HENRY V., who succeeded his father Henry IV., was b. at Monmouth (whence his surname), in 1388. In his yoUth he bad acquired great military distinction in operations against Glendower, and after his military work was put an end to, through his lather's jealousy and distrust of him, he became almost equally celebrated for dissipation. But when he became king (April 21, 1413), he shook himself in great measure free of bad habits and companions, and in an endeavor at the Outset of his reign to be both just and generous, he liberated front the confinement in which his father had placed him the young earl of March, who was the true heir to the crown, and restored the son of Hot spur to the lands and honors which his father had lost by rebellion. He paid a tribute to religion also, or rather to the orthodoxy of the age, by persecuting the Lollards by fire and halter. The great effort of his reign was an attempted conquest of France, in which he virtually succeeded. He had no right to the French crown; but in these days of usurpation and unsettled laws of succession, when might and right were practically identical, he seems to have believed sincerely that he had a right. In his first cam paign to vindicate it, he besieged and took the town of }Lafleur, and gained the battle of Agincourt (q.v.), Oct. 25, 141,5, against such enormous odds as to make his victory One of the most notable in history. Two years after, he again invaded France, and
made Normandy once more subject to the English crown. An incapable king and civil discord aided him greatly. On May 20, 1420, there was ratified at Troyes " perpetual peace" between Henry and the French. Henry demanded and had conceded to him the regency of France, the eldest daughter of the king and queen to be his queen, and the succession to the French crown on the death of the king. He had hardly returned to and been married to this French princess, Catherine, when the defeat at Bauge, n Mar., 1421, of his brother the duke of Clarence, whom he had left governor of S'ormandy, by a force consisting largely of Scotch, and commanded by the Scotch earl of Buchan, who killed the duke with his own hand, rekindled the hopes of the French, who supported the contention of Charles the dauphin against the treaty of Troyes, to which he had not agreed. Henry returned to France for a third campaign, and his wonted success in arms was following him, when he was seized with illness, and died in a month on Aug. 31, 1422, in the thirty-fourth year of his age, leaving au infant to succeed him, and a splendid reputation for all those qualities that constitute a magnanimous monarch.