[Illustration:  HENRY PROTECTS THE CHURCH FROM HERESY.]

Henry succeeded in catching a heretic, in 1401, and burned him at the stake.  This was the first person put to death in England for his religious belief, and the occasion was the origin of the epitaph, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

Conspiracies were quite common in those days, one of them being organized by Harry Percy, called “Hotspur” because of his irritability.  The ballad of Chevy Chase was founded upon his exploits at the battle of Otterburn, in 1388.  The Percys favored Mortimer, and so united with the Welsh and Scots.

A large fight occurred at Shrewsbury in 1403.  The rebels were defeated and Percy slain.  Northumberland was pardoned, and tried it again, assisted by the Archbishop of York, two years later.  The archbishop was executed in 1405.  Northumberland made another effort, but was defeated and slain.

In 1413 Henry died, leaving behind him the record of a fraudulent sovereign who was parsimonious, sour, and superstitious, without virtue or religion.

He was succeeded by his successor, which was customary at that time.  Henry V. was his son, a youth who was wild and reckless.  He had been in jail for insulting the chief-justice, as a result of a drunken frolic and fine.  He was real wild and bad, and had no more respect for his ancestry than a chicken born in an incubator.  Yet he reformed on taking the throne.

[Illustration:  HENRY V. HAD ON ONE OCCASION BEEN COMMITTED TO PRISON.]

Henry now went over to France with a view to securing the throne, but did not get it, as it was occupied at the time.  So he returned; but at Agincourt was surprised by the French army, four times as large as his own, and with a loss of forty only, he slew ten thousand of the French and captured fourteen thousand.  What the French were doing while this slaughter was going on the modern historian has great difficulty in figuring out.  This battle occurred in 1415, and two years after Henry returned to France, hoping to do equally well.  He made a treaty at Troyes with the celebrated idiot Charles VI., and promised to marry his daughter Catherine, who was to succeed Charles upon his death, and try to do better.  Henry became Regent of France by this ruse, but died in 1422, and left his son Henry, less than a year old.  The king’s death was a sad blow to England, for he was an improvement on the general run of kings.  Henry V. left a brother, the Duke of Bedford, who became Protector and Regent of France; but when Charles the Imbecile died, his son, Charles VII., rose to the occasion, and a war of some years began.  After some time, Bedford invaded southern France and besieged Orleans.

[Illustration:  HENRY, PROCLAIMED REGENT OF FRANCE, ENTERED PARIS IN TRIUMPH.]

Joan of Arc had been told of a prophecy to the effect that France could only be delivered from the English by a virgin, and so she, though only a peasant girl, yet full of a strange, eager heroism which was almost inspiration, applied to the king for a commission.