# Cassell's Illustrated History of England/Volume 1/Chapter 66

CHAPTER LXVI.
Richard II. was not 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, perhaps, of all English history to that period, 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. Nothing could exceed the enthusiasm with which he was received by the Londoners. They had erected triumphal arches; the conduits ran with wine, and a variety of pageants were displayed. One of these is thus described by Walsingham:—In Cheapside was erected a building in the form of a castle, out of which ran two streams of wine. On its four turrets stood four girls dressed in white, and of about the age of the king. As he approached, they blew towards him small shreds of gold leaf—a favourite fancy at the time, repeated afterwards to the young queen, on her arrival from Germany. They showered upon him flowers made of gilt paper, and then, coming down, filled cups with wine from tho fountain, and presented them to him and his attendants. Then flew down an angel from the summit of the castle and offered to the king a gold crown. Every street exhibited some pageant or device, but the merchants of Cheapside obtained the palm for their superior ingenuity.
Great Seal of Richard II.
The great seal was delivered to the king; but, as the Bishop of Ely, the chancellor, was absent beyond sea on public affairs, Richard returned the seal, enclosed in a ​purse containing, also, various letters patent, to Sir Nicholas Bonde, by him. to be kept till the chancellor's arrival.
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. On that day Richard rose at an early hour, and attended matins and mass in his private chapel in Westminster. The procession assembled in the great hall, the passage from which to the abbey church had been carpeted with scarlet cloth. The prelates, abbots, and clergy led the way, followed by the officers of state, and last came the king, a canopy of sky-blue silk, supported on spears of silver, being borne above him by the barons of the Cinque Ports. While the litany was chanted the young prince lay prostrate before the altar, whence he was conducted to his throne, raised on a platform in the middle of the nave. When he had taken the customary oath, the archbishop, accompanied by the marshals, explained to the people the obligations of his oath, and inquired whether they were willing to have Richard for their king. The reply was a loud and universal acclamation; whereupon he was anointed, crowned, and invested with all the insignia of royalty. To this followed a solemn mass, and at the offertory he descended and presented on the altar bread, wine, and a mark of gold; after which he returned to his throne and received the homage of his royal uncles, his earls and barons.
Sir John Dymoke attended as champion with his two esquires, and the lord steward, the constable, and marshal rode up and down the hall on their chargers to maintain order.
By all this weight of ceremony the poor youth was completely exhausted, and had to be borne in a litter to his own apartment. This to a speculative mind might have presented an omen, too truly realised, that he would not possess vigour to bear him to the end of his natural term of sovereignty. After he was sufficiently restored, he again returned to the great hall, where he created four earls and nine knights, and then partook of a sumptuous banquet, which was again followed by a ball, minstrelsy, and the usual boisterous festivities of the age.
Everything, in fact, was done which could tend to inspire the boy-king with an idea of that absolute greatness which had been already sufficiently instilled into his mind from very infancy by his mother, his uncles, and his courtiers. For such things kings afterwards pay a suitable compensation. The same ideas, the same accomplishments, the same spirit of despotism were afterwards imprinted on the nascent mind of Charles I., and with the same results. Never before had such base laudation, such creeping prostrations, been practised in this country. Both courtiers and dignitaries of the church used the same language of grovelling sycophancy towards the unsuspecting youth; and little could he dream that, while they were lauding his wisdom and royal virtues, they were preparing for him the execrations of his people and the loss of his throne and life. It has been justly said that for much of what came afterwards to pass these vile flatterers were really answerable. While, therefore, passing judgment on the follies and the crimes of kings, we should never forget that they have been made what they are by the mercenary courtiers who perpetually throng about thrones. At this moment the youthful Richard was the idol of every class in the nation; the beauty of his person and the memory of his father surrounding him with a halo of popular favour, through which the gloom of after years could make no way.
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 regency, 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. They therefore chose nine councillors, consisting of three bishops, two earls, two baronets, 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 stanch cavaliers in the council, and, in reality, he and his brothers were the real 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, though it was not complied with, received a civil answer. They, moreover, 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 Phillpot 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 he 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—he, 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; that it would be marvellous indeed 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 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 very strong 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.
Richard II. From the Original Painting in the Jersalem Chamber of the Dennery, Westminster.
Another blow aimed at the aspiring duke was through his patronage of the late king's mistress, the notorious Alice Perrars. Lancaster had procured her return from banishment, and protected her. But he was now fain to abandon her, seeing this 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 Leland, and a full pardon of Richard Lyons, who had been convicted by the Commons of various misdemeanors. The beautiful, clever, and unscrupulous Alice was now finally banished, with forfeiture of all her lands, tenements, goods, and chattels.
The Widow of the Black Prince appealing to Wat Tyler for Protection from the Mob. (See page 413)
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 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 Phillpot, 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 now subsidy, as well they might, seeing that it 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 enrollment 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 now 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 abortively spent, they granted a fresh impost on wool, wool-fels, 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, the Brie, the Beausse, the Gatmois. the Orleanois, 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 received much kindness and refuge in England, was averse to treat with ingratitude his old allies; 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 only escaped the hostility of the natives 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 the 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 Do 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 in every quarter into 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 ​diers 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 ware 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 Artavelde—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." "They woulde murmur one with another in the fieldes, and in the waves as they went togyder, affermyng how Johan Ball sayd trouthe." 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 nother angelles nor spirittes," 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.
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 license.
​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 "outrageous and insupportable." This was bold language; the result was, of the many schemes to meet the difficulty, the fatal capitation 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 writhing 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 Fobbings 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 Bealknap, the chief justice of the Common Pleas, was sent into Essex to try the recusants; but they denounced him as a traitor to the 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, clothes, 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, whom 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, Jak Treweman, and Jon Balle. 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 Burloy, 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, as its chaplain, who took for the text of his first sermon the good old rhyme—
"When Adam dove 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, who, however, luckily 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 amounted to 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, Sir Robert of Namur, 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 th gospel that God is no respecter of persons; and, addressing these new and startling ideas to the inflamed minds of ignorant and oppressed people, they immediately applied them in their own way, and not only 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, and 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 th 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. With the king were his mother, the archbishop, Sir John Holland, the Earls of Warwick, Berwick, and Salisbury, the Grand Prior of the Knights of St. John, and many others who had flocked thither for safety. The king's brothers, the Dukes of Lancaster, York, and Gloucester, were absent, the unpopular Lancaster being in Scotland.
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.
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." No doubt the terrors of the democrats of Flanders, now again in full action, of the horrible Jacquerie and the ruthless Malleteers, at this time paralysing Paris, were all present to the minds of the royal party, and, with the uncouth appearance of the mob, operated awfully upon 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 heaving, 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 Greouwich 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 great enemy of the nation, and burnt the furniture and the records belonging to the chancery.
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
John of Gaunt.
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.
"Then these people entered into the city, and went into thereof, and robbed and pillaged the house, and then set fire to it, and clean burnt and destroyed it."
Wycliffe appearing before the Prelates at St Paul's to answer the Charge of Heresy.
But they wore not so abstinent of the wine which they found in the cellars. With this, to them, new and delicious liquor, they grew intoxicated and furious, and proceeded to the most bloody tragedies. To every one whom they met they put the question, "With whom holdest thou?" and unless he said, "With King Richard and the Commons," off went his head. The Fleet prison and Newgate were destroyed, the liberated prisoners labouring heartily at the demolition. The Temple, with all its books and ancient works, was burnt. All foreigners they destroyed with the constant antipathy of the uneducated; but against the Lombards and the Flemings, as money dealers and contractors with Government, their rage was deadly. They dragged thirty Flemings out of the churches, whither they had fled for sanctuary, and thirty-two more out of the Vintry, and dispatched them. Having left more than thirty of their number buried in their intoxication under the smoking ruins of the Savoy, and massacred many eminent citizens as they endeavoured to escape, wearied out with drink and slaughter, at night they sat down before the Tower.
In the morning the sight from the Tower was by no means cheering. The immense 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 excluding the entrance of all 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 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 Pordiccas d'Albret, the famous Free Companion captains, with 8,000 more that might be mentioned. But the Earl of Salisbury and "the wise men about the king gave bettor and more humane advice." And now that the king spoke face to face with them, behold, all their demands resolved them into those four:—1. The abolition of bondage. 2. The reduction of the rent of land to fourpence the acre. 3. The free liberty of buying and selling in all fail's 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 follows 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 only provided with sticks, and not one in a thousand properly armed. Here the insurgents got possession, as no doubt was their grand object, of their designed victims, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the chancellor, and Sir Robert Hales, the treasurer; of 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 soon now be over.
In the morning 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 further 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 I make yon 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—one 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 the renowned Free Companies captain, 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 all 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, Knyghton, Walsingham, Stow, 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 subtilty. When the mob was at Blackheath there were strange 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 was 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 he 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, his work had long been done.
Richard himself, having stuck the heads of Wat Tylar and 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. On this occasion Richard is reported to have addressed them in this style:—"Rustics ye have been and are, and in bondage shall ye remain; not such as ye have heretofore known, but in a condition incomparably more vile." This was very different language to that which he had held when he addressed them in force in London; and would show, if it were at all needful, that as a boy of fifteen he could deeply dissimulate; that he never for a moment intended to grant the groaning people any relief; and that he hoarded up his vengeance, as many of his most powerful nobles had to experience, till he saw his opportunity.
And, in keeping with this character, at every town that lay in the neighbourhood of the disturbed districts he opened commissions for the summary condemnation of offenders. According to Holinshed, 1,500 of the insurgents were executed; amongst them Jack Straw, and ​Lester and Westbroom, who 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 the serfdom altogether. This, probably, was the enlightened 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 one general and inevitable massacre. It was plain the day for the extinction of serfdom was not yet come.
The Commons, indeed, attributed the insurrection to its true causes—to the long-continued exactions occasioned by the wars of the late reigns, which had impoverished the landowners, and deteriorated the condition of the villeins. These expenses, which had produced no advantage to the nation, had made the mass of the people wretched. The rapacity of the officers employed to collect these aids, and of the purveyors, who were but a species of licensed banditti, was unbounded. Besides, there were bands of real banditti, called maintainers, who in various parts of the country subsisted by robbery. These ruffians, such was the inefficient preservation of public order in the country, assembled in great bands, seized people, and especially women, for their ransoms, and killed such persons as attempted to resist. They abounded in Cheshire and Lancashire, made expeditions of a hundred miles or more, and carried off the daughters of men of property, and pretended they had married them; after which they sent to their parents demanding the fortunes to be sent to them on peril of the lives of the abducted victims. But, though the Commons pointed out these causes of popular discontent, and obtained an inquiry into the matter, with some reforms in the courts of law and the king's household, they were as far from thinking of the emancipation of the serfs as the lords. They made the danger of again raising them a plea for not yielding the king fresh taxes, but they were, after much reluctance, compelled to grant them. This being done, Richard proclaimed a general pardon, which eventually extended to the peasantry.
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 Poictiers, 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 high pedigreed and portionless, Anne was reckoned handsome, and, far better, was extremely good-hearted and pious. The king became deeply attached to her, and the English were extremely proud of her as the Cæsar's sister, of which they could never speak enough. She only lived 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;" and had she lived as long as her husband, would undoubtedly have preserved him from alienating the love of his people, and perishing as he did.
On the meeting of Parliament, soon after the king's marriage, the Duke of Lancaster solicited the grant of £60,000 to enable him to prosecute his claims on the towns of Spain, through the right of his wife, the Lady Constance, daughter of Don Pedro the Cruel; but after much debate the advance was declined. The circumstances of the country rendered it equally unadvisable that a large body of the military men of the realm should be withdrawn from it, and that money should be expended for foreign claims while the people were so sore on the subject of their heavy taxation. The duke was therefore compelled, however unwillingly, to postpone his expedition to Spain. His anxiety at this time was owing to the failure of the Earl of Cambridge, who had been sent out to support the King of Portugal against the King of Spain. The Earl of Cambridge had carried over a small but brave army to Portugal, the Duke of Lancaster promising to follow him with a greater force; but his embassy to Scotland, and the breaking out of the Wat Tyler insurrection, had prevented this; and Ferdinand, King of Portugal, finding himself disappointed of the duke's aid, and fearing to be overcome by Spain, had made peace with John of Castile, greatly to the chagrin of the Earl of Cambridge, who had made a marriage alliance between his son John and the only daughter of the King of Portugal, both mere children. On this peace being concluded, the Earl of Cambridge returned to England, having effected nothing towards the establishment of the claims of his brother, John of Gaunt, but, much in opposition to the King of Portugal, had brought away his son. This led afterwards to the divorce of his son's young Portuguese wife, by dispensation from the Pope, and her marriage to the King of Spain. Thus the King of Spain not only maintained himself on the throne of Castile, in defiance of John of Gaunt, but the King of Portugal dying, he laid claim in right of his wife to that kingdom. These were the circumstances which made Lancaster eager to pass over and assert his claims, but at this juncture without effect. He had only, however, to wait a few years for a more favourable opportunity.
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 Artavelde, the stout brewer of Ghent, had fallen, yet that high-spirited city had maintained a long career of independence. Philip van Artavelde, 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. The people had assumed a white hat as the badge of their party, and their former leader, John Lyon, was dead, under the suspicion of being poisoned by some emissary of the court party.
Philip van Artavelde put on the white hat, and thus announced to the public that he was willing to tread in the steps of his father, and of their late leader. The most subtle and influential man of this party was one Peter Dubois, who promised Artavelde his whole interest with the people on certain conditions. "Can you," he said, "bear yourself high, and be cruel amongst the Commons, and especially in such things as we shall have to do? A man is nothing unless he be feared and dreaded, and at the same time renowned for cruelty. Thus must the Flemings be governed; and you must have no more regard for the life of man, or pity for their sufferings, than for the life of the brutes which we kill for food."
Philip van Artavelde declared his readiness to adopt this system of action, in order to save his country. He felt, with Peter Dubois, that, to restrain the license of the rude multitude and enable them to win their independence, there must be a strong hand and a stern discipline. That he could assort this he immediately showed, on being elected Governor of Ghent, by arresting and cutting off the heads of twelve of the ringleaders of the tumult in which his father was murdered; giving solemn proof that he would not forget his enemies. Presently afterwards he and Peter Dubois put to death with their own hands two ambassadors, whom they had sent to treat with the Earl of Flanders, and who had agreed to give up to the earl a hundred of such citizens as he should name, to be entirely at his pleasure, on condition of peace. On these ambassadors declaring these terms, Peter Dubois and Philip Artavelde rose up, and, reproaching them with their treason, stabbed them on the spot, in the midst of the council.
Having thus demonstrated in sanguinary earnest, to both friends and foes, that they meant to prosecute the contest in the spirit of republican Rome, they took the field. The contest was dreadful, for they had not only to contend with the Earl of Flanders, but with the Duke of Burgundy, his son-in-law and heir, and the King of France, the nephew of Philip of Burgundy, whom he had induced to come to their aid with a powerful army. Against this formidable confederacy Philip van Artavelde made a most brilliant resistance. He compelled the allied forces to raise the siege of Ghent; he made himself master of Bruges; burnt Sechlin, a town of France; and laid siege to the strong fortress of Oudenarde. Those who fought under him were arrayed in cassocks of different colours, to denote the towns they belonged to. They were armed principally with pikes; all fought on foot, and in one great phalanx. For about fifteen months Artavelde pursued this surprising career of success; but in November, 1382, he came to a great pitched battle with the French at Rosebeque. The night before this battle Artavelde was roused by a sound of a great host fighting on the hill of Dorre, between his camp and that of the French. He went out, had the trumpets blown to call his troops to battle, and being asked by his officers what it meant, he told them; on which they replied that they had heard the same sounds, and the battle-cries of the French in the conflict—St. Denis and Mountjoy with lights in the sky; but they had sent thither, and found nothing. The next day the battle was fought on this hill, and Philip was slain, with 9,000 of his followers.
This great overthrow, it was supposed, would completely prostrate the Flemings; but the King of France, a boy now only fourteen years of age, was obliged to hurry home to suppress the insurrection of his own people in Rouen and Paris, who, like the Flemish and English, had risen in resistance to the tax-gatherers and oppressors. The Parisians, 30,000 in number, had armed themselves with iron mallets, whence they were called Mailletins, or Malleteers. With these mallets they smashed the helmets of the soldiers sent against them, and made themselves unassailable by digging ditches, building walls, and barricading the streets—a practice in which they have been followed by their descendants in our time.
The Flemings, relieved from the presence of the French, recovered themselves, and still 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 Artavelde, in his great need, had solicited the assistance of England; but his ambassadors had most impolitically 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 Rosebeque, against France.
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. Part of his forces made themselves masters of Bourbourg, and obtained permission to carry their booty to Calais. The bishop 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 the Reformation 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. There appear to have been several versions, and some of them at comparatively early periods. Sir Thomas More, in his "Dialogues," says: "The hole Byble was, long before Wickliffe's days, by vertuous and well-learned men translated into the English tong, and by good and godly people with devotion and solemness well and reverently red." In Strype's "Cranmer" it is also said: "It is not much above one hundred years ago since Scripture hath not been accustomed to be read in the vulgar tongue within this realm; and many hundred years before that it was translated and read in the Saxon's tongue; and when this language waned old and out of common usage, because folk should not lack the fruit of reading it, was translated again into the newer language, whereof yet also many copies may be found."
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 theological professor 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 become 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 scattering the first seeds of the Reformation in the queen's native country, were destined to prepare the way for Luther, and to produce such immense changes throughout the civilised world.
In England these doctrines and this translation never again ceased to be the object of anxious inquiry. "The new doctrines," says Dr. Lingard, the Catholic historian, "insensibly acquired partisans and protectors in the higher classes, who alone were acquainted with the use of letters; a spirit of inquiry was generated, and the seeds were sown of that religious revolution which in little more than a century astonished and convulsed the nations of Europe."
Wycliffe, who had sown these seeds, survived all the enmity and assailments of the enemies which his attack on the corruptions of the Church had naturally created. A fine picture might be painted of Wycliffe on his sick bed when in Oxford, in 1379, he was seized with a dangerous illness. The mendicant friars, whose vices and errors he so severely exposed, crowded round his bed, attended by four aldermen of the city commissioned to visit him, and called upon him to recant his errors. But Wycliffe, who seemed at the point of death, seized with a sudden energy, started up in his bed, and, shaking his clenched hand at these astonished men, exclaimed, "I shall not die, but live many years to expose the absurdities, the falsities, and the crimes of the mendicant friars."
We are not to suppose, however, that Wycliffe had arrived at the clear conceptions of reformed religion which are established at the present day. Neither he nor Luther after him were able to shake off at once all the reverence for the rites and tenets in which they and their fathers for ages had been educated. Any one seeing old Lutheranism as it is yet practised on the Continent would scarcely be able to distinguish it from Popery. Socrates, even while about to drink poison as the punishment for his preaching doctrines subversive of the paganism of Greece, yet desired his friends, as soon as he was dead, to sacrifice a cock for him to Esculapius; thus manifesting the hold which his hereditary ideas still had upon him. So Wycliffe and Luther retained many things which subsequent reformers have seen it necessary again to reform. It is doubtful even whether Wycliffe disapproved of either pilgrimages or the worship of images: purgatory he believed in to the last; and, though he denounced the Pope as antichrist, and the priests as "the proctors of Satan," in his treatise "On the Truth of Scripture," he asserts that it is worse than paganism to refuse obedience to the apostolic see, and says that "prelates and priests, ordayned of God, comen in the stede of apostles and disciples, and that the Pope is the highest vicar that Christ has heare in earth."
These discrepancies demonstrate that this great man was, during his whole career, after he began to perceive. ​the corruptions of the Church, in a transition state, not fully cleared and settled in his mind; yet, with, all the defects arising from his past trammels, he was a great apostle and did a great work. 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 who had so long deluded and fleeced them.
Death of Wat Tyler. (See page 417.)
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 men 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 never could be put down anymore. 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. The inhabitants of London were especially warm adherents of these doctrines. 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. Of the growth of this reformation we shall speak further in the chapter on the progress of the nation.
​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 stern 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 very 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 Knyghton, with 80,000 axes, with which they cut down their 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 over. 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.
This John Holland—a base man, who stained himself with more than one murder, as we shall find—was the son of Joan of Kent, Richard's mother, by her first husband, Sir Thomas Holland; by whom she had also another son, created by Richard Earl of Kent. Sir John Holland—notwithstanding Richard, for this second murder, "was bent on putting him to death—was afterwards created by him Earl of Huntingdon and Duke of Exeter. His present act of assassination only the more confirmed the public in the idea that something was to be concealed. There was great excitement; but the Lord Zouch, whom the friar had named as the author of the memorial, protested that he knew nothing of the matter; and the Earl of Buckingham, another of the king's uncles, bursting into the king's presence with his sword drawn, swore he would kill the first man that dared to charge his brother Lancaster with treason. Richard professed to be satisfied; and, in proof of it, sent the duke across the Channel to procure a prolongation of the armistice. But he was, in reality, anything but satisfied; and it was secretly resolved to arrest him on his return. Apprised of this, the duke, instead of coming to London, hasted away to his castle of Pontefract, where he remained strongly fortified, till, by repeated journeys and entreaties, the king's mother procured a reconciliation, and also a pardon for her son John Holland.
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. According to him, the country to be wild, the people barbarous, and Edinburgh, the capital, they thought inferior to their provincial towns of Tournay or Valenciennes. They were annoyed and discontented at the want of feasts, balls, tournaments, and the gaieties of their own country. They complained that they were compelled to purchase the very coarsest food at most exorbitant prices, and were at their wits' end for forage for their horses. The people, exasperated at their ridicule and complaints, repaid them with hatred, and, as they asserted, even laid traps for their lives, the common soldiers being very disrespectful to the women. For a long time none of the nobility, except the Earls of Douglas and Moray, even visited them, and when they were introduced to the king they were as much shocked with his appearance as with that of the country: "at his red bleared eyes, and at his whole appearance, which convinced them that he was no warrior."
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 40,000 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. His host is variously estimated at 60,000 and 80,000 men; but, before he passed the English borders, an incident occurred which marred all his satisfaction. Lord Stafford, son of the Earl of Stafford, one of the king's favourites, and in high favour with Queen Anne, both on account of his chivalrous and his virtuous qualities, was on the way with despatches from the king to the queen, when, some affray having taken place amongst their retainers, John Holland struck down the young lord without personal provocation, and killed him on the spot. Jealousy of the queen's favour and malice against her adherents is said to have been the real cause of this atrocious deed. The murderer fled for sanctuary to the church at Beverley. The Earl of Stafford and his family were loud in their demands of justice on the miscreant, and Richard vowed that he would hang him if ever he ventured out of the sanctuary of St. John of Beverley. Meantime, he confiscated his estates. Their common mother, the "Fair Maid of Kent," prostrated by grief at this second deed of her assassin son, wept for four days, entreating the king in vain to spare the malefactor's life. She then sunk, heart-broken, on the fifth day, at the castle of Wallingford. Her death so affected Richard, who was a most affectionate son, that he pardoned the criminal when it was too late to save his mother.
Richard now marched 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 Courci, 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 pious 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 the great Edward III. and Philippa of Hainault. Her uncles, the Dukes of Gloucester, York, and Lancaster, were still more deeply 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 aspirings 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 himself to retire to Guienne. But by successful policy he now, even, 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.
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 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 which has providentially 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 wore so fleeced by the tax-gatherers, that the land-owners 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 and national an 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, greatly enraged, at first contemplated—that which was long after 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.
This impeachment by the Commons is a most memorable event: it is a striking proof of the wonderful manner in which the power of that body had grown in a few years. This was the second instance of the kind, the former occurring just at the close of the last reign. But now the prosecution was directed in a more determined and unanimous manner, and against an officer not only of high rank, but high in the monarch's favour. We have no longer the Commons of England humbly crouching, as it were, before the imperious barons, and scarcely daring to consider the benches they occupied at the lower end of the general Parliament as their own, but evidently feeling their real dignity and power; no longer confining themselves to voting away their own money, or meekly offering a petition of grievances, but exercising the daring functions of the public tribune, and calling to account the monarch through his ministers.
Emboldened by this second success, the opposition proposed to establish a permanent council, like those in the reigns of John, Henry III., and Edward II., 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 awe-struck 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. At the first of these councils attended Sir Robert Bealknap, the chief justice; Sir John Holt and Sir William Burgh, justices of the King's Bench; and Sir John Gary, chief baron of the Exchequer. The same persons attended also the second council at Nottingham, with the exception of the chief baron, and the addition of Sir Robert Fulthorpe, justice of the King's Bench; Sir Robert Tresilian, lord chief justice; and John Lokton, the king's sergeant-at-law.
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 Brombre, 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 nineteenth of November, and on the tenth 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 Brembre.
This "appeal" they sent to the king by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Lords Cobham, Lovel, and Devereaux. 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 Brembre, Mayor of London. All, except Brembre, 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 Brembre 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. Brembre, who was a commoner, was adjudged and condemned by the peers, who wore 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, wore put to death. Sir John Beauchamp, Sir James Burners, Sir John Salisbury, and Sir Simon Burley were all executed, Salisbury being drawn and hanged.
The fate of Sir Simon Burley excited the deepest and most general sympathy, and his death, in resistance to all the earnest appeals on his behalf, betrays the most sanguinary obstinacy in the callous Gloucester. Sir ​Simon lived a long and distinguished life. He belonged to the court and camp of Edward III.; had been appointed by the Black Prince as the most suitable guardian for Richard; had attended the young king from his infancy; and negotiated his marriage with the good Queen Anne. Richard, who loved and revered him as a father, pleaded for him with his ruthless uncle in vain. For three weeks he refused to sign any warrant for his execution, and it was carried out at last without his assent. The queen was on her knees for three hours before Gloucester, imploring him, but in vain, to spare the good Sir Simon; and even the Earl of Derby added his earnest entreaty, and proceeded to actual quarrel with his uncle to prevent this atrocity, but without moving the stern tyrant from his purpose.
John Wycliffe.
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 he 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 II asserting his authority. (See page 428)
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 great seals from the Archbishop of Canterbury, and gave them to William 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 acquiescence 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 Swineford, 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 Scotch 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, or præmunire, 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 always been most ardently attached to her, was so beside himself with grief at her loss, 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.
Anne was a woman of most excellent heart and great piety. She was a fervent promoter of the Reformation: and it is a singular fact that Thomas Arundel, Bishop of Ely, and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, at her funeral preached a sermon in which, according to Rapin, he actually praised the queen for reading the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue. Yet this same Arundel was the first to procure an act for burning heretics—that is, those who, by following Queen Anne's example, and reading these Scriptures, came to think differently to himself on some points.
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. We find soon after that he had grown indolent, self-indulgent, devoted to low society and low pleasures, and thus lost his own dignity and the love of his people. With a fresh alliance, too, came a fresh spirit, fresh projects, and revival of the old spirit of vengeance, which led him to dip his hands in the blood of those of his kindred who had dealt hardly with him; and from this again sprung retaliation and his final fall.
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 three last 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 good-will, 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 extremely jealous of new arrivals, many of them being poor courtiers who were sent there, as they are now sent to our colonies, to help themselves to what they could secure, and others banished men. Those were supported by the English Government as a counterbalance to the power of the native chiefs, and 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'Neals, much of Connaught was regained by the O'Connors, and the O'Briens made equal conquests in Leinster. To prevent amalgamation of the English chiefs with the native Irish, and thus strengthening their formidable native power, Edward III. had passed the famous statute of Kilkenny to which we have alluded, 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'Neal, O'Brien, O'Connor, and M'Murchad, 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 great power, and, feeling their influence amongst the people, they prepared a most sweeping petition to the Commons, containing many great facts, which were yet too strong for reception by the Government. They complained of the celibacy of the clergy; that, by accepting offices under Government, and being ministers of state, and even generals, they became hermaphrodites—attempting to do the impossible thing, that of serving God and Mammon. They declared that by teaching transubstantiation they led to idolatry; that through the confessional they acquired a dangerous 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 went the length of the modern Peace Society, asserting that by licensing men to exercise the trades of goldsmiths and swordsmiths they violated the principles of the Gospel, which were those of simplicity and peace. It is remarkable how completely the Christians of the earliest Reformation seized upon the doctrines regarding war and capital punishments which are now agitated, and not yet established.
Though no one was found hardy enough to present the petition, abounding with doctrines which, though they had existed in the New Testament for fourteen centuries, were still too new to the public for acceptance, yet the clergy were greatly 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.