he resolved to enforce his claims at his own hand. In the summer of 1400, he attacked the castle of his rival, and laid waste his barony. Here the affair might have terminated, had not the king, taking the cause into his own hands, ordered Lords Talbot and Grey to march against him, and surround him in his own house. Upon their approach, Glendower retired into the inaccessible fastnesses of Snowdon, where he successfully maintained a guerilla warfare against the English forces. Stimulated by a sense of national degradation, and the recollection of the haughty Edward's conduct towards their country, and encouraged, perhaps, by the vague prophecies of Merlin and Aquila which wandering minstrels sung throughout the country, thousands of his countrymen flocked to his standard, and, on the 20th of September, Glen

In the Collection of the Public Acts,' he is always called Glendourdy. • Shakspeare has availed himself of these supernatural omens in Henry IV.

"At my nativity

The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes,

Of burning cressets," &c.

Walsing. p. 36L

dower, finding himself already at the head of a powerful and spirited army, proclaimed himself Prince of Wales. The defeat of the Flemings of Pembroke and Cardiganshire, who had been surrounded with a greatly superior force on Mynydd Hyddgant, was followed by the capture of Lord Grey, who obtained his sovereign's license to purchase his liberty by acceptance of the terms of ransom proposed by Glendower. These were of such a kind as neutralized the future efforts of his prisoner. Besides payment of 10,000 marks, the proud baron was compelled to accept of the hand of Jane, his rival's daughter, in marriage. Henry now published a general amnesty, with no other exceptions than Owen of Glendowrdy, Rice ap Tudor, and William ap Tudor. But the Welsh continued to pour into the camp of their countryman from all quarters, and even the Welsh students at Oxford and Cambridge hastened to join the national cause. The revolt had now assumed too serious an aspect for ordinary measures. In the month of October 1401, Henry placed himself at the head of an army and set out in person to chastise the presumptuous rebel ; but the activity of Owen, aided by an uncommonly severe winter, rendered all his efforts abortive, and a dishonourable retreat followed. The Percies now rebelled, and the irregular and wild Glendower joined that formidable coalition, which we have treated of under another head. His next step was to assemble the estates of the principality at Machynlaeth in Montgomeryshire, by whom he was formally crowned sovereign of

Wales.

Henry was successful in preventing the junction of the Northumbrian and Welsh forces, but Owen maintained with unabated spirit the independence of his country; and, in 1404, concluded a treaty of alliance with Charles, King of France, in which he styled himself, "Owemus Dei Gratia Princeps Walliæ," &c. The king of England now entrusted the recovery of Wales to his gallant son, Henry of Monmouth, whom he created lord-lieutenant of that country, with special powers, for the better execution of his commission." Owen commenced the campaign of 1405 by taking some castles, and defeating the earl of Warwick at Mynydd Cwmdu in Montgomeryshire; but the young Henry soon after successively defeated Owen himself at Grosmount, and his son at Mynydd-y-Pwli-Melyn.

Owen was now compelled to seek an asylum in the most inaccessible spots of Wales. A diversion was made in his favour by a French armament, but its success was only temporary, and Prince Henry gradually got possession of the strongest fortresses of the country. Still he seems to have struggled on with unconquerable spirit though diminished fortunes. In 1411, we find him specially excepted from the general pardon issued by Henry, as an arch-rebel with whom his enemies dared not to negotiate.8 In the ensuing year, David Gam, an apostate Welshman, who had been seized in an attempt to assassinate Glendower, though his own brother-in-law, obtained license to purchase his liberty by payment of a ransom to the unconquered chief. Three months before the battle of Agincourt, Henry V. commissioned Sir Gilbert Talbot to treat with Glendower, and the offer was again renewed after that victory had graced the English arms; but, during the negotiation, 5 Walsing. 364.

Rymer's Fœd. viii. 181.

Rymer's Ford. viii. 356.

Ib. viii. 291.

8

Rymer's Fod. viii. 711.

death overtook this last king of the Britons, who expired on the 20th of September, 1415. His countrymen seem to have forgotten the memory of their intrepid defender sooner than his enemies themselves. In the year 1431, the English commons besought the lords to enforce the forfeiture of Owen Glendower's lands, whom they describe as an arch-traitor, whose success would have been "to the destruction of all English tongue for evermore.'

"9

Sir William Gascoigne.

BORN CIRC. a. D. 1350.- -DIED A. D. 1413.

SIR WILLIAM GASCOIGNE, chief-justice of the king's bench in the reign of Henry IV., was born at Gawthorp, in Yorkshire, about the year 1350. His family was noble, and of Norman extraction. Having studied law, and acquired considerable reputation as a pleader, he was appointed one of the king's sergeants-at-law in 1398. Upon the accession of Henry IV., he was made judge in the court of common pleas; and, in 1401, was elevated to the chief-justiceship of the king's bench. In July, 1403, he was joined in the commission with Ralph Neville, earl of Westmoreland, for levying forces in Yorkshire and Northumberland against the insurrection of Henry Percy; and, on the submission of that nobleman, he was nominated in the commission to treat with the rebels. In all these high trusts, Gascoigne acquitted himself to the satisfaction of his royal master and the kingdom at large. But on the apprehension of Archbishop Scroop, when the king required his chief-justice to pass sentence of death upon him as a traitor, the virtuous and inflexible Gascoigne sternly refused, because the laws which he was appointed to administer gave him no jurisdiction over the life of an ecclesiastic. Henry was highly displeased at the obstinacy, but had sufficient strength of mind to respect the integrity of his minister, and Gascoigne had the honour of knighthood conferred on him the same year.

From his general conduct, as related by historians, there is sufficient reason to place Sir William Gascoigne in the first rank of chief-justices, both for integrity and abilities. The many abstracts of his opinions, arguments, and decisions, which occur in our older law-reports, sufficiently attest the general opinion which was entertained of his professional merits. One memorable transaction, which still remains upon record, would have sufficed, had others equally strong been wanting, to have stamped his character for ever with the noble feature of judicial independence. It happened that one of the associates of the youthful, and then dissolute prince of Wales, had been arraigned for felony. The news of his favourite's apprehension no sooner reached the prince's ears, than he hastened to the court, and imperiously demanded that the prisoner should be immediately set at liberty. Gascoigne desired him instantly to withdraw, and leave the law to take its course; whereupon the prince, breaking through all restraint and decorum, rushed furiously up to the bench, and, as is generally affirmed, struck the chief-justice.

Kot. Parl. iv. 377. — Hen. VI.