The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, No. 64, February, 1863. Various
and it was as emphatic a departure from the principle of hereditary right as can be found in history. So much was this the case, that liberals in polities mostly place their historical sympathies with the party of the Red Rose, for no other reason, that we have ever been able to see, than that the House of Lancaster's possession of the throne testified to the triumph of revolutionary principles; for that House was jealous of its power and cruel in the exercise of it, and was so far from being friendly to the people, that it derived its main support from the aristocracy, and was the ally of the Church in the harsh work of exterminating the Lollards. The House of York, on the other hand, while it had, to use modern words, the legitimate right to the throne, was a popular House, and represented and embodied whatever there was then existing in politics that could be identified with the idea of progress.
The character of the troubles that existed between Henry IV. and his eldest son and successor, Shakspeare's Prince Hal, is involved in much obscurity. It used to be taken for granted that the poet's Prince was an historical character, but that is no longer the case,—Falstaff's royal associate being now regarded in the same light in which Falstaff himself is regarded. The one is a poetic creation, and so is the other. Prince Henry was neither a robber nor a rowdy, but from his early youth a much graver character than most men are in advanced life. He had great faults, but they were not such as are made to appear in the pages of the player. The hero of Agincourt was a mean fellow,—a tyrant, a persecutor, a false friend and a cruel enemy, and the wager of most unjust wars; but he was not the "fast" youth that he has been generally drawn. He had neither the good nor the bad qualities that belong to young gentlemen who do not live on terms with their papas. He was of a grave and sad temperament, and much more of a Puritan than a Cavalier. It is a little singular that Shakspeare should have given portraits so utterly false of the most unpopular of the kings of the York family, and of the most popular of the kings of the rival house,—of Richard III., that is, and of the fifth Henry of Lancaster. Neither portrait has any resemblance to the original, a point concerning which the poet probably never troubled himself, as his sole purpose was to make good acting plays. Had it been necessary to that end to make Richard walk on three legs, or Henry on one leg, no doubt he would have done so,—just as Monk Lewis said he would have made Lady Angela blue, in his "Castle Spectre," if by such painting he could have made the play more effective. Prince Henry was a very precocious youth, and had the management of great affairs when he was but a child, and when it would have been better for his soul's and his body's health, had he been engaged in acting as an esquire of some good knight, and subjected to rigid discipline. The jealousy that his father felt was the natural consequence of the popularity of the Prince, who was young, and had highly distinguished himself in both field and council, was not a usurper, and was not held responsible for any of the unpopular acts done by the Government of his father. They were at variance not long before Henry IV.'s death, but little is known as to the nature of their quarrels. The crown scene, in which the Prince helps himself to the crown while his father is yet alive, is taken by Shakspeare from Monstrelet, who is supposed to have invented all that he narrates in order to weaken the claim of the English monarch to the French throne. If Henry IV., when dying, could declare that he had no right to the crown of England, on what could Henry V. base his claim to that of France?
Henry V. died before his only son, Henry VI., had completed his first year; and Henry VI. was early separated from his only son, Edward of Lancaster, the same who was slain while flying from the field of Tewkesbury, at the age of eighteen. There was, therefore, no opportunity for quarrels between English kings and their sons for the sixty years that followed the death of Henry IV.; but there was much quarrelling, and some murdering, in the royal family, in those years,—brothers and other relatives being fierce rivals, even unto death, and zealous even unto slaying of one another. It would be hard to say of what crime those Plantagenets were not guilty.1 Edward IV., with whom began the brief ascendency of the House of York, died at forty-one, after killing his brother of Clarence, his eldest son being but twelve years old. He had no opportunity to have troubles with his boys, and he loved women too well to fall out with his daughters, the eldest of whom was but just turned of seventeen. The history of Edward IV. is admirably calculated to furnish matter for a sermon on the visitation of the sins of parents on their children. He had talent enough to have made himself master of Western Europe, but he followed a life of debauchery, by which he was cut off in his prime, leaving a large number of young children to encounter the worst of fortunes. Both of his sons disappeared, whether murdered by Richard III. or Henry VII. no one can say; and his daughters had in part to depend upon that bastard slip of the Red-Rose line, Henry VII., for the means to enable them to live as gentlewomen,—all but the eldest, whom Henry took to wife as a point of policy, which her father would have considered the greatest misfortune of all those that befell his offspring. Richard III's only legitimate son died a mere boy.
The Tudors fame to the English throne in 1485. There was no want of domestic quarrelling with them. Arthur, Henry VII.'s eldest son, died young, but left a widow, Catharine of Aragon, whom the King treated badly; and he appears to have been jealous of the Prince of Wales, afterward Henry VIII., but died too soon to allow of that jealousy's blooming into quarrels. According to some authorities, the Prince thought of seizing the crown, on the ground that it belonged to him in right of his mother, Elizabeth Plantagenet, who was unquestionably the legitimate heir. Henry VIII. himself, who would have made a splendid tyrant over a son who should have readied to man's estate,—an absolute model in that way to all after-sovereigns,—was denied by fortune an opportunity to round and perfect his character as a domestic despot. Only one of his legitimate sons lived even to boyhood, Edward VI., and Henry died when the heir-apparent was in his tenth year. Of his illegitimate son, the Duke of Richmond, Henry was extravagantly fond, and at one time thought of making him heir-apparent, which might have been done, for the English dread of a succession war was then at its height. Richmond died in his seventeenth year. Having no sons of a tormentable age, Henry made his daughters as unhappy as he could make them by the harsh exercise of paternal authority, and bastardized them both, in order to clear the way to the throne for his son. Edward VI. died a bachelor, in his sixteenth year, so that we can say nothing of him as a parent; but he treated his sister Mary with much harshness, and exhibited on various occasions a disposition to have things his own way that would have delighted his father, provided it had been directed against anybody but that severe old gentleman himself. Mary I. was the best sovereign of her line, domestically considered; but then she had neither son nor daughter with whom to quarrel, and the difficulties she had with her half-sister, Elizabeth, like the differences between the Archangel Michael and the Fallen Angel, were purely political in their character. We do not think that she would have done much injustice, if she had made Elizabeth's Tower-dungeon the half-way house to the scaffold. But though political, the half-sisterly dissensions between these ladies serve to keep Mary I. within the rules of the royal houses to which she belonged. Mary, dying of the loss of Calais and the want of children, was succeeded by Elizabeth, who, being a maiden queen, had no issue with whom to make issue concerning things political or personal. But observe how basely she treated her relatives, those poor girls, the Greys, Catharine and Mary, sisters of poor Lady Jane, whose fair and clever head Mary I. had taken off. The barren Queen, too jealous to share her power with a husband, hated marriage with all "the sour malevolence of antiquated virginity," and was down upon the Lady Catharine and the Lady Mary because they chose to become wives. Then she imprisoned her cousin, Mary Stuart, for nineteen years, and finally had her butchered under an approach to the forms of law, and in total violation of its spirit. She, too, kept within the royal rules, and made herself as great a pest as possible to her relatives.
The English throne passed to the House of Stuart in 1603, and, after a lapse of six-and-fifty years, England had a sovereign with sons and daughters, the first since the death of Henry VIII. at the beginning of 1547. There was little opportunity for family dissensions in the days of most of the Stuarts, as either political troubles of the most serious nature absorbed the attention of kings and princes, or the reigning monarchs had no legitimate children. The open quarrel between Charles I. and the Parliament began before his eldest son had completed his eleventh year; and after that quarrel had increased to war, and it was evident that the sword alone could decide the issue, the King parted with his son forever. They had no opportunity to become rivals, and to fall out. There is so much that can be said against Charles I. with truth, that it is pleasing—as are most novelties—to
It has been said of the Plantagenets that they "never shed the blood of a woman." This is nonsense, as we could, time and space permitting, show by the citation of numerous facts, but we shall here mention only one. King John had a noble woman shut up with her son, and starved to death. Perhaps that was not shedding her blood, but it was something worse. Before English statesmen and orators and writers take all the harlotry of Secessia under their kind care and championship, it would be well for them to read up their own country's history, and see how abominably women have been used in England for a thousand years, from queens to queans.