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Stories From English History From Richard Ii to Charles I.
Stories From English History From Richard Ii to Charles I Author:Alfred John Church General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1896 Original Publisher: Macmillan Subjects: Great Britain History / Europe / Great Britain Travel / Europe / Great Britain Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the Gener... more »al Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER III. AGINCOURT. I HAVE already told1 how Edward III. claimed to be King of France, and how he won great victories by sea and land in seeking to make good this claim. But the whole country he could never conquer. Afterwards all that the English had won was lost again. For King Edward grew weak and foolish in his old age, and the Black Prince died before his father after long sickness. When Richard, the Black Prince's son, became king, he was but a boy, and the great English nobles were too much taken up with quarrels to care much for other things ; nor did Richard do any better when he took the power into his own hands. The end of it was, that when Richard died only the town of Calais was left to the English. King Henry IV. was too busy keeping himself upon his throne, and putting down the nobles who rebelled against him, to have any time for conquest abroad. But Henry V. felt himself able to do what his father 1 Vol. i., chs. 28 -- 31. could not. First he claimed that certain provinces of France should be given up to him, and that he should have for his wife the daughter of the French king, the Princess Katharine, with a dowry of two million crowns. Something the French were willing to give, two or three provinces, but not all that Henry asked, and the Princess,'but not with so much money. For a while ambassadors went to and fro, but they could come to no agreement,1 and on August II, 1415, King Henry set sail from Southampton. He had about 30,000 men, who were carried i...« less