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Henry VI. and the dynastic

inconveniences, and established in its stead a new one which makes the navigable character of the water, and not the relation of the water to the land, the test of jurisdiction.1

6. The Hundred Years' War, which grew out of the assertion by Edward III. of his claims to the French crown, struggle reached its highest point of success when Henry V., after the War of the victory of Agincourt and the conquest of Normandy, was the Roses. able in 1420 to force on Charles VI. the treaty of Troyes,

known as

Henry

VI.'s, the fourth mi

wherein it was agreed that Catherine, the eldest of the French princesses, should be given him in marriage; and that he should become regent of the kingdom during the life of Charles, and his heir at his death. Two years thereafter Henry V. died, leaving his English kingdom, and the vast continental possessions which he had secured by inheritance, treaty, and conquest, to Catherine's infant son, then scarcely nine months old, The infant Henry VI. at once succeeded to the English throne, and, upon the death of his maternal grandfather two months later, to that of France. For the fourth time since the Conquest the duty then devolved upon nority since the national council to provide for the actual administration of the sovereign power during the minority of the king, as the common law of the realm neither contemplated nor provided for any such contingency. How upon the accession of Henry III. the exercise of the royal authority was vested in the earl marshal, the elected representative of the baronage, who carried on the government with their advice under the title of rector regis et regni, has been explained already.3 After the deposition of Edward II., and the coronation of his son, then but fourteen years old, the parliament, which was immediately summoned, vested the administration of the sovereign power, not in a protector or regent, but in a standing council of bishops, earls, and barons, which has been

the Con

quest.

1 The early doctrine which limited the admiralty jurisdiction to tide waters may be found in The Thomas Jefferson, 10 Wheat. 428; Peyroux v. Howard, 7 Pet. 324; United States v. Cooms, 12 Pet. 72. These cases were overruled in The Genesee Chief v. Fitzhugh, 12 How. 443, the principles of which were reaffirmed in The Magnolia, 20 How. 296. The doctrine as finally settled is, that the admiralty ju

risdiction in the United States is not limited to tide waters, but extends to all public navigable lakes and rivers where commere is carried on between the several states or with foreign nations.

2 "In judgment of law the king, as king, cannot be said to be a minor." Co. Litt., p. 43.

8 See above, p. 394.

"1

The same

mentary

aptly termed "a sort of parliamentary regency." general plan was followed at the accession of Richard II., who was at the time but eleven years old. Although he was permitted to take the great seal from the hands of its old. keepers, and to hand it over to a new custodian who, by its magic influence, could legalize all acts of government, the direction of affairs actually passed to a council of twelve originally appointed by the lords, and afterwards modified by the authority of the whole parliament.2 In providing for the A parlia minority of Henry VI. the estates were careful to empha- regency essize the exclusiveness of their jurisdiction by ignoring the tablished. directions of the dead king, who had expressed the wish that his eldest brother, the Duke of Bedford, should become regent of France, while his younger brother, Gloucester, should act as regent in England. As soon as parliament assembled it "proceeded to authorize by its act the appointment of the Duke of Bedford, whilst in England, protector and principal counsellor of the king, and the Duke of Gloucester to execute the same functions in the absence of the Duke of Bedford; and a council, consisting of the Duke of Gloucester and several bishops, dukes, earls, and barons was appointed to assist in the government." 4 The council, which ordinarily stood as an intermediary body between the crown and the estates, thus became the depositary of the royal authority, upon its ordinary executive functions the duties of a regency were superimposed. As the infancy, incompetency, and imbecility of the unfortunate Henry rendered the regency thus established practically perpetual, the dramatic history of his troubled reign is no more nor less than the record of a series of struggles carried on between the leading statesmen of the time for supreme influence in the council, which was equivalent to the substance of royalty itself.

gle for su

The three great actors who first come upon the scene are The strugBedford, Gloucester, and Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Lincoln. premacy in During the prolonged absence of Bedford on the Continent, the council, where he wore his noble life out in the effort to hold the

1 Knighton, c. 2556; Rot. Parl., ii. p. 52. Cf. Hallam, M. A., vol. iii. pp. 175-181.

Rot. Parl., iii. p. 386.

This is the account contained in

the Gesta Hen. Quinti, p. 159. Ac-
cording to Wavrin, p. 423, Henry com-
mitted England to the Duke of Exeter,
and France to Bedford.

4 Lords' Report, vol. i. p. 368.

Legitima

tion of the

Beauforts.

French conquests which Henry V. had won, a struggle began between Gloucester and Beaufort for supremacy in the English administration. The Beauforts, the natural allies of the house of Lancaster and ever the mainstays of its fortunes, were the illegitimate descendants of John of Gaunt by his mistress, Catherine Swinford, who were legitimated by act of parliament in the reign of Richard II. In the original patent of legitimation the right to succeed to the crown was not given in express terms, and from that fact the inference was drawn that they were excluded by implication. In 1407, however, Henry IV., in confirming Richard's act of legitimation, expressly excluded the right to the succession by inserting the limitation, "excepta dignitate regali," 2— words, which were found interlined in Richard's grant on the patent rolls, but which did not occur in the document upon which Richard's parliament had acted. The fact that the express words of exclusion were introduced into the original patent through an illegal interpolation left to the Beauforts, in the event of the extinction of the legitimate branch, a pretension at least upon which to found a claim to the crown of Lancaster. The Henry Beaufort, bishop first of Lincoln, then of Winchester, who now comes prominently into view, was a son of John of Gaunt by the Swinford alliance, who had in both of the preceding reigns held the office of chancellor. In 1424 Beaufort was again elevated to that office, and from that time his rivalry with Gloucester continues with varying fortune until it was suspended by Bedford, who returned from France in 1433 to personally assume the direction of the home administration. In the next year, however, Bedford was recalled to France, and in 1435 he died at Rouen. After that event Gloucester still struggled to maintain his hold upon power, until the condemnation of his wife for witchcraft in 1441

1 Rot Parl., iii. p. 343.

2 Excerpta Historica, p. 153.

8 "In the original patent of legitimation, and in the copy entered on the rolls of parliament, there was no reservation of the royal dignity. In the copy on the patent rolls there is such reservation, but it is interlined, and in a different ink, though the hand is nearly the same. In the exemplifica

tion by Henry IV., in 1407, the exception occurs without interlineation. See Sir Harris Nicolas, in Excerpta Hist., P. 153. It appears, however, to me, that the original patent, though it omits, nevertheless implies the exception.". Lingard, vol. iii. p. 50, and note 1.

4 Fadera, x. p. 340. 5 She is styled "Eleanor Cobham, lately called Duchess of Gloucester."

who in 1424

cellor, in

came chief

broke his prestige in the council, and left Cardinal Beaufort1 Beaufort, in undisputed possession as chief minister. To end the had been French war, which was a continual drain upon the national made chanresources, now became the prime object of Beaufort's pol- 1441 beicy. With that end in view a truce2 was concluded in counsellor. 1444 through the English ambassador, the Earl of Suffolk, William de la Pole; and by the same agent a marriage was negotiated between Henry and Margaret of Anjou, which was duly celebrated in April, 1445. In February, 1447, Gloucester died suddenly at Bury St. Edmunds, and six weeks thereafter his old rival, Cardinal Beaufort, followed him to the tomb. Suffolk, the negotiator of the Angevin Suffolk. marriage, and the trusted friend of Henry and Margaret, now comes upon the scene as chief counsellor, and assumes the burden of maintaining the French war, fast approaching an inglorious close under the leadership of Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset. In 1448 the surrender of Maine and Anjou - the price of Henry's marriage with Margaret was finally made; in 1450 the second French conquest of Normandy was completed; and in 1451 the conquest of the English possessions in the south ended with the fall of Bordeaux. For a moment the tide was turned, when in 1453 the great Earl of Shrewsbury came as a deliverer and changed defeat into victory. But the end had now come. The earl was slain at Castillon in July, and in October Aquitane, the splendid inheritance of Eleanor, was lost to England forever. From that time England "constantly takes part in continental England affairs; but she holds no continental possessions save such loses her outlying posts as Calais, Boulogne, Dunkirk, or Gibraltar."4 posses In 1450, in the midst of these disasters, which in rapid succession tore from the English crown all of its important continental dominions, Suffolk fell, leaving the supremacy in The struggle between court and council to be fought for by the Duke of Somerset, Somerset the representative of the Beauforts, then lieutenant of and York begins. France, and Richard, Duke of York, then lieutenant of Ireland.

1 He was first nominated to the cardinalate in 1417 (Ang.-Sax., p. 800), but the king forbade him to accept. He accepted a second nomination made in May, 1426. Cf. Lingard, vol. iii. p.

2 Fœdera, xi. pp. 59-67; Rot. Parl.,
74.

Fœdera, xi. pp. 210, 214.

4 Mr. Freeman, in Enc. Brit., "England," 9th ed., vol. viii. p. 321.

continental

sions.

Pedigree of
Richard of

York:

Duke of

Clarence;

The pedigree of this Richard of York, who now comes prominently into view, takes us back to the great genealogical controversy which arose between the children of Edward III. when, upon the deposition of Richard II., the crown passed by authority of parliament to Henry IV., the son of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. If the doctrine had then been firmly settled that the strict rule of hereditary descent, applied by the feudal lawyers to the succession of estates, governed the descent of the crown, it would have passed, not to the heir of John of Gaunt, the fourth son of Edward III., but to Edmund Mortimer, the heir of Edward's his relation third son, Lionel, Duke of Clarence.1 Whatever rights the to Lionel, house of Clarence possessed, under a law of succession which in that day was not at all clearly defined, were transmitted from Lionel to his daughter Phillipa, who became the wife of Edmund Mortimer, third Earl of March. Roger Mortimer, the son of this union, fell fighting in Ireland in 1398, leaving an infant son, whom the childless Richard II. declared his heir-presumptive. This infant son was the Edmund Mortimer, fifth Earl of March, whose claim was ignored in the revolution which elevated Henry IV. to the throne. At his death without issue, the latent claim of his house survived to his sister Anne, who married the Earl of Cambridge, by whom she became the mother of Richard, Duke of York.2 In addition to the right which Richard thus derived through the house of Mortimer, a right embarrassed by the fact of its transmission through female descendants, he also claimed his relation descent in the male line from Edmund of Langley, a son of to Edmund Edward III., younger than John of Gaunt. Under this claim Richard stood next in the line of succession in the event of the death of Henry IV. without issue, provided the Beauforts were excluded by the terms of their legitimation. Such were the rival claims of the houses of York and Beaufort to the tottering throne of the childless Henry VI. when, in the autumn of 1450, Somerset returned from France and York from Ireland to contend for the station of chief minister, made vacant by Suffolk's fall.

of Langley.

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When the struggle for su

George, Duke of Clarence, Richard
III., etc.

8 See above, p. 554.

4 As to the condition of things upon

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