The young King was but a child, and there was a prospect of a long minority, affording an ample field for the intrigues of party. The position of the kingdom too was such as to promise a time of considerable difficulty. The war with France had been put off by a succession of truces, but was still threatening, and England was in no condition to meet it. An invasion actually took place. French troops landed in the Isle of Wight, and laid waste the country. Moreover, the last reign had closed amidst domestic difficulties. The Lords therefore thought it right to take the settlement of the kingdom into their own hands. At a great council it was determined to form a Council of Regency, drawn from all orders represented in Parliament, to assist the great officers of the crown. The dangers which beset the country induced all parties for a time to rally honestly round the throne. The royal princes, who might become party leaders, were on that account excluded from the Council. The national party again gained the majority in the Commons, and again elected De la Mare as their Speaker. But the Commons had no wish to drive matters to extremity, or to change the existing balance of power. They fell back into their old position, which they had temporarily felt themselves obliged to desert, declined to have anything to do with matters of state; and when told to consider the best means for the defence of the kingdom, they pleaded their inability to answer, named a council of peers whom they thought qualified for the purpose, and made overtures of friendship by placing Lancaster’s name at the head of the list. Lancaster, who desired power and had no fixed principles, accepted the position, first making a solemn denial of all the calumnious reports which were afloat about him, and thus again became practically Prime Minister. But the Commons showed that they intended to keep their own great object, economical management of the finances, steadfastly in view, by insisting that the subsidy, which was granted at once upon this reconciliation, should be paid into the hands of two treasurers named by themselves. They also demanded, as a further guarantee of good government, that the great officers of state and the judges should be chosen by the Lords, and publicly named to the Commons. The King was left unrestrained in the choice of those who should be about his person. At the next Parliament, held at Gloucester in 1378, they still pursued the same policy, and refused to grant a new subsidy till the accounts of that last granted had been exhibited to them. It was plain that the constant repetition of subsidies was much disliked.
But the continuation of war in Brittany soon made fresh demands for money necessary. This war had closed by a sudden revulsion of feeling on the part of the Bretons, who had been roused to extreme anger by the annexation of the province by the French King. But on his death they became equally hostile to their late friends the English, and drove them from the country. To supply this want of money, new methods of taxation were devised. A poll-tax, graduated from £6, 13s. 4d. on the Duke of Lancaster, to 4d. on the ordinary labourer and his family, was granted, but produced not half the sum required. Further demands were made, and the consent of the Commons purchased by reforms of the household, and by the establishment of a Parliamentary finance committee. Even the new grants thus purchased did not suffice, and at the end of the year 1380, a poll tax graduated from £1 to 1s. per head was imposed on every male and female.
The exaction of this tax, which fell proportionately with much greater weight on the lower, unrepresented orders, produced the great insurrection known as Wat Tyler’s insurrection. Many causes had been at work, not in England only, but throughout Europe, to excite discontent among the labouring classes. The severity and rough inquisitorial spirit with which the present impost was collected was beyond what they could bear. In Essex, under Jack Straw, at Dartford, under Wat Tyler, whose daughter had been subjected to insult, and at Gravesend, where Sir Simon Burley had laid claim to a labourer as his villein, insurrections broke out. Wat Tyler was chosen for the general leader, accompanied by John Ball, the popular itinerant preacher. But the insurrection was not confined to these counties only, it extended from Winchester to Scarborough. It was in all respects a revolutionary movement. Manor-houses were pillaged and destroyed, and the court rolls, where the villeins’ names were written, were burnt. Officials, those who had served on juries, justices, and even lawyers, were put to death. The rebels were particularly embittered against John of Gaunt, swearing to admit no king of the name of John, and refused all taxes except the customary tenth and fifteenth.
The insurgents entered Southwark, and pillaged the palace of Lambeth; on the following day penetrated into London, freed the prisoners in Newgate, destroyed Lancaster’s house of the Savoy, and showed their national spirit by killing some fifty Flemish merchants. The King was alone in London; he offered to meet them at Mile End. He there received their petition, which demanded not political but social rights,—the abolition of villeinage, the reduction of rent to fourpence an acre, the free access to all fairs and markets, and a general pardon. The King granted their demands; and charters were at once drawn up for every township. But, in the meanwhile, the more advanced leaders, disliking the moderation of the bulk of their followers, broke into the Tower and ransacked it. On the following day, the King came across these men in Smithfield. Tyler was at their head. He advanced to have a personal interview with the King, and was suddenly killed by Walworth, the Lord Mayor, as he played with his dagger, an action which was construed as a threat. The young King, with remarkable presence of mind, rode forward to the astonished rebels, declared that he would be their leader, and induced them to follow him to Islington, where they found themselves in the presence of Sir Robert Knowles and 1000 soldiers. They at once yielded, and demanded the King’s mercy; he declined to punish them, and dismissed them to their homes. When time had thus been gained, the crisis was over. Richard found himself at the head of an army. Several defeats and numerous executions broke the spirit of the rebels, and the insurrection was suppressed.
In autumn the Parliament met. The King declared he had recalled his charters, but asked the Commons to consider the propriety of abolishing villeinage. The ignorance and want of sympathy with the feelings of the class below them, which existed among the representative Commons, was then made evident. No men, they said, should rob them of their villeins. The charters were therefore finally revoked; and not only the charters, but the general pardon also: at least 250 persons were exempted from it. Meantime, the House of Commons made political capital out of the insurrection; they declared that the cause of the insurrection was not the social oppression of the labourer, but their own grievances, purveyance, the rapacity of the officers of the Exchequer, the maintainers, or bands of robbers who carried on depredations in some counties, and the heavy taxation. This was followed by a further inquiry into the royal household.
Lancaster continued in power for three years longer. His ministry was unmarked by success; and the feeling against him, which had been exhibited in the insurrection, found frequent expression. With regard to Church reform he had completely changed his tactics. When Wicliffe passed beyond his attacks upon the abuses of the Church, and touched its doctrine, questioning even the fundamental point of Transubstantiation, Lancaster withdrew his support. Although Wicliffe was so far upheld by Parliament, that a statute which had been passed for the suppression of his “poor priests” was repealed, he was unable, without Lancaster’s assistance, to withstand the power of the Church, and was compelled to make some form of recantation before he regained his living of Lutterworth, where he died in 1384. But Lancaster reaped no advantage from this change in his conduct. Every disaster was still laid to his charge, and the old suspicion that he harboured covert designs upon the throne still clung to him. The great schism was at this time dividing the Catholic Church. For seventy years the Papacy fixed at Avignon had been the servant of the French king: the Babylonish captivity the Italians called it. Gregory XI. restored the Papacy to Rome, but his death was followed by a double election. The French cardinals elected Clement VII., the Roman cardinals Urban VI.; and the Christian world was divided in its allegiance. In the interests of Pope Urban, who was received in England, the Bishop of Norwich, a remarkable prelate, who had distinguished himself in the suppression of the late insurrection, was engaged to lead an army against France. He selected the old road of attack. The Flemish citizens, in spite of the death of their great leader, Philip Van Artevelt, and of a crushing defeat they had received from the French chivalry at Rosbecque, continued their enmity to France. The Bishop was to act in concert with them.
His expedition failed; it was currently reported that Lancaster had thwarted it. A certain friar came to the King offering to prove traitorous designs on the part of Lancaster. Sir John Holland, the King’s half-brother, and a partisan of Lancaster’s, into whose charge he was given, killed him. His death was no doubt suspicious. His story against Lancaster was believed. In 1385, Scotland, which had been subsidized by France, became troublesome. Richard led an army against it; but the advice of De la Pole, the King’s chancellor and favourite minister, who pretended to dread the designs of Lancaster, induced Richard to retreat, and the expedition came to nothing. Moreover, still further to mark his fear of Lancaster, Richard declared Roger, Earl of March, his presumptive heir. The enmity between March and Lancaster, in which perhaps may be traced the first beginnings of the Wars of the Roses, had been already marked in the last reign. Peter de la Mare was the steward of the Earl of March, while Sir Thomas Hungerford, the speaker of the following Parliament, occupied the same office in the household of Lancaster.
John of Gaunt, thus mistrusted and opposed, was glad to embrace the opportunity of leaving England, which was offered him by affairs in Spain, where he wished, in union with the Portuguese, to push the claim to the throne of Castile, which he derived from his wife, the daughter of Pedro the Cruel.
He was at once succeeded in his influence and in his party leadership by a far more dangerous man, another uncle of the King, Thomas, Duke of Gloucester. Meanwhile the politics of England had changed, and had fallen back into their normal condition. We have seen that the King had been allowed the free selection of his own household. He had surrounded himself by men not drawn from the higher baronage.[64] His chief favourite was De Vere, whom he had made Earl of Oxford, and subsequently Duke of Ireland, and to whom he had intrusted the government of that disturbed country; while his ministers nominated by Parliament were also men who owed their position to their capacity rather than to their birth. The chief of these was Michael de la Pole, the chancellor, whom the King had raised to the rank of Earl of Suffolk. He was thus open to the old charge of favouritism. The Lancastrian party had set themselves against his favourites. Already one of them, the Earl of Stafford, had been killed by Sir John Holland, and Gloucester found no difficulty in forming a powerful party among the barons, taking for his cry the reform of the administration, and seeking to excite the national feeling, by keeping alive the animosity against France, towards which country Richard was much drawn; while the specious pretext of reform as usual attracted the Commons. In 1386, Gloucester took advantage of a threatened invasion from France to produce charges against the administration. The King’s officers, it was said, had used the public revenues for their own purposes; the Commons had been impoverished by taxes, the landowners could not get their rents, and tenants were compelled to abandon their farms through distress. The three last of these charges were traceable, not to government, but to economical changes, but served well as a party catchword; and so successful were they, that in a Parliament held at Westminster, Commons and Lords united in demanding a change of ministry. After a contest of three weeks the King yielded. Suffolk was dismissed, and his dismissal was immediately followed by his impeachment. The charges brought against him were held to be partly proved, and he was sentenced to be kept in prison during the King’s pleasure. After the dissolution of Parliament he was released. His place was taken by Arundel, Bishop of Ely.
This blow, though severe, was followed by a worse one. The old baronial policy of establishing a committee of reform was renewed. To intimidate the King, the statute of the deposition of Edward II. was produced in Parliament. The estates having declared that unless he granted their requests they would separate without his permission, he was finally compelled to authorize a commission of eleven peers and bishops, to inquire into abuses and regulate reform. Their duty was a very wide one, touching the household, the treasury, and all complaints out of the reach of law. The partisans of Gloucester formed the majority of this committee, of which the Duke himself and his chief friend, Lord Arundel,[65] were members. It was arranged that the power of the committee should last for one year only. It does not seem to have brought to light any great abuses, nor was its government sufficiently superior to that which had preceded it to justify its establishment. Richard had no mind to submit to a limitation of his prerogative which seemed so little called for. He set to work with his usual secretiveness. At Shrewsbury, and again at Nottingham, he inquired of the judges how far the late conduct of the reformers was constitutional. Their reply was strongly in favour of the prerogative. They declared the late measures treasonable, and its authors liable to capital punishment, denied the power of Parliament to impeach, and declared Suffolk’s condemnation false. Fulthorpe, one of the King’s judges, though sworn to secrecy, at once told Gloucester of the King’s questions. Consequently, when Richard had made all preparations for a sudden coup d’état, he was alarmed to find that Gloucester, Arundel, and Nottingham, had reached London the same day as himself, with a numerous army. At Waltham Cross the Earls of Derby and Warwick joined them, and they proceeded to appeal, or, as we should say, accuse of high treason, the Archbishop of York, the Duke of Ireland, the Earl of Suffolk, Robert Tresilian the judge, and Sir Nicholas Brember, whose influence had been employed to secure London for Richard. The accused sought refuge in flight, and the Duke of Ireland succeeded in raising troops in the West, and attempted to bring the matter to the issue of battle. But the Lords Appellant were beforehand with him; he was unable to cross the Thames, as he hoped, at Radcot; and being there surrounded, with difficulty escaped by swimming the river.
The appellants, now masters of the kingdom, made a thorough clearance of all who could be considered King’s favourites. Eleven of his intimate friends were imprisoned, a number of the lords and ladies of the Court removed, and in February 1388, a Parliament known as the “Wonderful or merciless Parliament” assembled, which, in a long session of 122 days, was employed almost entirely in destroying the enemies of Gloucester. His appeal was heard, and all the five accused gentlemen were found guilty; three escaped, Tresilian and Brember were put to death. Some of the judges were likewise executed, some pardoned on the intercession of the bishops, and four knights, old and intimate friends of Richard, of whom Sir Simon Burley is the best known, were also impeached and beheaded. Parliament closed with an ordinance, declaring that the treasons for which these men had suffered were not established by any statute, and should not form a precedent; and by exacting a repetition of Richard’s coronation oath. For a year, Gloucester ruled at his will, without any marked success. The Percies were defeated by the Scotch at Otterbourne, and an invasion from France was only averted by the incessant dissensions which had arisen in that country during the minority of Charles VI. Before the end of Gloucester’s administration, however, truces were concluded with both Scotland and France.
Richard appears to have been able to dissemble profoundly; he had been most submissive to his conquerors, who believed their power safe, when, at a council in the spring of 1389, he quietly asked Gloucester how old he was. Gloucester replied that he was twenty-two. “Then,” said the King, “I am certainly old enough to manage my own affairs. I thank you, my lords, for your past services; I want them no longer.” He then proceeded to change the ministry, removed Arundel from the chancellorship,[66] and took the government into his own hands. Although the ministry was changed, there was no great reversal of policy, no punishment of the Lords Appellant. On the contrary, the King, under the advice, it is probable, of William of Wykeham, seemed determined to ignore party, and to attempt a moderate government. He declared that he would be bound by the decisions of the late Parliament, employed among his most intimate counsellors, Derby, who had been one of the appellants, and the Duke of York, who had been on the commission of 1386; and it would appear that he did not even remove Gloucester from his councils. In pursuance of this national and healing policy, in the following year, the chief officers temporarily resigned their offices, that their administration might be examined. The Commons found not the slightest cause of complaint, and they were reinstated at once. This peaceable state of affairs continued till 1397. During the whole of that time, we must believe that Richard was only waiting his opportunity. There were indeed some signs of his secret thoughts. Some of his banished friends were relieved or obtained places in Ireland. On the death of Robert de Vere he succeeded in obtaining the Earldom of Oxford for his uncle, Aubrey de Vere; and a year or two afterwards he brought his friend’s body, which had been embalmed, from abroad, and before it was reburied, had the coffin opened, and gazed with much emotion upon the dead man’s face. But outwardly such unity reigned, that national matters could be considered, and the period is marked by the completion of the quarrel with the Papacy with regard to Provisors, and by an expedition to Ireland.
England, it has been said, embraced the cause of Urban VI. In his gratitude he had given the King the nomination to the two next vacant prebends in all collegiate churches. But the appointment by the Pope of an Abbot of St. Edmunds, in 1380, produced a repetition of the Statute of Provisors of Edward III.’s reign.[67] Still the laws were repeatedly evaded, the Pope always presenting to benefices which fell vacant at Rome. As the cardinals generally died at Rome, this was a large exception. In 1390, the 29th of January of that year was settled as a term. All Provisors before that year were legal; all after, together with the introduction of any Papal letter of recommendation, absolutely illegal. In 1391, the new Pope, Boniface IX., declared all these enactments void, and proceeded to grant Provisors. Consequently, in 1393,[68] was drawn up the final Statute of Provisors, or Præmunire. By this any man procuring instruments of any kind from Rome, or publishing such instruments, was outlawed, his property forfeited, and his person apprehended.
The following year the King made an expedition to Ireland. The condition of that country had long demanded attention. Since the invasion of the Bruces, the native tribes had made considerable advances on all sides, but their domestic dissensions prevented any permanent success. A far greater evil was the condition of the Irish of old English race. The want of strong central authority had allowed the individual chieftains to establish something like royal power in their own dominions; they were gradually falling back into barbarism, and in a way very unusual among conquering races, had been gradually adopting the manners and laws of the conquered race around them. Among them, as among the natives, perpetual discord and fighting existed. So disorderly were they, that Edward III. had ordered that no official places should be occupied except by men born in England; and Lionel of Clarence, who had been appointed to bring the country into order, had, in 1364, procured, at the Parliament of Kilkenny, statutes, directed not against the Irish, but against the English settlers, making the adoption of Irish habits, and of the Brehon or Irish law, high treason. Earlier in the reign, Richard had appointed his favourite De Vere to restore order. His success had been prevented by the attack upon him by the Lords Appellant in 1387. The King now, in the year 1394, determined to go in person. His measures were just and moderate, and he succeeded in inducing all the native princes to swear fealty.
He was called home by the excesses of the Lollards, as the followers of Wicliffe were called. They had prepared a petition, containing a forcible exposition of their own tenets, and a vigorous attack on the priests. The Church demanded the presence and protection of the King, who, on his arrival in England, expelled the Lollards from Oxford. At the same time he contracted a marriage, consonant with his known French views, with Isabella, the daughter of Charles VI. of France, a Princess of ten years of age. In 1397, the marriage ceremony having been performed, the young Queen was crowned. It seems possible that it was in reliance upon this new friendship with France that the King now determined to execute his long dissembled vengeance. The seven years of peaceful government had allayed suspicion, and won him popularity. Lancaster, who had returned from Spain, had ceased to take a very prominent part in the government, and had, moreover, been gratified by the legitimization of his children by his mistress Catherine Swinford. His son, the Earl of Derby, had deserted his former associates, and was one of the King’s advisers. Mowbray of Nottingham, another of the Lords Appellant, had also been won over. The Duke of York had throughout been friendly disposed to the King. On the other hand, Gloucester had been continually acting in a spirit of covert hostility. He had made political capital by opposing the French match, and by publicly speaking against the extravagances of the royal household, which appear to have been very great. Froissart, indeed, mentions a story, which however needs confirmation, that he had combined with Warwick and the Arundels in a plot to seize the King.
Richard carried out his plans of vengeance with his usual secrecy and skill. Suddenly, Warwick, Arundel and Gloucester were apprehended, and sent to different and distant castles. He then proceeded against them as they had themselves proceeded against his friends. They were appealed of treason by a number of Earls in the royal interest. Rickhill, one of the justices, was sent to Calais to obtain Gloucester’s confession, and a Parliament was assembled at Westminster, in which the good will of the Commons had been already secured. As a preliminary measure, all pardons to Gloucester, Arundel and Warwick were revoked. An impeachment was then brought against the Archbishop Arundel, and the appeal against the Duke and the two Earls was heard. Arundel refused to plead anything but his pardon. This having already been revoked, he was at once condemned and executed. The Earl Marshall, to whom Gloucester had been intrusted, was ordered to produce him, but replied that the Duke was dead. It seems almost certain that he had been murdered by Richard’s orders at Calais. The Archbishop was condemned to banishment for life; and Warwick, who pleaded guilty, was exiled to the Isle of Man. Lord Mortimer, who was also involved in the accusation, fled to Ireland, and was outlawed. A shower of new titles was lavished on the obsequious Lords. Derby and Rutland were made Dukes of Hereford and Albemarle; Nottingham, Duke of Norfolk; De Spencer, Neville, Percy and Scrope, respectively, Earls of Gloucester, Westmoreland, Worcester and Wiltshire. A statute was passed making it treason to levy war against the King, and declaring the penalty of treason against any one who should attempt to overthrow the enactments of this Parliament. The next Parliament at Gloucester, in 1398, acted in the same obsequious manner. The Acts of the Wonderful Parliament were repealed. To the grant of a subsidy was added the tax on wool and hides for life; and a permanent committee of twelve peers and six commoners was appointed to represent Parliament for the future.
The new Dukes of Hereford and Norfolk alone remained unpunished of the old Lords Appellant of 1386. These two men, who had shared in the destruction of their former associates, had now quarrelled, and Hereford brought a formal charge against Norfolk of treasonable conversation. To the Parliamentary committee this question was now referred, and by them laid before a court of chivalry; at the same time the committee enacted laws in the royal interest, exactly as though it had been the Parliament. It was agreed that the dispute between the two dukes should be settled by the arbitrament of battle. The lists were prepared at Coventry, but as the combatants were about to engage, the King took the matter into his own hands, and, on what principle it is impossible to conceive, punished both; Hereford he banished for ten years, Norfolk for life. Richard had thus destroyed his old enemies, rid himself of the constraint of Parliament, and was practically despotic. “Then the King began to rule,” says Froissart, “more fiercely than before. In those days there were none so great in England that durst speak against anything that the King did. He had council meet for his appetite, who exhorted him to do what he list. He still kept in his wages 10,000 archers. He then kept greater state than ever, no former king had ever kept so much as he did by 100,000 nobles a year.”[69]
He acted in accordance with his position. He raised forced loans, meddled in the administration of justice, and went so far as to declare no less than seventeen counties outlawed, for having, as he asserted, favoured the Lords Appellant before the affair at Radcot Bridge. But he overrated his real power. His government had been accepted because it had been constitutional and moderate. The change which was evident since his acquirement of the sole authority induced the people to give the credit of that moderation to Hereford, who had been a chief member of that council, and who was a popular favourite. Thousands had attended him as he left England for his banishment, and excitement spread through the country when the King, in contravention of his promise and of law, refused him the succession to his father’s title and property upon the death of that prince. Regardless of the discontented feeling of the people, Richard unwisely determined upon another expedition to Ireland, to complete his work there, and to exact vengeance for the death of the Earl of March, whom he had named as his successor. The kingdom was thus left vacant, and in the charge of the Duke of York, whose subsequent conduct proved that he shared in the national feeling.
The new Duke of Lancaster took advantage of this act of folly to land at Ravenspur in Yorkshire, declaring loudly that he came but to demand his family succession. The Percies, the old friends of the Lancastrians, received him with gladness, and his march southwards soon became formidable. The King’s ministers, Wiltshire, Bussy, and Greene, fled for refuge to Bristol. Thither York also betook himself, thus leaving the capital open. Lancaster, now at the head of a powerful army, also drew to the West. As he came within reach of the Duke of York, civilities were exchanged, which proved that he had no opposition to fear from him. Bristol opened its gates. The King’s favourites were seized and executed, and the King, who had landed in Wales from Ireland, with the Duke of Albemarle and other nobles, saw his army rapidly dissolve, and had to take refuge in the castle of Conway. Henry of Lancaster found himself joined by all the nobility. He commissioned Percy of Northumberland to procure a meeting with Richard at Flint. The proposed meeting was a trap to catch the King; as he rode from the castle with Northumberland, Richard found himself in the midst of hostile troops. When he was introduced to the presence of Lancaster, he knew that his fate was sealed, and with his peculiar power of accepting circumstances, was entirely submissive in his behaviour.
A Parliament had been summoned to meet in September; but before that time, Richard was induced to make a formal resignation of the kingdom. Not content with this, when the Parliament met, Henry caused the coronation oath to be read. It was contended that Richard had broken it, and therefore forfeited the crown. The Bishop of Carlisle alone raised his voice in favour of the fallen King, and demanded that he should at least be heard in his defence. His interference was, of course, in vain. The deposition of the King was voted. The throne being thus vacant, the Duke was not long in laying claim to it. In a curious document, in which he mingled the claims of blood, of conquest, and the necessity of reform, he put forward his demands. They were unanimously admitted. The Archbishop of Canterbury took him by the hand and led him to the throne. It was his cue to act with strict legality, yet he could not afford to do without a Parliament so obviously devoted to his interests. As that Parliament had expired by Richard’s deposition, he immediately issued writs for a new one, returnable in six days, thus rendering it absolutely impossible to make any new elections. It was with the Parliament thus secured that he began his reign.