Anonymous

THE REIGN OF RICHARD II.

Accession of the King—Attitude of John of Gaunt—Patriotic Government—Insurrection of the Peasantry—John Ball—The Poll-tax—Wat Tyler—The Attack on London—The Meeting at Mile End—Death of Wat Tyler, and Dispersion of the Insurgents—Marriage of the King—Expedition of the Bishop of Norwich—Death of Wycliffe—Unpopularity of Lancaster—He Retires to Spain—Gloucester Attacks the Royal Favourites—Committee of Reform—The Lords Appellant—The Wonderful Parliament—Richard sets Himself Free—His Good Government—Expedition to Ireland—Marriage with Isabella of France—The King's Vengeance—Banishment of Hereford and Norfolk—Arbitrary Rule of the King—His Second Visit to Ireland—Return of Hereford—Deposition and Murder of Richard.

Richard II. was only eleven years of age at the time of his grandfather's death. He was the sole surviving son of the popular Black Prince, his elder brother having died before his father left Guienne. Richard, therefore—called Richard of Bordeaux, from being born there—was brought up as the heir-apparent by his mother, Joan of Kent, and his uncles, in the most luxurious indulgence, and in the most extravagant ideas of his royal rank. This was a fatal commencement for the reign of a boy, and it was made still more so by the extreme popularity of his father, whose memory was idolised both as the most renowned warrior of his time, and as the advocate of the people against the stern measures of Edward III. All these things combined to spoil a naturally good and affectionate disposition.

Richard ascended the throne on the 22nd of June, 1377, his grandfather having died the day before. While the old king still lay on his death-bed, a deputation of the citizens of London had waited on the juvenile prince at Shene, where he was living, and offered him their lives and fortunes. They entreated him to come and take up his residence in the Tower amongst them. Richard gave a gracious reply in assent, and the next afternoon made his entrance into the capital. Three weeks were spent in performing the obsequies of the late king, and in preparing for the coronation of the present. This took place on the 16th of July.

The day after the coronation the prelates and barons met in council to arrange the form of government during the king's minority. They avoided appointing a regent in order, as is supposed, that they might not have to elect the Duke of Lancaster, the celebrated John of Gaunt, the king's uncle, who had long been suspected of aspiring to the crown, and who was, moreover, an unpopular personage. They therefore chose nine councillors—namely, three bishops, two earls, two barons, and two knights—to assist the chancellor and the treasurer. Not one of the king's uncles was included, not even the Earl of Cambridge, afterwards made Duke of York, who was indolent and of slight capacity, and therefore not much to be feared; nor the Earl of Buckingham, afterwards Duke of Gloucester, who was bold and turbulent, but much more popular than either of his brothers. Contrary to general expectation, Lancaster appeared to acquiesce in the arrangement without a murmur, and retired with all his attendants to his castle of Kenilworth, as if about to devote himself to the pursuits of private life. But he had taken care to secure the appointment of some of his staunch cavaliers in the council, and, in reality, he and his brothers were the ruling powers in the state. Amongst the leading members of the council were the Bishops of London, Carlisle, and Salisbury, the Earls of March and Stafford, Sir Richard Devereux, and Sir Hugh Segrave.

The Commons had acquired now so much consideration and boldness, that they petitioned the king on this occasion to be admitted to assist the barons in nominating the royal council during the minority; which petition, though it was not complied with, received a civil answer. They further represented the necessity of their being summoned every year, as entitled by the law of Edward III., and before they dissolved they appointed two citizens as treasurers to receive and disburse the moneys granted by them to the Crown. These treasurers were John Philpot and William Walworth, citizens of London.

The Commons did not conceal their suspicions of the Duke of Lancaster. They uttered very plain language regarding him, and this language did not fail to rouse his ire. When the Archbishop of Canterbury recommended Richard to the affections of his people, and called on Parliament to assist in advising how the enemies of the realm might best be opposed, the Commons replied that they could not themselves venture to answer so important a question, but begged to have the aid of twelve peers, naming the Duke of Lancaster expressly as "my lord of Spain."

The moment that the king had assented to this the Duke arose, bent his knee to the king, and said, with much anger, that the Commons had no claim to advice from him. They had charged him with nothing short of treason—him, the son of a king, and one of the first lords of the realm, a man of a family not only closely allied to the throne, but noted for its faith and loyalty. It would, indeed, be marvellous, he said, if he, with more than any other subject in the kingdom to lose, should be found a traitor. He resented the imputation indignantly, called on his accusers to stand forth, and declared that he would meet them like the poorest knight, either in single combat, or in any other way that the king might appoint.

This extraordinary demonstration created a great sensation. The lords and prelates crowded round him, entreating him to be pacified, "for no mortal being could give credit to such imputations." The Commons pointed to the fact that they had named Lancaster as their principal adviser, and finally the duke allowed himself to be appeased. But it was clear that the Commons were strongly against him. The majority consisted of the very men who had been opposed to him in 1376; and their speaker was Sir Peter De la Mare, the man whom he had imprisoned for his activity on that occasion.

Another blow aimed at the aspiring duke was through his patronage of the late king's mistress, the notorious Alice Perrers. Lancaster had procured her return from banishment, and protected her. But he was now fain to abandon her, seeing the stormy state of the political atmosphere, and consented even to sit on a committee of the House, with four other peers, to try her for soliciting causes in the king's courts for hire and reward, and for having procured from the late king the revocation of the appointment of Sir Nicholas Dagworth to an office in Ireland, and a full pardon of Richard Lyons, who had been convicted by the Commons of various misdemeanours. The beautiful, clever, and unscrupulous Alice was now finally banished, with forfeiture of all her lands, tenements, goods, and chattels.

The enemies more immediately in view when the Parliament was summoned were the French and Spaniards. Taking advantage of the reign of a minor, the French refused to renew the truce which had expired before the death of the late king; they drew close their alliance with Enrique de Trastamare, who resented the assumption of the title of King of Castile by the Duke of Lancaster. They united their fleets and ravaged the English coasts. Richard only ascended the throne in June, and in August the whole of the Isle of Wight was in the possession of these foreigners, with the exception of Carisbrooke Castle. They laid waste the island, burnt the towns of Hastings and Rye, and attacked Southampton and Winchelsea. Winchelsea made a successful resistance, and the Earl of Arundel, falling on the combined fleet before Southampton, repulsed it with great loss. But marauders of other nations flocked to the fleets of the French and Spaniards, and committed much devastation both on our ships at sea and on our coasts. The maritime districts of Kent and Sussex suffered severely, and a fleet even ascended the Thames and burnt the greater part of Gravesend.

To check these several inroads Parliament granted supplies which, however, from the empty condition of the Treasury, were obliged to be borrowed in advance from the merchants. With these funds a fleet was raised, and put under the command of the Duke of Lancaster, who passed over to Brittany, besieged the town of St. Malo, where he lay for some weeks, and then returned to England without effecting anything, to the grievous disappointment of the people. Meantime the Scots, instigated by the French, broke the truce, and attacked the castle of Berwick, which they took. They burned Roxburgh, and made incursions into the northern counties. Being repulsed, and Berwick having been retaken by the Earl of Northumberland, they united with the French and Spaniards at sea, and under one John Mercer, they swept the German Ocean, and seized all the ships in the port of Scarborough.

These tidings produced great alarm and indignation in London, and John Philpot, the stout alderman lately appointed one of the treasurers for the Commons, seeing that nothing was done by the Government effectually to check these marauders, fitted out a small fleet at his own expense, put to sea without waiting for any commission from the authorities, and, coming up with the united fleet, gave battle, and after a desperate conflict succeeded in capturing sixteen Spanish ships, with all the vessels carried off from Scarborough, and John Mercer himself. Returning triumphantly to London after this most brilliant achievement, he was received, as he deserved, with enthusiastic acclamation by his fellow-citizens, but was severely reprimanded by the royal council for having dared to make war without regal permission. So offensive was it to the routine of that day that a man without orders should save his country.

Nothing having been done by the regularly appointed commanders except the usual feat of spending the money, a new Parliament was summoned. This met at Gloucester on the 20th of October, 1378. The Commons objected to a fresh subsidy, as well they might, seeing that the last had produced no advantage; but, being answered by Sir Richard Scrope, the steward of the household, that it was indispensable, they insisted on permission to examine the accounts of the treasurers, which was granted under protest that it was not by right, but by favour, and should not be drawn into a precedent. They next requested to be furnished with a copy of the enrolment of the tenths and fifteenths which they had last granted, to learn how they had been raised, which, as money was wanted, was also conceded under protest. Finally, they proposed that six peers and prelates should come to their chamber to consult with them on these matters—an evidence that the Lords and Commons at that time regularly occupied separate houses. This was declined by the great men of the Upper House, who, however, professed their readiness to meet, by committee, with a committee of the Commons.

The Commons having obtained the necessary accounts and documents, went leisurely and deliberately to work; and though the impatient Government repeatedly urged them to dispatch, they still proceeded with all sedateness and care, showing that the popular body was growing sensible of its real powers. Having discovered that the whole of the supplies had been duly but fruitlessly spent, they granted a fresh impost on wool, wool-fells, and skins, for the pressing services of the State.

Another army was raised, and placed under the command of the Earl of Buckingham. He passed over to Calais, whence in the summer of 1380 he marched with 2,000 cavalry and 8,000 infantry, through the very heart of France, pursuing the old accustomed ravages, through Picardy, Campagne, Orleannais, and on to Brittany. The Duke of Burgundy, with a far greater army, hovered in the vicinity of this handful of men; but, remembering the past result of conflict with small armies of the English, he kept aloof.

By the time that Buckingham reached Brittany, Charles V. died, and Charles VI., a minor, like the King of England, succeeded in the autumn of that year. The Bretons, now thinking that, a mere boy being on the throne of France, they could protect themselves, grew impatient of the burdensome presence of the English. De Montfort, who had found a friendly refuge in England, was averse from treating his old allies with ingratitude; but the people accused the English of rapacity and haughtiness—and, no doubt, with cause enough, if we are to judge by the general proceedings of the English in France—and would not cease their demands till the count had transferred his alliance to the regency which governed France during the minority. This accomplished, the people expressed every impatience to be rid of Buckingham and his army, and as soon as the following spring allowed of his embarking, he took his leave, having escaped the hostility of the natives only by the bravery of his troops and the supplies of provisions from home. The English returned home denouncing bitterly the ingratitude of the Bretons; and this was the unsatisfactory termination of their long and expensive exertions to maintain the independence of Brittany. The only possession which we retained in that province was the port of Brest, which Richard had received from De Montfort in exchange for an equivalent estate in England. Calais and Cherbourg—obtained from the King of Navarre—Bordeaux and Bayonne were still towns in the hands of the English, affording tempting avenues of approach to every quarter of France, and incitements to future expeditions.

But at this moment events were approaching which demanded all the efforts of the Government to maintain domestic order. In various countries of Europe the advance of society, and, though slow, of trade and manufactures, had begun to produce its certain effect upon the people. They no sooner ate of the tree of knowledge than they perceived that they were naked—naked of liberty, and property, and every solid comfort. They were in a great measure serfs and bondsmen, transmitted with the estates from proprietor to proprietor, like the chattels and the live stock. The haughty aristocracy looked upon them as little better than the beasts; and, addicted to continual wars with each other or with foreign countries, made use of the miserable people only as soldiers for those wars or as slaves to cultivate their lands. The wretched sufferers were ground by domestic exactions, and pillaged and burnt out continually in some of the countries by invading armies. Nothing could be more terrible than their condition; and when they began to perceive all its horrors, and to endeavour to rise above them, their imperious masters trod them down again with harsh and often terrible ferocity.

But wherever towns grew and trade sprang up, there numbers became, by one means or other, free. In England every man who could contrive to live a year and a day in any town became a free man. The very wars which had desolated Europe had tended to awaken a spirit of independence; the soldiers who served in different countries picked up intelligence by comparing various conditions of men. The constant demands of Government for money inspired those who had to furnish it with a sense of their own importance. The example of the freedom and superior comfort in towns stimulated the inhabitants of the country to grasp at equal benefits.

Flanders, as the earliest manufacturing and trading country, had, as we have seen, speedily become democratic; had expelled its ruler, and had now maintained a long career of independence. At this moment it was waging a most sanguinary and determined war, not only against its own earl, but against the whole forces of Burgundy and France, led by Philip van Artevelde—the son of Jacob, the stout old brewer of Ghent—and by a relentless citizen, Peter Dubois.

Once more in France insurrection had broken out, headed by the burghers and people of the towns, excited against the tax-gatherers, and had spread from Rouen to Paris, where it was raging. And now the same convulsion, originating in the same causes, had reached England; and simultaneously in Flanders, France, and this country, the people were in arms against their Government and nobles.

It has been supposed that the preaching of Wycliffe had no little effect in rousing this storm in England, and there can be no doubt of it. The people, once made acquainted with the doctrines of human right, justice, and liberty abounding in the Bible, and pervading it as its very essence, could only regard the knowledge as a direct call from God to rise, rend the bondage of their cruel slavery, and assume the rank of men. This light, this wonderful knowledge, coming too suddenly upon them, made them, as it were, intoxicated, and overthrew all restraint and tranquillity of mind. They felt their wrongs the more acutely by perceiving their rights, and how basely they had been deprived of them by men professing this religion of truth, justice and humanity. Such was the case on the preaching of Luther in Germany afterwards, and it was the case here now. Occasionally a nobleman had suddenly emancipated the whole of the villeins on his domain in return for a fixed rent to be paid by them; but this process was slow and uncertain, and extremely exciting to those who witnessed this emancipation, remaining themselves in bondage. Thus all classes of the people were in a restless state. The freemen just above these serfs, and especially those on the coast, who had been plundered and burnt out by the enemy, were full of bitterness from their sufferings, and disposed to regard the tax-gatherer as little short of a demon. Few, except the working order of the clergy, who lived and laboured amongst them, treated them like human beings.

Imagine, then, this state of things, and a priest like John Ball of Kent coming amongst them on Sundays as they issued out of church in the villages, and saying to them as Froissart thus reports him: "Ah, ye good people, matters go not well to pass in England, nor shall do, till everything be common, and that there be no villeins nor gentlemen, but that we be all united together, and that the lords be no greater masters than we. What have we deserved, or why should we be kept thus in bondage? We all come from one father and mother, Adam and Eve. Whereby can they show that they are greater lords than we be? saving by that they cause us to win and labour for that they dispend. They are clothed in velvet and camlet, furred with ermine, and we are vestured with poor cloth. They have their wines, spices, and good bread, and we have the drawing out of the chaff, and drink water. They dwell in fair houses, and we have the pain and travel, rain, and wind in the fields; and by that which cometh of our labours they keep and maintain their estates. We be called their bondmen, and without we do willingly their service we be beaten; and we have no sovereign to whom we can complain, nor that will hear us, nor do us right. Let us go to the king—he is young—and show him what bondage we be in, and show him how we will have it otherwise, or else we will provide us of some remedy; and if we go together, all manner of people who be now in any bondage will follow us, to the intent to be made free; and when the king seeth us we shall have some remedy, either by fairness or otherwise."

This honest John Ball, having got this great gospel of freedom into his head, could not be prevailed on to be quiet. The archbishop shut him up for some months in prison, but on coming out he went about saying the very same things. "And these people," says Froissart, "of whom there be more in England than in any other realm, loved John Ball, and said that he said truth." In the beginning of the world, they said, there were no bondmen; wherefore they maintained none ought to be bound, without he did treason to his lord as Lucifer did to God. But they said they could have no such battle, because they were "neither angels nor spirits," but men formed in the similitudes of their lords; adding, "Why, then, should we be kept under so like beasts?" And they declared they would no longer suffer it; they would be all one, and if they laboured for their lords, they would have wages for it.

JOHN WYCLIFFE.

(From the portrait in King's College, Cambridge.)

This was all only too true; but a truth coming too suddenly, and more than they could bear, or were disciplined to win, or, if won all at once, to maintain. And these poor people did not know that even now there was growing up that power amongst the people, in the shape of Parliament, which should gradually and securely fight their battles, and establish all their desires. Even now the Commons had reached the presence of the king and the nobles, and stood there boldly declaring their rights, and putting an ever-growing restraint on regal and aristocratic licence.

In the Parliament which met in January, 1380, the Commons complained loudly of the extravagance of the expenditure. They demanded that the king's council should be dismissed; that the king should govern only by the aid of the usual Crown officers—the chancellor, treasurer, privy seal, chamberlain, and steward of the household; and that these ministers should be chosen by Parliament. These unexampled demands were all granted; a committee of finance was appointed, to consist of Lords and Commons; and such a concession as had never yet been made was granted, and three representatives of cities—two aldermen of London and one of York—were put upon it. In the autumn, being informed that the subsidies which they voted were inadequate to defray the debts of the State, they pronounced the demand for more money "outrageous and insupportable." This was bold language; the result was, of the many schemes to meet the difficulty, the fatal poll-tax, which threw the country into a general convulsion. This was a tax of three groats per head on every male and female above fifteen years of age. In towns it was to be regulated by the rank and ability of the inhabitants, in order to render it easier to the poor, so that no person should pay less than one groat, nor more than sixty, for himself and wife.

This poll-tax was the drop to the full cup. The people were already groaning under the continued exactions for the French wars, and this tax drove them to desperation. What added gall to its bitterness was that it was farmed out to some of the courtiers, who again farmed it out to foreign merchants, whose collectors proceeded with a degree of harshness and insolence which irritated the people beyond endurance. It was soon discovered that the amounts which came into the treasury would by no means reach the sum calculated upon. Commissions were then issued to inquire into the conduct of the collectors, and to enforce payment in cases where favour had been shown, or where due payment had not been made.

The people soon grew obstinate, and declared boldly they would not pay. Hereupon the commissioners treated them very severely, and they again, on their part, resenting this severity, began secretly to combine for resistance, and proceeded to chase away, wound, or even kill the officers of the law.

One of these commissioners, Thomas de Bampton, sat at Brentwood in Essex, and summoned the people of Fobbing before him. They declared that they would not pay a penny more than they had done. Bampton then menaced them, and ordered his sergeant-at-arms to arrest them. But they drove him and his men away. Whereupon Sir Robert Belknap, the chief justice of the Common Pleas, was sent into Essex to try the recusants; but they denounced him as a traitor to king and country, made him glad to get away, and cut off the heads of the jurors and clerks of the commission, which they stuck upon poles, and carried through all the neighbouring towns and villages, calling on the people to rise. In a few days the commons of Essex were in a general insurrection, and had found a leader in a vagabond priest, who called himself Jack Straw.

They attacked the house of Sir Robert Hales, the Lord Treasurer of England, who was also Prior of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. Ample provision had just been made for a chapter-general of the order, and there was in the house abundance of meats, wines, cloths, and other things for the knights brethren. The people ate up the provisions, drank the wine, and destroyed the house.

They then sent letters and messengers into all the neighbouring counties, and not only the peasantry of Kent, but of Norfolk and Suffolk, were soon up in arms. But the incident which caused the whole immediately to break into flame was this:—One of the collectors of the tax at Dartford, in Kent, went to the house of one Wat Tyler, or Walter the Tyler, who, Froissart says, was "indeed a tyler of houses, an ungracious patron." He demanded the tax for a daughter of Wat, who the mother contended was under fifteen, the age fixed by the law. The insolent tax-gatherer declared he would prove that, and was proceeding to the grossest outrage, when Wat came running in at the outcries of the wife and daughter, and knocked out the scoundrel's brains with his hammer. The neighbours applauded Wat's spirit, and vowed to stand by him; "for," says the chronicler, "the rude officers had in many places made the like trial."

The news of this exciting occurrence, and the insurrection of the men of Kent, spread rapidly over the whole country, from the Thames to the Humber; through Hertford, Surrey, Sussex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridge, and Lincoln. In every place they chose some leader, whose assumed names still remain in their letters and proclamations, as Jakke Milner, Jak Carter, and Jak Treweman. They were invited by the letters from Kent to march to London, where "the Commons should be of one mind, and should do so much to the king that there should not be one bondman in all England." They are reported soon to have mustered 60,000 from the counties round London, making free with houses and provisions as they marched along.

But the great stream appears to have come from Kent and the south. One of their first visits was to Sir Simon Burley, the guardian of the king, at Gravesend. Sir Simon had claimed a man living in that town as his bondman, in spite of the legal plea set up that he had resided there more than a year and a day. He demanded 300 pounds of silver for the man's freedom; but this was refused, and Sir Simon sent his prisoner to Rochester Castle. The men of Kent, now joined by a strong body from Essex, marched on Rochester, took the castle by surprise, and not only liberated this man, but other prisoners.

At Maidstone Wat Tyler was elected captain of the insurgent host, and the democratic preacher, John Ball, its chaplain, who took for the text of his first sermon the good old rhyme—

"When Adam dolve, and Eve span,

Who was then the gentleman?"

Wat Tyler and his host entered Canterbury on the Monday after Trinity Sunday, 1381, where John Ball denounced death to the archbishop, who had often imprisoned him: luckily, however, he was absent. But they broke open the archbishop's house; and, as they carried out the wealthy pillage, they said, "Ah! this Chancellor of England hath had a good market to get together all this riches. He shall now give an account of the revenues of England, and the great profits he hath gathered since the king's coronation."

They struck terror into the monks and clergy of the cathedral; did much damage to it and the church of St. Vincent, as is said; compelled the mayor and aldermen to swear fidelity to King Richard and the Commons of England; cut off the heads of three wealthy men of the city; and, followed by 500 of the poor inhabitants, advanced towards London. By the time they reached Blackheath, joined by the streaming thousands from all quarters, the insurgents are said to have numbered 100,000 men.

Into the midst of this strange, rude, and tumultuous host, suddenly, to her astonishment and terror, came the king's mother, on her return from a pilgrimage to Canterbury. "She was," says Froissart, "in great jeopardy to have been lost, for the people came to her chaise and did rudely use her, whereof the good lady was in great dread lest they should have dealt rudely with her damsels. Howbeit, God kept her," and being excused with a few kisses, and with offers of protection, she got to London as fast as she could, and to her son in the Tower, with whom there were the Earl of Salisbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Earl of Hereford, and other noblemen and gentlemen.

At Blackheath John Ball frequently addressed the assembled multitudes on his old and favourite topics of the rights and equality of men. We must bear in mind that this man and his doctrines have been described by his enemies. He appears to have been a thorough democrat or Chartist of his day, drawing his opinions from the literal declarations of the gospel that God is no respecter of persons; and these new and startling ideas being addressed to the inflamed minds of ignorant and oppressed people, they immediately applied them in their own way, and declared that they would have no more lords, barons, and archbishops, but simply the king and the Commons of England. They are said to have committed great atrocities on their way from different counties, pillaging the manors of their lords, demolishing the towns, and burning the court rolls. They swore to be true to the king, and to have no king of the name of John, this being aimed at John of Gaunt, their standing aversion, who was regarded as the author of this tax, because he exercised authority over his nephew. They also swore to oppose all taxes but fifteenths, the ancient tallage paid by their fathers.

That many outrages were committed is most probable: such must be inevitable from so general a rising of an uneducated and oppressed populace smarting under generations of wrongs. But we shall most fairly judge them by their own public demands presented to the king, which we shall presently see were most wonderfully simple, reasonable, and enlightened for such a people, under such exasperating circumstances.

The harangues of John Ball are described as working the insurgent army into the wildest excitement, and the admiring people are said to have declared that he should be the Primate and Chancellor of England, this officer at that time being almost always a prelate.

At the taking of the castle of Rochester, the mob had compelled the governor, Sir John Newton, to go along with them; and now they sent him up the river in a boat to go to the king at the Tower as their messenger. He was to inform the king of all that they had done or meant to do for his honour; to say that his kingdom had for a long time been ill-governed by his uncles and the clergy, especially by the Archbishop of Canterbury, his chancellor, from whom they would have an account of his administration of the revenue. Sir John, coming to the Tower, was received by Richard graciously; and he then told the people's desire, assuring the king that all he said was true, and that he dared do no other than bring the message, for they had his children as hostages, and would kill them if he did not return.

After some consultation the king informed Sir John that in the morning he would come and speak to the people. With this message Sir John joyfully departed, and the vast crowd are said to have received the message of the king's coming with great satisfaction.

GREAT SEAL OF RICHARD II.

The next morning, being the 12th of June, the king, attended by a considerable number of the lords of the court, descended the river in his barge. At Rotherhithe he found 10,000 men on the river banks awaiting his coming, with two banners of St. George and sixty pennons. So soon as they saw the king they set up one universal cheer. This was no doubt meant as a hearty welcome; but the king and his courtiers being all in a state of panic—for the council, it is stated, were perfectly paralysed by their fears—the boisterous acclamation struck the royal party as frightful yells. "The people," says Froissart, "made such a shout and cry as if all the devils in hell had been among them." Instead of landing, the courtiers advised the king to draw off. The people cried to the king that, if he would come on shore, they would show him what they wanted; but the Earl of Salisbury replied, saying, "Sirs, ye be not in such order or array that the king ought to speak to you;" and with that the royal barge bore away up the river again.

At this sight the crowd were filled with indignation. They had hoped that now they should bring to the royal ear all their grievances; and there can be little doubt that if the king had shown the spirit which he afterwards did, and boldly and courteously put his barge within good hearing, and listened to and answered their complaints, all that followed might have been prevented. But being now persuaded that the great lords about him would not allow the king to hold fair and open audience with them, "they returned," says Froissart, "to the hill where the main body lay"—for this was only a deputation, the hill being most likely Greenwich Park—and there informed the multitude what had taken place.

On hearing this the enraged host cried out with one voice, "Let us go to London!" "And so," continues Froissart, "they took their way thither; and on their going they beat down abbeys and houses of advocates and men of the court, and so came into the suburbs of London, which were great and fair, and beat down divers fair houses, and especially the king's prisons, as the Marshalsea and others, and delivered out the prisoners that were therein." They broke into the palace of the archbishop at Lambeth, regarding him as the enemy of the nation, and burnt the furniture and the records belonging to the chancery.

As the men of Kent advanced through Southwark, the men of Essex advanced along the left bank of the river, destroyed the house of the lord treasurer at Highbury, and menaced the north of London.

When the men of Kent arrived at London Bridge they found it closed against them, and they declared that if they were not admitted they would burn all the suburbs, and, taking London by force, would put every one to death. The people within said, "Why do we not let these good people in? What they do they do for us all!" and thereupon they let down the centre of the bridge, which Walworth, the mayor, had had drawn up.

See p. 462

ONE OF WYCLIFFE'S "POOR PRIESTS" PREACHING TO THE PEOPLE. (See p. 462.)

[See larger version]

"Then these people entered into the city, and went into houses, and sat down to eat and drink. They desired nothing but it was incontinently brought to them, for every man was ready to make them good cheer, and to give them meat and drink to please them. Then the captains, as John Ball, Jack Straw, and Wat Tyler, went throughout London, and 20,000 men with them, and so came to the Savoy, in the way to Westminster, which was a goodly house, which appertained to the Duke of Lancaster; and when they entered they slew the keepers thereof, and robbed and pillaged the house, and then set fire to it, and clean burnt and destroyed it."

This palace of John of Gaunt's was the most magnificent house in London. The mob, having thus shown their hatred of him, went to the house of the Knights Hospitallers in Clerkenwell, which had been lately built by Sir Robert Hales, the grand prior of the Order and Treasurer of the kingdom, whose house they destroyed at Highbury. It is only fair to bear in mind that in destroying these noble houses, the people disclaimed any idea of plunder. Their objects were, as they asserted, to punish the traitors to the nation, and obtain their own freedom from bondage. They published a proclamation forbidding any one to secrete any booty. They hammered out the plate, and cut it into small pieces. They beat the precious stones to powder, and one of the rioters having concealed in his bosom a silver cup, was thrown with his prize into the river.

In the morning (June 14), the sight from the Tower was by no means cheering. The multitude was clamouring for the heads of the chancellor and treasurer, whom they regarded as main authors of all the exactions and ill-treatment they had received, and preventing the entrance of any provisions till their demand was conceded. Presently a message was brought them from the king that if they would quietly retire to Mile End, then having plenty of open land, "where the people of the city did disport themselves in the summer season," he would meet them there and listen to their requests. Anon the gates were thrown open, the drawbridge was lowered, and Richard, attended by a few unarmed followers, rode on amid the throng. Arriving at Mile End, he found himself surrounded by 60,000 petitioners. On the way Richard's half brothers, the Earl of Kent and Sir John Holland, had taken alarm and ridden off, leaving this youth of sixteen in a cowardly manner in such circumstances. But Richard on this occasion displayed a bravery and a discretion which, had they been uniformly exhibited, must have produced a prosperous reign.

According to Froissart, in the night, while they lay asleep on Tower Hill, the king had been advised by Sir William Walworth and others to make a sally and slay them in their sleep; for, as he observes, there were not one in twenty in harness, and as they were drunken, they might be killed like so many flies. These counsellors represented that the citizens of London could easily do this, as they had their friends ready in arms secreted in their houses, and that there were Sir Robert Knowles and Sir Perdiccas d'Albret, the famous Free Company captains, with 8,000 more that might be mentioned. But the Earl of Salisbury and "the wise men about the king gave better and more humane advice." And now that the king spoke face to face with them, behold, all their demands resolved them into these four:—1, The abolition of bondage; 2, The reduction of the rent of land to fourpence the acre; 3, The liberty of buying and selling in all fairs and markets; 4, A general pardon for the past offences.

The king with a smiling countenance assured them that all this was fully granted them, and that if they would retire every one to his own county and place, he would give one of his banners to those of each shire, bailiwick, and parish to march home under; and that they should leave two or three from each village to bring unto them copies of the charter he would give them. On hearing this the people said, "We desire no more." They became quite appeased, and began to draw off towards London. That night thirty clerks were employed in making copies of this charter, which were sealed and delivered in the morning.

But while the superior and better-disposed country people had attended the king, Wat Tyler and Jack Straw, with the more turbulent and factious portion of the insurgents, had remained behind. No sooner was the king out of sight, than these treacherous fellows made a rush at the Tower, and got possession of it, most probably through the perfidy or perhaps panic of the garrison, for there were in the Tower, according to Holinshed, 600 men-at-arms, and as many archers, while of these commons and husbandmen many were provided only with sticks, and not one in a thousand was properly armed. Here the insurgents got possession, as no doubt was their grand object, of their designed victims, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the chancellor; Sir Robert Hales, the treasurer; William Appledore, the king's confessor; and Legge, one of the farmers of the obnoxious tax, with three of his accomplices. All these they speedily beheaded. The head of the archbishop was carried through the city on the point of a lance, with the hat he wore nailed to the skull, that he might be better known to the multitude, and it was set on London Bridge.

They ranged through all the apartments of the Tower, again came upon the terrified mother of the king, pricked her bed with their swords to see if any one was concealed in it, and saluted her with a few more kisses. The poor lady fainted away, and was carried by her attendants to her house, called "The Wardrobe in Carter Lane." Here the king on his return joined her, and gave her comfort, trusting that all would now soon be over.

In the morning (June 15), Richard left the Wardrobe, and, after mass at Westminster, rode through Smithfield at the head of sixty horsemen, where he beheld a great throng of people in front of the abbey of St. Bartholomew. He said he would go no farther till he knew what ailed them, and that he would appease them again. It was Wat Tyler at the head of 20,000 insurgents. Wat had refused the charter sent to him, demanding fresh conditions; and, when these were conceded in a second, demanded still more; amongst other things, the total repeal of the forest or game laws, and that all parks, waters, warrens, and woods should be common, so that the poor as well as the rich should freely fish in all waters, hunt the deer in the parks and forests and the hare in the fields.

On seeing the king stop, Wat Tyler said, "Sirs, yonder is the king; I will go and speak with him. Stir not hence without I make you a sign; and when I make you a sign, come on and slay them all except the king. He is young; we can do with him as we please, and we will lead him with us all about England, and so we shall be lords of all the realm without doubt." Wat rode up to the king, and so near that the head of his horse touched the flanks of that of the king. Then said Wat, "Sir king, seest thou all yonder people?" "Yea, truly," said the king; "why dost thou ask?" "Because," said Wat Tyler, "they be all at my commandment, and have sworn to me faith and truth to do all that I will have them. And thinkest thou that they, and as many more in London, will depart without thy letters?"

The king courteously assured him they should have them; and at this point, says Froissart, Wat Tyler cast his eyes on an esquire of the king, whom he hated on account of some words he had said. "Ah!" said he, "art thou there? Give me thy dagger." The esquire refused, but the king bade him give it, and with that Wat began to play with it, and said to the esquire, "By my faith, I will never eat meat till I have thy head." At this moment the mayor, Sir William Walworth, coming up with his twelve horse, and hearing these words, and looking through the press, said, "Ha! thou knave, darest thou speak such words in the king's presence?" Wat gave a sharp answer, and Froissart says that the king said to Walworth, "Set hands on him." Be that as it may, Walworth thrust a short sword into Tyler's throat; or, as others say, struck him on the head with it or with his mace. At all events, Walworth gave him the first blow, which was speedily followed by one of the king's squires—Robert Standish, probably the one with whom the altercation commenced—stabbing him in the abdomen. Tyler wheeled his horse round, rode about a dozen yards, and fell to the ground, where he soon expired.

On seeing him fall his followers cried out, "We are betrayed! They have killed our captain!" and they put themselves in battle array, with their bows before them.

With wonderful presence of mind Richard ordered his attendants to keep back, and, riding confidently up to the people, said, "Sirs, what aileth you? I will be your leader and captain. Follow me, I am your king; Tyler was but a traitor; be ye at rest and peace." Then he rode back to his company, who advised that they should draw off into the fields near Islington. Thither many followed the king; and many, hoping no good, quietly stole away. On coming into the fields, they beheld Sir Robert Knowles, with 1,000 men-at-arms; and the insurgents, now fearing the worst, got away as fast as they could, throwing down their bows, and many kneeling to the king and imploring pardon. Knowles burned to be allowed to charge and cut them down; but the king refused him this indulgence, saying he would take his revenge in another way; which, in truth, he afterwards did. He issued a proclamation, however, forbidding any stranger to remain another night in the city on pain of death.

Such is the history of this remarkable insurrection as transmitted to us with some slight variations by Froissart, Knighton, Walsingham, Stowe, and Holinshed. While these things passed in London, various parts of the country were equally agitated and overrun by the insurgents. In the south the outbreak extended as far as Winchester, in the north as far as Beverley and Scarborough. The nobility shut themselves up, and neither stirred out to free themselves nor aid the king. So general and simultaneous was the rising, that some supposed that it was concerted and conducted by some able but invisible leaders much above Wat Tyler and Jack Straw in influence and subtlety. When the mob was at Blackheath there were rumours that the king's uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, was seen disguised amongst them; but this was probably owing to some one bearing a strong resemblance to the duke being there, or it may have been got up by his enemies to injure him at court, as there were active endeavours, about the same time, to alarm the king regarding Lancaster's intentions, who was on the Borders treating with the Scots.

Only one man of distinction acted with the spirit which might have been expected from the warlike baronage of England, and that was a churchman.

Henry Spencer, the young Bishop of Norwich, finding that the rebellious peasantry would not listen to what he considered reason, buckled on armour, mounted his steed and, at the head of a strong body of retainers, attacked them in the field as they were pursuing their career of depredation. He repeatedly surprised these marauding bodies, routed, and slew them. His mode of dealing with them was summary and unique. After every battle he sat in judgment on his prisoners, and, after giving them absolution from their sins, had their heads struck off. By these means he soon restored order in the counties of Norfolk, Huntingdon, and Cambridge. When the news of Tyler's overthrow and the dispersion of the insurgents spread through the country, and those who had shut themselves up in castle and town hurried forth to show their deep loyalty to the king, Spencer's work had long been done.

Richard himself, having stuck the heads of Wat Tyler and of numbers of his compeers on London Bridge, was advised to undertake a progress through the different quarters of his kingdom, to make all quiet and secure. Numbers flocked to his standard, and at the head of 40,000 men he advanced from place to place, issuing proclamations, recalling and destroying the charters he had given, commanding the villeins to return to their labours, and prohibiting, under severe penalties, any illegal assemblies. In Kent and Essex Richard found some resistance; and it was not until 500 of these unhappy creatures had been killed in Essex that they gave way. According to Holinshed, 1,500 of the insurgents were executed; amongst them Jack Straw, John Litster, and Westbroom, the last two of whom had assumed the title of Kings of Norfolk and Suffolk.

When Parliament met it was announced to it that the king had revoked all the charters he had been obliged to grant to the villeins; but the chancellor suggested whether it would not be well to abolish serfdom altogether. This, probably, was the view of the king's better counsellors: it certainly was not his view of things on his journey; but it met with the response which was inevitable at that day. The barons declared that nothing should induce them to give up the services of their villeins, and that they would resist with all their power either violence or persuasion for that object; nay, were it even to save themselves from general massacre, they must uphold the existing system. It was plain the day for the extinction of serfdom was not yet come.

The king was now sixteen, and at this early age he was married to Anne of Bohemia, who herself was only fifteen. She was the daughter of the late Emperor of Germany, Charles IV., called Charles of Luxembourg at the battle of Poitiers, where he attended his father, the old blind King of Bohemia. Anne was thus granddaughter to the brave old blind monarch, and sister to the Emperor Sigismund. As has almost universally been the case with German princesses, there was a great boast and parade of the illustrious ancestry of Anne, but no money whatever. Nay, Richard, or rather the country, had to pay the expenses of her journey to England, though it was made from the palace of one royal relative to that of another, particularly the Dukes of Brabant and Flanders, and under their escort. But, though possessed of high pedigree and without portion, Anne was reckoned handsome, and was good-hearted and pious. The king became deeply attached to her, and the English were extremely proud of her as the CÆsar's (Kaiser's, or Emperor's) sister, of which they could never speak enough. She lived only twelve years as queen; but she won the affection of every one who came near her, was universally beloved, and long lamented under the name of the "Good Queen Anne." Had she lived as long as her husband, she would undoubtedly have preserved him from alienating the love of his people, and perishing as he did.

England was at this moment about to undertake the support of the very principles of freedom and popular independence in Flanders which it had so sternly put down at home. Flanders, as the earliest manufacturing and trading country, had, as we have seen, speedily displayed a democratic spirit. It had expelled its ruler, who resisted, and endeavoured to crush all tendency towards popular rights. Though Jacob van Artevelde, the stout brewer of Ghent, had fallen, yet that high-spirited city had maintained a long career of independence. Philip van Artevelde, the son of Jacob, warned by the fate of his father, had, during his youth, kept aloof from popular ambition, and adhered to a strictly private life. But the people of Ghent becoming sorely pressed by the Earl of Flanders, and its very existence being at stake, Philip, no longer able to suppress the spirit of the patriot born with him, suddenly emerged from his obscurity and put himself at the head of the populace. He was, however, defeated and slain by the French at Rosbecque, but the Flemings recovered themselves, and made a desperate resistance. At this time there were two Popes—Clement VII., a Frenchman, and Urban VI., an Italian. We have seen that on all occasions when there was only one Pope, he was a zealous peace-maker; but this schism, with its two rival pontiffs, naturally produced a fiery feud. The French Pope, Clement, was recognised by France and its allies, Scotland, Spain, Sicily, and Cyprus. Urban was supported by England, the people of Flanders, and the rest of Europe. The two pontiffs launched their anathemas against each other, and roused all their allies to assist their respective causes. France exerting itself powerfully to give the ascendency to Clement, Urban entreated the aid of England. The prominence which the Bishop of Norwich had assumed in the Wat Tyler insurrection, and his prompt energy and success as a general, drew the attention of Urban, and he sent to the martial bishop extraordinary powers as his champion. The king and parliament gave their consent; a fifteenth lately granted by the Commons was made over to the prelate for the purposes of the enterprise, and he engaged to serve against France for a year, with 2,500 men-at-arms and the same number of archers.

Philip Artevelde, in his great need, had solicited the assistance of England; but his ambassadors had most imprudently demanded at the same time the payment of a debt which they alleged was of forty years' standing. The Duke of Lancaster and the royal council had made themselves merry over this unique mode of soliciting alliance in a crisis, and refused to help them. But now it was determined to abet the people of Ghent, as a means of upholding them, after their heavy defeat at Rosbecque, against France.

COINS OF THE REIGN OF RICHARD II.

Henry of Norwich passed over the Channel, took Gravelines by assault, pursued the fugitives to Dunkirk, and entered the town in their rear. He was speedily master of the coast as far as Sluys, and might have struck a decisive blow at the French power in Flanders; but he was not supported, though there was a numerous body of men-at-arms at Calais. The Duke of Lancaster, whose own offers of leading this expedition had been refused by Parliament, and who is said to have seen with chagrin the success of his rival, was accused of preventing the advance of these troops. The bishop, thus thwarted in the midst of his triumphs, turned his arms against Ypres, to oblige the Ghentese; but the siege was prolonged, and the King of France, at the entreaty of the Count of Flanders, was approaching with a fine army. The men of Ghent retired; the bishop made one furious assault, and then withdrew. He threw himself once more into Gravelines, and, after holding it a short time, demolished its fortifications, and returned to England.

That this campaign of the militant bishop did not equal the expectations which his former demonstration had raised, appears partly owing to his own precipitancy, but far more to the machinations of his powerful enemies. Like most unsuccessful commanders, he fell under the censure of the Government. He was accused before Parliament of having taken a bribe of 18,000 francs to betray the expedition, and of having broken his contract with the king by returning before the year of his engagement had expired. Of the former charge he was cleared on full inquiry, but he was condemned on the latter to forfeit all his temporalities till he had paid the full damages to the king. Four of his principal knights were also condemned to pay 20,000 francs into the treasury for having sold stores and provisions to the enemy to that amount.

Not to interrupt the narrative of events which extend over into other years, we may here note one of the most remarkable incidents of this reign. This is the death of Wycliffe, who was struck with apoplexy while performing public service in his parish church, and died on the last day of the year 1384.

John Wycliffe had not only put in active motion the principles of Church reform by his preaching, and his public defences against the attacks of the authorities of the Church, but he had made those principles permanent by the translation of the Bible. Not that Wycliffe's was the first translation of the Scriptures into English; we know, for instance, that Bede translated the Gospel of St. John, and finished the work on his death-bed in 735. But these earlier translations of the Bible had remained in the libraries of monasteries, and, by the little education of the people, and the conservative vigilance of the Church, had been the sole study of a few learned men. Wycliffe, by his position as teacher at Oxford, had excited a wide interest and inquiry about the Scriptures; by his patronage at court, and the persecutions of the prelates, they had been made the subject of a vast curiosity, and this curiosity he had taken care to gratify by multiplying copies through the aid of transcribers, and by the "poor priests," the converts to his doctrines, reading them and recommending them everywhere amongst their hearers. The English Bible was never more to be a rare or merely curious book. It is said that when the good Queen Anne's countrymen who attended her here at the court were expelled by the Lancaster faction, they carried back copies of Wycliffe's Bible and writings, which had been her favourite reading; they thus fell into the hands of Huss and Jerome of Prague, accompanied by the anti-papal doctrines of the great English reformer; and in this manner arose in Bohemia the sect of the Hussites.

The chief value of Wycliffe's work consisted in his correction of abuses. Numbers of his "poor priests," as they were called, traversed the nation, as he had done, in their frieze gowns, and with bare feet, everywhere proclaiming the doctrines of the Gospel, and denouncing the impositions and vices of Popery. They held up the monks and priests of the time to deserved scorn, and the people, feeling the sacred truth, flocked round them, deserting those by whom they had been so long deluded and fleeced.

There can be little doubt that John Ball, the preacher of Wat Tyler's army, was one of these "poor priests" of Wycliffe, for it was only three years before Wycliffe's death that this insurrection occurred, and Wycliffe's apostles had been preaching everywhere amongst the people for years. There is as little doubt that this preaching produced this insurrection, as Luther's produced the "Peasants' War" afterwards in Germany. The effect was perfectly natural that men, who for ages had been trodden down as slaves and beasts of burden, hearing all at once that "God had made of one blood all the nations of the earth," that He "was no respecter of persons," and that they were called upon by Him to do to one another as they would be done by, should review their position, and stand astonished at its vast antithesis to the ordinances of Christianity. That the people rebelled was not their fault, but that of the barons and the Church, which, while professing the Gospel, had ignored every precept of it in regard to the people. Now that the great and eternal principles of political justice as well as saving faith contained in the Gospel were once known, they never could be again taken away; they became the heritage of the people. The Wat Tyler insurrection was put down, but that which produced it could never be put down any more. The powerful eloquence and holy lives of the preachers of Wycliffe were universally confessed. Men of all ranks, from the royal Duke of Lancaster, to the peasant, joined them, and acquired the name of Lollards. It is true that John of Gaunt supported Wycliffe from selfish motives only, and deserted him as soon as he began to attack the doctrine of Transubstantiation. The inhabitants of London were especially warm adherents of the new teaching. John of Northampton, one of the most opulent and distinguished citizens, was a decided Lollard, and during the time of his being mayor, particularly irritated the clergy, who drove a brave trade in pardons and indulgences, by his active reformation of the vices of the people. The Lords Hilton, Latimer, Percy, Berkeley, and Clifton, with many other nobles, knights, and eminent citizens, became the protectors and advocates of scriptural reform.

Richard had now reached the age of nineteen. The ability, address, and bravery which he had displayed at the time of the insurrection raised high hopes in the nation of the success of his future government. Time, however, failed to realise these expectations. Richard was by no means destitute of cleverness, but his mind was rather showy than solid. He had been brought up in his boyhood in the south of France, at the luxurious court of Bordeaux. He had early been imbued with the tastes of Provence—music and poetry—rather than with politics and arms. After his father's death his mother and half-brother had treated him with ruinous personal indulgence, and instilled into his mind the most mischievous ideas of his future greatness and royal authority. There is a striking parallel between his education, his personal character, and his fate, and those of Charles I. Both were fond of literature and the fine arts; both had the strongest domestic attachments, and had been indoctrinated with the most fatal ideas of the royal prerogative. Both were high-spirited, chivalrous, and, necessarily, despotic; they were moulded to despotism by their parents. Both had their favourites—Richard, De Vere and De la Pole; Charles, Strafford and Buckingham. Both, while they were intensely beloved by their own families and immediate associates, lost the affections of their people by utterly despising their rights, and both came to a tragic end.

When the Bishop of Norwich returned from his unfortunate expedition, Lancaster concluded an armistice with France, in which the Scots were included; but, as these reckless neighbours still continued the war, he marched into Scotland in 1384, burnt the huts of which their towns were composed, and—to destroy the retreats into which they always retired on the approach of an English army—he supplied his troops, according to Knighton, with 80,000 axes, with which they cut down the forests, inflicting a most serious injury on the nation. Notwithstanding this service, he found, on his return to London, that the suspicions of his disloyalty were more rife than ever. While the Parliament was sitting at Salisbury, a Carmelite friar, one John Latimer, put into the king's hands the written particulars of a real or pretended conspiracy to place the crown on the head of John of Gaunt. Richard was advised to show this to Lancaster, who swore that it was false, and vowed to do battle with any one who impeached his innocence. He insisted that the friar, who persisted in his story, should be committed to safe custody; and, accordingly, he was consigned to the care of Sir John Holland, the king's half brother, but a secret ally of the Duke of Lancaster, who strangled him in the night, it is said, with his own hands, and had him dragged through the streets in the morning as a traitor.

No sooner did the armistice with France and Scotland expire in May, 1385, than the French sent John of Vienne, formerly Governor of Calais, to Scotland with an aid of 1,000 men-at-arms and 400,000 francs in gold, and armour for the equipment of 1,000 Scottish knights and esquires, to induce them to make an inroad into England. This armament arrived in Scotland in the early summer, but the French knights, according to Froissart, were greatly astonished at the rudeness of the country and the hard living of the people. When they wanted to begin the campaign, they complained that the Scots wanted to be paid for fighting their own battles, and would not budge a foot till the 20,000 livres were distributed amongst them. In short, it did not tend much to the mutual satisfaction of their allies that the gay Frenchmen had come over. At length, the forces being paid, the united army of France and Scotland descended on Northumberland, and took three castles in the marches, but, on the approach of the English, as rapidly retired. John of Vienne was astonished at their retreat, allowing the enemy to pillage their country, but they told him they did not pretend to make resistance to so powerful a force; that all their cattle were driven into the woods and fastnesses; that their houses and chattels were of small value; and that they well knew how to compensate themselves. Accordingly, as Richard advanced into Scotland by Berwick and the east coast, the Scots, accompanied by the French, poured 30,000 men into England by the west, and, ravaging Westmoreland, Cumberland, and Lancashire, collected a splendid booty, and returned well satisfied to their country.

Richard was now, for the first time, at the head of an army against a foreign enemy. He had before only led his forces against his own peasantry. Marching into Scotland without being able to find any enemy, he reduced to ashes Edinburgh, Dunfermline, Perth, and Dundee, and he was about to perpetrate the same rigour on Aberdeen, when the news reached him that the Scots were laying waste Cumberland, and John of Vienne was besieging Carlisle. He then made a rapid counter-march, in order to intercept them; but on the way another of his favourites, Sir Michael de la Pole, infused some fresh suspicions into the king's mind regarding Lancaster, and the following morning Richard angrily announced his intention of returning home. In vain Lancaster protested against it; the king persisted in his intention. He disbanded his army; and, on the other hand, the Scots declaring that they found the heavy French cavalry of no use in their desultory species of warfare, behaved with so much rudeness to them, that they also returned home, much disgusted, says Froissart, "with the country, and the manners of the inhabitants."

In the Parliament which met in November following, Richard confirmed various honours which he conferred during the expedition. He was anxious to allay the jealousies between his relatives and his favourites. He therefore created his uncles, the Earls of Cambridge and Buckingham, Dukes of York and Gloucester, with a new grant of lands of the annual value of £1,000 each. Henry Bolingbroke, the son of Lancaster, and Edward Plantagenet, the son of the Duke of York, he made Earls of Derby and Rutland. But then he proceeded to heap similar honours and emoluments on his favourites. Robert de Vere, a handsome young man of good family, but of dissolute manners, he created Earl of Oxford, with the title of Duke of Ireland—a title before unknown in England; and transferred to him by patent, which was confirmed by Parliament, the entire sovereignty of that island for life. He gave him in marriage his relative, the daughter of Ingelram de Courcy, Earl of Bedford; but De Vere became deeply enamoured of one of the queen's ladies of the bedchamber, a Bohemian, the Landgravine of Luxembourg, and therefore allied to the Imperial family. Not only the king but the queen favoured his suit, and obtained a divorce and dispensation for his fresh marriage from the Pope. This transaction gave deep offence to the English nation, for the rejected wife was the granddaughter of Edward III. and Philippa of Hainault. Her uncles, the Dukes of Gloucester, York, and Lancaster, were still more incensed.

Michael de la Pole, the other chief favourite, was created Earl of Suffolk, with the reversion of the estates of the late earl on the death of his widow and the queen. As Richard had no children, he, at the same time, in order to cut off the hopes of the Duke of Lancaster, named Roger, Earl of March, and grandson of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, his heir to the throne.

The Duke of Lancaster thus, after repeatedly avowed suspicions of his designs on the throne, now so markedly cut off, found it most agreeable to retire awhile from court; and no fairer plan could present itself than that of prosecuting his claims on the crown of Spain, in which his brother, the Earl of Cambridge, had been so unsuccessful. John, the newly-chosen King of Portugal, had sent to invite him to come over and support him against their common enemy, the King of Spain. Nothing could be more agreeable to Lancaster, and Richard was equally glad to have him out of the way. One-half of the year's supply was devoted to the purposes of this expedition. Twenty thousand men were mustered, and before John of Gaunt and Constance, his wife, Princess of Spain, set out, the king presented him with a crown of gold, as confident that he would wear it; and the queen presented one also to the duchess. The fleet sailed from Plymouth in July, 1386, and the duke arriving safely in Portugal, his eldest daughter, Philippa, was married to the king. During the first campaign the duke carried all before him; but the second summer consumed his army by its heat, and compelled him to retire to Guienne. But by successful policy he now managed to become reconciled to the King of Spain, and married his second daughter to the son and heir of that monarch. Thus John of Gaunt, though destined never to wear a crown himself, was the father of two queens. His duchess Constance made over her claims on the Spanish throne to her daughter Catherine, and their descendants reigned over Spain for many generations. For himself, he received 200,000 crowns to defray the expenses of the expedition, and an annuity was settled on him of 100,000 florins, and the same amount on the duchess.

From the Froissart MS. in the British Museum.

Reproduced by AndrÉ & Sleigh, Ld., Bushey, Herts.

TOURNAMENT AT ST. INGLEVERE, NEAR CALAIS.

IN THIS TOURNAMENT THREE FRENCH KNIGHTS, THE CHALLENGERS, HELD THE LISTS FOR THIRTY DAYS AGAINST ALL COMERS FROM ENGLAND AND ELSEWHERE. AMONG THE ENGLISH KNIGHTS WAS SIR JOHN HOLLAND, HALF-BROTHER TO RICHARD II.

While the Duke of Lancaster was absent, the restless Duke of Gloucester became more assuming and imperious towards the king than Lancaster had ever been. He fomented the jealousies of the nobles, insisted on remodelling the government, and reduced the king to a mere automaton. At the same time the French, also taking advantage of the great duke's absence, contemplated a formidable invasion of the island. Their preparations were on the most extensive scale, both in men and ships. The army is said to have exceeded 100,000 men; and their vessels in the port of Sluys, it was vaunted, could, if placed side by side, have bridged the whole Channel. The nobility and gentlemen of France seemed every one burning with desire to avenge the injuries and defeats they had so often suffered from the English. The news of this stupendous armament spread dismay through the country; troops were assembled, beacons erected, and the Earl of Arundel was appointed high admiral, with orders to destroy the ships of the enemy the moment they landed, and leave the inhabitants to lay waste the country before them, and then deal with them at leisure. But the fate of this armada was the same as that which has regularly attended all yet directed against the British isles. It was dispersed by a terrible tempest; the army was disbanded; and the Earl of Arundel, executing his commission with great vigour, took 160 vessels, laden chiefly with wine, relieved the garrison of Brest, and then, proceeding to the port of Sluys, destroyed all the ships there, and laid waste the country round to the distance of ten leagues.

After this brilliant issue of the threatened danger, the nation was all gaiety and rejoicing. But the factious Gloucester resolved that his royal nephew should not rejoice long. He collected his partisans, and determined to drive the king's favourites from office. They contended that the people were so fleeced by the tax-gatherers, that the landowners could not collect their rents, and that the ministers and their officers embezzled the public moneys. The first on whom they meant to open their charge was the chancellor, De la Pole, the new Earl of Suffolk. The chancellor opened the Parliament which met at Westminster, in October, 1386, with a bold announcement; the king, he said, was resolved to punish the French for their menaced invasion, by passing over at the head of a suitable armament, and carrying the war into France. He requested them to take into consideration the necessary supplies for so great a national enterprise. But the Lords and Commons met this by a joint petition for the dismissal of the ministers and members of council, and especially of the chancellor. The king, much enraged, at first contemplated—what was long afterwards so fatally done by Charles I.—seizing the leaders of the opposition, but, finding that he should not be supported in this out of doors, he retired to his palace at Eltham, and, then, giving way, drove to town, dismissed the obnoxious ministers, and made the Bishop of Hereford treasurer. But this concession, so far from appeasing Gloucester and his adherents, only made them feel surer of their real object. They impeached the chancellor, and, though they could prove little against him, they caused him to be imprisoned during the king's pleasure, and fined. So long as the Parliament sat, Suffolk suffered his sentence; but as soon as it was dissolved the king liberated him.

Emboldened by this second success, the opposition proposed to establish a committee, with authority to reform the Government. The king indignantly declared that he would never consent, but would dissolve the Parliament. But again the Commons coolly presented to him the statute by which Edward II. had been deposed, and at this significant hint the king gave way, and signed a commission, appointing a council of fourteen persons—prelates and peers—including the three great officers of state, all of Gloucester's faction, except Neville, Archbishop of York. They were empowered to inquire into everything in the household, the ministry, the courts of law, and the condition of the people. Gloucester was at the head, and the king, now nearly twenty-one years of age, was virtually deposed. The whole sovereign prerogative lay in the council, and for twelve months—the term assigned to this junto—Richard was nothing.

It was not to be expected that a young monarch of Richard's quick feelings could tamely acquiesce in such a tyrannic tutelage as this. His favourites did their part in stimulating him to resistance. At the close of the session of Parliament he entered a protest against this invasion of the royal prerogative, and began to seek the means to break up this irksome circle of control. He sounded the sheriffs of the counties, but they had been appointed by his uncles, and he found them in their interest. He therefore set out on a sort of royal progress, and used every endeavour to make himself popular with his subjects. Wherever he came he marked his arrival by some act of grace. The gentlemen of the county and the burghers of the principal towns were invited to his court, and were received with the utmost affability. This won greatly upon them, and there was a general avowal of a determination to stand by him and the royal authority. He went to York, to Chester, to Shrewsbury, and thence to Nottingham. At the two latter places he held councils of the judges, and took their opinion on the conditions which the Parliament had forced upon him. Here the judges, who in those days were not independent of the Crown as they are at present, proved as subservient to the king as Parliament had shown itself subservient to the aristocratic faction; declared that the commission was wholly subversive of the constitution; that those who introduced the measure, or induced the king to consent to it, were liable to capital punishment; that all who compelled him to observe it, or prevented his exercise of his rights, were traitors; that the king, and not the Lords and Commons, had the power to determine the order in which questions should be debated in Parliament; that it was for the king to dissolve Parliament at pleasure. Still more: that the Lords and Commons had no power to impeach the king's ministers, officers, or justices; that those who introduced and passed the statute of deposition of Edward II. were traitors; and that the judgment against the Earl of Suffolk was unconstitutional and invalid altogether.

This sweeping judgment, which annihilated the power of Parliament, and made the Crown all but independent, was signed and sealed by the judges, in the presence of the Archbishops of York and Dublin, the Bishops of Durham, Chichester, and Bangor, the Duke of Ireland, the Earl of Suffolk, and two other counsellors.

Armed with this potent instrument, Richard prepared to take vengeance on his dictators. He determined to arrest the chief of his opponents, and send them to be judged before the very men who had thus prejudged them. Thomas Usk was appointed sub-sheriff of Middlesex; a bill of indictment was prepared; Sir Nicholas Brember, who had been three times Mayor of London, undertook to influence the city, and even swore in different companies "to stand to the death for the king." The commission was to expire on the 19th of November, and on the 10th Richard entered London amidst the acclamations of the people. The mayor and principal citizens wore the royal livery of white and crimson, and a vast crowd attended him to St. Paul's, and thence to his palace of Westminster.

Everything appeared conspiring to his wishes; he retired to rest elated with his success, and calculating on the defeat of his enemies; but when he awoke in the morning it was to a sad reverse. He learned that a strong force, stated at 40,000 men, had arrived in the vicinity of the city, under the command of the Duke of Gloucester and the Earls of Arundel and Nottingham. During the whole time that he had been making his preparations to seize the members of the council they had been carefully watching and cautiously following him. The very day after the judges had delivered their decision at Nottingham, and bound themselves to keep it profoundly secret, one of them in the other interest, Sir Richard Fulthorpe, had betrayed the whole matter to the Earl of Kent, and through him to the Duke of Gloucester. A royal proclamation was issued, forbidding the citizens to aid or supply with provisions the armed force without: but the confederates, the next day advancing to Hackney, sent in a letter to the mayor and corporation, commanding them, under menace of severe penalties, to give their assistance to the loyal object of delivering the king from the hands of traitors, and requiring an immediate answer. On the 13th the Earls of Derby and Warwick went out and joined them at Waltham Cross, and the members of the commission "appealed," as they termed it, of treason the Archbishop of York, the Duke of Ireland, the Earl of Suffolk, Sir Robert Tresilian, and Sir Nicholas Brember.

This "appeal" they sent to the king by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Lords Cobham, Lovel, and Devereux. Richard was obliged to give way, for he now perceived that, after all, the city was not with him; and on Sunday, the 17th, the appellants marched into London, and, appearing before the king in Westminster Hall, formally preferred the charge of high treason against the aforesaid persons. The accused fled. De la Pole, the Earl of Suffolk, succeeded in reaching France, where he soon after died. De Vere, the Duke of Ireland, hastened to Wales, where the letters of the king overtook him, commanding him to raise the royal standard, and promising to join him on the first opportunity. The duke was encouraged by the adherence of Molyneux, the constable of Chester, who came with a strong body of archers; but Gloucester, who only wanted a plea for deposing his nephew, eagerly seized on this circumstance, and agreed with Arundel, Warwick, and Sir Thomas Mortimer at Huntingdon, to "depose Richard, and take the crown into his own custody." De Vere was rapidly marching towards London, but was met by Gloucester and Lord Derby, Lancaster's son, at Radcot Bridge, in Oxfordshire, and utterly routed. Molyneux was slain, but De Vere made his escape to Ireland, and thence to Holland, where he died about four years afterwards.

The successful appellants returned to London at the head of their 40,000 men, and presented thirty-nine articles of impeachment against the five already named, the Archbishop of York, Suffolk, De Vere, Tresilian the judge, and Brember, Mayor of London. All, except Brember, who was in prison, had fled, and all the judges, except Sir William Skepworth, were arrested as they sat in their courts, and committed to the Tower. The king demanded the opinion of the principal lawyers of the day on the validity of the impeachment, who unanimously declared it to be informal and illegal. But the peers determined to proceed; on which the bishops and abbots all protested against taking any part in judgments of blood, and left the house in a body. The accused were condemned and adjudged to death; but only Sir Nicholas Brember and Tresilian the judge—who was hated by the people for his bloody sentences on those involved in the late insurrection, and who was betrayed in his concealment by a servant—were executed.

Nothing could be more arbitrary than the proceedings of this "Wonderful Parliament," as it was called. Brember, who was a commoner, was adjudged and condemned by the peers, who were certainly not his peers. The Archbishop of York had crossed to Flanders, where he passed the short remainder of his days as a humble parish priest.

The "Wonderful Parliament," or, as others termed it, the "Merciless Parliament," which sat all the spring of 1388, and was dissolved on the 3rd of June, employed itself, at the instigation of the vindictive Gloucester, who had a savage thirst of blood, in imprisoning, condemning, and driving away the king's friends, even to his confessor. The judges who gave the extra-judicial answers to the king at Nottingham were condemned to death; but, at the intercession of the bishops, were banished to Ireland; while Blake, the secretary who drew up those answers, and Usk, who had been made under-sheriff, were put to death. Sir John Beauchamp, Sir James Berners, Sir John Salisbury, and Sir Simon Burley were all executed, Salisbury being drawn and hanged. Gloucester did not suffer the Parliament to dissolve without an order for the expulsion of the Bohemians who attended the queen, or without passing acts to incapacitate the king from reversing the attainders which they had issued. This strange Parliament at once declared that its judgments should never be reversed, nor any of its statutes ever repealed. Yet it declared that it had pronounced things treason which had never been so held before, and therefore no judge should ever make its example a precedent. It gave to the appellants £20,000 in remuneration for their services, and granted to them and their friends a full indemnity, besides a general pardon to the opposite party, with the exception of eighteen persons named.

Richard, stunned, as it were, by this stern and sanguinary demonstration on the part of his great and haughty relatives, remained for about twelve months passive, and in a manner extinguished in his own kingdom. But we may rest satisfied that he never for a moment in his own mind intended that this state of things should last a day longer than he could help, or that they who now carried measures against him with a high hand and a combined power, should escape their due punishment. He felt that the "sons of Zeruiah were too hard for him;" that his arbitrary uncles and cousins had artfully raised the public will against him, and that it was vain to resist. Gloucester had done his bloody work; and it only required time to make the nation feel repugnance to the agency of so much cruelty. His administration did not by its splendour conceal the hideousness of the acts on which his power was based. Arundel, indeed, did some brave deeds at sea; but the only brilliant deed on land was the battle of Otterburn, which has been so celebrated by the minstrels of that day, as may be seen in Percy's "Reliques of English Poetry." It was fought on the 15th of August, 1388, and Douglas, the Scottish chief, was killed; but on the English side Sir Henry Percy—the celebrated Hotspur—and Ralph Percy were taken prisoners, and the English, according to Froissart, were driven from the field; though English writers give a different account—each party, in fact, claiming the victory.

By degrees the terror which Gloucester had inspired began to die away from the minds of men; they began to sympathise with their youthful king, kept in such unworthy subjection, and to offer to him their aid and services. No sooner did Richard feel conscious of this change in the public feeling than he gave one of those proofs of high thought, and bold, prompt action, which, if they had been the results of a steady, energetic temperament, and not mere evanescent flashes, would have made his enemies stoop in awe before him, and his reign fortunate. In a great council held in May, 1389, he suddenly addressed his uncle Gloucester: "How old do you think I am?" "Your highness," replied Gloucester, "is in your twenty-second year." "Then," said the king, "I must surely be old enough to manage my own concerns. I have been longer under the control of guardians than any ward in my dominions. I thank ye, my lords, for your past services, but I require them no longer."

Before the council could recover from its surprise he demanded the seals from the Archbishop of Canterbury, and gave them to William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, and the keys of the exchequer from the Bishop of Hereford, handing them to one of his own friends. Gloucester, after a private interview with his nephew, finding it impossible to move him, retired into the country. Richard retained his uncle, York, and his cousin, Henry of Bolingbroke, in his favour, and entrusted them with the chief administration of affairs.

For about eight years Richard ruled with a moderation and a deference to the rights of Parliament and the people, which won him much popularity. He, on one occasion, voluntarily remitted some subsidies, declaring that he would not call for them till he really needed them. His uncle Lancaster returned from Spain, and having placed his two daughters on the thrones of that country and of Portugal, he appeared satisfied in his ambition, and disposed not only to acquiesce in the sway of his nephew, but also to reconcile him to the offending Gloucester, whom he brought again to court. It was not long, however, before there was great division between the royal brothers; for, Lancaster's wife being dead, he married Catherine Swynford, a daughter of a private gentleman of Hainault, who had been his mistress, and by whom he had several children. His brothers York and Gloucester were highly incensed at this marriage of the great John of Gaunt, regarding the lady of far too inferior birth to enter into their alliance; but Richard not only countenanced his uncle in this honourable proceeding, but passed an act through Parliament to legitimise the children, and created the eldest son Earl of Somerset.

By this rupture between the royal brothers, the power of Richard was left unassailed—which it never was when they were united—and the country enjoyed internal tranquillity. He ceded to his uncle of Lancaster the province of Guienne for life; but, as the inhabitants remonstrated loudly against this act, it was finally revoked with the duke's consent. He concluded a peace with France in 1394, which also included Scotland; Robert II. having died in 1390, and John, his eldest son, now reigning under the title of Robert III.; the Scots entertaining the same prejudice against a king of the name of John as the French and English, each nation remembering with disgust the reign of a King John.

Meantime Richard frequently met his Parliament, and appeared on all occasions anxious to possess its approbation. He even on one occasion asked his officers of state to resign, and place themselves at the bar of Parliament, requesting every one who had cause of complaint to prefer it. Pleased with this condescension, Parliament not only bore willing testimony to the honour of the ministers, but were ready to meet all the king's demands for money. By consent of Parliament, also, he recalled such of the bishops who had been banished to Ireland as now survived; made his confessor a bishop; and, moreover, on hearing of the death of the Duke of Ireland, he restored the earldom of Oxford in favour of his uncle, Sir Aubrey de Vere, and afterwards had the body of the duke brought from Louvain, and re-interred with great state in the church of Colne.

At this time, also, after much dispute with Rome regarding the appointment by the Pope of foreigners to English bishoprics and livings, he settled that question on a better basis than it had yet occupied, passing the last and most comprehensive of the statutes of provisors, by which it is provided that any persons receiving such investment from Rome, or carrying causes there, shall, with all their abettors, suffer forfeiture of all their goods, chattels, and lands, wherever found, and be put out of the king's protection.

These were years in which Richard appeared to realise the early auguries of his reign, and act with such wisdom and moderation as make the latter portion of his days a marvel and a sad mystery. But we believe the mystery will be solved by the fact that he now—that is, in June, 1394—lost his excellent queen, the good Queen Anne. She died at her favourite palace of Shene; and Richard, who had been most ardently attached to her, was so beside himself with grief that, in a state of frenzy, he ordered the palace of Shene to be levelled with the ground; and the rooms where Anne died were actually dismantled.

From all that we learn of Anne it appears very evident that her influence over Richard was of the most beneficial kind, and that the longer she lived the more prudent and popular he became. With her he lost his compass and his guiding star, and wandered off the good way.

In the immediate bitterness of his grief, however, he was advised, in order to divert his sorrow, to make a visit to his Irish dominions. There was certainly confusion enough there to occupy his thoughts. The wars of the last three monarchs, and the troubles of the second Edward, had withdrawn their attention from Ireland, and both the native and the English races there had made great encroachments on the authority of the Government. The revenues had formerly produced a surplus of £30,000; they were not now equal to the necessary expenses of the management of the island. The natives, asserting their ancient territories, were fast enclosing the English in narrower bounds, while the English were at variance amongst themselves. They were divided into two classes—those who had helped to conquer the country, and those who had been recently sent there by the English Government. There were, therefore, English by race merely, and English by birth. The descendants of the original invaders had, in proportion as they were remote from the seat of government, grown independent, and in many cases adopted the language and manners of the natives. Many of these men retained great numbers of armed followers, made inroads on their neighbours, ruled as kings in their own districts, and expelled all thence who would not conform to their will. Such was Thomas Fitzmaurice, who, to secure his goodwill, was created Earl of Desmond, and who yet was rather a terror than a strength to the Government.

These old settlers, the English by race merely, were very jealous of new arrivals, many of them being poor courtiers who were sent there—as they were in later days sent to our colonies—to help themselves to what they could secure, and others banished men. These were supported by the English Government as a counterbalance to the power of the native chiefs, and of the English by race. Edward III. had indeed forbade any office to be held but by Englishmen still connected with England by property or office; but this produced such a ferment among the old Englishry that it was obliged to be abandoned. While these feuds and divisions weakened the English party, the native chiefs pushed on their advances, and the greater part of Ulster was recovered by the O'Neills, much of Connaught was regained by the O'Conors, and the O'Briens made equal conquests in Leinster. To prevent amalgamation of the English chiefs with the native Irish, and thus the strengthening of their formidable native power, Edward III. had passed the famous statute of Kilkenny which made it high treason to marry with the Irish.

It was in the hope that an English nobleman, residing in the country with a permanent right, and with almost regal power, might reduce the island to order, that Richard had made the Earl of Oxford Duke of Ireland, and granted to him and his heirs for ever all the lands which he should conquer from the native Irish, except such as they had retaken from the Crown or from former grantees. The hopes which had been entertained from this scheme were defeated by the king's feud with the barons, and by the attainder and banishment of Oxford.

Richard now set out to reduce the different factions, and restore order himself, at the head of 4,000 men-at-arms and 30,000 archers, and attended by the Duke of Gloucester and the Earls of Rutland and Nottingham. He landed at Waterford in October, 1394, and at the approach of so effective a force the most daring chieftains retired into their bogs and mountains. Such was the vigour with which Richard on this occasion prosecuted his object—no doubt finding a great relief to his mind in action—that very soon the Irish made terms of surrender, and the four principal kings, O'Neill, O'Brien, O'Conor, and McMurrough, came in and attended the king to Dublin, where they were, no doubt, much to the annoyance of their wild Irish habits, obliged to assume the outward smoothness of civilisation, most reluctantly induced to receive the honour of knighthood, to be arrayed in robes of state, and feasted in all decorum at the king's table.

The Irish chieftains, to the number of seventy-five, did homage, and agreed to the payment of a yearly tribute. Richard never on any occasion, not even in the Wat Tyler riots, displayed more energy and tact. He had all the qualities which should distinguish a monarch. He reformed the abuses of the Government, redressed grievances, enforced the laws, removed tyrannical officers, and thus reconciled the minds of the Irish, and re-established the English supremacy.

This good work was interrupted by a violent dispute between the Lollards and the Church at home. The Reformers had acquired much power, and, feeling their influence amongst the people, they prepared a sweeping petition to the Commons, containing many facts which were yet too strong for reception by the Government. They objected to the celibacy of the clergy, and complained that, by accepting offices under Government, and being ministers of state, and even generals, they were attempting to do the impossible thing—namely, to serve God and Mammon. They declared that by teaching transubstantiation they led to idolatry; that through the confessional they acquired a despotism over the people; by authorising war and criminal executions they opposed the law of Christ, which was one of love and mercy; and they even asserted that by licensing men to exercise the trade of goldsmiths and swordsmiths they violated the principles of the Gospel, which were those of simplicity and peace. Though no one was found hardy enough to present the petition abounding with doctrines which, though they had existed in the New Testament for nearly fourteen centuries, were still too new to the public for acceptance, yet the clergy were alarmed at this demonstration, and solicited the protection of the king, who severely reprimanded the leaders of the Lollards, and ordered all teachers of that persuasion to be expelled from the university of Oxford. Good Queen Anne was gone, and a new era, with new influences and fortunes, was at hand.

Richard now astonished the whole country by proposing to marry the eldest daughter of the King of France. The strong antipathy which the long and cruel wars had nourished between the two nations made them already regard each other as natural and hereditary enemies. Both the people of England and France, therefore, were surprised at this proposal, and averse from it. But the people are little consulted in any age in these matters; and the proposal, after some discussion at the French court, was well entertained. At the English court it was far from popular. The princes and barons looked on the French wars as the sources of fresh military glory and promotion. The Duke of Gloucester most of all expressed his opposition to it. He had more reasons than one. The first was, that he had a daughter whom he would fain see married to Richard. By this alliance he could calculate on his descendants succeeding to the throne of England, even if he could not himself usurp it. During the king's life, with his easy and pleasure-loving disposition, he could calculate on engrossing the real power of the State. Not less strange was his second reason. If the king allied himself to France, he would thus greatly strengthen his authority at home, and Gloucester was too far-seeing not to perceive that Richard, who never forgot an injury, would then be in a position to revenge himself on him for his past attempts to usurp the control over his nephew, and especially for the armed conspiracy which had destroyed his favourite ministers, and suspended his prerogative for twelve months. That this marriage was a matter entirely of policy was clear enough. The French princess was a mere child ten years of age. The preliminaries were, however, soon concluded, and the ceremony took place in 1396.

The conduct of Richard after this marriage was such as to lead the people the more sensibly to deplore the death of the good Queen Anne. Instead of the better spirit which had distinguished his latter years, instead of the wise and active conduct which he had displayed in Ireland while under the influence of a salutary sorrow, a light and thoughtless disposition had taken its place, as if a mere girlish wife had brought with her an atmosphere of trifling and frivolity. With the exception of his harsh treatment of the city a few years before, and the deprivation of its charter, which, though soon restored, had left a lively memory of the arbitrary fact, there was not much in Richard's political conduct to complain of. But his personal character was rapidly deteriorating. He lived in a continual course of feasting and dissipation, and thus wasted the funds he had received with the queen, and the resources derived from his people.

Amongst the principal favourites of this time were his half-brother, the murderer, Sir John Holland, who had been on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in penance for his crimes, and now was dignified with the title of the Earl of Huntingdon, as his brother was with that of the Earl of Kent. Through the hands of these men all favours and honours passed, and we cannot suppose that their conversations and counsels were very good for the king. His household was on a most ruinous scale, consisting, it is said, of not less than 10,000 persons, and the riot and follies carried on there excited great disgust.

All these matters were carefully noted by the discontented Duke of Gloucester, still more morose from the king's refusal of his daughter, on the plea of her being too near akin. It was in vain that the king made him rich presents to win his goodwill. He was still sullen, morose, and destitute of all courtesy, returning the attentions of the nobles with abrupt and curt answers, so that they said amongst themselves, if ever Gloucester could stir up a war he would.

At length Richard resolved to strike his long deferred blow. He invited the Earl of Warwick to dinner, and then, the latter being off his guard, he had him arrested at the house of the chancellor, near Temple Bar, and committed to the Tower. The primate was made use of to bring his brother, the Earl of Arundel, to a private interview with the king, who instantly arrested him and sent him to Carisbrooke Castle. But perhaps the most revolting of these insidious modes of arrest was that of the Duke of Gloucester himself. Richard, while intending to sacrifice his uncle's life, did not hesitate to pay him a visit at his castle of Pleshy, in Essex. Here Gloucester came forth with his wife and daughter to meet him, without any suspicion, and, according to the account of the rolls of Parliament, with a dutiful procession. The king caused him to be seized and hurried on board a vessel by the earl marshal, and conveyed to Calais. It is said by contemporary chroniclers that, while this was doing, Richard was conversing in a friendly guise with the duchess. Froissart says Richard was kindly entertained, requested Gloucester to accompany him to London, and had him seized on the way. This does not appear probable if the parliamentary rolls are correct. But in any case the manner of the thing was treacherous and unworthy of a great monarch.

The sudden disappearance of the duke alarmed all his friends and partisans, who believed that he was murdered, and they trembled for their own security. To pacify the public mind, Richard issued a proclamation, stating that these arrests had been made with the full assent of the Dukes of Lancaster and York, and of their sons and all the leading members of the council; that they were made, not on account of the transactions of the tenth and eleventh years of his reign, for which bills of indemnity had been given, but for recent offences; and that no one need be alarmed on account of participation in those past proceedings.

This was to lull into security fresh victims, and to obtain that sanction from Lancaster, York, and their sons, which Richard pretended to have had, and which was not true. These princes were at Nottingham, and Richard determined to retort upon them their conduct towards his favourites. He therefore hastened down thither, and as these noblemen were at dinner he suddenly summoned them to the gate, and compelled them to set their seals to a form of arrest which had been prepared for the purpose. They were made to say, "We appeal Thomas Duke of Gloucester, Richard Earl of Arundel, and Thomas Earl of Warwick, as traitors to your majesty and realm," and to call for trial upon them.

To secure his measures Richard employed every means to impress the Parliament and public with awe. Great preparations were made for the assembling of a Parliament which was to decide the fate of a prince of the blood, and one so powerful and popular, as well as of some of the chief nobles of the realm. It is said that the sheriffs had been tampered with—a most base and unconstitutional act, and which, resorted to in the assembling of this famous Parliament, opened the way for much subsequent corruption of the kind. A wooden shed of large extent was erected near Westminster Hall, for the reception of so numerous an assembly as was summoned to give the fuller sanction to its decrees, and the lords came with such prodigious retinues, no doubt for their own safety, that they not only occupied all the lodgings of London, but of the towns and villages for ten miles round.

The king came to Westminster, attended by 600 men-at-arms, wearing the royal livery of the hart, and 200 archers, raised in Cheshire. On the second day of the session, Sir John Bussy, the Speaker, and a thorough creature of the king, petitioned that the clergy might appoint proxies, the canons forbidding their presence at any trials of blood, and Lord Thomas Percy was appointed their procurator. The Parliament passed whatever Richard was pleased to dictate to it. It annulled the commission of regency and the statute confirming it, passed in the tenth year of his reign. It abrogated all the acts which attainted the king's ministers—though the Parliament which passed them and the people had sworn to maintain them for ever—and declared that they had been extorted by force. It revoked all pardons granted heretofore to Gloucester, Arundel, and Warwick.

This facile assembly first impeached Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, as the aider and abettor of the accused noblemen, for having moved and advised the arrest and execution of Sir Simon Burley and Sir James Berners, contrary to the wishes of the king, and that while chancellor, and bound to support the rights of the Crown. The archbishop rose to defend himself; but Richard, fearful of the effect of his eloquence, desired him to waive awhile his observations, on pretence of requiring more time to consider the matter; but the next day he was declared to be guilty, and banished for life.

The following day, September 21st, the charges were read to the lords against the three nobles. They were that Gloucester and Arundel had compelled the king, under menace of his life, to sign the commission of regency; that at Hornsey Park they had drawn to their party the Earl of Warwick and Sir Thomas Mortimer, and by force had compelled the king to do their will. The Earls of Rutland, Kent, Huntingdon, Somerset, Salisbury, and Nottingham, and the Lords Spenser and Scrope were accused of the same crime; that at Huntingdon they had conspired to depose the king, and shown him the statute of the deposition of Edward II., and had also insisted on the death of Sir Simon Burley, in opposition to the king's will.

The Earl of Arundel pleaded not guilty and former pardons; but he was condemned and executed. Warwick was convicted of high treason; but, on account of his submissive behaviour, his life was spared, and he was banished to the Isle of Man.

On the 24th a mandate was issued by the king and his council in Parliament to the earl marshal to bring his prisoner, the Duke of Gloucester from Calais to the bar of the House. Three days after this an answer was returned by the earl marshal that "he could not produce the said duke before the king and his council in that Parliament, for that, being in his custody in the king's prison at Calais, he there died."

The simple unexplanatory abruptness of this announcement is particularly startling. It impresses the mind with the conviction of foul play, and suggests that the king—not daring to bring to further trial a prince so nearly related to the Crown, and so highly esteemed by the people, and yet resolved not to let him escape—had procured his assassination. Apoplexy and other things were talked of, but there could be but one opinion of his end—murder. How this was effected has never been discovered. When Henry Bolingbroke had usurped Richard's throne, and it was his particular interest to prove Richard a murderer of their common uncle, one John Hall, a servant of the Earl of Nottingham, was brought forward, who swore that to his knowledge the duke was taken from the prison to an inn, called the Prince's Inn, and there smothered between two beds by a servant of the king and another of the Earl of Rutland. Though eight persons were named in the paper as being concerned in the transaction, none of these were ever examined, nor was Hall brought before any judge; but, having made this confession, he was at once beheaded. It appears sufficiently clear, therefore, that this was an invention of Bolingbroke's to blacken the character of Richard. Froissart says he was strangled in prison by four people with towels; but the mode matters little: the fact of Gloucester's murder cannot admit of a doubt, and whatever it was, the Parliament appears not to have troubled itself about it. They declared, both Lords and Commons, that he was a traitor, and confiscated all his property to the Crown. The rest of the nobles and prelates named in the indictment were then conditionally pardoned, except those who took up arms against the king in his eleventh year, including Lord Cobham, who was banished to Jersey for life, and Mortimer, who had fled into the wilds of Ireland, and was outlawed.

What is extraordinary is, that several of the very peers who were engaged in these transactions, now declared treasonable, sat in judgment on their more unlucky accomplices. The Duke of York, the Bishop of Winchester, and Sir Richard Scrope, had been members of Gloucester's commission of regency; and Derby and Nottingham were two of the five who appealed to the favourites of treason. Some of these were not only winked at, but even promoted when the trial was over. Richard, indeed, in Parliament, fully exculpated them, asserting that, though for a time deceived by the pretences of Gloucester, they had abandoned his cause like good and loyal subjects. He then created his cousins, Derby and Rutland, Dukes of Hereford and Albemarle; his two half-brothers, the Earls of Kent and Huntingdon, Dukes of Surrey and Exeter; the Earl of Nottingham, Duke of Norfolk; the Earl of Somerset, Marquis of Dorset; the Lords Despenser, Nevil, Percy, and William Scrope, Earls of Gloucester, Westmoreland, Worcester, and Wiltshire.

On the last day of the session of this servile Parliament the peers took an oath that all the judgments passed in this Parliament should have the full force of statutes for ever; that any one attempting to reverse them should be held to be a traitor; and that the clergy should excommunicate him. The Commons held out their hands in acquiescence with this oath, and Lord Thomas Percy, the proxy of the clergy, swore on their behalf. The Parliament was then prorogued till after the Christmas holidays, when it met at Gloucester.

Perhaps no period of our history exhibits a monarch more reckless of the restraints of the constitution than Richard at this epoch; nor a Parliament more servilely disposed to grovel at his feet, and surrender every valuable right. Before closing its sessions, the Commons not only granted him most liberal supplies, but a tax on wool, wool-fells, and hides, not for the year as previously, but for life, thus rendering him, to a great degree, independent of Parliament; and Richard, again, to provide against any repeal of this munificent grant, published a general pardon, which, however, was to become void the moment any future Parliament attempted to repeal this act.

But this vile Parliament went still further in surrendering the birthrights of the people. It had been customary to appoint a committee of the peers and judges formerly, to remain after the business of the session was completed, to hear and determine on such petitions as had not been already answered. Advantage was now taken to seize on this form of a committee to supersede the general functions of Parliament; and twelve peers and six commoners, not judges or justices, were not only invested with the powers of the ancient committees, but also to "hear, examine, and determine all matters and subjects which had been moved in the presence of the king, with all the dependencies thereof." One half only of these were required to attend, so that to nine people were transferred all the powers and authority of Parliament!

The immediate object of this stretch of parliamentary and, under its guise, of kingly power, was to execute the designs of the monarch which led to his ruin. Richard was of that light and sensitive character, and had been early so imbued with the idea of the divinity that "doth hedge a king," that he was easily led on to the most arbitrary conduct. In the late proceedings against Gloucester and his adherents he had broken unceremoniously through all the restraints of the constitution, and the obsequiousness of Parliament induced him now to imagine that he had placed himself above all law. Parliament had granted him supplies for life, and with the aid of the committee to which Parliament had so tamely resigned its prerogative, "all persons well affected to the king," he could, he imagined, do just as he pleased; and he lost no time in putting this to the proof. He had destroyed Gloucester; he resolved to cut off or remove other overgrown relatives and nobles.

The lively and strong memory which Richard had always shown of past injuries, but never more so than during the late trials, struck terror into the hearts of many who were conscious that they had offended. Amongst these was the Duke of Norfolk. At present he stood apparently high amongst Richard's friends; but he was well aware how slippery was that position, and he was conscious that his reluctance to carry out the bloody proscription against Gloucester would be treasured up in the king's never-failing remembrance for the first tempting occasion. Of the original lords appellant he only and the Duke of Hereford now remained.

Norfolk happening to overtake Hereford, on the road between Brentford and London, the following conversation took place, according to Hereford's statement of it as it still remains on the rolls of Parliament:—

Norfolk. We are on the point of being undone.

Hereford. Why so?

Norfolk. On account of the affair at Radcot Bridge.

Hereford. How can that be, since the king has granted us pardon, and has declared in Parliament that we behaved as good and loyal subjects?

Norfolk. Nevertheless, our fate will be like that of others before us. He will annul that record.

Hereford. It will be marvellous, indeed, if the king, after having said so before the people, should cause it to be annulled.

Norfolk. It is a marvellous and false world that we live in; for I know well that, had it not been for some persons, my lord your father of Lancaster and yourself would have been taken or killed, when you went to Windsor after the Parliament. The Dukes of Albemarle and Exeter, and the Earl of Worcester and I, have pledged ourselves never to assent to the undoing of any lord without just and reasonable cause. But this malicious project belongs to the Duke of Surrey, the Earls of Wiltshire and Salisbury, drawing to themselves the Earl of Gloucester. They have sworn to undo six lords, the Dukes of Lancaster, Hereford, Albemarle, and Exeter, the Marquess of Dorset and myself; and have power to reverse the attainder of Thomas Earl of Lancaster, which would turn to the derision of us and many others.

Hereford. God forbid! It will be a wonder if the king should assent to such designs. He appears to make me good cheer, and has promised to be my good lord. Indeed, he has sworn by St. Edward to be a good lord to me and others.

Norfolk. So he has often sworn to me by God's body, but I do not trust him the more for that. He is attempting to draw the Earl of March into the scheme of the four lords to destroy the others.

Hereford. If that be the case, we can never trust them.

Norfolk. Certainly not. Though they may not accomplish their purpose now, they will contrive to destroy us in our houses ten years hence.

Hereford must have taken the earliest opportunity to communicate this confidential conversation to the king. It showed him that the king was carefully watching those who had formerly appeared as his enemies. He was in haste, therefore, to secure himself by the sacrifice of the friend who had thus put him on his guard. Whatever were the steps he took for this end, he received a summons to attend the king at Haywood, where he was made to pledge himself on his allegiance to lay the whole of the preceding conversation before the council. Hereford took care not to leave the king without obtaining a full pardon for himself, under the Great Seal, for all the treasons, misprisions, and offences that he had ever committed.

Accordingly he appeared in full Parliament, and laid this statement before them; but it contained so much which would naturally incense the king, that he went to Richard the next day, and, throwing himself on his knees before him, once more craved his pardon, declaring that, when he took part formerly in measures against the king, he did not know that he was doing wrong, but that now he knew it, and implored forgiveness for it. All this anxiety showed that he was conscious of having entered into the very conspiracies which he was now endeavouring to throw off upon others.

Richard, with his usual smooth duplicity, once more assured him before the whole Parliament of his entire pardon, and promised him great favour. But Richard had, no doubt, already made up his mind as to what he would do. He had here strong hold on his turbulent and disaffected nobles, and he never let such advantages escape him. The great object, therefore, of obtaining a committee of men devoted to him, in whom were concentrated all the powers of Parliament, was to deal with these two nobles, who were dangerous to the solidity of his throne.

To this convenient committee, this sort of pocket Parliament, Richard referred the decision of the cause between them. Norfolk, aware of danger, had not appeared in his place in Parliament; but he was summoned by proclamation, and, on surrender, was brought before Richard at Oswaldster. There he boldly declared his innocence, and denounced the whole of Hereford's story as false, "the lies of a false traitor."

Richard had them now in his power, and ordered them both into custody. He proceeded to Bristol, where his little pocket Parliament went on exercising all the functions and authority of the real Parliament; and Richard caused them to enact that their statutes were of equal authority with those of a full Parliament, and should take the same effect; that all prelates before taking possession of their sees, all tenants of the Crown before receiving possession of their lands, should take an oath to observe the enactments of this junto as perfectly as those of Parliament itself, and that any person attempting to alter or revoke them should be guilty of treason. No more absolute independence of Parliament was ever assumed in this country. The violations of the constitution for which Charles I. afterwards lost his head were not more outrageous than these.

The controversy between Hereford and Norfolk, it was decreed by this committee, should be referred to a high court of chivalry, which was appointed to take place at Windsor on the 29th of April. As Hereford here persisted in the charge, and Norfolk as stoutly denied it, and as no witnesses could be brought, the court determined that the decision of the question should be made by wager of battle, which was to take place at Coventry on the 16th of September.

There, at the moment that the two antagonists were on the point of running a tilt at each other, the king threw down his warder, and the earl marshal stayed the combat. The king then pronounced sentence of banishment upon them both, which, he informed them, was the judgment of the council. Hereford was exiled for ten years, Norfolk for life. It is clear, from the greater severity of the sentence of Norfolk, that the charges of Hereford had told against him. He was pronounced guilty of having, on his own confession, endeavoured to excite dissensions amongst the great lords, and of having secretly opposed the repeal of the acts of Gloucester's Parliament. Richard took precautions to prevent the malcontents associating abroad so as to plot treason. The Duke of Norfolk was commanded to go on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and after that to reside only in Germany, Hungary, or Bohemia; and neither of the dukes was to hold any communication with the banished Archbishop of Canterbury at any time during their exile.

Hereford, a man of consummate command of his temper, cool, calculating, and as unprincipled as he was ambitious, appeared to submit to this extraordinary, and, by all, unexpected, sentence, with so much humility that he obtained from Richard various benefits which a more openly indignant man would have lost. In the first place, the king, touched by his submission, promised to shorten the term of his exile five years. He acceded to Hereford's request that letters patent should be granted to both the banished lords to appoint attorneys to take possession of any inheritances which might fall to them during their absence, though they could not be there to perform homage or swear fealty. This request has been pronounced by some historians a mysterious one; but there is no mystery about it. John of Gaunt, Hereford's father, was now old and infirm, and not likely to live long. He had so lost all that high and swelling spirit which distinguished him through a long life, that he had consented to sign the royal acts against his own family—that for the attainder of his brother Gloucester, and now for the banishment of his own son. If he died while his son was abroad under sentence of banishment, all his vast estates would pass to the Crown in default of the performance of the necessary feudal conditions of tenure. Hereford, aware of this, endeavoured to guard against it by this royal engagement, and, probably, that his design might not be too obvious, was a party to the extension of the favour to his opponent. We shall presently see that Hereford's precaution did not prevent Richard seizing on Lancaster's estates, as that sagacious nobleman feared; but it gave Hereford a grand plea for his return to vindicate his usurped rights.

The two banished dukes took their departure. Richard, to soften still more the mind of Hereford, sent to him at Calais a present of 1,000 marks. The unfortunate Norfolk, after his pilgrimage, returned, and died of a broken heart at Venice. And we may here notice what became of the exiled Archbishop of Canterbury. After residing some time in France, the Pope appointed him to the see of St. Andrews in Scotland. This step was taken at the request of Richard, who flattered himself that he had thus rendered a troublesome adversary harmless.

Richard now imagined that he had reached the summit of uncontrollable power. With his taxes secured for life, instead of being compelled every year to come to Parliament to solicit their renewal, and to be called to account by the Commons for their expenditure; with his obsequious little pocket Parliament and council ready to decree any measure that he willed, however unjust and unconstitutional; and with a standing body of 10,000 archers, maintained out of those foolishly-conceded life-long supplies, Richard was, in fact, an absolute monarch. Froissart says, no man, however great, dared speak against anything that he did. He had lopped off or driven away the most powerful of his nobles and kinsmen; and he now raised money by forced loans. He compelled the judges to expound the law at his pleasure. He forced the unhappy adherents of Gloucester to purchase and re-purchase charters of pardon; and, to obtain plenty of fines and amercements, he at one stroke outlawed seventeen counties, on the charge of having favoured his enemies at the battle of Radcot Bridge. He could accuse both sides at pleasure of being his enemies; for, while he had secretly commissioned the Duke of Ireland to take up arms, Gloucester and Hereford were ostensibly maintaining the royal cause.

The money thus extorted from his groaning subjects was spent with reckless extravagance. We have already spoken of the prodigal licence and swarming numbers of his court. That of Edward III. had been esteemed very magnificent, but this of Richard far eclipsed it; and the chroniclers describe with wonder the gorgeous furniture and equipages, the feasts and pageants of this court, which had not the martial glory to make it tolerable to the people which Edward's had. It is said that the number of tailors, cloth merchants, cooks, jewellers, and retainers in costly liveries, was something inconceivable.

But, like that of many another thoughtless king, Richard's grandeur was hollow and delusive. It had no basis in the affections of any class of the community. The friends of Gloucester and Hereford, and the other nobles who were banished, were full of violent discontent, and secretly diffused it on every side. The people saw with indignation their hard-earned money wasted on the worst of creatures. Richard had made them his enemies at the very commencement of his reign by his perfidious conduct to them in the Wat Tyler insurrection, and by the cruelty with which he pursued them afterwards. As Shakespeare makes the nobles say:—

There wanted but a match to explode the mine, already laid by his folly and want of real regard to his people, under Richard's feet, and this came in the death of the aged John of Gaunt. He died about three months after the banishment of his son; an event which no doubt hastened his end.

Now was seen the wisdom of Hereford's act in procuring the letters patent for the securing of his inheritance, for the arbitrary rapacity of Richard at once revealed itself, and he declared that Hereford's banishment was tantamount to outlawry, which implied forfeiture of estate; and this dishonest and impolitic judgment a great council which he assembled, including his committee of Parliament, confirmed. It declared the patents granted both to Hereford and Norfolk were utterly illegal and void. Neither Richard nor his council hesitated, when it pleased them, to stultify and declare unlawful their own most solemn acts. In fact, all faith was banished, and government was a farce, to be followed by a tragedy.

Richard seized on the vast estates of the banished Hereford, now Duke of Lancaster, and when Henry Bowet, the duke's attorney, resisted this iniquitous proceeding, he also was arrested and condemned to death as a traitor, but let off with banishment. This most lawless deed appeared to put the climax to the national endurance. The people murmured, the nobles assumed a sullen and brooding aspect, and the whole nation was ripe for revolt.

Henry of Lancaster was not a man to let slip the favourable opportunity. He had always shown outward deference to the people; he waited and watched every movement from Paris, where he resided, and where he had been on the point of strengthening his position by marrying the daughter of the Duke of Berri, when Richard, in alarm, sent over an embassy and defeated it.

Yet at this crisis, when Hereford, newly become Lancaster, was maddened by the seizure of all his demesnes and honours, did Richard venture to leave his kingdom, where he had not one real friend. His cousin and heir, the Earl of March, had been surprised and killed in a skirmish with the Irish. Richard, with his quick, resentful feelings, in his eagerness to revenge his loss, determined at once to go to Ireland. He appointed the Duke of York, his uncle, regent in his absence, attended mass at Windsor, and at the door of the church took wine and spices with his young queen, whom he repeatedly took up in his arms and kissed like a child, as she still was, being only about twelve years of age, saying, "Adieu, madam, adieu, till we meet again."

From Windsor, Richard, accompanied by several noblemen, marched to Bristol, where those circumstances were pressed on his attention which would have made any prudent monarch return with all speed to his capital. Reports of plots and discontents reached him from various quarters. The Londoners, who had always shown the most decided liking for the present Duke of Lancaster, on hearing of Richard's voyage for Ireland, said amongst themselves, "Now goes Richard of Bordeaux to his destruction, as sure as did Edward II., his great-grandfather. Like him, he has listened so long to evil counsellors, that it can be neither concealed nor endured any longer."

There were numbers of officers in his army who were as disaffected, and amongst these were the Lord Percy and his son. The king summoned these noblemen to his presence, but they got away into Scotland, and put themselves under the protection of King Robert. The condition of England at this moment was very miserable. There were general murmurings and divisions in the community. Robbers and robberies abounded, justice was perverted, and the people said it was time there was some remedy. The bishops and nobles got into London for safety, and those who had lost their relatives by the king's exactions rejoiced in the trouble, and wished to see it grow. In their eyes the Duke of Gloucester had been a great and plain-spoken patriot, to whom the king would not listen, and who had lost his life through his honest representations of the condition of the country.

Under such circumstances Richard set sail at Milford Haven, and in two days, on May 31st, 1399, landed at Waterford. There he lost three weeks in waiting for the Duke of Albemarle, who was to have followed him with another force, but who is supposed to have been influenced by the prevailing disaffection. At length Richard marched on towards Kilkenny, and many of the lesser chieftains came humbly, with halters round their necks, suing for pardon. Not so the great chieftain McMurrough. He came to a parley with Scrope, the Earl of Gloucester, mounted on a magnificent grey charger, which had cost him 400 head of cattle, and brandishing a huge spear in his hand. He expressed his willingness to become a nominal vassal of the Crown, but would be free of all compulsion or conditions. Richard refused to treat with so independent an individual, but set a price on his head, and proceeded to Dublin, where he was at length joined by Albemarle, and he then again gave chase to the wild Irish chief. But in the midst of this pursuit he was suddenly arrested by news from England, which reduced all other considerations to nothing.

Lancaster had landed at Ravenspur, in Yorkshire, and was rapidly collecting an army and marching towards London. While the duke was brooding at Paris over the fresh indignity put upon him by Richard, who had sent the Earl of Salisbury to break off the match with Marie, Countess of Eu, daughter of the Duke of Berri, the exiled Archbishop of Canterbury arrived, bringing him the news of Richard's departure for Ireland, and the desire of the people of London for his arrival. To elude the vigilance of the French court, he obtained permission to visit the Duke of Brittany, and he speedily set sail from Vannes for England. Three small vessels carried the whole of his invading army—namely, the archbishop, the son of the late Earl of Arundel, fifteen lancers, and a few servants. But he had full reliance on the spirit which then animated all England. He was quickly joined by the Earls of Westmoreland and Northumberland, to whom he declared, in the White Friars at Doncaster, that he came only to reclaim the honours and estates of his father, which were secured to him by the king himself by his letters patent, and he swore to make no claim upon the crown.

His uncle, the Duke of York, as regent of the kingdom in the royal absence, advanced to St. Albans ostensibly to oppose his progress; but it could not be supposed that he was very hearty in the cause, after having seen one brother murdered by the king, and the only son of the other, the great John of Gaunt, expelled and thwarted by him. The favourites of the king, the Earl of Wiltshire, Bussy, and Green, who were not only members of the infamous council, but had been farmers and exactors of the oppressive taxes, showed a prudent doubt of any sure protection from such a champion as York. They had been appointed to wait on the young queen at Wallingford, but they took flight, leaving her to fate, and fled to Bristol, in expectation of meeting the king. York very soon took the same direction, no doubt in the desire to resign, as soon as possible, his responsibility into the hands of the king, for he felt that there was no reliance on his army.

Thus he left the way open to the capital, and Lancaster advanced along it with equal rapidity and success. On all the estates belonging to his family he was received with rapture, and the people of London came out to meet him, headed by the clergy, with addresses of congratulation and offers of assistance. But he did not make much delay in the metropolis: all was evidently his own there. He therefore made a rapid march after his uncle, to prevent his union with the king's forces, should he arrive, and he came up with him at Berkeley. After a friendly message from Lancaster, York met him in the castle church, and the result of their conference was that York joined his forces to those of Lancaster. Probably he might believe that Lancaster sought only his just demand of the enjoyment of his hereditary estates, which York had already avowed that he would aid him in. But from that moment the cause of Richard was betrayed, and his doom was sealed. York, on his authority as the king's lieutenant, ordered Sir Peter Courtenay, the governor of Bristol Castle, to open its gates; Sir Peter, protesting that he knew no authority but the king's, yet submitted to the commands of York as regent. The next morning, the three late members of the council and farmers of the taxes, the Earl of Wiltshire, Bussy, and Green, were brought out and executed without any trial. The people had clamoured loudly for their blood, and were delighted at their deaths. The Duke of York took up his quarters at Bristol, and Lancaster, who must have had full confidence in the adhesion of his uncle, went on to Chester, where the people were most favourable to the king, in order to secure the city.

Meanwhile Richard, having received this astounding news, prepared to pass over with his army. From this resolution the Duke of Albemarle, who played constantly into the hands of the queen's enemies, used every endeavour to persuade him. At length it was determined that the Earl of Salisbury should sail with his own retainers, only 100 men, and endeavour to raise the inhabitants of Wales, Richard promising to follow in a week.

Salisbury was successful. The men of both Wales and Cheshire flocked to the king's standard, and the earl looked impatiently for the king's arrival. But no Richard appeared; and it was not till nearly three weeks from Salisbury's setting out that Richard came, with the Dukes of Albemarle, Exeter, and Surrey, the Earl of Worcester, the Bishops of London, Lincoln, and Carlisle—plenty of noblemen but hardly any soldiers.

Scarcely had they landed, when the most general disaffection showed itself. The news of the Duke of York having joined Lancaster was fatal; and Richard, looking out of his window on the second morning after his arrival at Milford Haven, saw that his army had vanished. A council was instantly held in the greatest consternation. Some counselled the king to retire to his French provinces; but his evil genius, the Duke of Exeter, the quondam murderer, John Holland, strongly urged him to hasten on to Conway, where the Earl of Salisbury lay. If they could not make a stand there, they could still put out to sea for Guienne. This advice prevailed; but such was the confused state of the royal councils that, instead of advancing there in a small but compact body, the king, disguised as a Franciscan friar, stole out of the camp at midnight, and, accompanied by his two half-brothers, Exeter and Surrey, the Earl of Gloucester, the Bishop of Carlisle, and a few other attendants, made their way towards Conway. As soon as their departure was known, the military chest was plundered, and Albemarle, Worcester, and most of the leaders, hastened to Lancaster, the rest dispersing to their own counties as best they might, insulted and robbed on their way by the Welsh.

Still more overwhelming news met the fugitive king on reaching Conway. Instead of a fine army, there lay Salisbury with only 100 men, and destitute of all provisions. While Richard had delayed his coming, adverse influences had been brought to bear on Salisbury's host; disheartening rumours were circulated amongst the troops, and, in spite of Salisbury's tears and entreaties, they rapidly dispersed.

In this deplorable situation the mind of the king seems to have lost all its wonted courage. He sent his two half-brothers, the Dukes of Surrey and Exeter, to his haughty rival to ask what were his intentions. They could very easily be divined. Richard was wholly in his power, and it was not in the nature of Lancaster to let pass so tempting an opportunity of seizing a crown. While the two emissaries went on their mission, the king and Salisbury examined the castles of Beaumaris and Carnarvon, but, finding only bare walls, they returned dejected to Conway. Meantime Surrey and Exeter were admitted to the presence of Lancaster at Chester, who at once detained them as prisoners. Here was already the traitor Albemarle, who was so gay that he could afford to taunt the fallen kinsmen of the king.

Lancaster having carefully informed himself of the retreat of the king, and that he had a considerable treasure deposited in the strong castle of Holt, immediately despatched a body of troops to capture the money, and another of 400 men-at-arms and 1,000 archers, under the Duke of Northumberland, to secure the king. Northumberland marched into Flint, and thence to Rhuddlan Castle, and about five miles beyond the latter place left his detachment concealed behind a rock. He then rode forward with only four attendants to Conway, where he was readily admitted to the presence of the king, who was in the highest anxiety regarding his brothers and the fate of their mission. The duke replied that his brothers were quite well at Chester, and that he was himself despatched with a letter to his Grace by the Duke of Exeter. In the letter Exeter was instructed to say that Richard might put full confidence in the offers made by Northumberland. These were that the said dukes, Exeter and Surrey, the Earl of Salisbury, the Bishop of Carlisle, and Maudelin, the king's chaplain, should take their trials for having advised the murder of Gloucester; that Lancaster should be made justiciary of the kingdom, as his ancestors had been before him; and, these terms being conceded, the duke would wait on the king at Flint, to implore pardon, and accompany him to London.

Richard, after consulting his friends, consented to the terms, but secretly assured his adherents implicated that he would stand by them steadfastly on their trial, and would take the first opportunity to be avenged on his and their enemies; saying he would flay some of them alive if he could, and that all the gold on earth should not induce him to spare them. He insisted on Northumberland swearing on behalf of Lancaster to the strict observance of the articles, and, "like Judas," says the writer of the account, in the ArchÆologia, which we are following, "he perjured himself on the body of our Lord"—that is he swore on the host.

Northumberland set out, Richard reminding him of his oath, and telling him he relied upon him. He soon followed with a small company of friends and servants. On coming to a turn of the road, Richard exclaimed, "God of Paradise, assist me! I am betrayed! Do you not see pennons and banners in the valley?" Northumberland with eleven others just then came up, and pretended to be ignorant of any armed force near. "Earl of Northumberland!" said Richard, "if I thought you capable of betraying me, it is not too late to return!"

"You cannot return," said Northumberland, seizing Richard's bridle; "I have promised to conduct you to the Duke of Lancaster." A body of lancers and archers came hastening up, and Richard, seeing all hope of escape gone by, exclaimed, "May the God on whom you laid your hand reward you and your accomplices at the last day!"

They reached Flint Castle that evening, where Richard, when left alone with his friends, vented the bitterness of his regret that he had repeatedly spared Lancaster, when he so carefully destroyed other and far less dangerous men. "Fool that I was!" he exclaimed; "thrice did I save the life of this Henry of Lancaster. Once my dear uncle, his father, on whom the Lord have mercy, would have put him to death for his treason and villainy. God of Paradise! I rode all night to save him, and his father delivered him to me to do with him as I pleased. How true is the saying that we have no greater enemy than the man whom we have preserved from the gallows! Another time he drew his sword on me, in the chamber of the queen, on whom God have mercy! He was also the accomplice of the Duke of Gloucester and the Earl of Arundel; he consented to my murder, to that of his father, and of all my council. By St. John, I forgave him all; nor would I believe his father, who more than once pronounced him deserving of death."

The next morning the fallen king, after a sleepless night, ascended the tower of the castle, and looked out anxiously for the approach of Lancaster, who had agreed to meet him there; and anon he saw him coming at the head of 80,000 men. This vast army came winding along the strand to the castle, which it surrounded, and Richard beheld himself a captive in the midst of his own subjects. At this sight, and the reflections it occasioned, the once arbitrary monarch shuddered, and bewailed his fate. He cursed Northumberland in impotent rage, but was soon called to meet Archbishop Arundel, himself a rebel returned, without asking leave, from banishment, the traitor Duke of Albemarle, and the Earl of Worcester. They knelt in pretended homage, and Richard held a long conversation with Arundel. When they were gone, Richard again ascended to the tower, gazed on the great host of his revolted subjects, and feeling a dire foreboding of his fate, said, "Good Lord God! I commend myself into Thy holy keeping, and cry Thee mercy that Thou wouldst pardon all my sins. If they put me to death, I will take it patiently, as Thou didst for us all."

At dinner there were only his few remaining adherents, and since they were all companions in misfortune, Richard would insist on their sitting down with him. While at their meal persons unknown came into the hall, and insulted and menaced him; and no sooner did he rise than he was summoned into the court to meet Lancaster.

The duke advanced to the king, clad in complete armour, but without helmet, and, bending his knee, did obeisance with his cap in his hand. "Fair cousin of Lancaster," said Richard, uncovering, "you are right welcome." "My lord," replied Lancaster, "I am come somewhat before my time, but I will show you the reason. Your people complain that for the space of twenty or two-and-twenty years you have ruled them rigorously; but, if it please God, I will help you to rule them better." The humbled monarch replied, "Fair cousin, since it pleaseth you, it pleaseth us well."

The king's horses were ordered, and they set forward at once for Chester, amid a flourish of trumpets, Richard and the Earl of Salisbury riding on tired and wretched animals. The duke came behind. At Chester, after issuing writs in the king's name for a meeting of Parliament, Lancaster dismissed a great part of his army, and set out for London. At Lichfield Richard slipped unperceived out of his window, but was retaken in the court, and was ever afterwards strictly guarded. On arriving at London, Richard was sent to Westminster, and thence to the Tower, while the hypocritical Lancaster went in solemn state to St. Paul's, and pretended to weep awhile at the tomb of his father, while in his heart he was congratulating himself on his successful treason. We have two conflicting statements of the manner of Richard's entrance into London. Froissart says that he was conducted secretly to the Tower for fear of the Londoners, who had a great hatred of him; but other accounts accord with that of Shakespeare, copied, no doubt, from the chronicles, which make Lancaster conduct him thither in triumph.

Parliament met on the 29th of September to consider of the course to be adopted: in other words, to carry out the will of Lancaster, and depose Richard. It was clear that Richard had entirely lost the affections of the people. They would never again receive him. His utter want of regard for them; his continual exactions to waste their means on unworthy favourites; the contempt he had all along expressed for the people, and his severe treatment of them; his breach of all his oaths as a king; his attempts to make himself absolute, and to rule by a junto, had made him disliked and despised through the whole realm, but especially in the metropolis. It is equally true that Lancaster was their favourite, and that they would willingly accept him as king; and had he been content to accept the crown as the popular gift, he would have had the highest possible title to it, far beyond any hereditary plea. But Lancaster disdained that only valid ground of right, and determined to claim it by descent. Than this there could be nothing more palpably untenable, for the Earl of March, the grandson of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, the third son of Edward III., was the true heir.

As soon as Lancaster allowed it to be known that he did not really content himself with being the reformer of the State, but aspired to the crown, some of his chief supporters fell away; and amongst them the Earl of Northumberland, who had been made to assure Richard of his just treatment. This was a main reason for Lancaster dismissing a large part of his army at Chester, including the followers of Northumberland.

The remaining transactions of this reign come to us chiefly through the rolls of Parliament, penned under the direct influence of Lancaster, and, therefore, are probably coloured as much as possible to favour his own views, and cover his notorious usurpation. A deputation of prelates, barons, knights, and lawyers waited on Richard in the Tower, and received from him his resignation, which he was then said to have promised at Conway, but which we know was not the fact. He was also in that document, signed by him and presented by the deputies to Parliament, made to name, by his own preference, Lancaster as his successor. Of course, all this he was obliged to say.

The next day this act of resignation was read in full Parliament, and there unanimously accepted, and received by the people with shouts of applause. If Richard had thus voluntarily abdicated, there could be no necessity for what immediately followed—a series of thirty-three articles of impeachment in order to his deposition. The chief charges contained in these were his violation of his coronation oath, his murder of the Duke of Gloucester, and his despotic and unconstitutional conduct. Of course, there was no opposition; but Merks, the Bishop of Carlisle, who had remained faithful to Richard, and continued with him to the last, stood boldly forward, claimed for him the right to be confronted with his accusers, and urged that Parliament should have the opportunity of judging whether his resignation were voluntary or not. Nothing could be more reasonable, but nothing more inconvenient where all was settled beforehand to one end; and the only answer which the high-minded prelate received was his immediate arrest by Lancaster, and consignment to the Abbey of St. Albans.

Richard was then formally deposed, with an acrimony of accusation which, to say the least, if his resignation had been, as asserted, voluntary in favour of Lancaster, was as ungracious as it was uncalled for. The chief justice, Sir William Thirning, was deputed to notify this decision of Parliament to the captive.

Lancaster, who had taken his seat during these proceedings near the throne, then rising, and crossing himself on the forehead and breast, pronounced the following words:—"In the name of Fadher, Son, and Holy Ghost, I, Henry of Lancaster, challenge this rewme of Ynglonde and the crowne, with all the members and appurtenances, als I that am descendit be ryght lyne of the blode, cumyng fra the gude lord King Henry Thirde, and throghe that ryght that God of His grace has sent me, with help of my kyn and of my frendes to recover it; the whiche rewme was in poynt to be ondone for defaut of governance, and undoying of the gude lawes."

This speech was one of those which have a sound of reason to the ear, but will not bear a moment's examination. True, he was descended from Henry III., like Edward III. and Richard, but not in the true line—that being, as we have stated, the line of Lionel, and Henry being now not only the usurper of Richard's throne, but of the Earl of March's reversion.

But the pretence was enough, and more than enough, for all who heard it. They knew it was empty sound, and the real reasons for assent lay in Lancaster's will, backed by a powerful army and a willing people.

Henry, as proof of Richard's having resigned his rights into his hands, produced the ring and seal. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Arundel, his late fellow-exile, now took him by the hand, and led him to the throne. He knelt for a short time on the steps in prayer, or affected prayer; for Lancaster, amid all his grasping at his neighbour's goods, was especially careful to do outward homage to the great Being who had said, "Thou shalt not covet." On rising, the two archbishops placed him on the throne; and, as soon as the acclamations ceased, the primate made a short sermon, choosing his text, with the finished tact of a priestly courtier, from 1 Samuel ix. 17:—"Behold the man whom I spake to thee of! this same shall reign over my people;" and the sermon was worthy of the text.

Thus ended the reign of Richard II.; and, as with it ended also the authority of Parliament and the ministers of the Crown, Lancaster immediately summoned the Parliament to meet again in six days, appointed new officers, and, having received their oaths, retired to the royal palace.

The history of the progress of Parliamentary power in this reign is most important. We find Parliament at various times asserting its authority, calling on the Crown to reform its household, its courts of law, to restrain its expenditure, and dismiss its servants. By its means the Duke of Gloucester obtained his commission to regulate the administration, and to impeach the prime minister, De la Pole, the Earl of Suffolk; and though, during the latter years of his reign, Parliament, as in our time, became corrupt and subservient, yet the people, assuming the exercise of those powers which their delegates had basely surrendered, punished and deposed the monarch whom they could not reform.

Richard was dethroned in the twenty-third year of his reign, and the thirty-fourth of his age. We may anticipate the events related at greater length in subsequent pages (see Chapter XXXIV.) to briefly sketch the fate of the deposed king. Henry IV. submitted to the lords the question what should be done with the late monarch, whose life, he declared, he was at all events resolved to preserve. The lords recommended perpetual confinement in some castle, where none of his former adherents could obtain access to him. This advice was acted upon, and probably was first suggested by Henry. Richard disappeared, and no one knew anything of his place of detention. The King of France threatened war on behalf of the rights of his daughter, Isabella, and his son-in-law, the deposed king. To avert this storm Henry proposed to make various alliances between the two royal families, including the marriage of the Prince of Wales to a daughter of Charles. But the King of France rejected the proposal, declaring that he knew no King of England but Richard. The French king, however, received intelligence that Richard was dead, and therefore he avowedly ceased to prosecute his claims, but confined himself to those of his daughter, demanding that she should be restored to him, with her jewels and her dowry, according to the marriage settlement. Charles afterwards consented to receive her with her jewels only, counter claims being set up against the dowry.

From the moment, however, that the public statement of Richard's death was made by the King of France, the nation became inquisitive, and it was not long before the dead body of the deposed monarch was brought up from Pontefract Castle, and shown publicly in St. Paul's for two days, where 20,000 people are said to have gone to see it. Only the face was uncovered, and that was wonderfully emaciated. Various were the rumours of the mode of his death on all these occasions, but, as in the case of Richard's victim, the Duke of Gloucester, nothing certain ever transpired. One story was that Sir Piers Exton, with seven other assassins, entered his cell to despatch him, when Richard, aware of their purpose, snatched an axe from one of them, and felled him and several of his fellows to the earth; but that Exton, getting behind him, prostrated him with one blow, and then slew him. Another story was that he starved himself to death; and there were not wanting rumours that he had escaped, and lived many years in the guise of an ordinary man. One thing is quite certain; that the so-called Richard, who, as we shall see, was a considerable source of anxiety to the new king, can have been nothing but an arrant impostor. But Henry of Lancaster may be safely trusted to secure his dangerous captive. The features of Richard were too well known to thousands in London to be mistaken for those of the priest Maudelin, whose body, it was pretended, had been substituted for Richard's. There can be no doubt but that he died a secret and violent death; the mode of that death must for ever remain a mystery. But the evidence would seem to incline to the conclusion that he was starved to death by his keepers.