# Cassell's Illustrated History of England/Volume 1/Chapter 69

CHAPTER LXIX.
Henry IV.
The reign of Henry IV. dates from the 30th of September, 1399, when he was placed on the throne of England by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, in the presence of the assembled Parliament. Having, as we have stated, made his claim to the throne in a speech ​as remarkable for its disdaining to base his pretensions on the choice of the people, as for its being delivered in the English of the day, in which we have given it—a proof that the language of the country was now recognised as that of all classes—he adjourned the Parliament till the 6th of October. On that day he was crowned in Westminster by Arundel, the Archbishop of Canterbury, with a careful observance of all the ancient ceremonies, and some new ones introduced, to give additional effect to the title of a conscious usurper. He had the sword which he wore on landing at Ravenspur borne naked and erect before him by the Earl of Northumberland; thus again asserting his title as of the sword; and he conferred the Isle of Man, which had belonged to Sir William Scrope, the Earl of Wiltshire, on the earl, in fee "for himself and his heirs, for the service of carrying this sword at the present and all future coronations."
But, not content with announcing thus markedly that he intended to defend by the sword the crown which he had won by it, he also introduced an additional incident which would now-a-days be highly absurd, but which then, no doubt, was calculated to make an impression on the ignorant and superstitious populace. He had the coronation oil carried in a vessel of stone, with a cover of gold set with diamonds, which it was announced was brought from heaven by the Virgin Mary, and delivered to Thomas a Becket, with an assurance that the kings anointed with that oil would be great and victorious princes, and zealous companions of the Church.
All the great barons who held by patent hereditary offices on the occasion performed their several services with apparent alacrity, and everything wore au outward air of smoothness and prosperity. Within three months Henry of Lancaster, an exile from the realm, had landed on its shores, deposed and imprisoned his rightful sovereign, and sat there the anointed king.
But he was well aware that he sat there by no single right, except that which he had so determinedly rejected—the election of the people—and that he was surrounded by a thousand elements of danger. Richard, the true king, was still alive, and, though at present unpopular with the people had many partisans, who had rather been surprised into silence than permanently satisfied. The rightful and acknowledged heir to the throne was the young Earl of Marche, who, though yet only a boy of seven years of age, had powerful connections in the Percies, the Mortimers, and other great houses. This young nobleman was the direct descendant from Lionel, Duke of Clarence, the elder brother of John of Gaunt, the father of Henry of Lancaster. Not only was the Earl of Marche the true lineal heir to the throne, but his father, Roger Mortimer, had been so declared by Richard II. by act of Parliament. This youth, thus unceremoniously set aside, Henry had taken care to secure the possession of, and kept him and his younger brother in a sort of honourable confinement at Windsor.
Besides the direct claim of the young Earl of Marche, Richard, Earl of Cambridge, himself a son of Edmund, Duke of York, and married to the sister of the Earl of Marche, regarded himself as injured by the invasion of the throne by Henry. The claims of the Earl of Marche were not at this crisis ever mentioned by any party; and, therefore, Henry took care to keep silence on them. He did not so much as attempt to procure from Parliament, when it met, an act of settlement of the crown in his family, as that would have implied a doubt of his legal right; but he elected his eldest son Prince of Wales, Duke of Guienne, Lancaster, and Cornwall, and he was named in Parliament heir apparent to the throne.
These steps were necessary to secure his hold of the throne at home. In France he had created a determined enemy in Charles VI., whose son-in-law he had deposed, and whose daughter he, in a manner, held captive, after having deprived her of her share of the crown of England. France, accordingly, threatened vengeance, and might be expected to incite the Scots to annoyance; and, besides being under the necessity of arousing the hostility of the friends and partisans of those nobles whom he resolved to punish for past offences to his family, he knew that he had laid himself under such obligations to those who had aided his designs as would be difficult to discharge to the height of their expectations.
Henry, therefore, went craftily to work. On dismissing the Parliament, he had instantly ordered the issue of writs for the assembling of a new one, returnable in six days. This necessitated the return of the very same men, for the time was far too short for a fresh election. He was certain of their obsequiousness, and would not risk a delay which might give time for the people to think, and to send up members who might at least raise difficulties. He declared that he did this for the profit of the kingdom, to spare the expenses of an election, and for the more prompt redress of grievances; but he took care to add that he did not mean this to be drawn into a precedent, to the prejudice of future Parliaments and of the kingdom.
It must have been on the tried compliancy of the Commons that Henry chiefly relied, for in the Lords he had much disagreeable and dangerous work to do; and he found the Commons as obedient as he could desire. He immediately moved the repeal of all the acts which had been levelled at his family and partisans during the late reign, and had the attainders of the Earls of Arundel and Warwick reversed. But now came into play all the powerful passions of the aristocracy—the terror of some, the hopes of others, the jealousies and animosities of all. It was at once seen how needful to Henry was the support of a devoted Commons. He summoned the lords who had appealed the Duke of Gloucester and his associates to justify their proceedings. This was raising a storm of the most furious description. All the noblemen concerned put forward the same plea as the judges had done in the late reign—namely, that they had only acted under compulsion; that they had neither framed nor advised the appeal, but wore compelled to sign it under terror of the threats of Richard. They asserted that they were no more guilty than the rest of the lords who had joined in condemning the appellants. This was touching the sore spot of the whole assembly, and the most terrible altercation arose. When Lord Fitzwalter made the charge against the Duke of Albemarle, twenty other lords joined in it, for Albemarle had been a notorious traitor to both sides, and twenty hoods were flung down ​on the floor of the House as pledges of battle in support of their assertions. The accused flung down his hood in acceptance of the challenge, and all wore taken up and given into the custody of the constable and Earl Marshal. When the Lord Morloy charged the Earl of Salisbury with falsehood to the Duke of Gloucester, and with betraying the secrets of Gloucester to the late king, Salisbury met his accusation with a direct denial, and both oast down their gloves in pledge of battle. There was plenty of ground for attack and recrimination in the transactions of the late reign; not a man but was open to some charge or other; and the House of Lords became the scene of the most violent dispute. The nobles charged each other with treason, duplicity, cowardice, and numbers of other criminal and disgraceful actions. The coarsest and fiercest language resounded through the house; liar and traitor rose above all other abusive and rude epithets; and it is said that no less than forty gauntlets, the gages of battle, lay on the floor at once.
Nothing but the most settled purpose of vengeance on his enemies would have induced the cautious Henry to rouse such a tempest at this moment. But he was sure of the popular branch of the legislature, and, probably, he felt that division amongst the haughty barons was strength to his own hands; and that only while they were in violent repulsion from each other could he safely humiliate those whom he had in view.
When the storm was at its height Henry interposed, and, while the conflicting peers were in fiery antagonism with each other, he let fall his intended blow on the party which had supported Richard against his uncle Gloucester and himself. The lords appellant were stripped of the honours and estates which they had obtained from Richard as the rewards of their appeal; and the Dukes of Albemarle, Surrey, and Exeter, the Marquis of Dorset, and the Earl of Gloucester, descended again to their former ranks of Earls of Rutland, Kent, Huntinigdon, Somerset, and Lord le Despenser.
To prevent the repetition of such scenes in future, appeals of treason to Parliament were prohibited, and such appeals were directed to be carried to the established courts of law. Treason itself was again limited to the offences named in the celebrated Act of Edward III. The abuse introduced by Richard of delegating all the powers of Parliament to a mere committee of both Houses was declared unconstitutional and utterly inadmissible; and the heaviest penalties were enacted against any person but the king giving liveries to his retainers.
This practice of giving liveries had grown into a source of great public mischief and confusion. Whoever accepted the badge of any prince or nobleman, bound himself to support the cause of his patron, and the patron on his part to defend him against the officials of the law, of other hostile person. Numbers of those who accepted the livery of a nobleman received no pay whatever, the equivalent being in the protection just mentioned; so that by this means a leader could maintain a large train of clients at little or no cost, and could call them together on occasion, to the evident danger of the public peace. It was highly desirable to put down this flagrant evil; but this law was as ill-obeyed as many others in those days, and the practice of distributing these liveries remained for ages afterwards.
Great Seal of Henry IV.
Henry proceeded to reward his friends. As he had punished his enemies by deprivation of honours and estates, he now restored the Earls of Warwick and Arundel to their former ranks and properties. He constituted the Earl of Northumberland constable, and Ralph Nevill, Earl of Westmoreland, marshal of England; and, as he had bestowed the Isle of Man on Northumberland, he now gave the earldom of Richmond to Westmoreland. Besides these, he conferred many other honours, grants, and offices. Before dismissing Parliament, he submitted to the lords spiritual and temporal, through the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Earl of Northumberland, an especial matter for their advice, and they were charged to keep the subject an inviolable secret. This was no other than the disposal of the deposed king. Henry declared, as we have already stated, that at all events he was resolved on the ​preservation of his life. The lords gave it as their advice that he should be placed under the custody of trusty officers, who should convey him secretly to some castle, where no concourse of people could assemble, and where he should be strictly excluded from all approach of those who had formerly been in his service. Four days after this the king went to the house, expressed his approval of the advice of the lords for the secure detention of Richard, and ordered it to be carried into instant and permanent effect.
Henry appeared now firmly seated on the throne of his unhappy cousin. There can be no doubt that it had been the dream and object of his life's ambition. His father before him, and his uncle Gloucester, had shown no equivocal signs of a desire to seize the crown of that unfortunate prince, and one after another they had usurped the actual power into their own hands. But Henry, more crafty and calculating, watched his opportunity, and had not made a decided grasp at it till he felt sure of the favour' of the people. Though he had now reached the height of his ambition, he still as carefully courted the favour of the people and the Church, in order to consolidate his new power. To give the people an idea of the auspicious change they had made in their sovereign, he issued a proclamation commanding all the blank bonds called raymans, which had been extorted from them by Richard and his courtiers, to be made null and committed to the flames. To ensure the continued favour of the clergy, he now took a very different course to that which both he and his father, John of Gaunt, had done formerly. Then they were the great champions of Wycliffe; now he withdrew his countenance from the Reformers, and paid the most marked attention to the interests and ceremonies of the Church, and to the persons and wishes of the Clergy.
But no precautions, no subtlety of policy, could give peace and security to a throne raised so palpably on injustice an,d treachery as that of Henry of Lancaster. From within and from without he found himself menaced by danger. France rejected his alliance and threatened war. The Scots, expecting the French to make a descent on England in favour of Richard, burst into Northumberland in one of their favourite excursions of plunder, took and destroyed the castle of Wark, and committed extensive devastations. Henry sent the Earl of Westmoreland to negotiate with these troublesome neighbours, and the Scots, finding no French army arrive, accepted the offered terms, and retreated to their own country.
But a conspiracy was forming at this very time in his immediate neighbourhood. The lords appellants, who had been stripped of the honours and wealth heaped upon them by Richard, though they had probably escaped, to their own surprise, with their lives, incapable of sitting down satisfied, entered into a conspiracy to assassinate the usurper. During the Christmas holidays they met frequently at the lodgings of the Abbot of Westminster to plan his destruction, and the following scheme was the result of their deliberations. They agreed to celebrate a splendid tournament, to be held at Oxford, on the 3rd of January, 1100. Henry was to be invited to preside, and, while intent on the spectacle, a number of picked men were to kill him and his sons.
The king was keeping his Christmas at Windsor, whither the Earl of Huntingdon, the notorious John Holland, who had a particular proclivity towards murder, presented himself and gave him the invitation. Henry accepted it, Huntingdon, notwithstanding his partisanship with Richard, and his, recent disgrace, being still the king's brother-in-law.
On the 2nd of January, the day previous to the tournament, the Earl of Rutland went secretly to Windsor and betrayed the whole plot to the king. It is said that Rutland had received a letter from one of the conspirators while at dinner, which his father, the Duke of York, would insist on reading, and the fatal secret thus coming out, York had compelled his son to reveal the whole to Henry at once. But it must be recollected that Rutland had as fatal a tendency to treachery as Holland had to murder. He had betrayed Richard while in Ireland, and on his return in Wales, had gone over at the critical moment to Lancaster. He now again entered into a murderous plot against the new king, and then, with equal facility, he betrayed his fellow-conspirators. It was an ominous mark of want of caution in the conspirators admitting him. as one of their members to their secret. Henry was so well acquainted with the false nature of the man who had thus sacrificed every party that he had been connected with, that he hesitated to give credit to this story. At length, having convinced himself of the reality of the plot, he remained quiet during the day at Windsor, and in the dark of the evening, set out secretly to London.
The conspirators, who had with them the staunch friends of Richard, the Earl of Salisbury and Lord Lumley, assembled on the day appointed at Oxford, but were surprised to find that neither the king nor their own accomplice, Rutland, had arrived. Suspecting treachery, they resolved to lose no time, but to surprise Henry at Windsor, where they knew he had but a slender guard. With a body of 500 horse they made a rapid ride that evening to Windsor, but arrived only to find that the intended victim had escaped. They were greatly disconcerted, but their partisans having joined them from Oxford, they determined to raise the standard of revolt, and to give out that Richard was at large, and at their head in assertion of his crown and dignity.
In order to give credit to their story of King Richard's escape, they dressed up Richard's chaplain, Maudelain, to represent him. Maudelain was said to be so like Richard in person and features, that every cue who saw him declared that he was the king without doubt. A translation of the Pienoh account of a contemporary, published by the Rev. John Webb, in the "Archæologist," says:—"The conspirators had many archers with them. They said the good King Richard had left his prison, and was there with them. And to make this the more credible, they had brought a chaplain so exactly like King Richard, that all who saw him declared he was the king. He was called Maudelain. Many a time have I seen him in Ireland riding through the country with King Richard, his master. I have not for a long time seen a fairer priest. They crowned the aforesaid as king, and set a very rich crown upon his helm, that it might bo believed of a truth that the king was out of prison." Maudelain was supposed to be an illegitimate son of one of the' royal family. He had been implicated in the illegal execution of the Duke of Gloucester at ​Calais, had adhered to Richard through all his fortunes, and was taken with him at Flint.
The army of the insurgents increased, but it is evident that their enterprise was ill-concerted, and their counsels were now distracted. Hearing that Henry was already at Kingston-on-Thames at the head of 20,000 men, they resolved to retire into the west. They went on, proclaiming Richard in all the towns and villages in their route, and the next evening they took up their quarters in Cirencester.
The young queen, according to several authorities, took a warm interest in this attempt. The Earls of Kent and Salisbury, it is said, went to Sunning Hill, where she was staying, and told her that they had driven Bolingbroke from the throne; that her husband was at liberty, and was then on the march to meet her, at the head of 100,000 men. Overjoyed at this news, says Sir John Haywood, the queen put herself at their disposal, and took an extraordinary pleasure in ordering the badges of Henry IV. to be torn from her household and replaced by those of her husband.
The deception was a cruel one; but the murderer Huntingdon was not likely to be very considerate of the queen's personal feelings. It would be enough for him that drowning men catch at straws, and that the presence of the real queen might be more effectual even than a sham king. The poor queen set out with the Earls of Kent and Salisbury on their march towards Wallingford and Abingdon. She was with the barons when they entered Cirencester. But there a terrible fate awaited them. The mayor had received the king's writ to oppose and seize the traitors. He summoned the burghers and the people, and at midnight they made an attack on the quarters of Kent and Salisbury. On attempting to escape the wretched noblemen found archers posted in every street; and, after a resistance of six hours, they were compelled to surrender, and were conducted into the abbey. In the middle of the following night, however, a fire breaking out in the abbey, which was attributed to their party, they were brought out and beheaded on the spot by the populace. The women, it appears, were as zealous in seizing the insurgents as the men, and that they did not exceed the king's orders is very clear from the fact, that Henry made a grant of four does and a hogshead of wine annually to the men, and of six bucks and a hogshead of wine to the women of that town.
The unfortunate Isabella was re-conducted, strictly guarded, from Cirencester to the palace of Havering-atte-Bower, and this continued her place of residence during the tragical transactions which followed this abortive insurrection.
The fate of the other leaders of the revolt was summary and sanguinary. The Earl of Gloucester and Lord Lumley went into the west of England, as was proposed, but were seized and put to death by the populace at Bristol. As for Huntingdon, the accounts of his end vary. One relation says that he was seized in Essex and committed to the Tower on the 10th of January, and five days afterwards beheaded, with circumstances of great cruelty. But others, and apparently the more probable, are that he was taken in Essex and convoyed to Fleshy, the seat of the late Duke of Gloucester, and, as one of those who had been associated with the late king in the treacherous arrest and murder of the duke, was put to death at the suggestion of the Duchess of Hereford, the eldest of Gloucester's daughters. The tenants and servants of the late duke are represented as actually tearing him to pieces with every possible act of torture, in the intensity of their hatred and revenge.
Sir Thomas Blount, Sir Benedict Shelley, Sir Bernard Brokos, and twenty-nine other knights and gentlemen, were drawn, hanged, and quartered in the Greenditch at Oxford, with circumstances of aggravated atrocity. Fabyan, in his "Chronicle," describes the death of Sir Thomas Blount as something not exceeded by the most fiendish tormentors. His bowels were cut out before his face and cast into a fire. While sitting in this manner he was insulted by Sir Thomas Erpingham, saying, "Go, seek a master that can cure you." Blount only answered, "Te Deum, laudamus. Blessed be the day on which I was born, and blessed be this day, for I shall die in the service of my sovereign lord, the noble King Richard." The executioner then cut off his head.
Feriby and Maudelain, Richard's chaplains, were executed in London. Bishops Merks and Walden were also condemned, but Walden succeeded in satisfying Henry of his innocence, and was pardoned. Merks the king was bent on putting to death, but the Pope demurred to acquiesce in the king's demand that he should be degraded from his orders prior to execution, and the delay saved him. The wrath of the king had cooled: probably he felt some of that remorse which he experienced afterwards so bitterly for the torrents of blood shed; and he complied with the Pontiff's entreaty for pardon for the bishop, who had certainly shown a most noble example of fidelity to his monarch. Both those clergymen subsequently acquired Henry's favour. The faithful Merks died rector of Todenham, in Gloucestershire, in 1409.
Such was the sanguinary termination of this ill-advised and ill-conducted insurrection—a proper prelude, as Henry the historian has justly observed, "to those scenes of blood and cruelty which fallowed in the long contest between the Houses of York and Lancaster, occasioned by the fatal ambition of Henry IV."
"But the spectacle," justly observes Hume, "the most shocking to every one who retained any sentiment, either of honour or humanity, was to see the Earl of Rutland carrying on a pole the head of his brother-in-law. Lord Spenser, which he presented in triumph to Henry as a testimony of his loyalty. Rutland, soon after Duke of York, was, perhaps, the most infamous man, as he certainly was the greatest traitor, of the age."
A storm still lowered in the direction of France. Charles VI. had been deeply offended by the conduct of Henry on leaving France. Under pretence of visiting the Duke of Brittany, he had stolen away to make war on the son-in-law of Charles, the husband of his daughter Isabella. On hearing of the deposition of Richard, Charles was seized, it is said, with one of his frequent fits of insanity, and on recovering vowed to make instant war. The people of France eagerly seconded the intentions of the indignant monarch. Offers of military service were made by leaders of note, and troops were already on the march towards the coast. It was now that Henry, as we stated in the close of Richard's reign, made his offers of alliance. He proposed intermarriages on a most liberal scale. The ​ambassador was empowered to treat not only with the king, but with his uncles, paternal and maternal, for marriages to be made between the Prince of Wales, his brothers and sisters, and the children, male or female, of the King of France, or his uncles. Charles peremptorily refused to receive the ambassador, disclaiming all knowledge of Henry as King of England.
But soon after this Charles of France received what he considered satisfactory news of the death of Richard, and sent Blanchet, his maistre des requestes, to announce that he should not disturb the truce made in the life-time of his dear son Richard, but demanded the immediate restoration of Isabella with her dower and jewels. The French commissioners were, however, instructed not to call Henry king, but to speak of him, in addressing the English envoys, as "La seigneur qui vous a envoyez," the lord who has sent you, and in writing, "La partie d'Angleterre," the English party.
Owen Glendower's Oak, near Shrewsbury.
Nothing at this time resulted from the endeavours to obtain Isabella, as Henry was not only anxious to marry her to his son, the Prince of Wales, but was very poor, and had no intention of returning the 200,000 francs of dowry, or the jewels. France, on its part, though professing to maintain the truce, did not omit what appeared a favourable opportunity to deprive England of her remaining possessions in that country. The people of Guienne wore greatly excited at the news of the deposition of Richard. He had been born amongst them, and a strong sympathy existed there in his favour. With all the warm feeling and imagination of the South, they now pictured him to themselves as all goodness. To them, indeed, he had been distant, and his rule, compared with that of the French, mild and indulgent. They uttered the most fervent imprecations on the heads of the Londoners, who, they said, had effected his ruin, and protested against submission to the usurper.
This was a temper precisely such as suited the French desires of acquisition in that quarter. The Duke of Burgundy, then all powerful, owing to the unhappy and continually recurring mental malady of the king, proposed to invade the English provinces. Accordingly, he marched upon Guienne, while the Duke of Bourbon appeared on another part of the frontiers, issuing proclamations, and offering most flattering conditions to the people to induce them to throw off their allegiance to the English, and unite themselves to France.
The Return of the Douglas across the Border.
These dangers from abroad being thus happily dissipated, a movement was made by the Royal Council, undoubtedly originated by Henry for ascertaining the fate of the deposed king. The late insurrection had shown the perils resulting from the presence of the true king—though in strict concealment—to the usurper. So long as Richard remained alive would attempts be made by his partisans to restore him; and, however popular Henry might be for a time, he was too well versed in human nature not to be aware that any cause of offence on his part, any heavy imposition or restriction of liberty, however necessary, would immediately turn the public mind to the dethroned monarch, and operate in his favour. These considerations, we have every reason to believe, had led to his immediate destruction. From the day that he had been left in the Tower after his formal abdication, the most profound mystery had covered his existence. There were many stories of his being, like Edward III., conveyed secretly from one castle to another by his keepers. It was said that he had been kept some time in Leeds Castle in Kent, and thence removed to Pontefract. But no one really know where he was, or how he was treated. But now news had reached the court of France that Richard was really dead, and the council of Henry, as if of their own accord, placed a minute on their book to this effect:—"It seemeth expedient to the council to speak to the king, that in case Richard, lately king, &c., be still alive, he be put in safe keeping, in conformity with the advice of the lords; but if he be departed this life, that then he be shown openly to the people, that they may have the knowledge of it."
The answer to this, as intended, was the showing openly the body, which was brought up from Pontefract Castle with considerable funeral pomp, namely, in a carriage drawn by two horses, one placed before the other. The carriage was covered with black cloth, having four banners emblazoned with the arms of St. George and St. Edward. It was attended by 100 men all clad in black, and was met on its approach to the city by thirty Londoners dressed in white and bearing torches. King Henry himself walked in procession, bearing a corner of the pall.
But this public exposition, so far from having satisfied the public mind of Richard's death, was the fruitful source of continued rumours of his existence, and perpetuated the very effects which Henry intended it to dispel—repeated revolts for his restoration. So strong was the belief that Richard was still alive and even at liberty, and that this was a mere mock funeral, and the corpse that of some other person, that in our own time Mr. Tytler, in his History of Scotland, vol. vii., p. 279, has taken up the theory, and produced new and curious evidence in its favour. It will explain much that we shall meet with in this reign to take a cursory review of this evidence.
The accounts of Richard's death, given by contemporary writers, are chiefly three. Walsingham asserts that he died in Pontefract Castle on the 14th of February, 1399, from voluntary starvation, having fallen into a profound melancholy on hearing of the failure of the insurrection on his behalf, and the execution of his half-brother, John Holland, and the rest of his friends. Thomas of Otterburn confirms this account, except that he adds that Richard being persuaded at length to take food by his keepers, found the orifice of his stomach closed from long abstinence, and perished in consequence. The chronicle of Kenilworth, the chronicle of Peter de Ickham in the Harleian collection, and Hardyng, assert that he was starved to death, by his keepers.
The story of his assassination by Sir Piers Exton and his eight ruffians is found in a French manuscript work in the Royal Library at Paris, and is repeated by Fabyan, Hall, and Haywood. The account of Fabyan is that followed by Shakespeare, which has given it a firm and world-wide hold on the public mind. All these accounts concur in the fact that the murder of Richard, in whatever shape it took place, occurred in Pontefract Castle. Tradition has had but one constant voice, also fixing it there, and in 1643 three gentlemen of Norfolk visiting that castle record that they were shown the highest of seven towers, called "the round tower," as the one in which Richard fled round a post in combat with his butchers; and they add, "Upon that post the cruel hackings and fierce blows do still remain."
The reasons for rejecting all these accounts brought forward by Mr. Tytler are these. In the first place, the public at the time were extensively of opinion that the body shown as Richard's was not his, but most probably that of Maudelain, his kinsman and chaplain, a man so strikingly resembling him, that we have seen the conspirators lead him forth with them to personate the king. There was nothing shown of the body but the face, and that only from the eyebrows to the chin. Undoubtedly there were strong reasons of some kind for this concealment. If the body were Maudelain's, though the features might bear out the resemblance, the hair would dispel the illusion, for Richard's was well known from its peculiar yellow hue. No hair was visible, and, so far, the idea of the substitution of another corpse was favoured. But the concealment of the head was equally suspicious, even were the body Richard's. It showed that there was something there which could not boar examination. If Richard died by violence, there would be upon the head the traces of it. That there was something to conceal was further strengthened by the fact that Henry did not allow the body to be deposited in the royal vault at Westminster, nor in the vault of the Black Prince, Richard's father, at Canterbury, but had it privately, conveyed to Langley, a favourite retreat of ​Richard's, and buried there in the monastery of the preaching friars, as more out of the way of inquiry and research.
Since Mr. Tytler has produced his evidence in favour of Richard's escape, the condition of the supposed body of Richard, on the opening of his tomb, has been peferred to as proof that the story of his death by Sir Piers Exton could not be true. The skull exhibited no decided fracture, but the suture above the os temporis was open, and that might certainly have been produced by the stroke, and the os temporis be covered at the time of the exposition of the body by the bandage. That it could not, however, be the body of Maudelain was sufficiently clear, as the head had not been severed from the body by the axe, as Maudelain's was.
It might, therefore, really be Richard's body, and the death be as related—namely, by Exton and his assassins. The evidence for Richard's escape to Scotland brought forward by Tytler is this:—Bower, or Bow-maker, the continuator of Pordun, and one of the most ancient and authentic of our historians, says that Richard II. found means of escape from Pontefract Castle; that he succeeded in reaching the Scottish isles, and travelling in disguise through those remote parts, was accidentally recognised when sitting in the kitchen of Donald, Lord of the Isles, by a jester who had been educated at the court of the king. He adds that Donald sent him under the charge of Lord Montgomery to Robert III., with whom as long as the Scottish monarch lived, he was supported as became his rank; and that, after the death of this king, the royal fugitive was delivered to the Duke of Albany, then governor of Scotland, by whom he was honourably treated; and he concludes this remarkable sentence by affirming that Richard at length died in the castle of Stirling, and was buried in the church of the preaching friars on the north side of the altar. In the events of the year 1419 the same historian has this brief entry:—"In this year died Richard, King of England, on the feast of St. Luke, in the castle of Stirling."
Andrew Winton, the author of a rhyming chronicle, who wrote before Bower, also relates the same story, with some additional incidents—namely, that Richard was placed by Henry in the custody of two gentlemen of rank and reputation, named Swinburn and Waterton, who took compassion on him, connived at his escape, and spread the report of his death. Mr. Tytler, by application to the present descendants of those gentlemen, has learnt that it has always been a tradition in the family of Mr. Waterton, the well-known naturalist, that his ancestor. Sir Robert Waterton, master of the horse to Henry IV., had Richard II. in charge at Pontefract.
Sir Robert was steward of the honour of Pontefract: and what is a curious circumstance, in 1405 the Earl of Northumberland seized and kept Sir Robert Waterton in close confinement in the castles of Warkworth, Alnwick, Berwick, and elsewhere; and that the Earl of Northumborland afterwards entered into league with Robert of Scotland to maintain the cause of King Richard.
In an ancient manuscript in the Advocates' Library, at Edinburgh, Mr. Tytler finds that Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, with his nephew, Henry the younger, came to King Richard, at this time an exile, but well treated by the governor." The same manuscript gives the account of his death, and adds his Latin epitaph, which was still remaining on the tomb in the time of Boece, who quotes it. On examining the accounts of the chamberlain of the Duke of Albany, signed after the death of Robert III., and while James I. was a captive in England, Mr. Tytler finds four several entries in the years 1408, 1414, 1415, and 1417, stating the expenses of maintaining King Richard at the annual cost of 100 marks a year, in total of £733 6s. 8d.
Mr. Tytler then reminds us of the fact that all those who insisted on King Richard being still alive, were summarily dispatched whenever they fell into the hands of Henry. Walsingham states that the year 1402 absolutely teemed with reports of Richard being alive, and a priest of Ware was put to death by Henry for affirming it. Then eight Franciscan friars were hanged at London for obstinately maintaining that this was true. Walter de Baldock, Prior of Launde, in Leicestershire, was hanged for publishing the same story. Sir Roger de Clarendon, a natural son of the Black Prince, and one of the gentlemen of the bedchamber to Richard II., along with his armour-bearer and page, was condemned and executed for the same offence. Still more, the celebrated Lord Cobham, the chief of the Lollards, on his trial in 1417, refused to plead, denying the authority of the court before which he was arraigned for heresy, saying, "He could acknowledge no judge amongst them so long as his liege lord, King Richard, was alive in Scotland." Mr. Tytler rests much weight on the position and character of Lord Cobham, whose integrity was of the highest kind, who had sat in Parliament, and held high office under Richard, Henry IV., and Henry V.; and must, he contends, have had ample opportunity for ascertaining the truth.
Finally, Mr. Tytler shows that when Sir David Fleming was in possession of the person of the asserted King Richard, Henry IV. entered into a secret correspondence with that gentleman, and granted him a passport for a personal interview; that Henry was about the same time carrying on private negotiations with Lord Montgomery, to whom, as we have stated, Richard had been delivered by the Lord of the Isles, and with the chaplain of the Lord of the Isles also.
Such are the chief points of the case brought forward by the ingenious historian of Scotland; and certainly they are strong and curious, but they fail to carry conviction to our minds. The pretended King Richard was no impostor, for he was asserted by others to be King Richard; but he uniformly denied it himself. He was positively declared by the former jester of King Richard to be that king, and also by the sister-in-law of the Lord of the Isle, who declared she had seen him in Ireland.
This supposed Richard is declared by Wynton "to have seemed half-mad or wild, from the manner in which he conducted himself," and therefore it was supposed that he had lost his understanding through his misfortunes. Though we are told that Lord Percy and other noblemen came to him, we are also informed that he would not see them. Yet for seventeen years at least, was this mysterious personage maintained at the court of Scotland as the venerable King Richard. But it appears that he was kept in the closest seclusion. Now, had the King of Scotland been ​confident that he had the real King Richard, nothing could have strengthened him so much against his enemy of England as to have let all those English noblemen and gentlemen who were familiar with Richard have the fullest opportunity of verifying him. As such was not the case, we may fairly infer that there were sufficient reasons for avoiding this test, and that the pretended Richard was what he was called by Henry of England in his proclamations, the mamuet, or puppet, which it was convenient for Scotland to play off against England, whenever it was useful to stir up an insurrection. Still, there in sufficient semblance of a fact in the case to make it one of those which will always stimulate curiosity, and give occasion for the exercise of a subtle ingenuity, without the chance of a positively decisive proof.
The King of Scotland lost no time in putting into play this story of the flight of King Richard to his court. The news of it was spread amongst the disaffected in various quarters of England, and the Scots prepared to make a descent on the country under advantage of the internal dissension produced. There were other motives which added piquancy to the enmity of the Scots and English. Robert in. was becoming old and feeble, and the Duke of Albany, his brother, one of the most ambitious and unprincipled men that ever lived, possessed the chief power, and gave every possible encouragement to the English adherents of Richard. On the other band, Henry, recollecting the taunts of degeneracy which had been cast upon his predecessor because be was of a pacific turn, determined to gratify the taste of the nation for military fame. It suited him in every way, except in a pecuniary point, for he was very destitute of funds; but it was calculated to divert men's minds from dwelling on the means by which he had risen to the throne, and gave them one great object of interest and union. The condition of Scotland, torn by powerful factions, and ruled by a weak and failing king, was favourable to his plans, and an expedition thither was the more grateful to his feelings, as it afforded him a hope of punishing the country which gave refuge to his enemies. Hr announced his intention to Parliament, but it did not encourage the idea of imposing new taxes. He then called a great council of the peers, spiritual and temporal, and these consented to a partial resort to the ancient feudal system, which had for some time been falling into desuetude, that the barons should assemble their retainers and follow the royal standard at their own cost; while the prelates and dignitaries of the Church should give the king a tenth of their incomes. Henry next summoned all persons possessed of fees, wages, or annuities, granted by Edward III., the Black Prince, Richard II., or the Duke of Lancaster, to meet him at York, under the penalty of forfeiture: and, from the banks of the Tyne, where he arrived in the beginning of August, he dispatched heralds to King Robert and the barons of Scotland, as his vassals, to meet him on the 23rd of that month at Edinburgh, there to do homage and swear fealty to him as the paramount lord of Scotland, which, be modestly asserted, all former Kings of Scotland had done to the Kings of England from the days of Brute the Trojan.
He marched to Leith without opposition, but the castle of Edinburgh was in the hands of David, Duke of Rothsay, the king's eldest son, who sent Henry a contemptuous defiance, offering to do battle with him, with one, two, or three hundred Scottish knights against the same number of English. Henry received the proposal with an equal affectation of contempt, and waited some days for the approach of an army under the Duke of Albany. But he waited in vain, for that astute nobleman took care not to engage a force which famine was fast defeating for him. Provisions became unattainable, and Henry was compelled to retreat to the borders.
The expedition was far from equalling the prestige of those of his predecessors, especially the Edwards I. and m., but at the same time it must be allowed that it far exceeded them in humanity. Whether the real motive were humanity or policy, it was in effect both. His protection was instantly afforded to all who sought it, and the royal banner displayed from tower or steeple was a signal that no violence or plunder of the inhabitants was permitted. Thus he mitigated the terrors of war, and set an example of moderation to both friend and enemy, such as had hitherto been unknown in European warfare.
Henry was hastily recalled from the borders of Scotland by a formidable revolt in Wales. There a new enemy, and a most troublesome one, had been needlessly provoked by the injustice of a nobleman, Lord Grey de Euthyn. Lord Grey, who had large estates in the marches of Wales, appropriated a part of the demesne of a Welsh gentleman, Owen ap Griffith Vaughan, commonly called Owen Glendower, or Owen of Glendowerdy. In his youth Owen had studied the law in the inns of court; was called to the bar, but afterwards became an esquire to the Earl of Arundel; and then, during the campaign in Ireland, to Richard II., to whom he was much attached. When Richard was deposed Owen retired to his paternal estate in Wales, where the aggression of Lord Grey took place. Lord Grey was closely connected with the new king; Owen was an adherent to the old one; and this probably encouraged Lord Grey to attempt the injustice. But Owen Vaughan was possessed of the high spirit and quick blood of the Welsh. He disdained to submit to this arrogant oppressor. He petitioned the king in Parliament for redress, but met with the fate which was only too probable from a poor partisan of the fallen king in opposition to the powerful one of the reigning dynasty. Though his cause was ably pleaded by the Bishop of St. Asaph, his petition was rejected, and Owen, who boasted that he was descended from Llewellyn, the last of the ancient Princes of Wales, boldly took his cause into his own hands, and drove Lord Grey by force of arms from his lands. The indignant nobleman appealed to Henry, who embraced his cause, and issued a proclamation at Northampton on the 19th of September, 1400, commanding all men of the nine neighbouring counties to repair instantly to his standard, to march into Wales, and reduce Glendower, who was declared a rebel. The fiery patriot, burning with indignation at this gross injustice, the very day that the news of it reached him, rushed forth, burnt Lord Grey's town of Ruthyn, declared himself Prince of Wales, and called on his countrymen to follow him and assert the liberty of their country. The spark was thrown into the magazine of combustible material of which Wales was full, for it was crushed but not contented. The people flocked from all quarters to Owen's standard. They admitted his claims to the princedom of the country ​without much inquiry, for they saw in him a champion and a deliverer from the English yoke. Owen's superior education in London inspired thorn with profound respect, and hence their opinion that he was a potent magician, possessing dominion over the elements. Henty marched against him, but Owen retired into the mountains, and the king was compelled to return.
The remainder of the year was spent in negotiations for the return of Queen Isabella to France. This return had hitherto been delayed by the anxiety of Henry still to obtain her for his son the Prince of Wales; but Isabella, as well as her relatives, is said to have stood firm not to listen to any alliance with the family of her husband's murderer. In the following year, 1401, Henry concluded a treaty of marriage between Louis of Bavaria, the eldest son of the Emperor of Germany, and his eldest daughter, the Princess Blanche, to whom he gave a portion of 40,000 nobles.
This done, Henry marched once more against the Welsh, who continued to assemble in still greater bodies under the banner of Owen Glendower, and make inroads into England, plundering and killing wherever they came. Twice in this year Henry took the field against them, but on his approach they retired into their mountains and eluded his pursuit. As regularly as he returned, they again rushed down into the champaign country, and in one of these incursions in Pembrokeshire, Owen gained a considerable victory, thus raising his reputation and augmenting his force.
Wearied by these fruitless attempts to subdue the insurgent Welsh, Henry returned towards the end of the year to London, but found as little repose or satisfaction there. Secret enemies were around him, treason dogged his steps into his very chamber, and he was very near losing his life by means of a sharp instrument of stool, having three long points, which was concealed in his bed.
In 1402 Henry was at length reluctantly obliged to relax his hold on the young Queen Isabella. When Charles VI., her father, recovered his sanity for a time, he sent the Count d'Albres into England to demand an interview with Isabella, in order to ascertain the real condition in which she was kept, and to demand her release with her dower and jewels, according to the marriage contract with Richard. The ambassador found the king at Eltham, who received him and his suite with great hospitality, gave ready access to the young queen on condition that neither the ambassador nor any one accompanying him should speak of Richard of Bordeaux to her. He declared that she should possess the most perfect security and every comfort, state, and dignity which was due to her rank and position; but he did not seem the more prepared to yield up the desired princess. His council, however, ventured to take a different view of the matter. They suggested that as no accommodation respecting her marriage with the prince could be effected, it was time that she should be given up to her friends. That as she was but of tender age, she could not of right claim revenue as a queen dowager of England, but that it was fitting that she should receive back again her dowry and her jewels, with all the other effects which she brought with her.
On this point Henry demurred, and submitted to the council whether he wore really bound by the engagements of his predecessor. The council, with an evidently growing firmness, decided that he was. But Henry pleaded another difficulty. He had, it came out, actually taken possession of the young queen's jewels, and distributed thorn amongst his six children; the Prince of Wales, though he could not have the lady, being consoled with the largest share of her spoils. Henry announced to his council that his children were all absent, but that he had written to them commanding them to give up the jewels of "their dear cousin, Queen Isabella," and they were to be sent to London.
If the poor young queen waited for them she waited in vain; for we find that she actually was compelled to take her leave stripped of every-thing except her silver drinking cup, a few silver saucers and dishes, and some pieces of old tapestry. Nothing in the whole reign of Henry is more characteristic of the grasping and unjust nature of the man, even in such small matters as a lady's jewels, finding in himself no capability of arousing a generous feeling within him. He was pre-eminently of a cold, unimpassioned, acquisitive nature. He excused himself from making restitution of her dowry on the plea of a great debt still owed by France to this country for the ransom of King John, and deducted the amount as a great favour, and with all the punctual scrupulosity of a scrivener. But the jewels were never returned or accounted for, as we shall presently hear from her indignant kinsmen.
In other respects the unfortunate and amiable young queen seems to have been sent home with all due state and respect. She was accompanied from her residence, Havering-atte-Bower, to London, by the Duchess of Ireland and the Countess of Hereford, the mother of the Duchess of Gloucester, and by Eleanor Holland, the widow of Roger, Earl of Marche, and mother of the young earl, the rightful heir of England. Besides these princesses there were the Ladies Poynings and Mowbray, and seven maids of honour, in addition to her own suite of French gentlemen and ladies. She was escorted by the Bishops of Durham and Hereford, the Earl of Somerset, half-brother of Henry, four knights bannerets, and six chevaliers.
It is said that still Henry was most unwilling to let her go, and that both he and his son did all in their power to bend her inclination, but in vain. At length, in July, Sir Thomas Percy was appointed to conduct her across the Channel, and Dover her into the hands of her friends. This took place at Loulinghen, a town betwixt Calais and Boulogne, on the 26th. of July, 1402. Isabella was at this time nearly fifteen, strikingly handsome, and extremely amiable. Every one is said to have parted from her with regret, and, on the other hand, she was received by her royal relatives and countrymen with an enthusiasm which probably had as much design as affection in it, for they wished to mark the contrast between the sordid behaviour of Henry and their own. She was overwhelmed with rich presents, as if to make amends for the widowed destitution in which she retiuned, and her uncle, the Duke of Orleans, who was anxious to secure her for his son, outdid every one else in his liberality. He was not satisfied with this, but sent a letter to Henry, upbraiding him in the severest terms for ​his meanness, for his murder of Richard, and challenging him to mortal combat. This -was not the only epistle which Henry received from France in the same strain, for the Count Walleran de Ligny and St. Pol had written to him before the queen arrived, and sent his heralds with his letter into England, also defying him, and protesting that he would everywhere, on land and sea, do him all the harm that he possibly could.
Henry was stung to answer these missives in a similar strain, but they did not prevent him still cherishing the idea of yet securing Isabella for his son. In 1406, if we are to believe Monstrellet, he made singular offers for this purpose, but the Duke of Orleans declared in the council that the hand of Isabella was now promised to his son, Charles of Angoulême. To this young prince the widowed queen of England was married, and died in childbirth in September, 1410. Such was the last of the fortunes of King Richard and his little queen; and it has been well argued that nothing is so decisive in proof of Richard being actually dead as the pertinacity of Henry to obtain Isabella for his son's wife, as he certainly would not have done this had he known that Richard was living, for it would have illegitimate the issue of the marriage, and the claim of succession to the throne.
Meantime the revolt of Owen Glendower had been acquiring strength. Not only did the Welsh, amid their native mountains, flock to his standard, but such of them as were in England left their various employments and hastened back to join in the great efforts for the independence of their country. Not only labourers and artisans, but the apprentices in London and other cities caught the contagion, and went streaming back. The students left the universities, and the Commons at length presented themselves before the king, representing to him how all these various classes of men were hastening to Wales laden with armour, arrows, bows, and swords. Owen took the field early, engaged his original adversary, Lord Grey, defeated and made him prisoner on the banks of the Vurnway. Sir Edmund Mortimer, uncle to the young Earl of Marche, collected all the friends and vassals of the family to prevent the devastation of their lands. They mustered 12,000, with whom they attacked Glendower near Knighton, in Radnorshire, but were defeated, and Sir Edmund was made prisoner, with a loss of 1,100 of his men. At the same time the young earl himself, who had been allowed by Henry to retire to his castle of Wigmore, though a mere boy, took the field, but was also captured by Glendower and carried into the mountains.
Henry, who had the strongest reasons for wishing the Mortimers out of his way, we may suppose was by no means displeased at their seizure by Glendower; and this was sufficiently evident, for he refused to allow the Earl of Northumberland, who was closely allied to the Mortimers, to treat for their ransom with Glendower. Still, Henry put forth all his vigour to reduce the Welsh chieftain. He entered Wales at three different points; his son, the Prince of Wales, leading one division of the army, the Earl of Arundel the second, and himself the third. The Prince of Wales pushed into the heart of the mountains with a bravery which was the herald of Agincourt. He reached the very estate of Glendower and burnt down his house, and laid waste his property; but Glendower kept aloof on the hills till he saw young Henry retire, when he poured down like one of his native torrents, and carried desolation in his rear. The English armies found it impossible to come to close quarters with these enemies, and equally impossible to procure provisions. The weather was insupportable. The rains descended in incessant deluges, the tempest tore away the king's tent, and everything appeared to confirm the ideas of the people, and indeed of contemporary historians, that Owen Glendower, by the power of necromancy, could "call spirits from the vasty deep," and bring the elements in league against his foes. Henry was compelled to return baffled from the contest.
The news which reached the king from Scotland was equally extraordinary. It was that King Richard was alive and residing at the Scottish court, and about to invade England at the head of a large army. The king issued repeated proclamations against the propagation of these rumours, and it was now that he put to death Sir Roger Clarendon, the natural son of the Black Prince, the nine Franciscan friars, and several other persons, for disseminating this account. But his efforts only added force to the popular belief. The circumstance most in his favour was the distraction of the Scottish court, where a most terrible tragedy had been the consequence of the criminal ambition of the Duke of Albany, the king's brother.
Robert III. had never been a martial monarch, owing to a kick which he received in his youth from a horse, which left him very lame. He was of peaceful habits, a religious and just temperament, but of feeble mind, and readily influenced by those around him. His aspiring brother, the Duke of Albany, had taken advantage of these circumstances to grasp the whole power of the state in his hands.
David, the Duke of Rothsay, the eldest son of Robert, was, like the son of Henry in England, gay and dissipated. He was at the same time brave, generous, and honourable, and, therefore, the more liable to be entrapped by the crafty arts of Albany. The king and queen were anxious to have their son well married, but Albany prevailed on them to select a wife from a Scottish house which would pay the largest dower. On this disgraceful principle he sought to degrade the prince, and make him enemies. He succeeded completely. George, Earl of March—not the English Marche—made the most ample offer for the honour of this connection with royalty. The prince was said to have his own attachment, but that was by no means consulted. When, however, the match was arranged with the daughter of the Earl of March, Archibald, Earl of Douglas, the most powerful and overbearing baron in Scotland, felt himself aggrieved, and determined to place his own daughter, as Rothsay's wife, on the throne. Earl James, his predecessor, had married the king's sister, and he was resolved that no subject but himself should hold the same relation to the crown. He outbade March, the Duke of Albany gave him the preference, the alliance already arranged was broken off with March, and Mariell Douglas was married to Rothsay.
Restoration of Isabella to her Father. (See page 491.)
Amongst the duke's companions was a Sir John Ramorgny, the most accomplished villain of his time. His education was of the most complete character for the age, for it seems he had been originally intended for the Church, but the profligacy and reckless spirit of his youth had disqualified him, and he had become first a soldier and then a diplomatist. His handsome person, his fascinating manners, the insinuating address and grace of his demeanour, which covered no single spark of conscience or principle, peculiarly fitted him to be the supple tool of princes. He was accordingly employed by Albany in state negotiations, both at home and abroad.
This man was just the person to attract the attention of the young Rothsay. He could inform him of all the life and follies of foreign courts, and introduce him to the most criminal pleasures of his own capital. Rothsay, with his openness of character, did not for a moment conceal his hatred of Albany, and Ramorgny, with the utmost coolness, advised him to have him assassinated. From this diabolical counsel Rothsay, who, however misguided, was honourable by nature, revolted in horror, and heaped such terms of abhorrence on his advisor, that Ramorgny, stung with all the resentment of a fiend, and incapable of the remorse of a man, conceived the moat deadly hatred to the young duke, betrayed his conversations to Albany, and lent himself to assist in his destruction.
In league with this villanous uncle and his villanous confidant Ramorgny were now, unfortunately, the Earl of Douglas, whose sister Rothsay had married but neglected, and Sir William Lindsay of Rossy, whoso sister he had loved and forsaken. These noblemen now waited in a plot which at this time of day appears not more revolting than astonishing—the murder of the heir apparent to the throne.
To effect this, it was represented by them to the aged king, who lived in close retirement, and knew nothing of what passed without but through the medium of Albany, that such were the excesses of the prince that it was absolutely necessary to put him under some closer restraint. Ramorgny and Lindsay, as the most apparently disinterested, wore made to introduce this to the king, and with such effect that the afflicted old monarch gave an order under the royal signet to arrest the prince and place him in temporary confinement. The victim was now in their power. Ramorgny and Lindsay seized him as he was on his way to St. Andrews with only a few followers, and shut him up in the castle of St. Andrews. Having sent off to Albany the tidings of their success, they were instructed by him to convey him to the solitary castle of Falkland. One tempestuous day, therefore, they threw a cloak over his rich dress, mounted him on a sorry horse, and, in this disguise, attended by a strong body of soldiers, they hurried him to Falkland and thrust him into a dungeon.
For fifteen days the unhappy prince was kept there under the charge of two ruffians of the names of Wright and Selkirk, whose business it was to starve him to death, When groaning in the agonies of hunger, his voice became known to a poor woman, who contrived to steal to his grated window, which was level with the ground, and convey him food, by dropping small barley cakes through the bars, and nourishing him with her own milk, conveyed to him through a pipe.
But the protracted life of their victim roused the suspicion of the assassins; they watched, and drove away the kind woman, and Rothsay soon perished in such terrible agonies that it was found, after his death, that he had gnawed the flesh from his own shoulder. His body was buried privately in the monastery of Lindores, and it was proclaimed that he had died of dysentery. But the fatal truth was not long in becoming known, and the public, forgetting the follies of the prince, now joined in universal execration against Albany as his murderer. Yet what availed it? The monarch, who bitterly bewailed the death of his son, and is supposed to have been well aware of his murderers, was himself in Albany's hands, and that daring and unscrupulous man not only demanded examination before Parliament of his conduct, but obtained for himself and Douglas an acquittal from all charge of guilt, which none dared to advance against them, and still more, an attestation from the powerless king, under his own seal, of their innocence, which, however, nobody believed.
While these horrors had been maturing and transacting, the Earl of March, resenting the treatment of himself and his daughter by the court and Douglas, had retreated to his impregnable castle of Danbar, renounced his allegiance to the King of Scotland, done homage to Henry of England, and joined energetically the Percies of Northumberland in their attacks on his native country. What stimulated him to more bitterness was to see his vast estates conferred on Douglas, the hereditary enemy of his house. He made frequent inroads, either to recover his lands, or, by laying them waste, to render them useless to the intruder. These devastating visits obliged the border barons, the Haliburtons, the Oockburns, Hepburns, and Landers, to make common cause with the Douglas. They agreed to give the command by turns to the different chiefs, and each was ambitious to excel his associates by some feat of arms, called in the language of the times chevanche. On one of these occasions, the command being in the hands of Sir Patrick Hepburn of Hailes, the Scots broke into England and laid waste the ​country with great fury; but going too far, they were intercepted by Percy and March on Nesbit Moor in the Merse. The Scots were only 100 in number, but they were well armed and mounted, and consisted of the flower of the Lothians. The battle was long doubtful, but March, who had not arrived before, coming up with 200 men from the garrison at Berwick, decided the fortune of the day. Hepburn himself was killed, and such was the destruction of his best knights and his followers that the spot still retains the name of Slaughter Hill.
The Field of the Battle of Shrewsbury
Henry was delighted with the news of this victory. He complimented the Percies and March on their prompt bravery, and commanded them to call out and assemble the feudal levies of the northern counties, as the Scots were menacing the borders on the west, and ravaging the neighbourhood of Carlisle. Henry's information was correct. To revenge the defeat of Nesbit Moor, Lord Archibald Douglas took the field with 10,000 picked men, and Albany, who now wielded unlimited power in Scotland, sent his son Murdoch to join him with a strong body of archers and spearmen. The most distinguished knights and barons of Scotland followed the Douglas banner. There wore the Earls of Moray and Fife, Fergus Macdowall with his wild Galwegians, the chiefs of the houses of Erskine, Grahame, Montgomery, Seton, Sinclair and Lesley, the Stewarts of Angus, Lorn, and Durisdeer, with many other gentlemen. A nobler army for its numbers, never left Scotland under a Douglas. But the present Earl of Douglas was as noted for his lack of caution, and for his numerous consequent defeats, as his ancestors had been for their care and success, so that he had acquired the by-name of "the Tyne-man," the losing man. He rushed on across the Tweed with his accustomed impetuosity, and never stayed his course till he arrived before the gates of Newcastle. Everywhere the country people, unsupported by any armed force, had fled before him, and he and his followers now found themselves so loaded with booty that it was necessary to return.
Secure in their numbers and in the flight of the inhabitants, the Scots pursued their homeward way leisurely, till they arrived near Milfield, not far from Wooler, in Northumberland. But here they found themselves confronted by a strong force under the Earl of Northumberland, his son Hotspur, and the Earl of March. Douglas seized on an excellent position, a hill called Homildon, had he only had cavalry and men-at-arms to contend with; but the forces of the Percies consisted chiefly of archers, and there were many eminences round Homildon which completely commanded it, and whence the English bowmen could shoot down the Scots at pleasure.
The English occupied a strong pass; but perceiving their advantage, and that the Scots had not even taken possession of the eminence opposed to them, they advanced and secured that important ground. Had the Scots taken care to pre-occupy that, they could have charged down on the English archers, if they ventured to leave the pass, and the battle must speedily have been brought to a hand fight, where the Scots, from their vantage ground, could have committed great havoc.
The English, having posted themselves, to their own surprise, on the eminence opposite to the Scots, saw that Douglas had crowded his whole force into one dense column, exposing them to the enemy, and impeding, by their closeness, their own action. Hotspur, at the head of the men-at-arms, proposed to charge the Scots, but March instantly seized his bridle rein, and showed him ​that he would, by his advance, lose the grand advantage offered them by the oversight of Douglas. He made him aware that the bowmen could speedily level the serried ranks of the Scots without any danger to themselves. The truth of this was at once perceived; the English archers advanced, pouring their arrows in showers upon the Scots, who were so thickly wedged together, and so scantily furnished with armour, having little more on them than a steel cap and a slender jack or breast-plate, or a quilted coat, that the cloth-yard arrows of the English made deadly work amongst thorn. As the English continued to advance, the best armour of the knights was found incapable of resisting their arrows, while the Scottish archers drew feebler and more uncertain bows, and produced little effect. The confusion among the forces of Douglas became terrible; the bravest knights and barons fell mortally wounded; the horses struck with the arrows reared and plunged, and trod down the riders of their own party. The Galwegians, only half clad, presented, according to the accounts of the time, the appearance of huge hedgehogs, so thickly were they bristled over with the shafts of the enemy.
In this mortal dilemma a brave knight, Sir John Swinton, exclaimed, "My friends, why stand we here to be marked down by the enemy, and that like deer in a park? Where is our ancient valour? Shall we stand still, and have our hands nailed to our lances? Follow me, in the name of God; let us break yonder ranks, or die like men!"
On hearing this. Sir Adam Gordon, who had long been at deadly feud with Swinton, threw himself from his horse, entreated his forgiveness, and kneeling, begged the honour of being knighted by his hand. Svrinton instantly complied, and the two knights, tenderly embracing each other, mounted and charged down on the enemy, followed by a hundred horsemen. Had the whole body of the Scots followed, they might have retrieved the day; but such was the confusion in the Scottish lines, that before Douglas could advance to support them, Swinton and Gordon were slain, and their little band slaughtered or dispersed. When at length Douglas was able to move on, the English archers, keeping perfect order, fell back upon their cavalry, but poured, Parthian-like, showers of arrows behind them on the Scots. The carnage was awful. No defence could withstand the English arrows; and the Earl of Douglas himself, who wore on this fatal day a suit of armour of the most tried temper and exquisite workmanship, which had required three years to manufacture, was wounded in five places, and taken prisoner, together with Murdoch Stewart, the son of the governor, Albany, eighty knights, the Earls of Moray and Angus, and a crowd of esquires and pages, some of them French. The Scottish army was utterly routed; 1,500 men are said to have perished in attempting to escape across the Tweed; and amongst the numerous slain, besides the chivalric knights Swinton and Gordon, were Sir John Levingston of Calendar, Sir Alexander Ramsay of Dalhousie, Sir Roger Gordon, Sir Walter Scott, and Sir William Sinclair.
Such was the bloody battle of Homildon Hill, another of those great victories which the English owed entirely to the matchless superiority of their bows and bowmen; for Walsingham declares that neither earl, knight, nor squire handled their weapons, or came into action; though, when the Scots were broken, they joined in. the pm-suit. It was a most decisive battle, effacing, on the part of Hotspur, the memory of Otterburn, and affording to March a signal vengeance upon Douglas, who was defeated, desperately wounded with the loss of an eye, and taken prisoner.
When Henry received the news of this great victory, achieved on the day of the exaltation of the holy cross, September 14th, 1402, he instantly dispatched a messenger with letters of congratulation to the Percies and the Earl of March, but commanded them not on any account to admit to ransom any of their prisoners, of any rank whatever, or to suffer them to be upon parole until they received further instructions. The object of this order was plainly to keep Scotland quiet by retaining so many of her bravest leaders in his power; but the peremptory tone of the command, coming in the hour of victory, gave great offence to the commanders. It was a settled and ancient right of the conqueror to ransom his prisoners, and it came with a more sensible effect on the fiery spurt of Hotspur from the recent refusal of Henry to permit him to ransom his brother-in-law, the Earl of Marche, from Owen Glendower. Henry took care to assure the victors that it was not his intention to deprive ultimately any of his liege subjects of their undoubted rights in regard to their captives; but Henry was not famous for keeping his word in opposition to his interests, as had been shown to all the world in the case of the Queen Isabella. The reader will recollect the indignant language put by Shakespeare into the mouth of Hotspur on this occasion, and, notwithstanding the assertion of recent writers that the offence really taken by the Percies was not from this cause, we see no reason to doubt the relations of Rymer and other authorities. This second interference of Henry was the deciding cause of that immediately following revolt of the Percies, to which they were already no little disposed.
They had been the means of placing Henry on the throne, as it would seem, without intending it, for he had sworn to them on the Gospels at Doncaster that he aimed at nothing more than asserting his own invaded rights. Henry had rewarded them with large grants of land, including those of their prisoner Douglas, which lay in Eskdale, Liddesdale, with Ettrick Forest, and the lordship of Selkirk. The Percies, indeed, might regard these last as scarcely more than nominal gifts, for they would require a powerful force to keep possession of them, and they were almost immediately retaken by the Scots. The Percies, in fact, were ill pleased with the haughty tone of Henry, who owed them so much, and they were now in close alliance with the Mortimers, who had the real claim to the throne. That Henry received their desire to liberate their royal relative with fear and suspicion was clear from the fact that he made no resistance to the ransom of Lord Grey de Ruthyn. Henry did not hesitate to say in reply to Hotspur's pertinacious demands of Marche's liberty, that he and his-uncle Mortimer had gone to Glendower of their own accord, and that no loyal subject would, therefore, wish them back again.
This was pointed language to a mind like Hotspur's. But there were still other causes at work. The Earl of Northumberland attended at Westminster with his ​prisoner Murdoch Stewart, the son of Albany, and six other captives. They were presented to Henry, who, though he invited them to dine with him, received them rather cotlly, and used severe language to Sir Adam Forster, one of thorn. The earl pressed Henry for the payment of largo sums of money due to him for the custody of the Marches and the costs of the Scottish war. This of all subjects was the most distasteful to Henry, who was always short of money, and reluctant to part with it when he had it. To balance this account—as he had done that of the dowry of Queen Isabella, by a credit on the unpaid ransom of King John—he now gave Northumberland, instead of hard cash, the lands of Douglas, which would require for their defence still more hard blows. Northumberland returned homo in no good humour, and the work of revolt now went rapidly on.
The Earl of Westmoreland, the brother of Earl Percy, entered into their quarrel regarding the liberation of the Mortimers. Scrope, the Archbishop of York, the brother of William Scrope, Earl of Wiltshire, who had been put to death by Henry at Bristol, and who, therefore, hated Henry, advised these nobles to depose the usurper, and place the Earl of Marche, the rightful prince, on the throne. The first open evidence of the insurrection was furnished by Edmund Mortimer, who, to free himself from captivity, gave his daughter in marriage to Owen Glendower, and on his part agreed to join the confederacy for the overthrow of Henry of Lancaster, with 12,000 men.
Meantime, the Percies and the Earl of March had agreed to liberate Douglas, their prisoner, on condition that he should join the enterprise with a certain number of Scottish knights. Accordingly the Percies and March made a foray into Teviotdale, and challenged the chivalry of Scotland, by way of concealing their real enterprise from the eyes of the English king, to meet them in battle on the 1st of August. Keeping up the appearance of an attack on Scotland, they invested an insignificant fortress on the borders called the Tower of Oocklaws, commanded by a simple esquire, one John Greenlaw. This petty border hold was besieged with all the forms of war by this powerful army. It was assaulted by the archers, and battered by the trebuchets and mangonels, but still it stood firm, and its commander at length entered into a treaty with Hotspur, promising to surrender it in six weeks, that is, on the aforesaid 1st of August, if not sooner relieved by the King of Scotland, or Albany, the governor. This made it necessary to send a courier to Edinburgh, ostensibly to communicate this agreement to the Government, but really under cover of it to open a negotiation with Albany for his adhesion to the enterprise. The utmost publicity was given by the Percies to the expected rencontre between the nations on the 1st of August. They applied in all directions for aid and troops from their friends, and carried the deception so far as to even solicit Henry for arrears of money duo to them, amounting to £20,000, in order to enable them to maintain the honour of the nation.
Henry must have lost much of his usual sagacity if he had not for some time seen through this solemn farce. The black clouds of the coming tempest had been drawing together from various quarters for some time, and dull must have been the vision of the Government had they not attracted their notice. Henry sent no money, but ominously avowed hid intention of joining his faithful Percies in person, and sharing their dangers for their common country. This appears to have startled the covert insurgents. They at once altered the tone of their pretensions. They abruptly abandoned the anticipated glories of their Scottish campaign, and directing their course towards Wales, gave out that they were about to make war on Owen Glendower, in defence of King Henry.
Henry of Lancaster was by no means deceived. He knew that Mortimer had allied himself to Glendower, and publicly proclaimed his intention to maintain the cause of his nephew, the Earl of Marche, against Henry. Still more, the Scottish Earl of March, refusing to participate in the treasonable designs of the Percies, from his mortal hatred to Douglas, whom they had made an associate, hastened to Henry, and fully apprised him of the real situation of affairs. Henry, therefore, lost no time in marching northward; but this movement quickened that of Hotspur.
It has been said, that if this conspiracy had been executed with as much prudence as it was planned, it would have cost Henry his crown; and the cause of failure has been laid on the precipitancy of Hotspur and the timidity of his father. But it must be borne in mind that Henry was a suspicious and vigilant monarch, constantly in danger, and, therefore, constantly on the alert to detect it. Fortune, Providence, or his singular circumspection, served him uniformly in all these conspiracies, and enabled him to defeat all his adversaries. It must also be borne in mind that to arrange a sufficient military force to overturn the throne of a monarch like Henry, it required extended ramifications of conspiracy; and this involved the imminent danger of bringing into the field of operation some individuals hostile or traitorous to the enterprise. On this occasion the Percies had announced their object to the Governments of France and Scotland, and the defiances arriving from the Duke of Orleans and the Count of St. Pol seem to have originated from this cause. But if they did not awake suspicion in the breast of Henry, there was the Scottish Earl of March, as there had been the traitorous Earl of Rutland before, to prove a stumbling-block to the conspirators. It was almost impossible to avoid making him a confidant, and if made, he was pretty sure to damage them through his hatred to Douglas.
At the critical moment when Henry had clearly obtained intelligence of what was going forward, Albany, who was raising all Scotland, and proposing to bring down 50,000 men to join them, had not had time to complete his muster. The old Earl of Northumberland fell ill, or, as some historians will have it, grew afraid, and could not march. It was, therefore, no precipitance, but an inexorable necessity which compelled Hotspur to use all diligence to effect a junction with Owen Glendower, before overtaken by Henry. He was accompanied by Douglas and his Scottish knights; and by his uncle, the Earl of Worcester, the lieutenant of South Wales, with what forces he could got together. The men of Chester, always devoted to King Richard, came out and joined them on the march to support his cause, ​for they heard that he was still alive. The whole insurgent army amounted to 14,000 men, and even though disappointed of the contingents of the Scottish regent and the old Earl of Northumberland, if they could reach the army of Glendower they would present a most formidable force.
The French Fleet reaching Milford Haven (See Page 504.)
But in this Henry was too quick for them. He himself, knowing the valour of both the troops and the leaders who came against him, was desirous to delay awhile an actual conflict with them; but the Scottish Earl of March, who seems to have been an admirable tactician, as he had seen the true mode of action at Homildon, saw it in this case, and urged vehemently on Henry the necessity of checking the Percies before they could form a junction with Glendower. Henry saw the wisdom of the advice; he had now reached Burton-upon-Trent, and turning west, he pushed forward by forced marches, and entered Shrewsbury at the same moment that the advanced guard of Percy and Douglas was seen in all haste endeavouring to gain that city.
Execution of the Archbishop of York. (See page 503.)
​On receiving this answer Henry cried, "Then, banners, advance!" and the cries of "St. George!" and "Esperance, Percy;" rent the air. It was a pitiful sight to see so fine an army of Englishmen drawn up against each other for mutual destruction; and at the very first discharge the archers on both sides made a fearful slaughter. Every passion and motive was called into action which could lead to a desperate conflict. Never were there two more equally balanced armies. Each was about 14,000 strong. Hardyng, who, as we have said, was present, states Hotspur's force at 9,000 knights, yeomen, and archers, "withouton raskaldry," that is, common hired soldiers. The leaders on both sides were the most valiant men and distinguished captains of the age, tried in many a hard-fought field. Their followers were the flower of the English and Scottish armies. Here were not the renewed English archers on one, but on both sides; and these supported by such a body of gentlemen and the substantial yeomanry of the country as had rarely been assembled in so moderately-sized a host. On the one side, the king and his son fought for crown, life, and reputation. If they were conquered, there was nothing for them short of loss of the crown, of existence, and of reputation; for they must go down to posterity as usurpers who had deluged their country with blood for their criminal ambition. For Hotspur, on the other hand, it was either victory and the establishment of a close alliance with the old hereditary line, in the person of the new King of England, or execution, if taken; or, if he escaped, eternal banishment, and the ruin of his noble house and of all his kindred and adherents. Therefore every man, and preeminently the leaders, put forth all their force, and fought with the most lion-like desperation. According to Walsingham, the insurgents gave out that Richard himself was alive, and with them in the field to assist in avenging his own injuries.
Percy and Douglas, who had so often fought in opposition, now rushed on side by side, like two young lions, beating and bearing down all before them. Everywhere they sought out the king, determined to take him, alive or dead. But again the cunning Scottish Earl of March, who seemed to think of everything, had advised the king to take the field in the armour of a simple captain, and to dress up several captains in the royal garb. The ruse succeeded admirably for the king, but fatally for his representatives. Douglas and Hotspur raged everywhere. They broke through the English ranks with thirty picked followers, and wherever they saw a royally-dressed and mounted champion they attacked and slew him. Douglas, who is described as performing, as well as Hotspur, prodigies of valour, is said to have killed three of the sham kings with his own hand. When at length they approached the real king, he exclaimed in astonishment, "Where the devil do all these kings come from?" The two brave generals attacked Henry himself with the same fury with which they had assaulted those who resembled him. They came so near to him that they slew Sir Walter Blount, the standard-bearer, threw down the standard, killed the Earl of Stafford and two other knights, and wore within a few yards of Henry, when his good genius, the Scottish Earl of March, rushed forward and entreated him, if he valued his life, to keep somewhat more aback. The battle now raged here portentously, and knights and gentlemen fell promiscuously on all sides. For three hours the struggle and carnage went on, every one fighting. Soot against Scot, Englishman against Englishman, with the fury of demons; the archers all the while pouring in their showers of arrows on their opponents, so that, as Walsingham says, "the dead lay thick as leaves in autumn;" and so encumbered were the ranks, that there was scarcely any advancing over them. Still, everywhere the forces of Percy and Douglas were carrying the day; yet, at length, Henry's fortune once more prevailed. He had fought everywhere with a gallantry not surpassed by any man in the field. When unhorsed he was rescued by the Prince of Wales, who, though wounded early in the battle with an arrow in the face, fought through it with the most distinguished bravery, giving full promise of his future martial fame. But Hotspur and Douglas, finding that the ranks of the royal army through which they had broken had closed after them, endeavoured at length to cut their way back to their own troops. In this, however, they were not easily successful. The battle was in its full fury, every man fought like a hero, and they found themselves assailed on all sides by the points of spears, swords, and flights of arrows. In the heat of the mêlee, Hotspur, nearly suffocated in his armour from his prodigious exertions, for an instant raised his visor for air. That instant an arrow struck him in the face, passed through his brain, and he fell dead on the field. At this sight, which was beheld by both armies, the royal ranks set up the jubilant shout of "St. George and victory!" The Scots and Percy's forces gave way, and the flight and pursuing massacre became general. The Scots were almost entirely cut to pieces. Douglas, in endeavouring to escape, fell over a precipice; or, as others say, his horse stumbled in ascending a hill, he was thrown, severely injured, and taken.
The numbers of killed and wounded in this terrific action are said to have been 5,000 on the side of the king, and a much greater number on that of the insurgents. Otterburn says that nearly 2,300 gentlemen fell, and about 6,000 private men, of whom two-thirds were of the insurgent army. The most distinguished persons who perished on the royal side were the Earl of Stafford, Sir Walter Blount, Sir Hugh Shirley, Sir Nicholas Qausel, Sir Hugh Mortimer, Sir John Massey, and Sir John Calverley. Besides Hotspur and Sir Robert Stuart being killed, the uncle of Hotspur, the Earl of Worcester, the Baron of Kinderton, and Sir Richard Vernon were taken prisoners. Douglas was treated by Henry with the courtesy due to his rank and reputation, and as a foreign enemy, not as a rebel; but Worcester, Kinderton, and Vernon were immediately beheaded.
The rapidity with which Henry had broken in upon the plans of the insurgents had prevented one of the most formidable coalitions imaginable. The Duke of Albany in Scotland had assembled 50,000 men, and advanced to join Hotspur at the tower of Cocklaws; but on arriving there he found Percy and his army gone thence; and, soon after hearing that he was defeated and slain at Shrewsbury, he gave out that his expedition had only been intended to drive that nobleman from Scotland, and returned quietly to Edinburgh.
​The Earl of Northumberland, recovering from his illness, was far advanced in his march with a considerable body of men to join the main army, when he was met by the intelligence of the defeat and death of his son, and his brother, the Earl of Worcester. Completely dejected by this calamitous news, he disbanded his little army, and retired to his castle of Warkworth. Owen Glendower, from some cause, never appeared.
No sooner was this destructive battle over than Henry marched northward to disperse any remains of disaffection or armed force. He acted with consummate policy, prohibiting his troops from plundering, and offering pardon to all concerned in the late rebellion who laid down their arms. The Earl of Northumberland hastened to avail himself of this lenity, and presented himself before Henry at York, who received him, as might be expected, with evident displeasure and reproaches for the perfidy of his conduct. It is said that the old earl was mean enough to declare that he never intended any disloyalty, but was marching his troops to join the royal army—a circumstance which, if true, would induce us to believe all that writers of the time have insinuated of the dubious character of the indisposition which prevented him appearing at the moment of action. Henry seems to have received his miserable plea with deserved contempt, and he retained him in honourable custody for judgment by the approaching Parliament. He then proceeded to issue orders for the arrest of the Lady Elizabeth, the widow of Hotspur, and compelled the knights of Northumberland to swear fealty to him.
When Parliament assembled, Northumberland presented his petition to the king, acknowledging his assembling his retainers, but pleading Henry's promise of pardon at York, on condition of his surrender. The king referred the decision of his case to the judges, but the lords claimed it as their right to try their brother peer; and many of them having been more or less involved in the recent league with him, they pronounced him not guilty of treason or felony, but only of trespasses, for which they adjudged him bound to pay a fine at the king's pleasure. He then swore fealty to Henry, to the Prince of Wales, and to the other sons of the king and their issue, whereupon Henry granted him his pardon, and in a few months restored him to his lands and honours, with the exception of the Isle of Man, the governorship of Berwick, and some other fortresses.
Henry had thus quelled this dangerous rebellion with great spirit and address, but he was still surrounded by dangers; he still found himself pursued by all the evils and annoyances of a usurper. The French friends and families of the slain insurgents were full of animosity; the country complained of the weight of taxes imposed to put down these continual disturbances, the direct consequences of Henry's arbitrary seizure of the crown; and his enemies abroad were insulting the country, and plundering its coasts in revenge of his offences.
The French attacked Guienne, and plundered every English ship and every part of the English coasts that they could approach. They captured a whole fleet of merchantmen; they attacked and took Jersey and Guernsey; they made a descent on Plymouth, burnt it, and laid waste the whole neighbourhood. Walleran de St. Pol put his threat in force, of annoying and injuring Henry by every means in his power. He cruised along our coasts with a squadron of ships, landed on the Isle of Wight, and inflicted severe injuries on the inhabitants before he was repulsed. The admiral of Brittany scorned our coasts and the narrow seas, and carried off no less than fifty prizes, and nearly 2,000 prisoners. No less than three princes of the House of Bourbon wore engaged in thus discharging on the people of England their vengeance for the crimes of their king.
Henry granted letters of marque to make reprisals, and the inhabitants of the English seaports associated and carried on a vigorous maritime warfare. They retaliated on the French, ravaged their coasts, burnt their towns, and often even penetrated into the interior. They brought several fleets, laden with wine and other valuable cargo, into the British ports. They burnt Pennareh and St. Mahe. The Flemings and Easterlings, instigated by the Duke of Orleans and St. Pol, joined with the French in this piratical persecution of the English; and Henry sent out his second son, Thomas, afterwards Duke of Clarence, with a fleet, who committed great havoc on their coasts, destroying ships, people, and towns, without mercy. Thus did the people, as is too commonly the case, suffer for the crimes and feuds of their rulers.
To relieve the pressure of his wants, he made an attempt, through the Commons, to resume the grants of the Crown, and to appropriate some of the property of the Church; which resulted in nothing but exasperation of the minds of both laity and clergy. The widow of the Lord Spenser, who had been executed at Bristol, formed a scheme to liberate from Henry's custody the young Earl of Marche and his brother. She reached their apartments at Windsor by means of false keys, succeeded in getting them safely out of the castle, and was on her way with them towards Wales, where their uncle Mortimer was in close alliance with Glendower. But the vigilance of Henry was quickly aroused; the fugitives were pursued and captured. Lady Spenser, on being interrogated by the council, avowed that her brother, the Duke of York, the notorious Rutland, who betrayed everybody, and who had now succeeded his father in his title and estates, was at the bottom of the scheme. York was immediately arrested; but he protested his entire innocence, and, after a few months confinement in the castle of Pevensey, he was released and restored to the full enjoyment of his rank and property.
Meantime Robert, King of Scotland, crushed by the murder of his eldest son, the Duke of Rothsay, and trembling for the fate of his second son, James, Earl of Carrick, still a boy of only fourteen years of age, was too much enfeebled by age and adversity to be able to contend with the wicked Albany, or find any means of security for his son at home, where that nobleman held unlimited sway. He therefore agreed to place him in charge of the King of France, and the young prince, accompanied by the Earl of Orkney, Fleming of Cumbernauld, the Lords of Dirleton and Hermandston, and a strong body of the barony of the Lothians, proceeded to North Berwick, and embarked in a ship which awaited him at the Bass. The Earl of Orkney and a small personal suite alone accomnanied him on the voyage, and ​as the truce was still existing with England, they had no apprehensions from that quarter. But they were already watched by the sleepless eyes of Henry of Lancaster, and when the vessel was off Flamborough Head, they were captured by an armed merchantman of Wye, and carried to London.
The Earl of Orkney presented a letter to Henry, written by Robert of Scotland, entreating him, should his son be compelled by stress of weather to put into an English port, to show him kindness. The earl added, that the young prince was on bis way to France for the purpose of his education, and prayed that they might be permitted to pursue their way in peace and security. But Henry had not planned their capture on trivial grounds, and was not, therefore, to be persuaded to give up his prize by mere words. His interest was his paramount principle, and with that he rarely suffered feelings of justice or a sense of honour to interfere. The seizure of the son of a neighbouring king, at entire peace with him, was as gross a breach of the laws of nations as could be conceived; but then Henry had by it obtained a pledge of good behaviour on the part of Scotland. He had now the heir-apparent in his hands, and could employ that advantage in counteraction of the use made by Scotland of the pretended King Richurd. Henry, therefore, merely replied to the entreaties of the attendants of the Scottish prince, that he would be perfectly safe with him; and that as to his education, he spoke French as well as the King of France or the Duke of Orleans; and that his father, in fact, could not have sent him to a better master. James and his suite were consigned to the safe keeping of the Tower. That nothing could be more agreeable to the Duke of Albany than to have the heir to the throne safely secured at a distance, was apparent to all the world, as it would leave him, in case of the king's death, regent, and all but king in name. So much was this felt, that many did not hesitate to declare the whole affair to have been planned between Albany and Henry; and the feeble public remonstrances of Albany confirmed this belief. Douglas, on the other hand, who would fain have had the young prince in his hands as a means of gratifying his own lust of power, and of curbing that of Albany, was so enraged at the conveyance of the Earl of Carrick out of the kingdom, that his son, James Douglas of Abercorn, attacked the party of nobles who had accompanied the prince, on their return from North Berwick, and at the moor of Lang-Hermandston slew Sir David Fleming, and took most of the other nobles prisoners. This disastrous termination of the scheme which Robert of Scotland had devised for the safety of his son, hastened his death, which took place in 1406, and Albany was appointed regent during the absence of the young prince, which he was not, therefore, likely to reduce by any very strenuous exertions of his own.
It might have been expected that Henry's decisive suppression of the Percy insurrection would have procured him some considerable interval of peace; but this was by no means the case. The Percies were on fire with resentment, and resolved to take revenge for their humiliation and the deaths of Hotspur and Worcester on the very first opportunity. The Earl of Nottingham, son of the Duke of Norfolk, and Scrope, the Archbishop of York, who, though they had remained passive while Hotspiur was in the field, now did their best to fan the flame of revolt in the heart of the old earl. He had been compelled at the time of his pardon to sign an obligation to surrender into the hands of the king the castles of Berwick and Jedburgh, and was deprived of the offices of constable and warden of the marches.
Henry had called two great councils of barons and prelates at St. Albans, but found in them a spirit very uncompliant with his demands. Foremost in opposition and in denouncing the measures of the king was the Lord Bardolf. He soon found it safest to absent himself from court, and he therefore hastened north to the Earl of Northumberland, and added his overflowing discontent to that which was already effervescing in the bosoms of the earl and of his partisans. The insurgents took the field, but, as in all their attempts during this reign, without any concert. First appeared in arms Sir John Falconberg and three other knights in Cleveland, in May of 1405. They were immediately assaulted and dispersed by Prince John, the third son of King Henry, and the Earl of Westmoreland. Then the Archbishop of York and the Earl of Nottingham, more commonly called the Earl Mowbray, who also was earl marshal, with unexampled rashness appeared in arms without waiting for the forces of the Duke of Northumberland. They fixed on the doors of the churches in York and other places a defiance of the king, charging him with the same crimes and misdemeanors which were contained in the proclamation of Shrewsbury—perjury, usurpation, murder, extortion, and the like. They assembled 8,000 men at Skipton-on-the-Moor. The Prince and Earl of Westmoreland having defeated Falconberg's force, marched against them, and came up with them in the forest of Galtres on the 29th of May.
Finding that the forces of the insurgents exceeded their own, the Earl of Westmoreland proposed a friendly conference, which was acceded to. There the earl acted with an art not more remarkable than the simplicity of those on whom it was practised. The archbishop presented a list of grievances, which Westmoreland read and declared to be perfectly reasonable, and presenting, in his opinion, no difficulties but such as might readily be got over. The matters in dispute were discussed. Westmoreland approved of all that they suggested, conceded all their demands, and solemnly swore to procure the royal ratification of every condition.
Having thus amicably terminated their differences, the earl called for wine, which the negotiators partook of in sight of both armies. Westmoreland then proposed that they should embrace, in sign of amity, which also took place in view of the two armies. While they were thus drinking and embracing, the earl pleasantly suggested that, as they were now friends, there could be no necessity for keeping their armies assembled, and proposed that they should disband them all on the spot, let them know that peace was concluded, and allow every man to go home.
To this the Earl Mowbray made some objection; but the archbishop, who was sincerity and simplicity embodied, overruled his caution, and gave orders for the dismissal of their troops. No sooner was this done, and the army of the insurgents dispersing on all sides in ​confusion, than it was seen that the soldiers of the Crown remained stationary, having been duly instructed beforehand; and Westmorland, throwing off the mask, arrested the archbishop, the earl marshal, and the other leaders who had come to the conference. This news reaching the insurgents, every one made the best of his way in flight for his own safety.
Henry was already on his way to support his son and Westmoreland. He had already arrived at Pontefract, and at that spot, so suggestive of his unrelenting disposition, the insurgent leaders, thus perfidiously entrapped, were brought before him. He ordered them to follow him to Bishopsthorpe, the palace of the primate, near York; as if, with a refinement of cruelty, he would make the fate which he designed for him the more bitter by inflicting it on the spot of his past greatness and authority. There he commanded the chief justice, Gascoigne, to pronounce on them sentence of death; but that upright and inflexible judge refused, declaring that he had no jurisdiction over either archbishop or earl, who must be tried by their peers. Sir William Fulthorpe was appointed on the spot Chief Justice of the King's Bench for the occasion; and this pliant tool, no doubt selected with full knowledge of his obsequious nature, called them at once before him, and, without any form of law, indictment, trial, or jury, condemned them to be beheaded as traitors; and the sentence was carried instantly into execution, with many circumstances of wanton and unworthy cruelty.
Judge Gascoigne
This was the first time that a prelate had suffered capital punishment in England. Prelates had been imprisoned and punished by forfeitrue and banishment, but no king had yet dared to put to death a bishop; and the circumstance did not pass without the Pope launching the thunders of excommunication against all persons concerned in this ominous innovation, though without especially naming the king. The archbishop, on hearing his sentence, protested that he never intended any evil to the person of Henry, and merely sought redress of grievances; but after having twice incited the insurgents to arms, and being believed to have written the last proclamation, if not that also at Shrewsbury, he was not likely to obtain credence. When afterwards the king called upon the House of Lords to record a judgment of high treason against the archbishop and the earl marshal, they demurred, and required the question to lie over till the next Parliament—a significant hint of their disapproval, which Henry was wise enough to take. The matter was never mentioned again.
Henry punished the city of York for its disposition to support the views of the archbishop, by depriving it of its franchises, and then, at the head of 37,000 men, marched in pursuit of the Earl of Northumberland and Lord Bardolf. Northumberland had delayed his demonstration this time to secure the assistance of Albany, the regent of Scotland, and aid from France. He had readily formed an alliance with Albany, but failed in procuring any support from the French court. As Henry advanced north, Northumberland retired. Henry took successive possession of the duke's castles of Prudhoe, Warkworth, and Alnwick; and as he drew near Berwick, Northumberland, who never showed much courage, surrendered it into the hands of the Scots, and fell back still further on his Scottish allies. The Scots themselves, not thinking the town tenable against Henry's forces, set it on fire and deserted it. The castle alone appeared disposed to make resistance; But the shot of an enormous cannon having shattered one of the towers, it opened its gates, and the son of the Baron of Graystock, with the six principal officers, were immediately executed. Henry turned southward victorious, and at Pontefract—which no thoughts of the murder he was charged with committing prevented his visiting—he conferred upon his queen the several great estates of the Earl of Northumberland and Lord Bardolf.
Henry now marched to Wales, whither he had sent his son, Prince Henry, in the spring. That gallant young prince, who had acquired such renown on the field of Shrewsbury, had pursued Glendowor into his fortresses, with all the ardour and impetuosity of youth. For some time that artful general eluded his attacks, and set him at defiance by a variety of stratagems, but in the month of March he had obtained a signal victory over the Welsh at Grosmont, in Monmouthshire, and taken Griffin, the son of Glendowor, who commanded, prisoner. He next laid siege to Lampeter Castle, in Cardiganshire, and after a long siege reduced it. But now the French appeared upon the scene with a force of 12,000 men, if we are to credit Otterburn.
Glendowor, finding his power gradually undermined by the efforts of Henry and his valiant son, had applied to the French, or, as some writers assert, had gone in person to solicit the aid of France. That country at the time was in a deplorable state of misgovernment. The malady of Charles VI. had reduced him to a condition of absolute imbecility. The powerful Duke of Burgundy was dead, and the dissolute Orleans, living in open adultery with the queen, had usurped the whole powers of the state. As Albany was in Scotland, so was Orleans in France. Hating Henry with an inveterate hatred, he readily promised Glendowor his assistance. A fleet was fitted out and entrusted to the Count of La Marche, a gay young prince of the royal family, but engrossed in pleasures and gaieties. It was so late in the year when this courtly ​admiral reached his fleet at Brest, that his most sensible followers refused to venture to sea; and with a fragment of his force La Marche made an abortive descent on the English coast at Falmouth.
In the spring of 1405, however, a fresh fleet, assembled by the resolute Orleans, reached Wales, and debarked at Milford Haven. The fleet consisted of 120 ships, and had taken on board a great number of cavalry horses, which, however, had nearly all perished during the stormy passage; and no sooner was the fleet moored than the squadron of the Cinque Ports sailed in after it, and burnt fifteen ships. It, moreover, cut off all supplies by sea, and soon after succeeded in capturing a portion of the French transports bringing ammunition and provisions.
The French army was commanded by the Count Montmorency, Marshal of Rieux, and the Sire de Hugueville, grand master of the arbalisters. They marched to Haverfordwest, and burnt the town, but suffered great loss in attempting to take the castle, and were repulsed. They next advanced to Caermarthen, laying the country waste as they went; they took Caermarthen, and there were joined by Owen Glendower with a force of 10,000 men. This united force took its way towards England, and Prince Henry, being in possession of an inferior force, was compelled to avoid an engagement.
It was this which had made Henry hasten his march from the north. Before setting out, he granted the Isle of Man, forfeited by the Earl of Northumberland, to Sir William Stanley, in whose family it continued till the reign of Elizabeth. On reaching Hereford the king was compelled to issue a proclamation representing that the kingdom was in great danger from the junction of the French and the Welsh; that his finances were totally exhausted; and that the tenths and fifteenths granted by Parliament could not be levied till Martinmas. He, therefore, commanded the sheriffs of all the neighbouring counties to summon before them the richest men of their several shires, and prevail upon them to advance money on the credit of the taxes already voted.
To such extremity was Henry IV. reduced, in one of the most critical epochs of his troubled reign; and this total want of means for paying and feeding his army delayed him so long, that it was not till late in the year that he came face to face with the invaders. They had now reached the very gates of Worcester, and menaced that town. Henry having united his forces with those of his son, now advanced upon the enemy, who were posted on a considerable hill, and took up his position on an opposite height. For eight days the two armies lay with a deep valley between them, neither of them willing to risk the loss of its vantage ground, and give battle under the unequal circumstances. There were occasional skirmishes, and three of the French lords were slain, including the brother of the marshal.
At length the Welsh and French beat a retreat into Wales, and Henry pursued them; but having reached their marshes and mountains, they turned upon the king's forces when they had, in their ardour, advanced incautiously amongst them, and inflicted great loss upon them, taking or destroying fifty of his wagons, containing the most valuable portion of his baggage. It was now the middle of October; the season was such as all the world then believed to be at the command of Glendower—tempestuous and incessantly raining. The roads became impassable, provisions were unattainable, and the king was heartily glad to draw off his army. Nor were the French less delighted to quit the country of the great necromancer, where they reaped more labours than laurels; and soon after they embarked and sailed back to France.
Freed for a moment from his anxiety, by the retreat of the Welsh and their allies, Henry turned his attention to the Earl of Northumberland and Lord Bardolf, who were still in Scotland. Knowing the secret disposition of Albany to encourage seditious enterprises against England, which was only kept in check by Henry holding the young King James in his hands, ready at any favourable moment to put him forward against him, he was by no means easy at the abode of those noblemen in that country.
For more than two years those noblemen had maintained their liberty in exile, wandering from place to place, to avoid the incessant arts and efforts of Henry to obtain possession of their persons. Sometimes they were soliciting aid from the Scots, sometimes from the Welsh, to renew their attempt to overturn the usurper. Henry was always on the watch to seize some advantage over them, and they were equally vigilant to inflict some injury on his troops or government. They did not neglect an endeavour to obtain an interview with the pretended Richard in Stirling Castle, and Albany would have been a bad tactician if he had openly refused them this. Nothing can be more obvious than that, if the Scottish Government really were in possession of the person of Richard, they would have taken care to show him to the numbers of English exiles always at that court, that they might be perfectly satisfied of the fact. No such means of placing this question on an unquestionable basis ever appears to have been used, though both French and English had taken pains to satisfy themselves on this head.
The French, when it was first rumoured that Richard had escaped, received the news with general delight. They formed plans for his restoration; they were ready to make a descent on England with a large army to support his cause; and the bravest knights vowed to peril their lives and fortunes in defence of the rights of Richard and Isabella.
Reconciliation of the Dukes of Burgundy and Orleans in the Church of the Augustines.(See page 509.)
In 1401, Serlo, or Serle, a gentleman of King Richard's bedchamber, propagated the report that Richard was still alive, and that he had been with him in Scotland. He brought letters and messages addressed by Richard under his privy seal to his friends in England. Maud, the old Countess of Oxford, now far advanced in life, but having lost none of the remembrance of Henry's part in the destruction of her husband, eagerly imbibed all Serle's accounts, and "caused it to be reported," says Walsingham, "throughout Essex, by her domestics, that King Richard was alive, and would soon come back, and recover and assert his former rank. She caused little stags of silver and gold to be fabricated, presents which the king was wont to confer upon his most favourite knights and friends, so that, by distributing these in place of the king, she might the more easily entice the must powerful men in that district to accede to her wishes."
The old countess by these means brought over many gentlemen to her belief, and amongst them several abbots of that county. The consequence was, as we have related, that these abbots, with Sir Roger Clarendon and others, were seized by King Henry, and summarily put to death for propagating this assurance of Richard being in Scotland. Henry eventually laid hold of Serle himself, who confessed that he had indeed seen a person in Scotland who was asserted to be King Richard, but who really was not so, but merely one Thomas Warde, who had been King Richard's Court fool. Serlo—who was said to have been concerned in the murder of the Duke of Gloucester at Calais—was, of course, executed in London, after having been drawn on a sledge through every town between Pontefract and the capital; and the old Countess of Oxford was shut up in prison.
And now the Earl of Northumberland and Lord Bardolf sought to satisfy themselves of the real facts—whether this was a true or a spurious Richard—for he was still supported by Albany as the real Simon Pure; whether Henry, in the proclamation made on the conviction of Serle, had forged his confession for him, as many assorted, and that the story of Thomas Warde was one of his invention. And what was the result? Northumberland, Bardolf, and their friends were assured that they were quite welcome to see and converse with Richard. Here the great mystery at last appeared on the point of being solved for over. But no: they were met by the information that Richard refused to see them, and that no solicitations, not even those of Albany himself, could extort his consent. This must have quite satisfied these noblemen that Albany's Richard was really a mamuet, or puppet, as Henry styled him in his proclamations, and that nobody know it so well as Henry himself.
Northumberland and Bardolf were soon compelled by the manœuvres of Henry to escape from Scotland. The Scottish noblemen who had been kept prisoners in England ever since the battles of Homildon Hill and Shrewsbury, were offered by Henry their liberty if they would persuade their friends in Scotland to seize and deliver up these noblemen. This disgraceful scheme was readily adopted by the Scottish prisoners and their friends, and would have been carried speedily into execution; but the news of it reached the ears of the brave Sir David Fleming, a staunch friend of the Percies. It must be remembered that not only was the Earl of Douglas, but Murdoch, the son of the regent Albany, still amongst the prisoners of war in England; and, therefore, both Albany and the friends of Douglas, combining the most powerful party in Scotland, were engaged in this most dishonourable conspiracy for the betrayal of Northumberland, his young grandson, Henry Lord Percy, and Lord Bardolf. Sir David Fleming, disdaining to connive at so base a treason against the honour and hospitality of Scotland, gave the English noblemen timely warning. They escaped; but Sir David, as we have related, returning from conducting Prince James to North Berwick on his way to France, was set upon by the son of Douglas and the connections of the other prisoners in England, and lost his life for his noble conduct. Northumberland and Bardolf made their escape to Glendower in Wales.
The situation of Henry at this epoch was far from enviable. His usurpation had involved himself and the nation in constant feuds, battles, treasons, and bloodshed. The best and ablest men, instead of being able to unite their counsels and their efforts for the common good of the country, were inflamed by violent antipathies against each other. The lives of many of the noblest were sacrificed, and the resources of the country consumed in mutual destruction. Henry, indeed, by his skill, address, and courage, had defeated all the schemes formed for his dethronement, and dispersed his assailants, but he was still surrounded by malcontents and general dissatisfaction. All his efforts had not been able to extinguish the reports of the existence of King Richard. As often as these reports were exposed and made ridiculous, as certainly did they revive and renew their strength. The remonstrances of Parliament were severe to an extraordinary degree against his exactions and mal-administration. According to the Parliamentary history, the Speaker of the House of Commons, Sir John Tibetot, in a speech addressed to the king, declared that the country was impoverished by excessive impositions, and that nothing was done for its benefit. That in Guienne ninety-six towns and castles were lost, though it had cost this nation great expenditure to defend it; and that the whole of our continental possessions were in danger. That the marches on the Scottish borders were in the worst condition; that the rebellion in Wales, notwithstanding every effort, was still unsuppressed. That Ireland was nearly lost, though the charges for its government continued. That at sea our trade was destroyed, and the vessels of our merchants intercepted. That the expenses of the royal household were excessive, and the court filled with "a set of worthless rascals."
Henry had left his son to continue the campaign in Wales, and he himself endeavoured to manage the domestic concerns of the kingdom; but in addition to the calamities of war, and the difficulties just enumerated, which were chiefly the consequence of them, there now appeared the plague, which ravaged both town and country for several years. In London alone it carried off no ​less than 30,000 people; and in other places it extirpated whole families, and left whole houses and almost villages empty.
To escape its violence, the court removed from London to Leeds Castle, in Kent. Desiring to be still farther from the capital, the king took shipping at Queenborough. on the Isle of Sheppey, and, accompanied by a small squadron, commanded by Thomas Lord Camois, descended the Thames, near its mouth the royal fleet was attacked by French pirates, and was in the greatest jeopardy. Four of his vessels, containing much valuable furniture, plate, and wearing apparel, and several persons of distinction, were taken, including Sir Thomas Eampstone, the vice-chamberlain, and Henry only escaped by the swiftness of his ship. This was a very admonitory proof of the truth of the representations of the House of Commons as to the condition of our naval affairs. Some suspicion was cast on Lord Camois, the commander, and he was arraigned on a charge of treason or cowardice before the peers, but was honourably acquitted.
Encouraged by Henry's domestic difficulties, and the strong opposition manifested by Parliament, the Earl of Northumberland and Lord Bardolf, having vainly waited for any decisive support from Owen Glendower, who indeed was now gradually sinking beneath the vigorous efforts of Prince Henry, determined to make one more descent on England. Northumberland had tried in vain to induce Albany to embrace his cause. He had then gone over to France, and thence to Flanders, with equally little success. His last hope was placed on the co-operation of the exiled nobles and knights in Scotland, and the disaffected in the borders and in Northumberland. A correspondence was opened with Sir Thomas Rokeby, sheriff of Yorkshire, and that gentleman is said, by Buchanan, to have lured them on in order to make their defeat certain. They advanced from Scotland into Northumberland, surprised several castles, and raised the Percy tenantry, who were attached to the old chief. Hence they marched on into Yorkshire, and having reached Knaresborough, were joined by Sir Nicholas Tempest. They crossed the Wharfe at Wetherby, and Sir Thomas Rokeby, who appears to have allowed them uninterrupted progress hitherto, that he might effectually cut off their retreat, now following them closely, overtook them on Bramham Moor, near Tadcaster, and brought them to an engagement. The Earl of Northumberland was killed in the battle. Lord Bardolf was taken prisoner, but died in a few days of his wounds. Thus did the old Percy of Northumberland, after a long and hard contest to put down the man he had helped to set up, close his stormy career on the 28th of February, 1408, as his son Hotspur had done five years before at Shrewsbury. The bodies of the earl and of Lord Bardolf were cut in quarters and sent to London and other towns, where they were exposed.
Henry was in full march to encounter the insurgents when he was met by the pleasing intelligence of their defeat and death. He proceeded to Pontefract, where he continued for a month, busily employed in punishing and fining the prisoners of any rank or substance who had been taken at the battle. He was in pressing need of money, and he coined as much out of ransoms as possible. The Abbot of Hayles, having taken arms, was executed like a layman, as the Archbishop of York had been before.
There remained now, of all Henry's enemies within the kingdom, only the Welsh to subdue. The contest between Owen Glendower and Prince Henry had now been going on for upwards of four years, with every demonstration of art, activity, and bravery with which two such commanders could conduct a difficult contest amongst mountains and marshes. Glendower, one of the most devoted patriots and most spirited and able generals that are to be found in history, had disputed every inch of ground with unconquerable pugnacity and never exhausted stratagem. He may be said to have taught Henry of Monmouth that discipline and military science which afterwards enabled him to win the battle of Agincourt, and achieve such brilliant triumphs in France. But Henry, full of youth and martial ardour, and supported from England by troops and provisions, was an antagonist who was sure, in time, to bear down the limited means of Glendower. During nearly five years he had completely reduced South Wales, and was slowly but steadily advancing in the north.
In the summer of 1409, Glendower, finding his indefatigable young enemy steadily advancing upon him, and the support of the disheartened and plundered people growing weaker, determined to make one desperate effort to supply himself with provisions, and to inflict a severe punishment, even if it were the last, upon the foe. He therefore sent all the forces he could muster, under the command of his two bravest officers, his son-in-law, Philpot Scudamore, and Rees ap Dhu, to make a grand foray in Shropshire. These commanders executed their commission with great bravery and ferocity; but they were at length defeated, their troops cut to pieces, and themselves taken prisoners, carried to London, and there executed.
This was the last expiring effort of the Welsh in that glorious struggle which they had maintained for ten years under their illustrious countryman, Owen ap Griffith Vaughan, better known as the unconquerable Owen Glendower. We say unconquerable, for though Wales, a small country, engaged in an unequal contest with a far greater and more wealthy nation, and with two of the most renowned generals of the age, Henry of Lancaster and his sou-, was compelled to yield, it is very clear, from abundant historic facts, that Owen himself never retired from the struggle—never was subdued. He contrived to live on amid his native mountains, the same free, high-hearted, independent man as when, in all the pride of his youth, he quitted the temples of the law, and gave to the mountain winds the banners of his native land. Sometimes he traversed the hills that he could not emancipate disguised in the dress of a shepherd. Sometimes he managed to collect a little band of warriors, and came suddenly on the unguarded lines and lands of his English foes. Sometimes, worn out by fatigue, or driven from the woods and rocks by the storms of winter, he sought a hidden repose at his daughter's house at Moningtonrin Herefordshire. But wherever he was, in whatever guise, whether that of a peasant in the lowland hut, or the soldier on the hills, he was still the unbending, unconquered patriot, of whom any country must be proud. In the Rolls of Parliament, and in Rymer's "Foedera." ​we find that in 1411 he was excepted by Henry in a general amnesty; in 1412 he was on foot and made prisoner; in 1416, just before the battle of Azincourt, Henry V., his old antagonist, who seems to have respected him as he deserved, commissioned Sir Gilbert Talbot to treat with Meredith, the son of Glendower, for a pacification of his father, and his still unconquered associates: and again, three months after the great triumph of Azincourt, Henry renewed the honourable ovorture. But Glendower was resolved to live and die free, a prince without subjects or a country, rather than the subject of the conqueror of Wales. He still, as appears by several writers yet extant, continued to haunt the wilds and mountains of Snowdon; and, if we may believe one tradition, died peaceably at his daughter's house at Monington, in 1410, while another shows us his burial-place beneath the great window of the south aisle in Bangor Cathedral. Both accounts may very well be true; but, wherever Owen Glendower rests, there rests the dust of a man who only wanted a wider field and a more numerous people to have become the saviour, as he was the true hero, of his country.
The nine years which Henry had now been on the throne had been years of constant insurrections, bloodshed in battle, and bloodshed on the block. He had put down all his internal enemies, and, save some occasional struggles with the remaining power of Glendower in the marshes of Wales, the kingdom was at peace with itself, and continued so during the few remaining years of this reign. At sea there were still attacks from the French, though the Government disclaimed them, and pretended to maintain the truce between the two countries. That truce, however, had been badly preserved in regard to the English provinces in France. In 1406 the Constable of France and the Count of Armagnac had made extensive inroads on Guienne and Saintonge. According to the complaint of Sir John Tibetot, the Speaker of the House of Commons, they had taken ninety-six towns and castles there. Nothing, indeed, but the miserable and distracted condition of France could have prevented them taking the whole, and driving the English totally out of that kingdom; for Henry, perpetually occupied in battling with his own insurgent subjects, had neither money, men, nor time to devote to his French provinces. The most pitiable entreaties were sent over from time to time for aid, but in vain; Henry was engaged in a life and death struggle at home.
In 1406 there were great efforts made on the part of the French court to seize the tempting opportunity to gain possession of all Henry's continental territories. The two most powerful nobles of the realm were commissioned to execute this great enterprise. The Duke of Orleans, the king's brother, was to load the forces against Guienne, whilst the Duke of Burgundy, called "John Sans-peur," or the Fearless, was to expel the English from Calais. Both of those schemes were absolute failures. The Duke of Orleans, who, though the king's brother, lived in shameless adultery with the queen, had secured the king's daughter, Isabella, the late Queen of England, for his eldest son, the Count of Angouléme, and the betrothment was now celebrating with great fêtes and rejoicings. The poor young queen, who had known nothing but trouble in her English marriage, now was about to be introduced into a fresh series of calamities, from which, however she was freed by an early death. She wept bitterly at pledging her hand to her new husband, which the French attributed to her losing, by this act, the title of the Queen of England; but her own attendants, to the fact of her retaining an unshaken and affectionate memory of King Richard. She might have wept in prophetic sorrow, for though her husband, much younger than herself, was extremely attached to her, the whole circumstances of the family were such as were not only disgraceful at the present moment, but speedily produced murder and civil distraction.
At present, however, all went "merry as a marriage bell," and not only the Duke of Orleans, the commander-in-chief of the expedition against Guienne, but the other royal officers, the Counts of Clermont and Alençon, left the army, and were deeply engaged in the matrimonial gaieties of Paris.
When they were over, these exemplary generals set out for their camps; but the season was then past for action, and, therefore, instead of fighting, Orleans and his princely and aristocratic officers endeavoured to amuse themselves during the miserably wet and stormy weather by gambling, while their troops were suffering all the extremities of famine and cold, destitute of food or proper tents. Haying spent all the money provided for the campaign, they rode back to Paris, followed by the curses of the soldiers, and received by the murmurs of the people.
John the Fearless of Burgundy had shown the same wonderful generalship against the town of Calais, so desirable as it was to recover it from the English. He cut down a whole forest to construct machines which should batter down the walls, and burst in the gates of that strongly fortified town, and reduce the houses to heaps of ruins by flinging in whole rocks. He was provided with two hundred pieces of cannon, and the most complete success was anticipated from his efforts. They resulted in nothing, and, like the Duke of Orleans, he returned to Paris complaining of not having been supplied with sufficient funds, and demanding not only the costs of his useless machinery, but immense sums which he asserted had been due to his father. These he was not very likely to obtain, for France, Paris, and the court were in the most wretched condition of anarchy and exhaustion imaginable. The malady of the king, recurring fits of insanity, had left the Government in the hands of the contending princes, especially of Orleans and Burgundy. The queen and Orleans, united in a guilty alliance, managed to keep the main power in their hands. The king was a cipher, and the country a ruin. At this time the royal household had not even food, except such as it took by force from the bakers, butchers, and dealers, in which they were imitated by the groat nobles.
To this unhappy condition of things was now added the fierce disputes and recriminations of the rival dukes; but Orleans, supported by the queen's interest, maintained his stand, and Burgundy, in high dudgeon and disgust, retired to his own dominions, vowing vengeance against his great opponent.
The Duke of Berri, uncle to both the contending princes, exerted himself to effect a reconciliation between them, and prevent the menaced civil strife, in addition. ​to the already crushing calamities of France. In this he at length appeared successful; but the success was only apparent, the result was really tragical. Burgundy returned to Paris, visited the Duke of Orleans, who was somewhat indisposed, and there appeared the most cordial reconciliation. The Duke of Berri, enchanted with the happy effect of his good offices, on the 30th of November, 1407, accompanied his two nephews to the Church of the Augustines to hear mass, and there these seemingly amicable relatives took the sacrament together in token of their perfectly reconciled minds. In three days after, Orleans was murdered in the Rue Barbette, by eighteen assassins in the pay of his dear friend the newly-reconciled and forgiving Burgundy. What was worse, it came out that both these thoroughly depraved princes had entertained the same design of dispatching his rival, and that Burgundy had only got the start with his assassins. Burgundy absented himself from Paris for a short time, when he returned again, and boldly justified his deed. The king, who was at the moment in one of his more lucid intervals, wept over the fate of his brother, and vowed to avenge if, but the power of Burgundy was beyond that of the feeble monarch.
The Orleans family was vehement for vengeance. Isabella, the former Queen of England, now joined her mother-in-law the duchess dowager in this demand of justice from her father. She came with the widowed duchess in a chariot covered with black cloth, and followed by a long train of mourning carnages filled with their domestics. The two ladies sat m front of their chariot weeping, and thus they arrived at the gates of Paris. There they wore met by most of the princes of the blood, and this mournful procession passed through the streets of the capital to the gates of the Hôtel de St. Pol, where Isabella threw herself at the feet of her wretched father Charles VI., crying for justice on the murder of her uncle. She cried in vain, the poor king was fast sinking again into his delirium, and twelve months afterwards Isabella again joined the Dowager Duchess of Orleans in a similar procession, to seek the same justice from her brother, the dauphin Louis, who was acting as regent, but with equal want of success; and the old duchess sank and died in despair of punishment on her enemy. The marriage of Isabella to Charles, now Duke of Orleans, took place soon after these events, and, as already related, the died in 1410, in giving birth to an infant daughter.
The Orleans family, finding that no justice was to be obtained from the feeble and corrupt government, but, on the contrary, that the people of Paris hailed John of Burgundy as a second Brutus, who had freed his country of a tyrant aiming at the crown, and that the very lawyers and clergy justified the murder on the same pleas, declaring that Orleans had produced the king's insanity through sorcery and drugs, determined to take arms and enforce it for themselves.
Burgundy, to strengthen himself with the Parisians, promised to reduce the monstrous weight of taxation under which they groaned, and they applauded him as their saviour. Revolt amongst Burgundy's subjects in Flanders withdrew him for a time from Paris, during which the queen, in the name of her son, the dauphin. declared Burgundy an enemy of the state, and threw all her energies into the interests of the Orleanists. But Burgundy returned victorious from his contest with his subjects, and in November entered Paris at the head of 6,000 men.
Once more, in the following March, the farce of a reconciliation took place between Burgundy and the young Duke of Orleans, at Chartres, where the children of Orleans embraced their father's murderer. But this base and unnatural union was as hollow as the former one; all the old animosity burst forth anew; and the young Duke of Orleans, who had lost the amiable Isabella, and married a daughter of the Count of Armagnac, was supported by that able and energetic nobleman in his opposition to Burgundy. From this day the whole of France was divided into the great hostile factions—the Orleanists and the Armagnacs—so called from the Count of Armagnac assuming the lead in his son-in-law's quarrel by his superior vigour and experience. The Dukes of Berri and Brittany, and the Count d'Alençon, embraced the cause of Orleans, and Burgundy was compelled to retire from Paris.
Henry IV., relieved from his own domestic foes, had watched this contest from the commencement with the deepest interest. His calculating soul saw that now the time was coming for him to take vengeance on Franco for its insults and injuries during the whole period of his struggles with his rebellious nobles. Into Henry's mind no feeling of commiseration for the sufferings of the French people was likely to enter; his very intellectual constitution was policy; his feelings led him only towards self-advancement. He foresaw that the first failing combatant would turn to him for aid, and he determined that it should be granted, because it would damage France. What he knew must come came now; and it was the more agreeable, because it enabled him to pay to the son of Orleans the debt of hate which he owed to the father for his haughty defiance and his taunts of murder.
Burgundy solicited his aid, and it was immediately granted in the shape of 1,000 archers and 800 men-at-arms. Perhaps there might be a secret fellow-feeling, which made Henry "thus wondrously kind;" for it was one murderer succouring another. Burgundy, with this force, formidable though small-for the fame of the English bowmen in France was not forgotten-drove the Orleanists from Paris, and took their place in October of 1411 amid the acclamations of the people. Burgundy had now secured the persons of the king and the dauphin, and with this semblance of being the royal party, he marched against the Orleanists, and besieged them in Bourges. In their retreat from Paris they had plundered the Abbey of St. Denis, and carried off a treasure of the queen deposited there, which naturally alienated the mind of that lady.
In their distress the Orleanists now in their turn sought aid from Henry of England, and it was granted with equal alacrity. Henry had satisfied his resentment against the Orleans family by punishing and humbling them; and he was rendered placable by still more powerful motives The Orleanists offered very tempting terms. They offered to acknowledge him as the rightful Duke of Aquitaine and to assist him to recover all the ancient rights and ​lands of that duchy. They agreed to hold of him, as their feudal lord, whatever they possessed there; to restore to him twenty towns which had been severed from it; and to give security that, on the deaths of the present lords, the counties of Angoulême and Ponthieu should return to him and his successors. Henry, on his part, agreed to assist them as his faithful vassals in all their just quarrels; to enter into no treaty with the Duke of Burgundy or his family without their consent; and to send at once to their assistance 3,000 archers and 1,000 men-at-arms, to serve for three months at the proper wages, which are stated to be, men-at-arms one shilling and sixpence, and archers ninepence per day.
The news of this convention altered greatly the position of the contending parties. The Armagnacs received the Duke of Burgundy with an unusual display of spirit. The Duke of Berri threw himself, with 800 men-at-arms, into Bourges, and threatened to defend it while a man was left. But there was a large party in France who behold with alarm and sorrow their common country thus torn by her own children, and the English, who had aforetime perpetrated such horrors there, thus introduced by them. Their utmost exertions were used to reconcile the hostile factions; and happily they succeeded. Burgandy met his uncle, the Duke of Berri, at an appointed place outside the walls of Bourges, where an accommodation was agreed upon; and as a means of making the peace permanent, the Duke of Burgundy agreed to give one of his daughters to a younger brother of Orleans. The two leaders took a very extraordinary mode of convincing the people of the sincerity of their alliance. They rode into the city both mounted on one horse; and the spectators, transported with joy at the sight, shouted with all their might, and sang, "Gloria in excelsis."
Owen Glendower. From his Seal, engraved in the "Archæologia."
In the midst of this exultation, the news arrived that Thomas Duke of Clarence, the second son of King Henry, had landed in Normandy, with 4,000 men, and was joined by the Counts of Alençon and Richmont. A deputation was immediately dispatched to inform the English leader of the peace, and to beg him to retire, as his aid was no longer needed. But Clarence naturally demanded the payment of the expenses of the expedition; and as they were not forthcoming, he advanced through Normandy into Maine, laying waste the country as he proceeded; while another body of English from Calais occupied great part of Artois. Six hundred men-at-arms hastened to the standard of the duke, who overran and plundered Maine and Anjou. Attempts were made, by promises of payment, to gain time for the assembling of troops; but Clarence was deaf to any such decoys. He had a very simple course laid down for him by his deeply calculating father: to do all the mischief he could in repayment of the various descents of the French on the English coasts, and their destruction of the English merchant ships; and by this very mischief to compel the Government to liberal terms for his withdrawal.
As there was no money in the national exchequer, there was a loud cry to arms, but it was very feebly responded to. Meantime, Clarence having overrun Maine and Anjou, prepared to invade the duchy of Orleans; this had the effect of bringing the young duke to the English camp with all the money he could muster, and having arranged with the invader for the payment of the whole cost of the expedition, 209,000 crowns, he left his brother, the Duke of Angoulême, as hostage in Clarence's hands for its payment.
On this, the Duke of Clarence did not quit the country, as was hoped, but marched on into Guienne, forbidding his troops to commit further devastations by the way, but allowing them to inform the inhabitants as they went along that they should not be long before they came again in the name of their own King Henry to carry on the war; words which were afterwards fulfilled to a terrible extent.
This was the last great operation of the reign of Henry IV. By a singular combination of tact, cool calculation, vigilant watchings of every movement around him, and a purpose which was delayed through no conscientious scruples, nor weakened by a single tender feeling, he had put down all his foes. He was at peace at home and abroad. Not a man was left alive who dared to tell him that he was a usurper, except the undaunted Glendower, who was too far off amid his mountains to be heard. He was the most sagacious and successful monarch in Europe, and perhaps its most miserable man.
Judge Gascoigne and Prince Henry.(See page 512)
​encounter foes continually springing like the teeth of Cadmus from the earth, he seemed insensible to the feeling that his crown was a theft, and his throne was the tomb of his murdered sovereign and near kinsman. He received with a face smooth as the visage of a statue, unimpressed by a feeling, unclouded by a frown, the sharpest words of his many enemies, crowned and uncrowned, hissing murder at him between their teeth; yet all the while his very soul winced and withered within him, and the deadly hand of remorse pulled at his heart-strings. While youth remained, and rapid and incessant action engrossed him, he seemed to soar above all the feelings and fears of an ordinary man. He boldly replied to those who upbraided him with his criminal seizure of his cousin's crown and realm, that the successful issue announced the approbation of the Almighty. But his health decayed prematurely. His body had been overworked, his mind had been overtasked, his conscience had been overburdened. As his strength gave way, his stoicism gave way with it. In his youth he has been described as gay and agreeable, and in his most active years, even when overwhelmed with business and menaced by the greatest dangers, he was cheerful, affable, ready to converse with the people that he came amongst. As disease and debility announced a not distant end, he grew gloomy, retiring, ascetic in his devotions, and suspicious even of his own son.
His false position had forced on him. every species of false conduct, and deeds which brought their certain punishment. There is every reason to believe that he sacrificed his sincere conviction of the truth of the Protestant doctrines, in order to purchase the powerful sanction of the Church for his unrighteous title; for before his usurpation he went along with his father in the protection of Wycliffe and the Lollards. To please the hierarchy he persecuted the Lollards, and was the first to give his sanction to the death of religious dissidents by the terrible means of fire. Yet, as if Providence would punish his apostasy by a striking antithesis, he was compelled, by the rebellion of an archbishop, to be the first in England to visit with capital punishment a prelate of the Established Church.
It is curious that soon after his execution of the Archbishop of York he was attacked by the most loathsome eruptions on the face, or, as it appears to have been, an inveterate leprosy. This the people naturally believed to be a judgment from Heaven upon him for that sacrilegious act, and probably some such conviction might haunt his own mind. Though in statute somewhat below the middle size, he was vigorously and finely formed. His features were regularly beautiful in his youth, and in some of his penitential communications he confessed to having been greatly proud of them. But, by the ravages of this repulsive complaint, they became so hideous that he was compelled at length to avoid appearing in public. To this wore added attacks of epilepsy, which became more and more violent, so that he would lie in death-like trances for hours.
As Henry declined in health, he seems to have grown increasingly jealous of the popularity of his son, the Prince of Wales. The young prince had acquired great glory by his conduct at the battle of Shrewsbury, and in his warfare against Owen Glendowor. He was free, jocund, fond of pleasure, and of mixing with all classes of the people. Shakespeare has made his life and character the most living and familiar of things. He has surrounded him by a set of jolly companions, the fat and witty Sir John Falstaff, Bardolph, "mine ancient Pistol," and the whole band of roysterers who haunted the Boar's Head, Eastcheap. He has drawn his inimitable portraiture of the merry Prince Hal from the chroniclers of the time, who describe him as the idol of the people. He was as dissipated as an heir-apparent generally is, but with his follies he displayed what his father never possessed—a generous temperament. No sooner was he on the throne than he offered terms of pacification to his most persevering enemy, Owen Glendower. The anecdote of his conduct before Judge Gasooigne has been represented as doubtful by some of our modern historians, but it is gravely related by Hardyng and Elmham, his contemporaries, and there is, therefore, no just right to question it.
One of the prince's associates had been arraigned for felony before Chief-Justice Gascoigne, the upright magistrate whom we have seen refusing to execute his father's illegal acts at York. The prince appeared before the magistrate, and peremptorily demanded the release of his boon companion. The chief-justice refused, when Henry drew his sword upon him, and swore that he would have the man liberated. The judge coolly ordered the prince to be committed to prison himself as a greater offender, since he was, by his position, bound expressly to be a maintainer of the laws. Henry at once, in the innate nobility of his own nature, felt and admired the lofty virtue of the magistrate. He submitted quietly to his order, and it is related that when the fact was mentioned to his father, he said, "Happy is the monarch who possesses a judge so resolute in the discharge of his duty, and a son so willing to yield to the authority of the law."
But, however happy Henry might express himself in such a son, it seems clear from contemporary writers that he kept him as much as possible from any participation in the affair's of state, and it is probable that this want of fitting employment threw him amongst his dissolute associates in order to pass his time. In the excited and unguarded hours of wild merriment, there were not wanting those who gathered up his thoughtless expressions against the conduct of his father, and bore them to the royal ear, coloured as malice or sycophancy dictated. It is certain that Henry entertained grave suspicions of his son. Knowing how he had offended in respect to the crown himself, he was more ready to believe it possible that his son might tread in his steps. The prince made repeated endeavours to disabuse his father's mind of these unworthy ideas, but in vain. According to Otterburn, he wrote to many of the lords letters justifying his allegiance to his father, and even went with a numerous train to demand an explanatory interview with him. Yet the Earl of Ormond, an eye-witness, says that even on this occasion the prince could not lay aside his eccentricities. That "he disguised himself in a gown of blue satin or damask, wrought full of oylet-holes, and at every oylet the needle wherewith it was made, hanging still by the silk; and about his arm he wore a dog's collar, sot full of SS. of gold, and the tirets of the same of fine gold."
He was received by the king in his closet, attended by four friends, and the prince, throwing himself on his ​knees before him, begged that he would take his life, seeing that he had withdrawn from him the royal favour.
Henry passed his last Christmas of his life at his favourite palace of Eltham. So complete was his seclusion, owing both to his illness and the awful disfigurement of his person, that he scarcely saw any one but the queen; lying frequently for hours without any sign of life. After Candlemas, he was so much better as to be able to keep his birthday, and he then returned to his palace at Westminster. He was at his devotions in the abbey, at the shrine of St. Edward, when his last fatal fit seized him. He was removed into the apartments of the abbot, and laid in the celebrated Jerusalem Chamber. The fit lasted so long that Prince Henry, who was present, knowing the plunder which often takes place at the deathbeds of kings, and which was remarkably the case at that of Edward III., ordered the crown to be removed to another and securer apartment.
On coming to himself Henry asked where he was, and being told in the Jerusalem Chamber, he regarded his last hour as come, for it had been predicted to him that he should finish his days in Jerusalem; and he had vowed, in expiation of his crimes, to make a pilgrimage thither. The days of the crusades were over, but a remarkable visit made to him soon after he ascended the throne, by Manuel Palæologus, the Emperor of Constantinople, when seeking aid against the Saracens, probably impressed his mind with this idea. He then requested that the Miserere should be read to him, which contains an especial prayer for forgiveness of "blood-guiltiness." Then looking round he missed the crown from its place, and demanded to know where it was. The scenes which followed have been faithfully and beautifully copied by Shakespeare.
"Ah! fair son," said the dying king; "what right have you to the crown, when you know that your father had none?"
"My liege," answered young Henry; "with the sword you won it, and with the sword I will keep it."
"Well," replied the king, faintly, "do as you think best. I leave the issue to God, and may He have mercy on my soul." And then followed that beautiful address so finely rendered in Shakespeare—
"Come hither, Henry; sit thou on my bed," &c.
Henry IV. was in the forty-seventh year of his age, and the fourteenth year of his reign, when he died. Perhaps no king by the troubles of his reign, the corroding remorse of his soul, and wretchedness of his last days, ever presented a more striking warning from Providence against guilty ambition. Had he resolved, in the days of his cousin Richard's misgovernment, to exert the influence which his eminent position—foremost in the realm, next to the throne—and his distinguished talents gave him, to check that monarch's arbitrary extravagances, and support him in the right, he might have won one of the most honoured names in history—the patriot of the age, and the father of his country. He yielded to a meaner ambition—that of wearing a pilfered crown; and the consequences were fatal to him, fatal to his family, and fatal to his nation. We shall yet have to wade far through the blood he caused to flow, and in another generation see his line driven from the throne he so unwisely usurped.
Tomb of Henry IV. and his Queen, in Westminster Abbey.
It is curious that as Henry usurped the throne of Richard II., he also usurped, as far as in him lay, his tomb. The body of Richard he sent to be buried at Langley, instead of permitting it to rest with the ashes of ​his father, the Black Prince; but there his own body was ordered to be conveyed, for he had expressed a superstitious desire that he should lie near the shrine of Thomas Becket. Yet the fact that he really does lie there has been called in question by a very extraordinary relation by a contemporary. It is given in the following "Testimony of Clement Maydestone," translated from a Latin manuscript in the library of Bennet College, Cambridge, 1440:—
"Thirty days after the death of Henry IV., Sept. 14th, 1412" (this should be March 20th, 1413), "one of his domestics came to the House of the Holy Trinity, at Hounslow, and dined there. And as the bystanders were talking at dinner-time of the king's reproachable morals, this man said to a certain esquire named Thomas Maydestone, then sitting at table, 'Whether he was a good man or not, God knows: but of this I am certain, that when his corpse was carried from Westminster towards Canterbury by water, in a small vessel, in order to be buried there, I and two more threw his corpse into the sea between Berkenham and Gravesend; for,' he added with an oath, 'we were overtaken by such a storm of winds and waves that many of the nobility who followed in eight ships wore dispersed so as with difficulty to escape being lost. But we, who were with the body, despairing of our lives, with one consent threw it into the sea, and a great calm ensued. The coffin in which it lay, covered with a cloth of gold, we carried with great solemnity to Canterbury, and buried it. The monks of Canterbury, therefore, say that the tomb, not the body, of Henry IV. is with us, as Peter said of holy David.' As God Almighty is my witness and judge, I saw this man, and heard him speak to my father, T. Maydestone, that all the above was true.
"Clement Maydestone."
This singular account being published by Peck, it was thought desirable to ascertain the truth of it by opening the coffin of Henry, which was done on the 21st of August, 1832, in the presence of the Bishop of Oxford, Lady Harriet and Sir Charles Bagot, and others. It was found in sawing away part of the lid of the wooden Coffin that there was also a leaden coffin within it, but so small that the outer coffin had been tilled up with haybands, which were very sound and perfect. The leaden coffin appeared moulded to the body within it, and on cutting that open the face of the corpse was discovered in perfect preservation; the nose elevated, the cartilage even remaining, though, on the admission of the air, it rapidly sank away. The skin of the chin entire, of the consistence, thickness, and colour of the upper leather of a shoe; the beard thick and matted, of a deep russet colour; the jaws perfect, and all the teeth in them, excepting one fore-tooth.
Though there was a body, the question still remains, was it the body of Henry IV.? Was it likely that an outer coffin would be made so large as to require packing? and if so, would that packing for a royal corpse be of haybands? There was a very small cross found lying on the haybands, not such, surely, as would be laid on the breast of a sovereign, for it was formed merely of two twigs tied together. Is it not the probable explanation of the affair that the attendants robbed the corpse of the cloth of gold in which it was wrapped, and then threw it into the river, replacing it by another corpse in lead procured for the occasion? It has been well observed that the perfect state of the skin of the supposed Henry's face does not accord with the fearful leprosy with which Henry was afflicted.
Henry IV. was twice married. His first wife was Mary de Bohun, daughter and co-heir of the Earl of Hereford. By her he had four sons and two daughters, Henry was his successor to the throne; Thomas was Duke of Clarence; John, Duke of Bedford; and Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. His eldest daughter, Blanche, was married to the Duke of Bavaria, and the second to the King of Denmark.
Conscious of the defect of his title, Henry was careful to avoid, on ascending the throne, asking for any act of settlement. He contented himself with receiving the oath of allegiance from Parliament to himself, and after himself to his eldest son or heir apparent. But after the battle of Shrewsbury he introduced a bill resting the succession on his four sons, but excluding his daughters. But on being reminded that to exclude his daughters annihilated all his claim to the throne of France, he reluctantly consented to the passing of an act admitting the general issue of his sons, but still passing over that of his daughters, as if fearful to bring in some foreign aspirant.
By his second wife, Joanna of Navarre, daughter of Charles the Bad, he had no children. Joanna made a much better queen than might have been expected from her parentage. Her worst faults appear to have been a great fondness for money, and for a numerous train of French attendants, which obliged Parliament frequently to interfere, as did that of Charles I., and insisted on their being sent home. She was handsome in person, but had the reputation of being addicted to the arts of necromancy, no doubt arising from the evil reputation of her father. We shall hear of her again in the next reign.
The defect of Henry's title was a circumstance favourable to the progress of the constitution, though prolific of much controversy and bloodshed. Compelled to court the good-will of the people, and to come to them often for money, the House of Commons availed themselves of this circumstance to increase in their demands of privilege and liberty. We shall notice more particularly these advances when we come to review, at a future date, the progress of the nation; and, therefore, it will only be necessary here to glance at them cursorily. In his very first year they passed a law depriving the crown of the power of protecting an unjust judge. In the second, they insisted on the removal of obnoxious persons from his household, and prevailed; in the sixth, they appointed treasurers to superintend the expenditure of the supplies; in the eighth, they enacted thirty articles for the regulation of the royal household, and compelled the judges, the council, and all the officers of the household to swear to the observance of them. The practice of the crown corrupting Parliament had shown itself in the reign of Richard II., and was now rife, through the means of the sheriffs. The Commons obtained an act to compel them to make just returns. They even went so far, when pressed by the king for money, to recommend ​him to seize the surplus temporalities of the Church, which they represented as containing 18,400 ploughs of land, producing 485,000 marks a year, equal to £4,750,745 of our present money.
Here, however, the king stood firm against the recommendation of the Commons; and even, to oblige the Church, he consented to the passing of the first law for the burning of heretics, that is, persons who dared to differ in opinion from the religion of the state; and in accordance with this barbarous act, William Sawtre, rector of Lynn in Norfolk, and afterwards curate of St. Osith's in London, the first English martyr, was burnt at the stake on the 10th of March, 1401.
None of our historians have given a more masterly summary of Henry IV. and his reign in a few words than Henry. He says:—"His head was better than his heart; his schemes being formed with prudence and generally successful, but not always innocent, and seldom generous. As jealous as he was fond of power, he stuck at nothing to obtain and keep it. From policy more than from principle, he protected the Church and persecuted heretics. Ambition was his ruling passion, and that, impelled by a violent gale of popular favour, hurried him into a throne, which involved him in many crimes and cares, and his country in many calamities. He would have been a better and happier man if he had never been a king."