Hereford was a man of great prudence and command of temper; and he behaved himself with so much submission in these delicate circumstances, that the king, before his departure, promised to shorten the term of his exile four years; and he also granted him letters patent, by which he was empowered, in case any inheritance should in the interval accrue to him, to enter immediately in possession, and to postpone the doing of homage till his return.

The weakness and fluctuation of Richard’s counsels appear nowhere more evident than in the conduct of this affair. No sooner had Hereford left the kingdom, than the king’s jealousy of the power and riches of that prince’s family revived; and he was sensible that by Glocester’s death he had only removed a counterpoise to the Lancastrian interest which was now become formidable to his crown and kingdom. Being informed that Hereford had entered into a treaty of marriage with the daughter of the duke of Berry, uncle to the French king, he determined to prevent the finishing of an alliance which would so much extend the interest of his cousin in foreign countries; and he sent over the earl of Salisbury to Paris with a commission for that purpose.

1399.

The death of the duke of Lancaster, which happened soon after, called upon him to take new resolutions with regard to that opulent succession. The present duke, in consequence of the king’s patent, desired to be put in possession of the estate and jurisdictions of his father; but Richard, afraid of strengthening the hands of a man whom he had already so much offended, applied to the parliamentary commissioners, and persuaded them that this affair was but an appendage to that business which the parliament had delegated to them. By their authority he revoked his letters patent, and retained possession of the estate of Lancaster; and by the same authority he seized and tried the duke’s attorney, who had procured and insisted on the letters, and he had him condemned as a traitor for faithfully executing that trust to his master;[*] an extravagant act of power! even though the king changed, in favor of the attorney, the penalty of death into that of banishment.

Henry, the new duke of Lancaster, had acquired by his conduct and abilities the esteem of the public; and having served with distinction against the infidels in Lithuania, he had joined to his other praises those of piety and valor, virtues which have at all times a great influence over mankind, and were, during those ages, the qualities chiefly held in estimation.[**] He was connected with most of the principal nobility by blood, alliance, or friendship; and as the injury done him by the king might in its consequences affect all of them, he easily brought them, by a sense of common interest, to take part in his resentment. The people, who must have an object of affection, who found nothing in the king’s person which they could love or revere, and who were even disgusted with many parts of his conduct[***] easily transferred to Henry that attachment which the death of the duke of Glocester had left.

While such were the dispositions of the people, Richard had the imprudence to embark for Ireland, in order to revenge the death of his cousin, Roger, earl of Marche, the presumptive heir of the crown, who had lately been slain in a skirmish by the natives; and he thereby left the kingdom of England open to the attempts of his provoked and ambitious enemy. Henry, embarking at Nantz with a retinue of sixty persons, among whom were the archbishop of Canterbury and the young earl of Arundel, nephew to that prelate, landed at Ravenspur, in Yorkshire; and was immediately joined by the earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland, two of the most potent barons in England. He here took a solemn oath, that he had no other purpose hi this invasion than to recover the duchy of Lancaster, unjustly detained from him; and he invited all his friends in England, and all lovers of their country, to second him in this reasonable and moderate pretension. Every place was in commotion: the malecontents in all quarters flew to arms: London discovered the strongest symptoms of its disposition to mutiny and rebellion: and Henry’s army, increasing on every day’s march, soon amounted to the number of sixty thousand combatants.

The duke of York was left guardian of the realm; a place to which his birth entitled him, but which both his slender abilities, and his natural connections with the duke of Lancaster, rendered him utterly incapable of filling in such a dangerous emergency. Such of the chief nobility as were attached to the crown, and could either have seconded the guardian’s good intentions, or have overawed his infidelity, had attended the king into Ireland; and the efforts of Richard’s friends were every where more feeble than those of his enemies. The duke of York, however, appointed the rendezvous of his forces at St. Albans, and soon assembled an army of forty thousand men; but found them entirely destitute of zeal and attachment to the royal cause, and more inclined to join the party of the rebels. He hearkened therefore very readily to a message from Henry, who entreated him not to oppose a loyal and humble supplicant in the recovery of his legal patrimony; and the guardian even declared publicly that he would second his nephew in so reasonable a request. His army embraced with acclamations the same measures; and the duke of Lancaster, reenforced by them, was now entirely master of the kingdom. He hastened to Bristol, into which some of the king’s ministers had thrown themselves; and soon obliging that place to surrender, he yielded to the popular wishes, and without giving them a trial, ordered the earl of Wiltshire, Sir John Bussy, and Sir Henry Green, whom he there took prisoners, to be led to immediate execution.

The king, receiving intelligence of this invasion and insurrection, hastened over from Ireland, and landed in Milford Haven with a body of twenty thousand men: but even this army, so much inferior to the enemy, was either overawed oy the general combination of the kingdom, or seized with the same spirit of disaffection; and they gradually deserted him, till he found that he had not above six thousand men who followed his standard. It appeared, therefore, necessary to retire secretly from this small body, which served only to expose him to danger; and he fled to the Isle of Anglesea, where he purposed to embark either for Ireland or France, and there await the favorable opportunities which the return of his subjects to a sense of duty, or their future discontents against the duke of Lancaster, would probably afford him. Henry, sensible of the danger, sent to him the earl of Northumberland, with the strongest professions of loyalty and submission; and that nobleman, by treachery and false oaths, made himself master of the king’s person, and carried him to his enemy at Flint Castle. Richard was conducted to London by the duke of Lancaster, who was there received with the acclamations of the mutinous populace. It is pretended that the recorder met him on the road, and in the name of the city entreated him, for the public safety, to put Richard to death, with all his adherents who were prisoners; but the duke prudently determined to make many others participate in his guilt, before he would proceed to these extremities. For this purpose he issued writs of election in the king’s name, and appointed the immediate meeting of a parliament at Westminster.

Such of the peers as were most devoted to the king, were either fled or imprisoned; and no opponents, even among the barons, dared to appear against Henry, amidst that scene of outrage and violence which commonly attends revolutions, especially in England during those turbulent ages, It is also easy to imagine, that a house of commons, elected during this universal ferment, and this triumph of the Lancastrian party, would be extremely attached to that cause, and ready to second every suggestion of their leaders. That order, being an yet of too little weight to stem the torrent, was always carried along with it, and served only to increase the violence which the public interest required it should endeavor to control. The duke of Lancaster, therefore, sensible that he should be entirely master, began to carry his views to the crown itself; and he deliberated with his partisans concerning the most proper means of effecting his daring purpose. He first extorted a resignation from Richard;[*] but as he knew that this deed would plainly appear the result of force and fear, he also purposed, notwithstanding the danger of the precedent to himself and his posterity, to have him solemnly deposed in parliament for his pretended tyranny and misconduct. A charge, consisting of thirty-three articles, was accordingly drawn up against him, and presented to that assembly.[**]

If we examine these articles, which are expressed with extreme acrimony against Richard, we shall find that, except some rash speeches, which are imputed to him,[***] and of whose reality, as they are said to have passed in private conversation, we may reasonably entertain some doubt,—the chief amount of the charge is contained in his violent conduct during the two last years of his reign, and naturally divides itself into two principal heads. The first and most considerable is the revenge which he took on the princes and great barons who had formerly usurped, and still persevered in controlling and threatening his authority; the second is the violation of the laws and general privileges of his people. But the former, however irregular in many of its circumstances, was fully supported by authority of parliament, and was but a copy of the violence which the princes and barons themselves, during their former triumph, had exercised against him and his party. The detention of Lancaster’s estate was, properly speaking a revocation, by parliamentary authority, of a grace which the King himself had formerly granted him. The murder of Glocester (for the secret execution, however merited, of that prince certainly deserves this appellation) was a private deed formed not any precedent, and implied not any usurped or arbitrary power of the crown which could justly give umbrage to the people. It really proceeded from a defect of power in the king, rather than from his ambition; and proves that, instead of being dangerous to the constitution, he possessed not even the authority necessary for the execution of the laws.

Concerning the second head of accusation, as it mostly consists of general facts, was framed by Richard’s inveterate enemies, and was never allowed to be answered by him or his friends, it is more difficult to form a judgment. The greatest part of these grievances imputed to Richard, seems to be the exertion of arbitrary prerogatives; such as the dispensing power,[*] levying purveyance,[**] employing the mareschal’s court,[***] extorting loans,[****] granting protections from lawsuits;[*****] prerogatives, which, though often complained of, had often been exercised by his predecessors, and still continued to be so by his successors. But whether his irregular acts of this kind were more frequent, and injudicious and violent than usual, or were only laid hold of and exaggerated by the factions to which the weakness of his reign had given birth, we are not able at this distance to determine with certainty. There is, however, one circumstance in which his conduct is visibly different from that of his grandfather: he is not accused of having imposed one arbitrary tax, without consent of parliament, during his whole reign;[******] scarcely a year passed during the reign of Edward, which was free from complaints with regard to this dangerous exertion of authority. But, perhaps, the ascendant which Edward had acquired over the people, together with his great prudence, enabled him to make a use very advantageous to his subjects of this and other arbitrary prerogatives, and rendered them a smaller grievance in his hands, than a less absolute authority in those of his grand son.

This is a point which it would be rash for us to decide positively on either side; but it is certain, that a charge drawn up by the duke of Lancaster, and assented to by a parliament, situated in those circumstances, forms no manner of presumption with regard to the unusual irregularity or violence of the king’s conduct in this particular.[*] 16

When the charge against Richard was presented to the parliament, though it was liable, almost in every article, to objections, it was not canvassed, nor examined, nor disputed in either house, and seemed to be received with universal approbation. One man alone, the bishop of Carlisle, had the courage, amidst this general disloyalty and violence, to appear in defence of his unhappy master, and to plead his cause against all the power of the prevailing party. Though some topics employed by that virtuous prelate may seem to favor too much the doctrine of passive obedience, and to make too large a sacrifice of the rights of mankind, he was naturally pushed into that extreme by his abhorrence of the present licentious factions; and such intrepidity, as well as disinterestedness of behavior, proves that, whatever his speculative principles were his heart was elevated far above the meanness and abject submission of a slave. He represented to the parliament, that all the abuses of government which could justly be imputed to Richard, instead of amounting to tyranny, were merely the result of error, youth, or misguided counsel, and admitted of a remedy more easy and salutary than a total subversion of the constitution. That even had they been much more violent and dangerous than they really were, they had chiefly proceeded from former examples of resistance, which, making the prince sensible of his precarious situation, had obliged him to establish his throne by irregular and arbitrary expedients. That a rebellious disposition in subjects was the principal cause of tyranny in kings; laws could never secure the subject, which did not give security to the sovereign; and if the maxim of inviolable loyalty, which formed the basis of the English government, were once rejected, the privileges belonging to the several orders of the state, instead of being fortified by that licentiousness, would thereby lose the surest foundation of their force and stability. That the parliamentary deposition of Edward II., far from making a precedent which could control this maxim, was only an example of successful violence; and it was sufficiently to be lamented, that crimes were so often committed in the world, without establishing principles which might justify and authorize them.

That even that precedent, false and dangerous as it was, could never warrant the present excesses; which were so much greater, and which would entail distraction and misery on the nation, to the latest posterity. That the succession, at least, of the crown, was then preserved inviolate: the lineal heir was placed on the throne; and the people had an opportunity, by their legal obedience to him, of making atonement for the violence which they had committed against his predecessor. That a descendant of Lionel, duke of Clarence, the elder brother of the late duke of Lancaster, had been declared in parliament successor to the crown; he had left posterity; and their title, however it might be overpowered by present force and faction, could never be obliterated from the minds of the people. That if the turbulent disposition alone of the nation had overturned the well-established throne of so good a prince as Richard, what bloody commotions must ensue, when the same cause was united to the motive of restoring the legal and undoubted heir to his authority? That the new government intended to be established, would stand on no principle; and would scarcely retain any pretence by which it could challenge the obedience of men of sense and virtue. That the claim of lineal descent was so gross, as scarcely to deceive the most ignorant of the populace: conquest could never be pleaded by a rebel against his sovereign; the consent of the people had no authority in a monarchy not derived from consent, but established by hereditary right; and however the nation might be justified in deposing the misguided Richard, it could never have any reason for setting aside his lawful heir and successor, who was plainly innocent. And that the duke of Lancaster would give them but a bad specimen of the legal moderation which might be expected from his future government, if he added,[**typo?] to the crime of his past rebellion, the guilt of excluding the family, which, both by right of blood and by declaration of parliament, would, in case of Richard’s demise or voluntary resignation, have been received as the undoubted heirs of the monarchy.[*]

All the circumstances of this event, compared to those which attended the late revolution in 1688, show the difference between a great and civilized nation, deliberately vindicating its established privileges, and a turbulent and barbarous aristocracy, plunging headlong from the extremes of one faction into those of another. This noble freedom of the bishop of Carlisle, instead of being applauded, was not so much as tolerated: he was immediately arrested by order of the duke of Lancaster, and sent a prisoner to the abbey of St. Albans. No further debate was attempted: thirty-three long articles of charge were, in one meeting, voted against Richard; and voted unanimously by the same peers and prelates who, a little before, had voluntarily and unanimously authorized those very acts of violence of which they now complained. That prince was deposed by the suffrages of both houses; and the throne being now vacant, the duke of Lancaster stepped forth, and having crossed himself on the forehead and on the breast, and called upon the name of Christ,[*] he pronounced these words, which we shall give in the original language, because of their singularity.

“In the name of Fadher, Son, and Holy Ghost, I Henry of Lancaster, challenge this rewme of Ynglande, and the croun with all the membres, and the appurtenances; als I that am descendit by right line of the blode, coming fro the gude king Henry therde, and throge that right that God of his grace hath sent me, with helpe of kyn, and of my frendes to recover it; the which rewme was in poynt to be ondone by defaut of governance, and ondoying of the gude lawes.”[**]

In order to understand this speech, it must be observed, that there was a silly story, received among some of the lowest vulgar, that Edmond, earl of Lancaster, son of Henry III., was really the elder brother of Edward I.; but that, by reason of some deformity in his person, he had been postponed in the succession, and his younger brother imposed on the nation in his stead. As the present duke of Lancaster inherited from Edmond by his mother, this genealogy made him the true heir of the monarchy, and it is therefore insinuated in Henry’s speech: but the absurdity was too gross to be openly avowed either by him or by the parliament. The case is the same with regard to his right of conquest: he was a subject who rebelled against his sovereign: he entered the kingdom with a retinue of no more than sixty persons.

The subsequent events discover the same headlong violence of conduct, and the same rude notions of civil government. The deposition of Richard dissolved the parliament: it was necessary to summon a new one: and Henry, in six days after, called together, without any new election, the same members; and this assembly he denominated a new parliament. They were employed in the usual task of reversing every deed of the opposite party. All the acts o£ the last parliament of Richard, which had been confirmed by their oaths, and by a papal bull, were abrogated: all the acts which had passed in the parliament where Glocester prevailed: which had also been confirmed by their oaths, but which had been abrogated by Richard, were anew established:[**] the answers of Tresifian and the other judges, which a parliament had annulled, but which a new parliament and new judges had approved, here received a second condemnation.

The peers who had accused Glocester, Arundel, and Warwick, and who had received higher titles for that piece of service, were all of them degraded from their new dignities; even the practice of prosecuting appeals in parliament, which bore the air of a violent confederacy against an individual, rather than of a legal indictment, was wholly abolished, and trials were restored to the course of common law.* The natural effect of this conduct was, to render the people giddy with such rapid and perpetual changes, and to make them lose all notions of right and wrong in the measures of government.

The earl of Northumberland made a motion, in the house of peers, with regard to the unhappy prince whom they had deposed. He asked them, what advice they would give the king for the future treatment of him; since Henry was resolved to spare his life. They unanimously replied, that he should be imprisoned under a secure guard, in some secret place, and should be deprived of all commerce with any of his friends or partisans. It was easy to foresee, that he would not long remain alive in the hands of such barbarous and sanguinary enemies. Historians differ with regard to the manner in which he was murdered. It was long the prevailing opinion, that Sir Piers Exton, and others of his guards, fell upon him in the Castle of Pomfret, where he was confined, and despatched him with their halberts. But it is more probable that he was starved to death in prison; and after all sustenance was denied him, he prolonged his unhappy life, it is said, for a fortnight, before he reached the end of his miseries. This account is more consistent with the story, that his body was exposed in public, and that no marks of violence were observed upon it. He died in the thirty-fourth year of his age, and the twenty-third of his reign. He left no posterity, either legitimate or illegitimate.

All the writers who have transmitted to us the history of Richard, lived during the reigns of the Lancastrian princes, and candor requires, that we should not give entire credit to the reproaches which they have thrown upon his memory. But after making all proper allowances, he still appears to have been a weak prince, and unfit for government, less for want of natural parts and capacity, than of solid judgment and a good education. He was violent in his temper, profuse in his expenses, fond of idle show and magnificence, devoted to favorites, and addicted to pleasure; passions, all of them the most inconsistent with a prudent economy, and consequently dangerous in a limited and mixed government. Had he possessed the talents of gaining, and still more those of overawing, his great barons, he might have escaped all the misfortunes of his reign, and been allowed to carry much further his oppressions over the people, if he really was guilty of any, without their daring to rebel, or even to murmur against him. But when the grandees were tempted, by his want of prudence and of vigor, to resist his authority, and execute the most violent enterprises upon him, he was naturally led to seek an opportunity of retaliation: justice was neglected; the lives of the chief nobility were sacrificed; and all these enormities seem to have proceeded less from a settled design of establishing arbitrary power, than from the insolence of victory, and the necessities of the king’s situation. The manners indeed of the age were the chief source of such violence: laws, which were feebly executed in peaceable times, lost all their authority during public convulsions: both parties were alike guilty: or, if any difference may be remarked between them, we shall find, that the authority of the crown, being more legal, was commonly carried, when it prevailed, to less desperate extremities, than was that of the aristocracy.

On comparing the conduct and events of this reign with those of the preceding, we shall find equal reason to admire Edward and to blame Richard; but the circumstance of opposition, surely, will not lie in the strict regard paid by the former to national privileges, and the neglect of them by the latter. On the contrary, the prince of small abilities, as he felt his want of power, seems to have been more moderate in this respect than the other. Every parliament assembled during the reign of Edward, remonstrates against the exertion of some arbitrary prerogative or other: we hear not any complaints of that kind during the reign of Richard, till the assembling of his last parliament, which was summoned by his inveterate enemies, which dethroned him, which framed their complaints during the time of the most furious convultions, and whose testimony must therefore have, on that account, much less authority with every equitable judge.[*] Both these princes experienced the encroachments of the great upon their authority. Edward, reduced to necessities, was obliged to make an express bargain with his parliament and to sell some of his prerogatives for present supply; but as they were acquainted with his genius and capacity, they ventured not to demand any exorbitant concessions, or such as were incompatible with regal and sovereign power: the weakness of Richard tempted the parliament to extort a commission, which, in a manner, dethroned the prince, and transferred the sceptre into the hands of the nobility. The events of these encroachments were also suitable to the character of each. Edward had no sooner gotten the supply, than he departed from the engagements which had induced the parliament to grant it; he openly told his people, that he had but dissembled with them when he seemed to make them these concessions; and he resumed and retained all his prerogatives. But Richard, because he was detected in consulting and deliberating with the judges on the lawfulness of restoring the constitution, found his barons immediately in arms against him; was deprived of his liberty; saw his favorites, his ministers, his tutor, butchered before his face, or banished and attainted; and was obliged to give way to all this violence. There cannot be a more remarkable contrast between the fortunes of two princes: it were happy for society, did this contrast always depend on the justice or injustice of the measures which men embrace; and not rather on the different degrees of prudence and vigor with which those measures are supported.

There was a sensible decay of ecclesiastical authority during this period. The disgust which the laity had received from the numerous usurpations both of the court of Rome and of their own clergy, had very much weaned the kingdom from superstition; and strong symptoms appeared, from time to time, of a general desire to shake off the bondage of the Romish church. In the committee of eighteen, to whom Richard’s last parliament delegated their whole power, there is not the name of one ecclesiastic to be found; a neglect which is almost without example, while the Catholic religion subsisted in England.[**] 17

The aversion entertained against the established church soon found principles, and tenets, and reasonings, by which it could justify and support itself. John Wickliffe, a secular priest, educated at Oxford, began in the latter end of Edward III. to spread the doctrine of reformation by his discourses, sermons, and writings; and he made many disciples among men of all ranks and stations. He seems to have been a man of parts and learning; and has the honor of being the first person in Europe that publicly called in question those principles which had universally passed for certain and undisputed during so many ages. Wickliffe himself, as well as his disciples, who received the name of Wickliffites, or Lollards, was distinguished by a great austerity of life and manners; a circumstance common to almost all those who dogmatize in any new way; both because men who draw to them the attention of the public, and expose themselves to the odium of great multitudes, are obliged to be very guarded in their conduct, and because few who have a strong propensity to pleasure or business, will enter upon so difficult and laborious an undertaking. The doctrines of Wickliffe being derived from his search into the Scriptures and into ecclesiastical antiquity, were nearly the same with those which were propagated by the reformers in the sixteenth century: he only carried some of them farther than was done by the more sober part of these reformers. He denied the doctrine of the real presence, the supremacy of the church of Rome, the merit of monastic vows: he maintained, that the Scriptures were the sole rule of faith; that the church was dependent on the state, and should be reformed by it; that the clergy ought to possess no estates; that the begging friars were a nuisance, and ought not to be supported;[*] that the numerous ceremonies of the church were hurtful to true piety: he asserted that oaths were unlawful, that dominion was founded in grace, that everything was subject to fate and destiny, and that all men were preordained either to eternal salvation or reprobation,[**] From the whole of his doctrines, Wickliffe appears to have been strongly tinctured with enthusiasm, and to have been thereby the better qualified to oppose a church whose chief characteristic is superstition.

The propagation of these principles gave great alarm to the clergy; and a bull was issued by Pope Gregory XI. for taking Wickliffe into custody, and examining into the scope of his opinions.[*] Courteney, bishop of London, cited him before his tribunal; but the reformer had now acquired powerful protectors, who screened him from the ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The duke of Lancaster, who then governed the kingdom, encouraged the principles of Wickliffe; and he made no scruple, as well as Lord Piercy, the mareschal, to appear openly in court with him, in order to give him countenance upon his trial: he even insisted, that Wickliffe should sit in the bishop’s presence while his principles were examined: Courteney exclaimed against the insult: the Londoners, thinking their prelate affronted, attacked the duke and mareschal, who escaped from their hands with some difficulty.[**] And the populace, soon after, broke into the houses of both these noblemen, threatened their persons, and plundered their goods. The bishop of London had the merit of appeasing their fury and resentment.

The duke of Lancaster, however, still continued his protection to Wickliffe, during the minority of Richard; and the principles of that reformer had so far propagated themselves, that when the pope sent to Oxford a new bull against these doctrines, the university deliberated for some time whether they should receive the bull; and they never took any vigorous measures in consequence of the papal orders.[***] Even the populace of London were at length brought to entertain favorable sentiments of this reformer: when he was cited before a synod at Lambeth, they broke into the assembly, and so overawed the prelates, who found both the people and the court against them, that they dismissed him without any further censure.

The clergy, we may well believe, were more wanting in power than in inclination to punish this new heresy which struck at all their credit, possessions, and authority. But there was hitherto no law in England by which the secular arm was authorized to support orthodoxy; and the ecclesiastics endeavored to supply the defect by an extraordinary and unwarrantable artifice. In the year 1381, there was an act passed, requiring sheriffs to apprehend the preachers of heresy and their abettors; but this statute had been surreptitiously obtained by the clergy, and had the formality of an enrolment without the consent of the commons. In the subsequent session, the lower house complained of the fraud; affirmed, that they had no intention to bind themselves to the prelates further than their ancestors had done before them; and required that the pretended statute should be repealed, which was done accordingly.* But it is remarkable, that notwithstanding this vigilance of the commons, the clergy had so much art and influence, that the repeal was suppressed, and the act, which never had any legal authority, remains to this day upon the statute book;[*] though the clergy still thought proper to keep it in reserve and not proceed to the immediate execution of it.

But besides this defect of power in the church, which saved Wickliffe, that reformer himself, notwithstanding his enthusiasm, seems not to have been actuated by the spirit of martyrdom; and in all subsequent trials before the prelates, he so explained away his doctrine by tortured meanings, as to render it quite innocent and inoffensive.[**] Most of his followers imitated his cautious disposition, and saved themselves either by recantations or explanations. He died of a palsy, in the year 1385, at his rectory of Lutterworth, in the county of Leicester; and the clergy, mortified that he should have escaped their vengeance, took care, besides assuring the people of his eternal damnation, to represent his last distemper as a visible judgment of Heaven upon him for his multiplied heresies and impieties.[***]

The proselytes, however, of Wickliffe’s opinions still increased in England:[****] some monkish writers represent one half of the kingdom as infected by those principles: they were carried over to Bohemia by some youth of that nation, who studied at Oxford: but though the age seemed strongly disposed to receive them, affairs were not yet fully ripe for this great revolution; and the finishing blow to ecclesiastical power was reserved to a period of more curiosity, literature, and inclination for novelties.

Meanwhile the English parliament continued to check the clergy and the court of Rome, by more sober and more legal expedients. They enacted anew the statute of “provisors,” and affixed higher penalties to the transgression of it, which, in some instances, was even made capital.[*] The court of Rome had fallen upon a new device, which increased their authority over the prelates: the pope, who found that the expedient of arbitrarily depriving them was violent, and liable to opposition, attained the same end by transferring such of them as were obnoxious to poorer sees, and even to nominal sees, “in partibus infidelium.” It was thus that the archbishop of York, and the bishops of Durham and Chichester, the king’s ministers, had been treated after the prevalence of Glocester’s faction: the bishop of Carlisle met with the same fate after the accession of Henry IV. For the pope always joined with the prevailing powers, when they did not thwart his pretensions. The parliament, in the reign of Richard, enacted a law against this abuse: and the king made a general remonstrance to the court of Rome against all those usurpations, which he calls “horrible excesses” of that court.[**]

It was usual for the church, that they might elude the mortmain act, to make their votaries leave lands in trust to certain persons, under whose name the clergy enjoyed the benefit of the bequest: the parliament also stopped the progress of this abuse.[***] In the seventeenth of the king, the commons prayed, “that remedy might be had against such religious persons as cause their villains to marry free women inheritable, whereby the estate comes to those religious hands by collusion.”[****] This was a new device of the clergy.

The papacy was at this time somewhat weakened by a schism, which lasted during forty years, and gave great scandal to the devoted partisans of the holy see. After the pope had resided many years at Avignon, Gregory XI. was persuaded to return to Rome; and upon his death, which happened in 1380, the Romans, resolute to fix, for the future, the seat of the papacy in Italy, besieged the cardinals in the conclave, and compelled them, though they were mostly Frenchmen, to elect Urban VI., an Italian, into that high dignity. The French cardinals, as soon as they recovered their liberty, fled from Rome, and protesting against the forced election, chose Robert, son of the count of Geneva, who took the name of Clement VII., and resided at Avignon. All the Kingdoms of Christendom, according to their several interests and inclinations, were divided between these two pontiffs. The court of France adhered to Clement, and was followed by its allies, the king of Castile and the king of Scotland: England of course was thrown into the other party, and declared for Urban. Thus the appellation of Clementines and Urbanists distracted Europe for several years; and each party damned the other as schismatics, and as rebels to the true vicar of Christ. But this circumstance, though it weakened the papal authority, had not so great an effect as might naturally be imagined. Though any king could easily, at first, make his kingdom embrace the party of one pope or the other, or even keep it some time in suspense between them, he could not so easily transfer his obedience at pleasure: the people attached themselves to their own party, as to a religious opinion; and conceived an extreme abhorrence to the opposite party, whom they regarded as little better than Saracens, or infidels. Crusades were even undertaken in this quarrel; and the zealous bishop of Norwich, in particular, led over, in 1382 near sixty thousand bigots into Flanders against the Clementines; but after losing a great part of his followers, he returned with disgrace into England.[*] Each pope, sensible, from this prevailing spirit among the people, that the kingdom which once embraced his cause would always adhere to him, boldly maintained all the pretensions of his see, and stood not much more in awe of the temporal sovereigns, than if his authority had not been endangered by a rival.

We meet with this preamble to a law enacted at the very beginning of this reign: “Whereas divers persons of small garrison of land or other possessions do make great retinue of people, as well of esquires as of others, in many parts of the realm, giving to them hats and other livery of one suit by year taking again towards them the value of the same livery, or percase the double value, by such covenant and assurance, that every of them shall maintain other in all quarrels, be they reasonable or unreasonable, to the great mischief and oppression of the people, etc.”[**]

This preamble contains a true picture of the state of the kingdom. The laws had been so feebly executed, even during the long, active, and vigilant reign of Edward III., that no subject could trust to their protection. Men openly associated themselves, under the patronage of some great baron, for their mutual defence. They wore public badges, by which their confederacy was distinguished. They supported each other in all quarrels, iniquities, extortions, murders, robberies, and other crimes. Their chief was more their sovereign than the king himself; and their own band was more connected with them than their country. Hence the perpetual turbulence, disorders, factions, and civil wars of those times: hence the small regard paid to a character, or the opinion of the public: hence the large discretionary prerogatives of the crown, and the danger which might have ensued from the too great limitation of them. If the king had possessed no arbitrary powers, while all the nobles assumed and exercised them, there must have ensued an absolute anarchy in the state.

One great mischief attending these confederacies was, the extorting from the king pardons for the most enormous crimes. The parliament often endeavored, in the last reign, to deprive the prince of this prerogative; but, in the present, they were content with an abridgment of it. They enacted, that no pardon for rapes, or for murder from malice prepense, should be valid, unless the crime were particularly specified in it.[*] There were also some other circumstances required for passing any pardon of this kind: an excellent law, but ill observed, like most laws that thwart the manners of the people, and the prevailing customs of the times.