DEPOSITION OF RICHARD II. THE HOUSE OF LANCASTER.

England did not long maintain herself in the dominant position she then occupied; the plan of extending her rule into Spain proved ruinous to the Prince of Wales. Not merely was his protÉgÉ overpowered by the French 'Free Companies,' which had gathered round his opponent: a Castilian war-fleet succeeded in destroying the English one in sight of the harbour of Rochelle. On this, their natural inclination towards the King of France awoke in the nobles and towns of South France; without great battles, merely by the revolt of vassals tired of his rule, Edward III again lost all the territories conquered with such great glory, except a few coast towns. Then a gloom settled down around the aged conqueror. He saw his eldest son, who, though obliged to quit France, in England enjoyed the fullest confidence and had every prospect of a great future, sicken away and die. And he too experienced, what befalls so many others, that misfortune abroad raised him up opponents at home. In the increasing weakness of old age, which gave rise to many well-grounded grievances, he could not maintain the independence of the royal power, with the re-establishment of which he had begun his reign. He was forced to receive into his Council men whom he did not like. He was still able to effect thus much, that the succession to the kingdom came to the son of the Prince of Wales, Richard II. But would he, a boy of eleven, be able to take the helm of the proud ship? Men saw factions arise that grouped themselves round the King's uncles, who were not fully disposed to defend his authority.

The great question for English history now was, whether the Parliamentary constitution, whilst it limited the King's prerogative, would also give him security. For the Commons had been at last admitted into the King's Council chiefly in order that they might withstand the violence of the factions. The situation however was not without its complications, for with the political movement one of yet wider aim was connected.

When the kingdom was at the very height of its power there arose in a college at Oxford the man who began that contest against the Papal supremacy which has never since ceased. John Wiclif attached himself first of all to the political movements of his time. One of his earliest writings was directed against the feudal supremacy of the Popes over England. He supported the Parliament's complaints of Romish Provisions and exactions of money, with great learning and at great length. Had his activity confined itself to these subjects, he would be hardly more remembered than perhaps Marsilius of Padua. What gave him quite a special significance was the fact that he brought into clear view the contradiction between the ruling form of the Church and the original documents of the Faith. From the claim of the Popes to be Christ's representatives, he drew the conclusion that they ought also to observe the Gospel which comes from the God-Man, follow His example, and give up their worldly power.[56] The leading Church dogma, that most closely connected with the hierarchic system, the dogma of Transubstantiation, he attacked as being one which equally contradicted Scripture and Reason. He urges his proofs with the acuteness of a skilful Schoolman, but throughout he shows a deep inner religious feeling. We may distinguish in him two separate tendencies. His appeal to Scripture, his attempt to make it accessible to the people, his treatment of dogmatic and religious questions which he will allow to be decided only by Revelation,—all this makes him an evangelic man, one of the chief forerunners of the German Reformation. But, as he himself felt, his strength lay rather in destruction than in construction. In asserting the doctrine that the title to office depends for its validity on personal worth, that even the rule of temporal lords rests on the favour in which they stand with God, and in raising subjects to be the judges over their oppressive masters, he entered on a path like that which the Taborites and the leaders of the peasants in Germany afterwards took.[57]

And these were precisely the doctrines for which his scholars, who traversed the land to make them known, found a well prepared soil in the people of England. How could the rise of popular elements fail to call forth a kindred effort also among the lower classes? The belief arose that Nature intended all men to be equal. The country people spoke of their primitive rights, traces of which were found in the memorials of the Conqueror's times, and which had then been taken from them. When now, instead of seeing these respected, they were subjected to new impositions, and this with harshness and insolence, they rose in open revolt. So overpowering was the attack which they directed against the capital and the King's palace, that Richard II found himself forced to grant them a charter which secured them personal freedom. Had they contented themselves with this, they might have done best for themselves and perhaps for the crown, but when they demanded yet further and more extreme concessions, they roused against themselves the whole power of the organised State, for which they were as yet no match. The Mayor of London himself struck down with his dagger the leader of the bands, Wat Tyler, because he seemed to threaten the King; the Bishop of Norwich was not hindered by his spiritual character from levelling his lance against the insurgents;[58] after which he accompanied the leaders, who were taken and condemned to death, to the scaffold, with words of comfort; in other places the lay nobles did their best. When therefore in the next Parliament the King brought forward the proposal to declare the serfs free by a united resolution,—for the previous charter that had been wrung from him was considered invalid,—both Lords and Commons rejected it, as tending to disinherit them and prove pernicious to the kingdom.

It is not to be supposed that a movement like this, which the lower class of citizens in the towns had joined, just as in the German peasant war, and which was mainly directed against the landed gentry, could be stifled by one defeat: it continued to ferment uninterruptedly in men's hearts.

Still less did the condemnation passed by Convocation on the deviations from the teaching of the Church effect their suppression. On the basis of Wiclif's doctrines grew up the sect of the Lollards, which condemned the worship of images, pilgrimages, and other external church ceremonies, designated the union of judicial authority with spiritual office as unnatural—'hermaphroditism'—rejected excommunication with abhorrence, and made secret and systematic war against the whole Church establishment.

But further besides these feuds there was one within the State system itself which now became most conspicuous.

In the midst of the general ferment how necessary had a strong and resolute hand become! But Richard's government had shown itself somewhat weak; by many it was suspected of having meant to turn the disturbances to its own advantage. The commons, who mainly represented the lower gentry and the upper citizens, abandoned him, and attached themselves to the nobles, just as these revived their old jealousy against the crown. For the almost inevitable result of success in suppressing a popular agitation is to heighten the self-confidence of an aristocracy. Impatient at being excluded from all share in the government, and strengthened in his ambition by the military disasters of the last years, the youngest of Richard's uncles, Thomas of Gloucester, put himself at the head of the grandees, whose plans the commons, instead of opposing, now on the contrary adopted as their own. The great questions arose, which have so often since then convulsed the European world, as to the relation of a Parliamentary assembly to the Monarchy, and their respective rights. The first demand of the English Parliament was that the ministers of State should be named by it, or at least should be responsible to it. Much as this demand itself implies, yet even more extensive views were behind. The Peers told the King plainly that if he would not rule according to the common law and with their advice, it was competent for them to depose him, with consent of the people, and to raise another of the royal house to the throne;[59] they threatened him openly with the fate of Edward II.

Richard could do nothing but submit. Eleven lords were appointed to restore order in the country; Richard had to swear to carry out all they should ordain (November 1386). There remained but one way by which to oppose this open violence: the King collected the chief judges at Nottingham, and laid the question before them, whether the Commission now forced upon him did not contravene the royal power and his prerogative. The judges were far from so interpreting the Constitution of England as to allow that the King is unconditionally bound by the commands of Parliament. They affirmed under their hand and seal that the appointment of that Commission against the King's will contravened his legal prerogative; those by whom he had been forced to accept it, and who had revived the recollection of the statute against Edward II, they declared to be guilty of high treason. But Parliament itself saw in this sentence not a judgment but an intolerable outrage. At its next sitting it summoned the judges before its tribunal, and in its turn declared them to be themselves guilty of high treason. Chief Justice Tresilian died a shameful death at Tyburn. The King lived to find yet harsher laws laid upon him: his uncle Gloucester was more powerful than he was himself.

He was not however disposed to bear this yoke for ever. He first freed himself from the war with France, which tied his hands; by his marriage with Charles VI's young daughter he sought to win that king over as an ally on his own side; at home too he gained himself friends; when all was prepared, he struck a sudden blow (July 1397), which no one would have expected from him. He removed his leading opponents (above all his uncle Gloucester, and Arundel Archbishop of Canterbury), banished them or threw them into prison: then he succeeded in getting together a Parliament in which his partisans had the upper hand. It moreover completely adopted the ideas of the judges as to the Constitution; it revoked the statutes which had been forced on the King,[60] and gave effect to the sentence of Nottingham. By making the King a very considerable grant for his lifetime, it freed him from the necessity of summoning it anew; he rose at once to a high pitch of self-confidence: he was believed to have said that the laws of England consisted in his word of mouth.

In England, just as in France at the same epoch, political opinions and parties ebbed and flowed in ceaseless antagonism. Richard's success was only momentary. He too, like so many of his ancestors, had incurred a grievous suspicion; the crime laid to his charge was that his uncle, who died in prison, had been murdered there by his command. Besides his absolute rule was not free from arbitrary acts of many kinds; among the great nobles each trembled for his own safety; the clergy, never on good terms with Richard, were impatient at being deprived of their Primate, who was to them 'the tower in the protecting bulwark of the Church.' In the capital too men were against a rule which seemed to put an end to popular influence; it needed only the return of an exile, the young Henry of Lancaster (whom the King would not allow to take possession of his inheritance by deputy, and who in conformity with the feeling of the time broke his ban to do himself right); all men then deserted the King; the nobles could now think of carrying out the threat which they had once hurled against him. Richard was compelled to call a Parliament, and at the moment it met to pronounce his own abdication. The Parliament was not contented with accepting this; it wished to put an end to all doubt for the future, and to establish its own right for ever.

A long list of articles was drawn up, from which it was concluded that the King had broken his coronation oath and forfeited his crown; the assembled Estates, when severally and conjointly consulted, held them sufficient to justify them in proceeding to the King's deposition. They named Proctors, two for the clergy, two for the high nobility—one for the earls and dukes, the other for the barons and bannerets, two for the knights and commons—one for the Northern, the other for the Southern counties. They sat as a court of justice before the vacant throne, with the Chief Justice in their midst: then the first spiritual commissioner, the Bishop of S. Asaph, rose, and in the place and name and under the authority of the Estates of the realm announced the sentence of deposition against the late King, and forbade all men to receive any further commands from him. Some opposition was raised; it is said that the Bishop of Carlisle very expressly denied the right of subjects to sit in judgment on their hereditary sovereign;[61] but how could this have had any effect against the Parliament's claim which had been formulated so long?

As the crown was now regarded as vacant, Henry of Lancaster arose,—in the name of God, as he said, whilst he made the sign of the cross on his forehead and breast,—to claim it for himself, in virtue of his birth and the right which accrued to him through God and the help of his friends. It was not properly speaking an election that now took place: the spiritual and lay lords, as well as the other members of the Parliament, were asked what their opinion of his claim was: the answer of all was that the Duke should be their King. When, conducted by the two archbishops, he ascended the vacant throne, he was greeted with the joyous acclaim of those assembled. The Archbishop of Canterbury made a speech full of unction, the drift of which was, that henceforth it would not be a child, such as the late sovereign had been, self-willed and void of understanding, but a Man that would rule over them, in the full maturity of his understanding, and resolved to do not so much his own will as the will of God.[62]

Thus did the spiritual and lay nobility, in and with the Parliament, make good their claim to dispose of the crown. They went to work against Richard II with less reserve than against Edward II. In the latter case the Queen had taken part in the movement; they had set the son in his father's stead. But this time they did not wait for the actual consummation of the King's marriage; they raised a prince to the throne who had openly opposed him in the field, and was not even the next in succession. For there were still the descendants of an elder brother left, who according to English usage had a prior right. The Parliament held itself competent to settle on its own authority even the succession to the crown. It enacted that it should belong to the King's eldest son, and after him to his male issue, and on their failure to his brothers and their issue. The proposal formally to exclude succession in the female line did not pass; but for a long while to come the actual practice had that effect.

Besides the motives involved in the extension of the Power of the Estates in and for itself there was yet another reason for such a proceeding. And this arose out of the growth, and increasing urgency, of the religious divisions. The Lollards preached, and taught in schools, according to their views: in the year 1396 in a petition to Parliament they traced all the moral evils and defects of the world to the fact that the clergy were endowed with worldly goods, and showed the advantage which would arise from the application of these to the service of the state and the prosecution of war.[63] They seem to have flattered themselves that by this they would win over the lay lords, but they were completely mistaken. For these remarked on the contrary that their own property had no better legal foundation than that of the clergy,[64] and only attached themselves to the rights of the Church all the more zealously.

That which would have been impossible under Richard II's vacillating government, the first Lancaster now undertook: in full agreement with the Estates he a few days after his accession announced to Convocation that he purposed to destroy heretics and heresies to the best of his power.[65] In the next Parliament a statute was drawn up in which relapsed heretics were condemned to the flames. And still more remarkable than this mode of punishment, which was that of the Church-law, is the regulation of the procedure in this statute. In former times the sentence had been pronounced by the archbishop and the collective clergy of the province, and the King's consent had to be asked before it was executed. The decision was now committed to the bishop and his commissary, and the sheriff was instructed to inflict the punishment without further appeal, and to commit the guilty to the fire on the high grounds in the country, that terror might strike all the bystanders. It is clear how much the power of the bishops was thus extended. Soon after, on the proposal of the lay lords, at whose head the Prince of Wales is named, a further statute passed, in which to spread the rumour that King Richard was yet alive, and to teach that the prelates ought to be deprived of their worldly goods, are treated as offences of equal magnitude and threatened with a similar punishment; the object being alike in both,—to raise a tumult. And in fact, when Henry V himself had ascended the throne, an outbreak did occur, in which these causes co-operated. The Lollards were strengthened in their resistance to the government of the house of Lancaster by the rumour that their rightful King was yet alive. Henry V was obliged to crush them in open battle, and then force them to remain quiet by a new statute, which enacted the confiscation of their goods as well.[66] His alliance and friendship with the Emperor Sigismund was based on the fact, that he regarded the Hussites as only the successors of the Lollards.

This orthodox tendency was now moreover combined with a strict Parliamentary government. Under the Lancasters there is no complaint as to illegal taxes; they allowed the moneys voted by the Parliament to be paid over to treasurers named by itself and accountable to it; that which earlier Kings had always rejected as an affront, the claim of Parliament to exercise a sort of supervision over the King's household, the Lancasters admitted; the royal officers were bound by oath to observe the statutes and the common law; the prerogative, hitherto exercised by the Kings, of softening the severity of the statutes by proclamations contravening their purpose was expressly abolished.

The Lancasters owed their rise to their alliance with the clergy and the Parliament: a fact which determined the character and manner of their government. The most manifold results might be expected, even beyond the borders of England, from their having by this very alliance won for themselves a great European position.

Nowhere was greater interest taken in Richard's fate than at the French court. Louis Duke of Orleans, whose voice was generally decisive there, once challenged the first Lancaster to a duel, and when he refused it pressed him hard with war. That Owen Glendower could once more maintain himself as Prince in Wales was entirely due to his French auxiliaries. That we find Henry IV more secure of his throne in his later years than in his earlier is a phenomenon the explanation of which we seek in vain in English affairs alone: it results from the fact that his powerful foe, Louis of Orleans, was murdered in the year 1407 at the instigation of John Duke of Burgundy, and that then the quarrel of the two parties, which divided France, burst out with increased violence, and remained long undecided. From the French there was no longer anything to fear: they emulously sought the alliance of the highest power in England; there even arose circumstances under which the Lancasters could think of renewing the claims of Edward III, from whom they too were descended.

At the time that Henry V ascended the English throne, the Orleanists had again gained the preponderance in France: they unfurled the Oriflamme against the Duke of Burgundy, who was now in fact hard pressed. Henry negociated with them both. But while the Orleanists made difficulties about granting him the independent possession of the old English provinces, Burgundy declared himself ready to acknowledge him as King.[67] The common interests moreover of home politics allied him with this house.

Henry could reckon on the sympathies of a part of the population of France, when he led the power of England across the sea. A successful battle in which he destroyed the flower of the French nobility gave him an undoubted superiority. The vengeance which the Orleanists wreaked even under these circumstances on the Duke of Burgundy, who was now murdered in his turn, brought the Burgundian party over completely to his side, together with the greater part of the nation. Things went so far that Charles VI of France decided to marry his daughter to the victorious Lancaster and to acknowledge him, as his heir after his death, as his representative during his life.

It was a very extraordinary position which Henry V now occupied. The two great kingdoms, each of which by itself has earlier or later claimed to sway the world, were (without being fused into one) to remain united for ever under him and his successors. Philip the Good of Burgundy was bound to him by ties of blood and by hostility to a common foe: as heir of France Henry sat in the Parliament by which the murderers of the last duke, who were also the chief opponents of the new state of things, were prosecuted. Another promising connexion was opened to him by the marriage of the youngest of his brothers with Jaqueline of Holland and Hainault, who possessed still more extensive hereditary claims. Henry recommended the eldest to Queen Johanna of Naples to be adopted as her son and heir. The King of Castile and the heir of Portugal were descended from his father's sisters. The pedigrees of Southern and Western Europe alike met in the house of Lancaster, the head of which thus seemed to be the common head of all.

In England Henry did not neglect to guard the rights of the National Church; but at the same time no one exerted himself more energetically to close the schism: the solemn condemnation of Wiclif's doctrines by the General Council of Constance served to vouch for his attitude in religious matters: the English Church obtained in it a place among the great National Churches.

Henry V found himself in the advantageous position of a potentate raised to power by a usurpation for which he was not however personally responsible. He could spare and reinstate Richard II's memory, as much as in him lay, though he owed the crown to his overthrow. That he furthered and advanced also in France the municipal and parliamentary interests, which were his mainstay in England, procured him the obedience which was there paid him, and a European influence. In his moral character Henry ranks above most of the Plantagenets. He had no favourites and let no unjust acts be imputed to him. He was stern towards the great and careful for the common people; at his first word men could tell what they had to expect from him. The French were frightened at the keenness of his expression, but they reverenced his high spirit, his bravery and truthfulness. 'He transacts all his affairs himself; he considers them well before he undertakes them; he never does anything fruitlessly. He is free from excesses, and truthful: he never makes himself too familiar. On his face are visible dignity and supreme power.'[68] He possessed in full measure the bold impulses of his ancestors, their attention to the general affairs of Western Christendom. In the war with the Lollards he was once wounded; that he recovered from his wound was designated as the work of divine Providence, which had destined him to be the conqueror of the Holy Land. He informed himself about its state as it was then constituted under the Mameluke rule: a Chronicle of Jerusalem and a History of Godfrey of Bouillon were two of the books he loved most to read. And without doubt such an undertaking would have been the true means, if any such means were possible, of uniting more closely, by common undertakings successes and interests, the realms already bound together under one sceptre. The Ottomans had not yet extended themselves in the East with their full force: something might yet have been effected there; for the King of France and England, who was yet young in years, a great future seemed to be at hand.

Sometimes it seems as though fortune were specially making a mock of man's frailty. In this fulness of power and of expectations, Henry V was attacked by a disease which men did not yet know how to cure and to which he succumbed. His heir was a boy, nine months old.

Of the two surviving brothers of the deceased King, the younger ruled England under the already established predominance of the Estates of the Realm, while the elder governed France with an increased participation on the part of the Estates: their efforts could only be directed towards preserving these kingdoms for their nephew Henry VI. We might almost wonder that this succeeded so well for a time: in the long run it was impossible. The feeling of French nationality, which had already met the victor himself with secret warnings, found its most wonderful expression in the Maid who revived in the French their old attachment to their native King and his divine right; the English, when she fell into their hands, with ungenerous hate inflicted on her the punishment of the Lollards: but the Valois King had already gained a firm footing. It was Charles VII who understood how to appease the enmity of Burgundy, and in unison with the great men of his kingdom to give his power a peculiar organisation corresponding to its character, so that he was able to oppose to the English troops better armed than their own, and make the restoration of a firm peace even desirable for them. But this reacted on England in two ways. The government, which was inclined for peace, fell into as bitter a quarrel as any that had hitherto taken place with the national bodies politic, which either did not recognise this necessity, or attributed the disasters incurred to bad management. The man most trusted by the King fell a victim to the public hate. But, besides this, there arose—awakened by these events and in a certain analogy with what happened in France—the recollection of the rights which had been set aside by the accession of the house of Lancaster. Their representative, Richard Duke of York, had hitherto kept quiet; for he was fully convinced that a right cannot perish merely because it lies dormant. Cautiously and step by step, while letting others run the first risk, he at last came forward openly with his claim to the crown. Great was the astonishment of Henry VI, who as far as his memory reached had been regarded as King, to find his right to the highest dignity doubted and denied. But such was now the case. The nation was split into two parties, one of which held fast to the monarchy established by the Parliament, while the other wished to recur to the principle of legitimate succession then violated. Not that political conviction was the leading motive for their quarrel. First of all we find that the opponents of the government—though themselves of Parliamentary views—rallied round the banners of the hitherto forgotten right of birth. Every man fought, less for the prince whose device he bore, the red or the white rose, than for his own share in the enjoyment of political power. On both sides there arose chiefs of almost independent power, who clad their partisans in their own colours, at whose call those partisans were ready any moment to take arms: they appointed the sheriffs in the counties and were lords of the land. But when blood had once been shed, no reconciliation of the parties was possible. Ha, cried the victor to the man who begged for mercy, thy father slew mine, thou must die by my hand. In vain did men turn to the judges: for the statutes contradicted each other, and they could no longer decide where the right lay. From the Parliaments no solution of these questions could be expected; each served the victorious party, whose summons it obeyed, and condemned its opponent. As the resources on each side were tolerably equal, even the battles were not decisive: the result depended less upon real superiority than on accidental desertions or accessions, and most largely on foreign help. After the English had failed, during the antagonism of Valois and Burgundy, in establishing their supremacy on the Continent, the quarrel—quieted for a moment—which broke out again between Louis XI and Charles the Bold in the most violent manner, reacted on them with all the more vehemence. King Louis would not endure that a good understanding should exist between Edward IV and Duke Charles, to whom Edward had married his sister: he drew the man who had hitherto done the most for the Yorkist interests, the Earl of Warwick, over to his own side; and scarcely had the latter appeared in England when Edward IV was forced to fly and Henry VI was reinstated. Louis had prepared church-thanksgivings to God for having given the English a king of the blood of France and a friend to that country. But meanwhile Edward was helped by Charles the Bold, to whom he had fled, though not openly in arms, yet with ships which he hired for him, with considerable sums of money, and even with troops which he allowed to join him.[69] To these, his Flemish and Easterling troops, it was chiefly attributed that Edward gained the upper hand in the field and recovered his throne. But what a state of things was this! The glorious crown of the Plantagenets, who a little while before strove for the supremacy of the world, was now—stained with blood and powerless as it was—tossed to and fro between the rival parties.