The reign of Richard II., with its strange and rapid revolutions, had been the beginning of that great faction fight which was concluded a century afterwards by the accession of Henry VII. After pursuing during that reign a policy of inconsistent, and even treacherous, self-seeking, the Duke of Lancaster now came forward as the champion of order. The coup d’état by which he put himself on the throne is another of those instances which history has so abundantly furnished, of the willing acceptance by a nation, after a period of long discomfort, of any one who would bring it rest. There are thus two points of view from which to regard his reign. It is the reign of a usurper bent upon establishing a dynasty, the reign of a conservative who bases his position on the maintenance of the existing state of society, and therefore for a time checks the natural progress of the nation. The necessity which a usurper feels for popularity will explain the improved constitutional position of the Commons during the earlier years of his reign; his position as a reactionary that attachment to the Church which produced the famous statute, “De Hæretico comburendo.”
The arbitrary character of the government at the close of the late King’s reign, and the acts of vengeance which had marked it, were the evils which were most prominent at the moment. Henry’s first step was of necessity the reversal of these acts, and the restoration of the state of things which had existed in 1388. The Parliament was therefore induced to declare all the acts of the last Parliament null, while those nobles whose adhesion to the late King had procured them fresh rank fell back to their old titles. Thus, the Dukes of Albemarle, of Surrey, and of Exeter, appear again as the Earls of Rutland, Kent, and Huntingdon, the Marquis of Dorset as Earl of Somerset. The scene in the House of Lords in the first Parliament marks the pitch to which passion had risen, and the preparation already made for future civil war. Rutland, the son of the Duke of York, was challenged by Lord Fitz-Walter, and when Lord Morley, the friend of the new King, challenged Lord Salisbury, no less than forty lords threw down their hoods as gages of battle on one side or the other. This point is further illustrated by the petition of the Commons, that all liveries except those of the King should be forbidden. The nobles had been gathering paid retainers around them, and getting themselves ready for the threatening quarrel. Meanwhile, the King had been crowned, supported by his two great partisans—whose names show the great influence of the North in the late change of government—Percy, Earl of Northumberland, now made Constable of England, and Neville, Earl of Westmoreland, with the rank of Marshall. It by no means suited Henry to excite remark as to his right. He therefore stepped as quietly as he could into the position of his predecessor, and his son Henry was declared Prince of Wales and heir-apparent, entirely without mention of the young Earl of March, the real heir, who was then a child in the custody of the King at Windsor. A grant of a tax on wool and leather for three years closed the session, and enabled Henry to take measures to secure his position; for it was not to be supposed that the party which had lost its influence would calmly acknowledge the new King. He was scarcely crowned when plots began to be formed against him, nor was it till he had been nine years upon the throne that the dangers which assaulted him both from his own kingdom and from foreign countries were finally overcome. It was during this period of weakness and uncertainty that he had to rest principally upon the Commons, who supported him as the champion of order against baronial disorder, but did not fail to take advantage of his weakness.
The first of these difficulties arose from those lords who had been the appellants against Gloucester, and whose loss of rank has been already mentioned. A week before Christmas, 1399, several others of the depressed party met at Westminster, and there the Earls of Huntingdon, Rutland, Kent, and Salisbury entered into a conspiracy for the restoration of Richard. Their plan was to seize the King at Windsor, but Rutland, a never-failing traitor, disclosed the project to his cousin; the King hastily betook himself to London, and the insurgent lords, finding that their plans were discovered, fell back towards the West. The King was rapidly pursuing them; but at Cirencester, the inhabitants, under their Mayor, surrounded their lodgings, took them prisoners, and afterwards beheaded Kent and Salisbury. Several escaped for the time, but the same fate at length overtook Despenser at Bristol, and Huntingdon at Pleshy in Essex. Subsequently, Sir Thomas Blunt and eighteen others were executed at Oxford. Among them was a priest, Maudelin by name, who had been chosen for his strong personal resemblance to represent the late King in the insurrection. That the leaders of this conspiracy should have all fallen victims to popular vengeance sufficiently shows the feelings of the bulk of the nation with regard to King Henry and his rival.
Meanwhile, Richard had been imprisoned in Pontefract Castle. In February a report was spread that he was dead. On this the Privy Council begged that, if still alive, he might be carefully secured. The answer was given that he was already dead, and a corpse was exhibited in London, the face of which, from the eyes to the chin, was left uncovered, the rest of the body being carefully clothed. This peculiar arrangement excited suspicions, which were probably groundless, but were further supported by the complete mystery which hung over the manner of the King’s death. Hunger and violence were both alleged; while some asserted that the corpse exhibited was not that of Richard, but of the priest Maudelin.[84]
His domestic enemies for the present silenced, Henry could look abroad. He made advances towards friendship with France, but it soon became plain that that kingdom was inclined to support the cause of the late King, whose young widow, Isabella, was the daughter of Charles VI. The title of King of England was refused to Henry, Isabella and her dowry demanded, and hostility thus kept continually alive. In Scotland, also, the same feeling showed itself. The King, Robert III., was confined by weakness of body and mind almost exclusively to the Isle of Bute; his brother, the Duke of Albany, was the real ruler of the country. Henry, who had a party in the country, and at whose court Dunbar, the Earl of March, the chief enemy of the Douglas family, was resident, thought it desirable to show his power. He therefore marched as far as Leith, demanding homage from the Scotch King similar to that claimed by his predecessors, but the Duke of Rothesay, heir-apparent, held firm in the Castle of Edinburgh, and want of provisions speedily obliged the English to beat a somewhat hasty retreat. As in the case of France, this transaction with Scotland established a constant hostility.
In the other dependency of England affairs were still worse. Owen Glendower, a Welsh gentleman of good family educated in England, incensed at the rejection of a suit about a certain property of Lord Grey of Ruthyn, had roused the national animosity, and claimed for himself the title of Prince of Wales. For the present Henry could do nothing effective against him. The war assumed a national character; the Welsh were expelled from the towns in the Marches. Edward I.’s statutes against the Welsh were re-enacted, even including that which ordered the destruction of the bards. The conduct of the war was placed nominally in the hands of Henry, Prince of Wales, a lad of thirteen. But the whole of the following year Glendower’s successes continued. Grey of Ruthyn and Edward Mortimer, uncle of the imprisoned Prince, the Earl of March, were taken prisoners, and an expedition undertaken by Henry in person towards the close of the year was forced to retire from the mountainous strongholds of the Welsh. The storms and snowdrifts seemed to fight against them in that wild district, and gave rise to the belief that Glendower was a magician.
Could these various enemies but find some powerful adherents in England, it was plain that Henry’s position would be precarious. A quarrel with those who had hitherto been his chief supporters, the Percies of Northumberland, supplied this element of danger; while a strange report, that the late King was still alive in Scotland, gave a central point round which all Henry’s enemies might gather. About Whitsuntide, in 1402, the rumour reached England that Richard had escaped from Pontefract, and had made his appearance at the house of the Lord of the Isles, by whom he was handed over to the Court, and there kept so strictly that no man could get sight of him. The existence of such a pretender was certain. It was in vain that Henry attempted to suppress the rumour by executions; in vain that he even proceeded to execute certain Franciscan monks who had been engaged in spreading it. The secrecy which covered Richard’s death, and which for some reason Henry could not break, prevented any clear proof of the imposture. The false Richard is believed to have been a man of weak intellect, called Thomas Ward of Trumpington. The reason of the King’s quarrel with the Percies is by no means clear, but various causes of discontent can be shown. The Duke of Albany, after much fighting on the borders, had made an expedition on a large scale against Carlisle. On its return home, the army, heavily laden with booty, was met by the Percies, and defeated at Homildon Hill. The defeat was complete; many Scotch nobles fell into the hands of the English, among them Murdoch, Earl of Fife, the son and heir of the Earl of Albany, and Douglas, Earl of Angus. For such prisoners the Percies expected a large ransom. Their anger and disappointment was great when the King took Murdoch from them and claimed the ransom of the rest. A somewhat similar affair took place in Wales. Of Glendower’s great prisoners, Grey of Ruthyn was allowed to ransom himself, a privilege refused to Mortimer; when the younger Percy, Hotspur, who had married Mortimer’s sister, urged his claim, he met with a rebuff. The King also owed the Percies large sums of money; £20,000 was due to them, which the entanglement of the finances made it impossible to pay. The general feeling that they had been badly rewarded for the invaluable assistance they had afforded Henry, acting upon the unusually hot temper of the younger Percy, drove them into a change of policy.
Before the end of the year 1402, they entered into negotiations with Glendower; and Mortimer, instead of attempting to gain his liberty, married the daughter of the insurgent chief, and recognized him as Prince of Wales. The Percies at the same time gained the assistance of their prisoner Douglas, and the conspiracy was completed by the support given to Glendower by France. On all sides the King’s difficulties seemed to increase. The Earl of Worcester joined the Percies; Richard’s old followers crowded to their standard, and an army, insidiously collected as though for an attack on Scotland, rapidly marched on Shrewsbury to make a junction with the Welsh. Thither Henry, with his son the Prince of Wales, hastened, and the decisive battle of Shrewsbury was fought, in which, after a keen struggle, Hotspur was killed, and most of the other leaders, including Worcester and Douglas, captured. Worcester and the other English leaders were beheaded; Douglas was retained in prison. The King had still to destroy the insurrection of the elder Percies in the North, where all the inhabitants of the country had taken the crescent—the livery of Northumberland. The royal army was, however, obviously too strong for opposition, and the Earl made his submission, and met the King at York. The House of Peers claimed as a right the trial of their fellow, and he was found guilty, not of high treason, but only of misdemeanour, and let off with a fine.
The great conspiracy was thus but half broken. Wales, Scotland, France, and the English malcontents were still in communication. From France, indeed, serious difficulties seemed to threaten. In presence of the weakness of Charles VI., the King of that country, the real power was disputed by his brother Louis of Orleans and his uncle the Duke of Burgundy. Louis had at this time the upper hand. He took in great dudgeon the events which had taken place in England; and rumours were abroad, strengthened by the distribution among the malcontents of Richard’s crest by the old Countess of Oxford, the mother of De Vere, the late King’s favourite. These rumours pointed to a great conspiracy, coupled with an invasion of Essex by France, in favour of the spurious Richard in Scotland. For a time the threat of invasion compelled the King to remain quiet; but after the French fleet, which had attacked the Isle of Wight and Plymouth, had been defeated at Portland, he was able to turn his attention to the North, and again to compel Northumberland to come to an explanation. But that explanation he found himself obliged to accept. Almost at the same time a fresh alarm met him. Lady Constance Spenser had contrived to withdraw the young Earl of March from Windsor, and to fly with him. She was shortly captured, and the young Prince brought back, but it was plain that the danger was great.
In April the King went against Wales. His absence in that direction was at once taken advantage of by his northern enemies. The difficulty with which he could secure supplies was one of Henry’s main obstacles to success, and in the last Parliament the opposition had been headed by Sir Thomas Bardolph. That gentleman now appeared in close conjunction with Northumberland, assisting him to garrison his fortresses. At the same time Mowbray, the son of that Duke of Norfolk with whom Henry had quarrelled at the time of his banishment, and Scrope, the Archbishop of York, the brother of that Lord Scrope who had been Richard’s chancellor at the beginning of his reign, and whom that King had been forced to remove, joined the insurrection. The Earl of Westmoreland, who remained constantly faithful to Henry, was sent against them while Henry was engaged in Wales. Again, the royal army was too strong for the insurgents. Scrope and Mowbray were induced to disband their forces, and were then immediately apprehended. Gascoigne, the chief justice, was called upon to try them and convict them summarily. He was one of those constitutional lawyers who were gradually rising in England, and he refused to do so, pointing out that he should infringe the liberties both of the Church and the House of Lords. Henry found in Sir William Fulthorpe a more complacent judge. They were both beheaded, not without arousing, as Gascoigne had foreseen, the anger of the Lords. Upon the capture of his confederates, Northumberland fled with Bardolph to Scotland, but being refused an interview with the impostor, and mistrusting the honesty of Albany, he subsequently withdrew to Wales. It was there alone that the war continued, nor was it finally suppressed during the reign.
But, in the next two years, events occurred which at length placed Henry in a position of security. The friends of the Scotch King, fearing the ambition of Albany, which had already induced him to take the life of the Duke of Rothesay, the heir-apparent, determined to withdraw James, the King’s second son and heir-apparent, from danger. He therefore took ship for France, but on the way was captured by English cruisers, and brought a prisoner to Henry, who grimly remarked that they might as well have sent him direct to him, as he could have taught him French quite well. He justified this boast; for though he kept the young Prince prisoner, he gave him an education which, upon his subsequent release, well fitted him for the throne he occupied. Henry had now in his hands pledges of safety from all his enemies. The Earl of March was still with him; Murdoch of Fife, Albany’s son, served as a hostage for his father; while James served as security from all attacks from the royalist party in Scotland. The following year (1407) was still more fortunate. The overweening vanity of Orleans, his licentiousness, which, it is said, did not even spare the young Duchess of Burgundy, excited the anger of the Duke of Burgundy, the King’s cousin, to such a degree, that he caused the Duke of Orleans to be murdered in the streets of Paris. Henry’s chief enemy in France was thus removed. With Burgundy, who had lately inherited Flanders, and thus become the Prince of a trading nation and the champion of the city populations, he had much in common; and though he did not espouse his cause in any active manner, he felt secure from any immediate danger. Without his French allies, Owen Glendower was gradually driven back to the mountains of North Wales, and in despair, Northumberland and Bardolph again appeared in the North, took arms, and were defeated and killed at Bramham. Thus safe on the side of France, with Scotland pledged to peace by the captivity of its princes, the Percies finally defeated, and Owen Glendower confined to the limits of the purely Celtic part of Wales, Henry was at length triumphant.
During the whole of these years of difficulty, the King had found it necessary to keep the Commons in good temper. Although he suffered from constant want of money, and in vain tried to induce his frequent Parliaments to act liberally towards him, he seems on no occasion to have employed illegal means for improving his position. It had become an accepted axiom, that consent of all the estates of the realm was necessary for the levying of taxes; and the Commons had made their position so good, that, in the very year of his final triumph, they ventured upon a quarrel with the Lords, claiming for themselves the exclusive right of originating grants, and insisting on the absence of the King while they were discussed. More than that, they had attempted, though unsuccessfully, to oblige the King to answer their petition of grievances before they made their grant, and succeeded in establishing the custom of appropriating their grants to special objects, and of paying them into the hands of treasurers of their own appointment. But their increase of power was chiefly visible in their interference with the royal expenditure and administration. In the fifth year of his reign, the King had been obliged to displace four of his ministers at the request of the Commons, to declare his intention of governing economically according to law, and to name his Privy Council in Parliament. And in the eighth year of his reign, when already he seemed upon the point of triumphing over his enemies, he was compelled to grant his assent to a petition of the Commons, which put as strict limitations upon his power as any to which Richard, even at the time of his greatest depression, had submitted. He had to name sixteen counsellors, by whose advice solely he was to be guided. His ordinary revenue was to be wholly appropriated to his household and the payment of his debts. No officer of the household was to hold his place for life or for a fixed term. The council was to determine nothing which the common law was capable of determining; and the elections of knights were regulated. At the head of this council was put the Prince of Wales.
It is difficult to understand how the King should submit to this arrangement, which virtually established a strictly limited monarchy, just at the moment of his success. It is perhaps explained by his failing health. A disease had attacked his face, which changed into a form of leprosy, and during the remainder of his life he was subject to attacks of epilepsy. It was not unnatural that he should wish to withdraw somewhat from public affairs. Under these circumstances, it is not quite clear how far he is to be credited with the remaining events of his reign. But the prudence and state-craft exhibited in them, which could hardly have been expected from so young a man as Prince Henry, and the more vigorous opposition which he subsequently made to the demands of the Commons, would seem to show that he was still practically ruler. This restoration of vigour is marked by his refusal, towards the close of his reign, to grant any extension of the right of liberty of speech, and by the humble tone adopted by the Parliament in the thirteenth year of his reign, when he was entreated to declare that he was not offended, and that he regarded them as his loyal subjects.
Having secured his position at home, though not, as has been seen, without some sacrifices, the King’s attention was chiefly directed towards securing the permanence of his dynasty by foreign matrimonial alliances, and to obtaining a strong position abroad by interfering in French politics. His two sisters were already respectively Queens of Castile and Portugal. He had himself married, in 1403, a Princess of Navarre. As a husband for his eldest daughter he procured Louis, Count Palatine, the son and heir of Rupert, King of the Romans; while his younger daughter married Eric, who had consolidated a great Scandinavian monarchy in the North.
In France he made his weight felt by alternately siding with one or other of the great parties which divided that kingdom. His natural connection would have been the Burgundians; and he first attached himself so far to that party as to send a considerable army to their assistance. A battle fought near St. Cloud (1411), in which the Armagnacs (as the friends of Orleans were now called) were worsted, for the time rendered the Duke of Burgundy the master of France. Henry chose this opportunity to change sides, and entered into an arrangement with the defeated princes, by which he was secured the full possession of Guienne. He intended at the same time to have led an army into France, and to have imitated the career of Edward III. The national danger produced a temporary friendship between the French parties, and Burgundy, at a meeting held at Auxerre, succeeded in persuading the Armagnacs to annul their arrangement with the English. Henry’s health prevented him from leading the expedition, as he intended; but an army, under the Duke of Clarence, his second son, laid waste Maine and Touraine, and was only stopped by the payment of a large sum of money. After this Clarence withdrew to complete the conquest of Guienne. Thus, though unable to fulfil his ambitious project of invasion, Henry had contrived to make his position abroad very different from what it was at the beginning of his reign, when the French could refuse him the royal title, and paralyze his home policy by a threat of invasion.
From one point of view, as a usurper founding a new dynasty, he had now been quite successful. As a preserver of society, he probably regarded himself as not less so. Though the son of John of Gaunt, the favourer of Wicliffe, and not averse in his youth to the doctrines of that teacher, he had seen that Lollardism pointed, not only to ecclesiastical, but to political changes. From the beginning of the reign he had determined that the preservation of the Church in all its privileges and possessions was the surest means of checking the rising democracy. He had therefore been always its staunch supporter. In pursuance of this policy, in the second year of his reign, he had given his assent to a persecuting statute, formed, it seems probable, on the petition of the clergy, without the participation of the Commons. This statute, which is known under the title of “De Hæretico comburendo,” forbade teaching and preaching without the license of a bishop, to whom also was given the right of condemning heretical books and writings, while the State undertook to carry out the bishop’s sentence. Should any person thus condemned continue in his heresy, he was to be regarded as relapsed, and handed over to the civil arm, to be publicly burned. The first victim of this statute was William Sautré, at one time parish priest of Lynn, and involved in the treason of Kent and Huntingdon. On his persisting in the errors with which he was charged, the new law was carried into effect. The persecution once begun did not cease without more victims, and produced the effect, so common in cases of persecution, of driving the Lollards into further extremes of fanaticism. The germ of socialism which no doubt existed in the Lollard doctrine, and which showed itself in the constant demand for the abolition of the wealth of the clergy, alarmed the barons, and made them strong supporters of orthodoxy. The Commons, on the other hand, although they appear to have differed in feeling at different parts of the reign, were on the whole willing enough, while supporting orthodoxy of faith, to countenance the secularization of Church property. Indeed, they went so far in this direction, that in the year 1410, in answer to the reiterated request of the King for a settled yearly subsidy for his life, they pointed out to him the advisability of appropriating some of the ecclesiastical revenues, which would be enough, they said, to supply him with 15 earls, 1500 knights, and 6200 men-at-arms for military service. They begged also that those condemned for heresy might be withdrawn from the bishop’s jurisdiction, and tried by secular courts.[85]
The popularity of the Prince of Wales, his position as head of his father’s Council, not unnaturally gave the King some uneasiness in his last years. It seems not improbable that, having been once put at the head of the Council, he virtually performed many of the duties of the Government. Documents are extant in which he seems to be regarded as the King’s representative. Moreover, the course of events seems to show certain changes of policy which can be explained in this way. It is evident from his after policy, that he was much attached to the Burgundian party in France. We may therefore credit him with the assistance sent to them, which proved so useful to them at the Battle of St. Cloud, especially as the force was commanded by his friend, Sir John Oldcastle. The sudden change of foreign policy coincides in time with the King’s altered tone in replying to the petitions of the Commons. These changes may very probably mark a determination on the part of the King to re-establish his authority, too much weakened by the position and popularity of the Prince. The stories of the Prince’s wild life in London are mentioned by writers who are almost contemporary, yet do not seem to agree well with what is certainly known of his industry in public business. They, as well as the strange travesty of Oldcastle, a good soldier and stern religious enthusiast, into Shakspeare’s jovial knight, Sir John Falstaff, are perhaps based on the malicious view taken by the orthodox of Oldcastle’s religious tendencies. It is well known that one of the charges alleged against all enthusiastic religionists is immorality. Prince Henry’s subsequent prosecution and punishment of Oldcastle would be represented as the discharge of his old favourites. The aspiring and dangerous character of the Prince, in the eyes of his father, is represented by the story which describes him as having taken the crown from his father’s bedside during one of his fits, and placed it on his own head; and having answered to the remorseful observations of the King as to the unjust manner in which he had gained it, that he “was prepared to guard it against the world in arms.” It is at all events certain that coolness existed between father and son at the close of the reign. The French expedition was intrusted, not to the Prince of Wales, but to the Duke of Clarence, and for the last year and a half Prince Henry was removed from his position as President of the Council. The disease which had so long tormented Henry came to a fatal termination on the 20th of March 1413.